The in-house solution FeeAdvisor.ai has been progressively deployed in our hospitals in Malaysia – 6 currently with 2 more by the end of the year. By end of 2022, most if not all our 16 hospitals in Malaysia will be using the AI tool. The product will also be pilot tested in Gleneagles Hospital Hong Kong.

Bill estimation is an integral part of our hospitals’ financial counselling process where patients get clarification regarding their medical bills prior to admission.

Dirk Schraven, IHH’s Group Head of Data & Value Driven Outcomes (VDO), said: “Using artificial intelligence, we are able to give our patients greater price transparency, accurate cost estimates, and timely cost updates during an unplanned care situation. This empowers patients to make better informed decisions regarding the various treatment options available. By giving patients and their family members greater peace of mind and enabling them to focus on getting well, we in turn gain their trust.”

By comparison, conventional bill estimation methods are based on statistical calculation of historical hospital bill sizes from past admissions and do not account for dynamically changing factors such as disease aggravation, patient’s medical condition, and medical practices resulting in longer length of stay or unexpected treatments.

While AI has been deployed to estimate bills in our 4 Singapore hospitals since 2018, this new tool is the first to be built and developed by an in-house team.

Allen Tan, AVP of Business Analytics, said: “It was a challenge we set for ourselves. Borrowing the idea of bill estimation, our team developed a minimal viable product in just three months. After a successful pilot phase, we started to deploy the product to hospitals in Malaysia. We couldn’t be happier with the results and feedback so far. Our next focus is on improving the solution to be more responsive to treatment changes so as to provide a better patient experience.”

FeeAdvisor.ai is just one of the in-house developed data products under #IHHMade. The team is working on several other prototypes including Package Value Optimiser, Robo Claims and Social Media Text Analysis - that are developed by IHH, for IHH.

These solutions are all part of IHH’s digital transformation journey to enhance operational efficiencies and to deliver better, easier, faster and more cost-effective healthcare to our patients.