Govt Abstract. As healthcare grows extra fragmented and dear, Transcarent CEO Glen Tullman explains why consumer-directed platforms powered by generative AI are rising as the following structural shift. He outlines how WayFinding strikes from search to agentic motion, why aligned incentives matter greater than added options, and the way accountable automation should maintain clinicians firmly within the loop.
Healthcare leaders more and more acknowledge that entry, value, and navigation stay deeply damaged for shoppers. On this dialog, Transcarent CEO Glen Tullman discusses why consumer-directed care has turn into the following frontier, how generative AI permits “magic-like” WayFinding experiences, and what it takes to align incentives round outcomes reasonably than quantity. Drawing on a number of public-company management cycles, Tullman frames AI not as a alternative for clinicians however because the orchestration layer that removes friction, improves predictability, and restores belief within the healthcare journey.
AITJ: Glen, you’ve led a number of public corporations and landmark IPOs, however with Transcarent, you’ve chosen to disrupt from the patron’s aspect first. What satisfied you that “consumer-directed care” was the following frontier in healthcare transformation?
Healthcare at the moment is just too usually complicated, advanced, and dear . . . and the general public will inform you that it’s getting worse reasonably than higher. Folks don’t know the place to show, what to do subsequent, or who they will belief. And that uncertainty exhibits up on the very moments when people and households are most weak. That’s precisely why we constructed Transcarent — and why we’re so pleased with WayFinding, which is the primary and solely complete well being and care platform that makes use of AI to empower well being shoppers.
We’ve used know-how in each different trade to empower shoppers, enhance the expertise, enhance the standard, and cut back prices . . . journey (Expedia), banking (SoFi), data (Google, ChatGPT), transportation (Uber, Lyft). In healthcare, the center is making it tougher than ever. It creates extra friction and is taking the entire cash. So, utilizing know-how to handle all of the challenges . . . an expertise that’s straightforward to make use of, that customers love, that delivers higher high quality and immediate entry to care seems like a no brainer. And that’s what we’ve created at Transcarent. We’re changing the legacy navigators with a subsequent technology platform. WayFinding is designed to assist individuals as they transfer alongside their well being and care journey.
Folks don’t know the place to show, what to do subsequent, or who they will belief.
Glen Tullman
You describe Transcarent’s platform as delivering a “magic-like” well being expertise by way of generative AI. Are you able to stroll us by way of a real-world instance of how that magic performs out in a member’s journey?
To paraphrase writer Arthur C. Clarke, know-how, completely utilized, is indistinguishable from magic. After I discuss a “magic-like” expertise, I’m speaking about eradicating friction at each step of an individual’s well being and care journey.
Image a busy working mother juggling a full day of Zoom calls when her little one comes down with a sore throat and fever. She opens the Transcarent app and describes her little one’s scenario. The AI Care Assistant asks a few easy follow-up questions, appears to be like at her advantages, after which does the laborious half for her: it finds a high-quality, in-network pediatrician and books an appointment on her behalf that matches her schedule or she will chat with a doc in 60 seconds, 24 hours a day.
That’s the ability of WayFinding. Our AI doesn’t simply reply questions — it drives motion by routing shoppers to the proper profit, surfacing excessive‑worth suppliers, and coordinating pressing or advanced care multi function app. To the patron, it ought to really feel like magic.
The WayFinding platform’s newest replace was revealed at CES2026. What does model 2.0 sign concerning the evolution of shopper expectations in healthcare—and what’s subsequent on the roadmap?
With WayFinding 2.0, we’ve moved from search to talk, to the “agentic motion period” in healthcare. Shoppers don’t simply need solutions; they anticipate techniques that do issues for them. Like private assistant would. That’s the extent of proactive, personalised service individuals already expertise in different industries . . . and now they will anticipate it in well being and care with Transcarent.
At CES, we launched Superior Symptom Checking (to determine what’s flawed), Agentic Scheduling (to search out an accessible, in community doctor and ebook an appointment for you), “Whole Recall” Reminiscence (to remind you what the physician mentioned and what care you need to have requested), and Personalised Well being Paths (to supply month-to-month personalised longevity strategies and care follow-ups). Healthcare is enjoying catch-up to each different trade, however we’re shifting rapidly.
You’ve usually mentioned healthcare innovation isn’t just about know-how however fixing issues for actual individuals. What’s one drawback that retains you up at night time—and what’s Transcarent doing about it?
The issue that retains me up at night time is easy and fixable: individuals delaying or avoiding wanted care as a result of the system is just too complicated, too costly, or each. Within the wealthiest nation on the planet, with one of the best docs and hospitals, too many households are nonetheless asking, “Can we afford to go to the physician?” or “The place do I even begin?” These sorts of delays flip manageable points into crises.
We sort out the issue from three angles, they usually all begin with making entry to high-quality healthcare straightforward for shoppers. First, we give individuals one place to go — not ten apps or a stack of membership playing cards and telephone numbers. With WayFinding, you’ll be able to simply ask Transcarent what you want and get clear, personalised steerage straight away. Second, we don’t simply cease at solutions. We wrap individuals in built-in Care Experiences to allow them to go from a query to precise care with out getting handed off or beginning over. Our platform consists of virtually each main level resolution . . . Hinge and Sword in MSK, Carrot, Progyny, Maven, and Midi in girls’s well being, and a bunch of others. And third, we modify the economics. We deliver transparency and accountability to issues like pharmacy and surgical prices, so employers and households are paying for higher outcomes, no more complexity or pointless surgical procedure. Our dedication is to drive high quality and accessibility up, and drive prices down.
Capping COE (Middle of Excellence) case administration charges at $6,500 is a daring transfer. How did you arrive at that quantity—and what structural shift are you hoping this transparency will catalyze throughout the trade?
For years, COE distributors have charged case administration charges that quietly rise with the associated fee and complexity of surgical procedure. So, the extra you spend, the extra they make. That by no means sat proper with me. We checked out years of efficiency information throughout 1000’s of surgical episodes and requested a easy query: What’s a good, flat price that helps excessive‑contact navigation and medical oversight with out rewarding greater payments?
By capping all surgical procedure case administration charges at $6,500 and setting costs earlier than surgical procedure, we’re drawing a line within the sand: no extra runaway, percentage-based charges that develop as claims develop. We’re calling on our friends to place outcomes first, make pricing predictable, and rebuild belief in employer healthcare by aligning their enterprise fashions with what’s proper for individuals. And I anticipate the charges to return down subsequent yr, together with the cap. If we’re going to make care higher that additionally means now we have to drive down prices.
Many platforms “add extra” to repair healthcare’s complexity. Transcarent goals for subtraction. What did it’s a must to say no to, or strip away, to create a less complicated and smarter expertise?
Conventional navigation stacks up name facilities, portals, level options, and apps, every with its personal login and telephone quantity. We mentioned no to that complexity. As a substitute of asking individuals to recollect which hypertension or most cancers resolution vendor to obtain, or which 1‑800 quantity to make use of, we constructed a single entrance door that unifies advantages navigation, medical steerage, and care supply.
Behind the scenes, it’s all built-in. We stripped away duplicative consumption kinds, redundant telephone timber, and disconnected vendor hand‑offs, and changed them with one coordinated expertise that routes individuals to excessive‑worth choices and stays with them by way of decision. By our Expertise Retailer, employers can contract with any of the main level options and have them straight built-in into their Transcarent expertise, simpler for the employers and simpler for the staff.
Within the time it takes to dial a legacy navigator, you’ll be able to have your reply on our WayFinding platform or be linked to one among our level resolution companions. Or discuss with an actual particular person.
You’ve repeatedly emphasised aligning incentives round outcomes reasonably than quantity. How troublesome is it to shift this mindset inside a system nonetheless entrenched in fee-for-service economics?
It’s powerful as a result of price‑for‑service isn’t only a fee mannequin, it’s muscle reminiscence. For many years, individuals have been rewarded for extra procedures, and extra visits with out asking if persons are truly more healthy. If you begin speaking about being paid for prevented surgical procedures, higher therapy plans, fewer ER visits, or decrease pharmacy tendencies, you’re asking the system to go in opposition to the how it’s designed. Healthcare is the one trade that, regardless of the addition of know-how, has not moved suppliers and shoppers nearer collectively. As a substitute, the center has grown – as have prices.
The excellent news is that self‑insured employers and ahead‑pondering well being plans are already there. They reside in a world of whole value, outcomes, and experiences.
We’ve constructed Transcarent round aligned incentives and efficiency ensures tied to measurable financial savings and improved care. Is it troublesome? Sure. However when you’ll be able to present that avoiding pointless care and chopping readmissions lowers prices, the dialog shifts from “if we will get there” to “how briskly can we get there?”
Healthcare is the one trade that, regardless of the addition of know-how, has not moved suppliers and shoppers nearer collectively.
Glen Tullman
From Livongo to Transcarent, your work has usually blended proactive, personalised care with highly effective information. How do you strike the proper steadiness between automation and the irreplaceable position of human clinicians?
Our philosophy is easy, assist clinicians give attention to what they do finest: hear, diagnose, deal with, and reassure. With WayFinding, generative AI interprets questions, checks advantages, surfaces choices, personalizes the expertise, and coordinates subsequent steps. However in terms of medical judgment, physicians, nurses, and Well being Guides step in. Our know-how lets physicians give attention to what they have been educated to do, not search for pharmacies or cope with billing.
Our AI is designed to assist navigation and choice‑making, to not diagnose, deal with, or exchange clinicians, and we use multi-layer security guards, human assessment, and steady monitoring to maintain it that means.
You spoke about collaborating in a CES panel on the 2035 imaginative and prescient for healthcare. If we fast-forward to that yr, what do you hope individuals will say Transcarent helped make inevitable?
When Transcarent launched WayFinding in 2024, we got down to do one thing essentially completely different: put clinically-led, trusted generative AI straight into the fingers of well being shoppers (our Members) so they might perceive their advantages, get steerage, and entry care in as little as 60 seconds in One Place. That work mattered—and it labored. At this time, greater than one million of our Members depend on our WayFinding platform.
By 2035, I hope individuals look again and say Transcarent led the way in which to place shoppers answerable for their well being and care, and paved the way in which for an expertise that well being shoppers truly like to make use of. And we did so by taking value out of the system.
I imagine that, to cite my pal and possibly one of the best enterprise capitalist within the enterprise at the moment, Hemant Taneja, “Know-how can create abundance in well being and care.”
If employers, well being plans, and households assume their well being and care expertise shall be personalised, reliable, and on their phrases, then we’ll have achieved our job. We’ll have raised expectations so excessive that a greater system wasn’t simply potential; it was unavoidable.
Having led corporations by way of IPOs, main acquisitions, and paradigm shifts—what’s the one management lesson you’ve carried from Enterprise Methods to at the moment’s AI-driven future at Transcarent?
I proceed to imagine that nice corporations begin with nice individuals. I nonetheless imagine that and can proceed to guide with that mindset. It’s all about having nice individuals and treating your individuals properly.
I’d add, velocity nonetheless issues. Now that may be extra true than ever earlier than. I usually ask the crew, “Why not at the moment?” I really imagine that delivering a greater well being and care expertise is just too vital to attend for. Each day issues.
Nice corporations begin with nice individuals. And velocity nonetheless issues.
Glen Tullman
