Katya Andresen and Bret Taylor discuss how conversational AI can help create a more connected health care experience, improve outcomes, and make support more relevant – with clinical expertise at the center.
How The Cigna Group and Sierra are using AI to connect the health care experience:
- The Cigna Group is using AI to make health care more connected and personalized, creating greater value for customers, employers, and plan sponsors.
- The Cigna Group is building a health intelligence capability that combines data, AI, and clinical expertise to help identify needs earlier, improve outcomes, and support affordability.
- The Cigna Group builds where its health care expertise creates an advantage and partners with companies like Sierra, a conversational AI company, to move faster on AI capabilities as part of its broader Health Intelligence approach.
Imagine a health care experience where people can get support earlier, without repeatedly explaining where they are in their journey, and where benefits, treatment, and medications feel more connected. That is the experience The Cigna Group is working toward – one that can reduce delays, improve follow-through, and lead to better health outcomes, while helping employers and plan sponsors use resources more effectively.
In their conversation, Katya Andresen, executive vice president and chief data, digital, and AI officer at The Cigna Group, and Bret Taylor, co-founder and CEO of Sierra, discuss how The Cigna Group’s broader health intelligence approach is creating a more connected health care experience and how Sierra is helping accelerate its conversational AI capabilities. The Cigna Group brings health care context grounded in clinical expertise and an understanding of each person’s health journey, while Sierra brings conversational technology that can help create simpler, more connected interactions.
Video: Katya Andresen, executive vice president and chief data, digital, and AI officer at The Cigna Group, and Bret Taylor, co-founder and CEO of Sierra, discuss how combining AI with health care context and clinical expertise can create a more connected health care experience.
The Cigna Group believes AI creates the most value when it makes health care more personal – giving clinicians and care teams relevant insight and helping people reach the right support sooner.
“What matters most is the connected journey. People should not have to start over each time they move between benefits, providers, medications, and services.” Katya Andresen, executive vice president and chief data, digital, and AI officer at The Cigna Group
As AI models become more widely available, the advantage lies in applying them with a deeper understanding of each person’s care and the ability to turn insight into action. That thinking is central to The Cigna Group’s Health Intelligence approach, while Sierra helps accelerate conversational AI capabilities.
“As AI models become more capable, they can move beyond supporting a single decision to engaging with people over a longer horizon. The opportunity is not simply to digitize a phone call, but to orchestrate an outcome – particularly for people with complex care needs.” Bret Taylor, co-founder and CEO of Sierra
Turning conversation into action
As part of The Cigna Group’s AI-enabled support, voice AI can help customers get answers and assistance faster, particularly in specialty pharmacy, where delays can disrupt complex treatment. By carrying context across voice, chat, and other channels, The Cigna Group can help clinicians and care managers get people to the right resource sooner – reducing repeated steps, missed follow-up, and the potential for higher-cost care.
Image: The Cigna Group’s “build and borrow” approach to AI: The Cigna Group builds AI capabilities where its health care context, clinical expertise, and ability to act create an advantage, while working with partners such as Sierra to move faster on conversational technology and other areas. This approach aims to support simpler interactions in the near term and more personalized, proactive engagement over time.
Context creates the advantage
Many organizations can access similar AI models and data. The real differentiation is having context and clinical expertise applied to them, not simply having access to the technology or data. AI surfaces relevant signals and supports people, while qualified professionals interpret those signals and determine the response, from proactive outreach to guidance through a complex prescription journey. Clinical judgment and appropriate human oversight remain central.
The collaboration reflects The Cigna Group’s “build and borrow” approach to AI: build where its expertise and capabilities create an advantage, and partner where outside technology can accelerate value. Across clinical care, prescription intake, and administration, this approach can reduce administrative burden, improve coordination, and simplify navigation – benefiting customers, clinicians, and plan sponsors.
“You can rent the intelligence; you need to own the context,” Taylor said. “The more relevant context you have, the better the engagement and the outcomes can be.”
Expanding personalized advocacy and supporting affordability
Coordinated care can help people understand benefits, navigate treatment, and manage medications. AI can surface relevant information and potential needs, while case managers and clinicians provide judgment, empathy, and clinical expertise.
Across The Cigna Group, thousands of clinicians help define which signals are meaningful and turn these insights into action. Combined with a fuller view of an individual’s journey, that expertise can identify needs earlier, get people to appropriate support, and reduce gaps in adherence and follow-up.
For customers, that means easier navigation, timely help, and fewer barriers to care. For employers and plan sponsors, less administrative work, faster access to therapy, better use of benefits, and earlier support can improve affordability and focus resources where they can have the greatest impact.
Ultimately, this is not just a better interaction. It is about identifying needs earlier, connecting people to the right support, and improving outcomes and affordability.
Frequently asked questions
The Cigna Group’s broader Health Intelligence approach combines data, AI, and clinical expertise to create a more connected health care experience. Sierra, a conversational AI company, helps The Cigna Group move faster on conversational AI. The Cigna Group brings the health care context, clinical expertise, and understanding of each person’s health journey, while Sierra brings conversational technology that can help create simpler, more connected interactions. Together, the companies aim to reduce repetitive steps, administrative work, and barriers to care.
At The Cigna Group, AI surfaces insights and supports people – it does not replace clinical judgment. AI can identify relevant information and potential needs, while qualified professionals interpret those signals and determine the response, with appropriate human oversight remaining central. The Cigna Group applies established clinical, privacy, security, and governance guardrails to the design and use of AI-enabled experiences.
When care is disconnected, delays, repeated steps, and missed follow-up can contribute to higher care costs. By combining AI with health care context and clinical expertise, The Cigna Group aims to identify needs earlier, reduce gaps in adherence and follow-up, and help people reach the right support sooner. For employers and plan sponsors, that can support better health outcomes and more effective use of health care resources.
Katya Andresen
I'm going to jump right in about our partnership. So, I wondered if we could start out talking a little bit about… You work across a lot of industries. Health care is very special. What are you learning about health care, and what have you learned from the partnership that we have?
Bret Taylor
Well, I think health care is probably, I think, has the highest potential for a positive impact with this current generation of AI. You've probably forgotten more about health care than I will ever know, but we spend about 18% of our GDP on health care in this country. It's one of the few industries that has gotten less productive over the past decade. And so, you know, whether if you look at the shortage of pharmacists to registered nurses, to doctors, to the administrative costs, I think that there are so many applications for this technology that can go directly to the benefit of members. And I think that's what has always drawn me to Cigna as you're focused on the member first. I think the thing that's been most exciting in our partnership has been the application of voice. So if you think about what it means to create digital experiences, you know, in the dark ages of three years ago, that meant a website or a mobile app. With voice AI we've essentially digitized the last remaining analog channel, which is the telephone. And the telephone is incredibly important in the health care industry, whether it's outbound callings to partners or inbound calling for members. And it's remarkable how well this technology can work. You've mentioned some of our partnership. The Accredo AI agent is autonomously handling over 40% of calls. These are basically members. It's better, faster, and cheaper right now. It's essentially the benefits are to everybody, the member, to you, to the bottom line. So I think, sort of thinking of as Maslow's hierarchy of needs, first find shelter. Like let's take, you know, the billions of phone calls in the health care industry that could be automated and apply it there. And then I… I know a lot of our conversation will go towards the longer horizon of this technology, where we can really help to drive outcomes for Cigna members, particularly for these complex cases, which I think are people who are most vulnerable in most in need and can most benefit from this technology.
Katya Andresen
That's great. I share your enthusiasm for voice, obviously. I think it's important, incredibly important, in health care. It is still early innings for voice in the AI space, so I think it would be really interesting to hear your perspective on where it's going, and then what that means for advantages for our partnership in the future.
Bret Taylor
Well, I think it was really captured by the slide you just presented, actually. But I'll sort of take a step back. As AI models become more capable, we've gone from sort of reasoning about sort of a single decision to thinking about, how do you actually orchestrate a longer horizon engagement. And if you think about a Cigna member with complex care needs, it's a perfect example of this. And it goes from, “How do you digitize a phone call?” to, “Can you actually orchestrate a member journey to drive towards an outcome?” Think things like prescription drug adherence or almost creating a digital health advocate for each member. If you think about the cost of sort of the high end of the health care market, where you can actually have concierge doctors and health advocates, with AI, we can digitize that, and we can provide that exclusive service in a much broader way and actually drive outcomes that just weren't possible before. And in particular, if you think about some of the complex care scenarios you're focused on, it's something that is only possible with AI to do in a cost-effective way. And so I think about outbound engagements; AI not just reaching out to you, but deciding to reach out to you, where everyone's journey is different. I think about, you know, automating sort of some of the relationships with partners, if you think about the complex supply chain of health care. And what I loved about the way you presented it, we have a saying at Sierra which is, “Rent the intelligence, own the context.” And I think over time, AI will be broadly available in the health care industry. You can't really differentiate on intelligence by itself, but what you can is have more context about your members and use that to make more intelligent decisions about how to engage with them and drive those outcomes. And I think, both because of your portfolio of companies and services and how far ahead you are in AI, I think you're going to start compounding some of that context advantage over time. And selfishly, as an AI person, I think we'll be able to see the impact of the technology faster with you than almost anyone else, which is such a privilege.
Katya Andresen
For us, too. And I'd like to follow up on something you just said. So, I agree, we're in a stage now where we can do inbound. We're doing outbound as well in certain parts of our business. But what really matters is that connected journey, and we believe that's the place we really want to be ahead of the game, as you said. And, can you talk a little bit about Sierra's plans around agentic harnesses or the ability to connect these journeys? No matter what modality someone is in or wherever they are in their journey?
Bret Taylor
Yeah. The spirit of “renting intelligence, owning the context” is how important the context is. You know, to some degree, that universal profile of me and who I am is the most valuable thing. And no matter how advanced GPT-28 is, you know, it won't know what you know about me as a member of Cigna. And that context about me is actually the most important thing to derive value from this. What will become superintelligence may already be superintelligence in the future. And what's interesting about essentially making AI agents your digital front door for that connected member journey is that every interaction I have with AI adds to that context, you know, because if you think about it, how many conversations over the phone like, what do you log in the computer system? Well, now, if you're having a conversation with an agent, whether it's over the phone or a digital voice experience or a digital chat experience, all of those memories are actually a part of my unified profile. And essentially, the more you lean into AI as your digital front door, the deeper your context mode becomes. And… but more importantly, for a Cigna member, the more intelligence you'll have about how to drive me towards that outcome. You know, To help me in particular with… and I am way out of my depth here… but for some of the, you know, sort of complex therapies, just even the act of taking them correctly is, “Can we really drive outcomes?” And to actually have as much context as possible to drive those outcomes, I think, is an incredible opportunity. And so, I'm obviously sort of biased in this assessment, but I think the more companies lean into AI as their digital front door, the more their AI will actually perform better. And I think it's also why I think you all leaning in to move more quickly than many of your peers is so important, because you're getting those lessons faster than anyone else.
Katya Andresen
Yeah. Thank you for really underlining the compounding value that we're seeing here, because this engine and the interactions with the agents create more and more data, and that makes the whole thing more and more valuable and great for outcomes. Okay. Speed round. Quick question for you. A skeptical investor might say, “Everyone has access to AI. Now really, where is the sustainable advantage?” And you've talked about context, but can you put a finer point on that?
Bret Taylor
Yeah. So, if you think about… I'll just give you an anecdote. I just added my 16-year-old daughter to our car insurance, which cost me an arm and a leg. In that conversation, I mentioned, jokingly, that I have a 15-year-old son and I'll be calling them next year. Which is true. And because I'm in my line of work, I wondered. I bet that's not being recorded anywhere, and I just gave them an opportunity to reengage me and upsell me, and I've given the date to reach out to me. I think that's an exact example of the type of context you get from, I'll say, the more unstructured conversations that come through these digital interactions, and there's millions of these and they're not inconsequential. I think talking about data in the abstract doesn't actually give it the value that it is. And if you think about someone talking about the trouble they're having to go see a specialty provider, maybe trouble with the medication, maybe they alluded to something that's actually an important side effect of a medication, but they didn't know it was important. All of those things are available when you have a digital front door that's an agent. And I think the important thing that you will have by leaning into this faster than others is you're starting to develop that advantage sooner. And because it compounds, you know, the earlier you start to develop those memories in that context, the more your advantage will compound relative to your peers. So, I really think this is… especially in health care, I think this is incredibly important. Also true of a property and casualty insurance company as well.
Katya Andresen
Well said. Thank you, Bret, so much. And as we said at the outset, I appreciate you being here, but above all, our partnership.
Bret Taylor
Thank you very much.