- Voice AI can help clinics cut insurance hold times and reduce staff burnout.
- Digital companions like Everfriends can ease loneliness for older adults and people with dementia.
- This article is part of “Build IT: Connectivity,” a series about tech powering better business.
Voice assistants are becoming a bigger part of our daily lives. Hype from frontier labs like OpenAI has sparked debate about whether talking chatbots might actually be a substitute for real human connections.
In many health and social care contexts, voice AI isn’t about replacing human-human connections. It’s more about filling gaps and freeing up staff from busywork. In clinics across the US, AI-powered voice tools are already calling insurers and handling paperwork and freeing up staff.
At the individual level, AI voice companions are stepping in to offer conversation and comfort to people.
Cutting admin headaches
One big pain point in US healthcare is the time staff spend on the phone with insurers, chasing approvals, waiting on hold, and dealing with endless paperwork.
Cencora, a major US healthcare distributor and clinic operator, faces this problem daily. Its teams handle benefits verification, pharmacy services, and specialty drug management — tasks that require huge volumes of repetitive phone calls.
“There are a lot of administrative phone calls that have to be made,” said Jeff Buck, Cencora’s vice president of digital solutions. Internal audits show benefit verification calls at Cencora can take up to 90 minutes, and call volumes spike tenfold in January.
Buck says Cencora turned to Infinitus, to help automate the process.