Group insurers are considering data more intelligently to develop products, services and plan designs that are optimal for plan sponsors, but also engage members by using their own personal health and transactional data to involve them in their own well-being. Speaking at Benefits Canada’s 2019 Halifax Benefits Summit on Sept. 24, Chris Goguen, manager of pharmacy benefits strategy and partnership at […]
Compared to the preceding years, 2019 appears to be the year of steady when it comes to progress on hot topics that resonated in the industry in 2017 and 2018. While no single topic has disappeared from the slate, neither have any new ones risen to become topics of urgency among consultants. “Last year, we […]
Buck is launching a three-part digital human resources product that aims to help employers create a consolidated experience for their plan members, drive behavioural change and raise employee satisfaction while creating a healthier employee population and increased productivity. “A more personalized employee experience combined with advanced analytics and decisioning tools are critical to the success […]
The American Association of Retired Persons Foundation and the law firm Garrison, Levin-Epstein, Fitzgerald and Pirrotti have filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Yale University employees who are objecting to their employer instituting fines for those who don’t participate in its wellness program. The university’s program requires its 5,000 unionized staff and their spouses to submit to medical […]
Identifying language more commonly used by a certain gender could have bearing on data analysis of socially responsible investment choices. A new metric, formulated by alternative data firm Indexia, measures the relative male- or female-dominated nature of language used by a company. The metric was built through a process of analyzing millions of direct quotations from both […]
Data is everywhere in the fourth industrial revolution, with no industry left untouched by the momentum it’s creating, according to Nikolas Badminton, futurist and chief executive officer of Exponential Minds. For benefits plans and disability management programs, data analytics can offer insight into how decisions are made, but the landscape is evolving as it becomes […]
Just 24 per cent of plan sponsors said they regularly receive claims analyses to help identify disease states in their workplaces, according to the 2019 Sanofi Canada health-care survey. This number rose to 31 per cent for employers with 500 or more employees and dropped to 13 per cent among small employers. It also found […]
By now, the economic burden of chronic disease in Canada has most likely surpassed $200 billion, according to Sarah Lussier Hoskyn, senior analyst, regulatory affairs and market access at Innovative Medicines Canada. “When you think about the total health-care budget in this country, we spent $250 billion in 2017 alone,” Lussier Hoskyn said during a session […]
Given the volume and depth of data available in benefits plans, as well as the complexity of problems to be solved, machine learning and broader artificial intelligence are unquestionably the future of plan and member health management. That said, there are some important challenges for plan sponsors to consider as they look at these new […]