AI the biggest challenge facing digital health and wellness firms: Beazley

Beazley, the specialist insurer, has revealed AI to be the biggest challenge facing digital health and wellness firms globally as they ramp up its integration into their systems.

Beazley’s Digital Health & Wellness 2024 report is a survey of 600 industry executives in six countries across Europe, North America and Asia digital health and wellness businesses.

Executives expressed concers over the trustworthiness and bias of AI as the highest priority in their agendas.

Evan Smith, Product Leader, Global Healthcare, Specialty Risks, Beazley, said: “Business leaders are right to be considering the varying challenges facing their firms. For instance, it’s clear deep learning algorithms in AI offer great benefits but also pose substantial risks.

“Because AI seems like a “black box” it can be hard to understand how it arrives at its conclusions, making it difficult to identify and correct bias, and to fully trust in AI’s recommendations. With our research finding that many businesses don’t have essential tailored insurance, it’s important insureds are considering the options available to them and ensuring the right cover is in place.”

To address this, Beazley recommends this subgroup and their insurers ensure that they have the right protection in place.

However, the insurer’s research found fewer than a third buy the essential tailored insurance covers that protect against bodily injury caused by several technology-based drivers.

Keri Marmorek, Claims Team Leader – Healthcare, Beazley, added: “Transformative technologies, such as AI, bring both risks and rewards. With 87% of US digital health and wellness companies planning to use or increase their use of AI to diagnose or treat patients, we can expect to see an increase in claims.

“It’s therefore essential that businesses partner with specialist insurers who have a deep bench of cyber and healthcare experts and a comprehensive, forward-looking view of the risks.”

The next top challenges are supply chain and recruitment issues cited by digital health and wellness businesses as they strive to grow, with 29% and 28% reporting this, respectively.

By contrast, in 2022, only 17% and 16% identified supply chain and recruitment as their top issues impacting growth. Fewer than half of firms expect overall business to grow in 2024, though there are significant regional differences.

Looking ahead, two risks continue to dominate C-Suite agendas: cyber and competency, which again were both highlighted in the 2022 report, but in 2024 both risks loom larger, and for the first time it’s concern over competency that dominates.

38% of global executives worry that clients will complain that treatment or advice was not as advertised or that competency was unfairly represented, an increase from 2022’s 24%. In 2024, 35% worry about cyber threats including ransomware and phishing, up from 27% in 2022.

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