UCARE.AI snags AI Award for healthcare at TEA 2020

UCARE.AI fosters a clinical ecosystem that relies on machine learning to automatically predict pre-admission costs.

Created to accommodate high-volume estimate requests for hospital pre-admission, AI-Powered Pre-Admission Cost of Hospitalization Estimation (APACHE) is an expandable plug-and-play system that supplies highly accurate and personalised forecasting of hospital expenses, which are vigorously produced according to significant parameters such as patient medical condition, medical practices, patient’s present age, revisit frequency as well as existing comorbidities such as high blood pressure or diabetes.

APACHE helps nurture a clinical landscape that depends on machine learning for high availability, fault-tolerance, and real-time processing of high-volume estimate requests, which subsequently empowers patients to make more well-informed choices regarding available medical treatment options. The increased price transparency also fosters trust between patients and health care providers.

This digital innovation has earned uCare.io Pte. Ltd. (UCARE.AI) the AI Award for healthcare category at Singapore Business Review’s (SBR) recently concluded Technology Excellence Awards (TEA).

The platform provides a staggering 18% mean absolute percentage error in hospital bill estimation, thanks to an advanced suite of AI and machine learning algorithms. This innovation is aligned with UCARE.AI’s dedication to guarantee that patients are able to make educated decisions on available medical treatment options.

It has been adopted since November 2018 across four major hospitals owned by Parkway Pantai in Singapore: Mount Elizabeth, Mount Elizabeth Novena, Gleneagles and Parkway East hospitals.

Since deployment, there has been no complaints and no report of downtime, which is a large improvement on the hospitals’ previous system. Since going live, the AI system has closed the average gap between the estimated and actual bills by 60 percent; hence the achievement of the aforementioned accuracy rate.

“Our investment in this new AI-powered system gives patients more accurate hospital bill estimates and empowers them to make more well-informed decisions on the medical treatment options available,” said Parkway Pantai CEO for the Singapore operations division Phua Tien Beng in a statement provided to SBR.

“More importantly, it allows patients to have greater peace of mind over their healthcare expenditure so that they can focus on getting well,” he added.

Because of APACHE’s success, Parkway Pantai has maximised UCARE.AI's predictions for their Price Guarantee Programme, a new offering that ensures costs for six common medical procedures.

With the PGP, Parkway Pantai’s patients will be guaranteed costs for these procedures, even if related complications arise and additional treatment is needed for up to seven inpatient days. The programme is the first of its kind and highlights Parkway’s confidence in UCARE.AI's solution to provide highly-accurate predictions.

Since implementation in Parkway Pantai hospitals, the AI-Powered Cost Predictor has garnered the company several notable accolades, such as the 2019 Asia-Pacific Healthcare AI Technology Innovation Award by Frost & Sullivan.

It has also earned UCARE.AI’s Founder and CTO Neal Liu recognition as one of ASEAN’s top 50 CIO tech leaders by IBM and IDG and accreditation from Infocomm Media Development Authority, a Singaporean government agency, for its product functionalities, bestowing Parkway Pantai with the Best Adoption Award in 2019 SG:Digital TechBlazer Awards.

It was also acknowledged by Singapore PDPC as the first successful large-scale model AI use case alongside UCARE AI’s follow-up whitepaper, which was released in January 2019.

Watch the interview below to know more about their winning project:

The Technology Excellence Awards, presented by Singapore Business Review, was held via video conferencing throughout the first and third week of June.

This year’s nominations were judged by a panel consisting of Daryl Pereira, Head of Cyber at KPMG; Cheang Wai Keat, Head of Advisory Services in Singapore and ASEAN Technology Consulting Leader at Ernst & Young; Chin Chee Choon, Advisory Leader and Assurance Director at Nexia TS; Rizwi Wun, Partner, Acting Head of Intellectual Property and Technology Practice Group at RHTLaw Asia; Carolyn Chin-Parry, Managing Director and Digital Accelerator Leader at PwC.

If you would like to join the 2021 awards and be acclaimed for your company’s exceptional technological innovations, please email Julie Anne Nuñez at [email protected]