Humana Inc. wants to do a better job of playing matchmaker for its members and providers.
According to WCPO-TV in Cincinnati, Louisville-based Humana has enlisted Cincinnati-based Spry Labs to help it figure out better ways of making those connections.
The goal is to find new ways to make the process of finding the right care provider more customer-friendly. That means improving the accuracy of information in provider directories and making sure that customers’ search results are relevant.
“Developing, populating, and maintaining the ‘ideal’ provider directory solution is a complex proposition and an industry-wide problem,” Spry says on its website. “Resolving this systemic problem would be a game-changer making the entire provider search experience less stressful, more predictable, and less costly for everyone involved.”
Spry, a spinoff of Cintrifuse, works with health care entrepreneurs and organizations to make digital prototypes and products that have commercial potential. Our sister paper, The Business Courier, calls it “a startup factory.”
Given that description, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that it isn’t using traditional methods of research and development to solve this problem for Humana.
Spry plans to crowdsource a solution with a “data jam” later this week, Sept. 29-30 in Cincy.
Cintrifuse director of marketing Eric Weissmann told WCPO that a data jam is sort of like a hackathon, where lots of people come together, form teams, build and compete over who’s idea is better.
But while hackathons are mostly open to anyone who wants to join, data jam teams have to apply to compete. So far, he said, about 30 participants have been accepted from as far away as Washington, D.C.
Humana will give the winning team $5,000. If any data jam ideas make it to the request for proposal process, the competing teams will also have the chance to put in bids.
Date: September 29, 2016