This is one of the best lines I’ve ever heard at an Society of Actuaries (SOA) meeting ... or any insurance meeting for that matter. Thanks to Luke VandenAvond from Northwestern Mutual for his witty phrase. Luke was advocating for how important it is that carriers step up their effort to collect structured data about medical impairments found during underwriting – starting now, so that they’ll be better able to analyze their mortality in the future.
Seriously, how many times have you wished you had better data so you could solve a problem your company is dealing with today, or perhaps even find an opportunity? I remember asking MIB reps if I could get a file of prior MIB codes so I could analyze mortality by impairment, but I needed more than seven years worth of data. They assured me REPEATEDLY that they REALLY DO delete the data after seven years.
Well, what if I had a solution that let you turn back the hands of time? I can’t do anything about gray hair, no hair, or wrinkles, but DigitalOwl can help you data mine your inforce files.
Here’s how it works:
Our Digital Underwriting Abstract (DUA) and Digital Audit Report (DAR) utilizes Artificial Intelligence (AI), Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract medical data from traditional APSs/EMR. We share it with underwriters via a Smart PDF and as structured data. We can even pull data from full underwriting files including labs, RX reports, digital applications, etc.
If you want to data mine your inforce block, you’d provide DigitalOwl with PDFs (or data if you have it) from your old files.
DigitalOwl will produce the DUA and provide you with the resulting data file.
From there, you decide what comes next - meaning - you decide if you just use the data in the original DigitalOwl format or want to run it through a rules engine so you can layer on an underwriting assessment with debits and credits. The answer depends on the problem you’re trying to solve.
Example Use Case:
We heard from Dr. Stout, obesity and diabetes are on the rise. You decide to study diabetics you underwrote 10-15 years ago to make sure you’re prepared for this increasing risk pool and:
make sure you’re charging enough
or conversely, look for niches where you can liberalize
analyze comorbidities or the impact of various treatments
maybe even build a mortality model or evaluate an inforce block
adjust your reserves if necessary
The only limit to what you can do with the data is the size of your imagination!
DigitalOwl will provide you with a fully digitized file, including:
diabetes plus all of the other impairments found,
all medications, diagnostic/lab tests, procedures, symptoms,
as well as full details on comorbid conditions.
We all need to find solutions to digitize and keep files going forward. Now there’s a solution that will allow you to go back in time – and this time make sure you’re capturing the data you need. Your current self – and your carrier – will thank you!