French tech startup Alan held a press conference this morning to announce three product updates. While it is better known as a health insurance company, the startup has always been trying to offer more than insurance coverage. It wants to build a super app for all things related to healthcare.
For instance, Alan lets you ask a question to a doctor and get an answer within 15 minutes or so. This feature has been live for the past four years.
The next logical step is leveraging artificial intelligence for medical conversations. Alan is adding a virtual assistant called Mo. It is currently directly tied to the feature that lets you chat with doctors.
“On the one hand, we increasingly want to be in charge of our own health. On the other, our healthcare system is mostly reactive and is therefore under constant strain,” Alan’s AI lead Antoine Lizée said at the press conference.
However, if you’ve used an AI chatbot over the past couple of years, you know that they tend to hallucinate. And when you work in the healthcare industry, you don’t want to give dangerous advice or misdiagnose a patient. This issue has come up in the news lately with AI-based medical transcriptions — eight out of every 10 audio transcriptions suffered from some level of hallucination according to a study from a University of Michigan researcher.
Alan’s guardrails are twofold. First, using the AI-based chatbot is entirely optional. “Mo rephrases my question, introduces itself and asks if I want to start with Mo or if I want to talk to a doctor,” Lizée said.
Second, Mo’s answers are checked by a doctor within 15 minutes. They can either confirm the medical advice or correct some things that have been said in the conversation. Patients receive a notification with a message to tell you how the doctor feels about the AI conversation.
Over the past few weeks, there have been 900 conversations between Alan users and Mo. But given that 680,000 people are currently covered by Alan’s health insurance products, Mo is quickly going to become a widely used healthcare-related AI chatbot. So it’s going to be interesting to see how people react to this new feature and if Alan is going to make some tweaks over time.
While Mo is mostly a chatbot for now, the company plans to add memories and personalization features to make it more proactive and less reactive. “This is just the beginning. Our vision for Mo goes beyond that. Our vision is to make it a health companion that understands your context and your health history,” Lizée said.
An online shop and some gamification features
In addition to AI features, Alan unveiled a mobile shop where you’ll find dietary supplements, sport accessories, baby-related goods and other health-adjacent products.
“It’s a curated selection of health and wellness products to improve your daily life,” Alan product manager Mélanie Alsberghe said. “We favor French brands that share our high standards and values. And we have negotiated preferential rates for our members.”
This seems like the first step of a bigger play. While online pharmacies aren’t very common in France due to regulatory and logistics hurdles, Alan could be well-positioned to offer over-the-counter drugs and more in the near future.
Finally, Alan is launching Alan Walk, a gamification feature with a self-explaining name. If you opt in to Alan Walk, the app will record your steps — it uses the built-in pedometer feature in your phone or (optionally) your connected watch.
Alan Walk has been designed as a feature to fight sedentary lifestyles. Steps help you reach certain goals. You unlock berries (a virtual currency) at each goal.
“Then you can exchange your berries to donate to charities, or get discounts on the Alan Shop, or personalize your avatar,” Alan product manager Antoine Moulet said. Your avatar is visible in a leaderboard ranking all your colleagues.
“For us, this is all about improving this integrated experience between health insurance, prevention and access to medical care,” Alan co-founder and CEO Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve said.
Alan recently raised a $193 million funding round at an impressive $4.5 billion valuation. After France, Belgium and Spain, the company announced plans to expand to Canada — for that country more specifically, Alan is the first new health insurance company in almost 70 years.
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