Corporate Insight Releases Research Series on Healthcare AI Leaders

Five Reports Evaluate Virtual Assistants and AI Search Results across Health Plans, Health Systems and Pharmacy

New York, NY, Oct. 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Corporate Insight (CI), the leading provider of competitive intelligence and customer experience research to the financial services, insurance and healthcare industries, today announced findings from five healthcare research reports identifying the leaders in customer-facing AI among healthcare organizations. Based on firsthand testing of virtual assistant tools and AI-powered search results, the research identifies a small group of leaders across chat and search in the health plan, health system, Medicare and pharmacy spaces.

“AI promises to transform chatbots and search in healthcare, and our recent research uncovered big gaps between leaders and median tools,” says Lauren Roncevic, senior director of healthcare research at CI. “Leading AIs from healthcare organizations and third-party firms can help customers understand test results, display claim status and find nearby providers, all within the chat window. But we also tested tools from major organizations that struggle to follow basic instructions or fail to understand prompts because of minor typos.”

Key findings from each report highlight the leaders:

Mayo Clinic and UPMC lead in public site effectiveness for AI search (Health System Monitor):

CI researchers tested ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews against the public sites of 15 leading health systems. Mayo Clinic and UPMC emerged as the two leaders whose sites produced strong AI responses across all three tested prompts: brand reputation, treated heart conditions and maternity care rankings. Both organizations use clearly named pages, organized condition lists and rankings placed within service line pages. Of the three tested prompts, maternity rankings proved difficult across health systems, with AI tools struggling to pull information from press releases and frequently citing outdated or incomplete information.

Additionally, CI researchers found that, among the three tested AI search tools, Gemini had the most issues with health system research, repeatedly pulling from third-party sources when prompted not to do so, offering incomplete responses or failing to cite any sources at all.

Amazon’s Health AI tool tops health system virtual assistant rankings, with most VAs falling short of out-of-industry expectations (Health System Monitor):

Amazon’s Health AI tool earned the only Excellent rating among nine leading health system virtual assistants, being the only tool to answer all four basic test prompts appropriately. Amazon effectively integrates One Medical and Amazon account data to personalize answers with nearby appointment slots and walk-in locations and allows users to begin appointment booking within the chat window.

Overall, however, the report found that health system virtual assistants fall short of user expectations for modern chat tools. Across the coverage set, only 11 of 36 prompt conversations produced an appropriate answer. Only two virtual assistants, from Amazon and Baylor Scott & White, were able to tell CI’s researchers the location of the nearest urgent care. Typos also proved impassable for most tools, with only Amazon and Sutter Health’s Emmie tool able to understand prompts with minor typos.

Aetna, Anthem BCBS, Cigna and UnitedHealthcare lead in CI testing of health plan mobile virtual assistants (Health Plan Monitor):

Aetna’s AI conversational assistant, Anthem BCBS’s new VA, Cigna, and UnitedHealthcare’s Avery earned Excellent ratings among the 12 virtual assistants that CI’s researchers tested. CI’s researchers tested five prompts across all tools, finding that today’s health plan mobile VAs do well when pulling basic information. Specific coverage questions remain harder to resolve: Fewer than half of the tools answered whether the member’s plan covers GLP-1s, a high-interest medication class, while questions about claim statuses returned the most live agent transfers of any prompt.

UPMC Health Plan shows that regional plans can lead in Medicare virtual assistants (Medicare Monitor):

UPMC Health Plan earned the only Excellent rating among the nine virtual assistants CI’s researchers tested across eight Medicare plans. UPMC’s chat tool stood out as the only VA to answer a monthly premium prompt with a correct member-specific figure. As with other VAs across healthcare, Medicare VAs showed a significant experience gap between the leading VA and the industry median tool. Two VAs from national carriers transferred members to a live agent on all four prompts. UPMC Health Plan’s results show that a regional plan can outperform national carriers on chatbot self-service.

Amazon, NimbleRx and Accredo stand out in key areas for pharmacy virtual assistant and live chat tools (Pharmacy Monitor):

In CI’s review of 18 pharmacy VAs, features from Amazon Pharmacy, NimbleRx and Accredo stood out as best practice examples for the industry. The review of pharmacy VAs found similar challenges to those in other reviews of VAs across the industry: Only 33% of pharmacy virtual assistants could initiate a task or load the relevant page within the chat, leaving most users to finish refills and check orders elsewhere.

“This research identifies near-term priorities for any healthcare organization looking to modernize its chat and VA experience,” says Roncevic. “Users are already relying on AI tools to make medical decisions and find care. Tomorrow’s leaders will be the organizations that integrate account data, hand off to a live agent when appropriate and structure their public site content so that AI tools can reliably retrieve and convey information to users.”

Access the Reports

Organizations can contact CI to learn how to access the full reports. Media seeking key findings and analyst perspectives can contact CI’s press team to learn more.

Organizations covered in this research:

Accredo, Aetna, Amazon, Amazon Pharmacy, Anthem BCBS, Ascension Health, Ballad Health, Banner Health, Baylor Scott & White, BCBS of North Carolina, BirdiRx, BlinkRx, Capsule, Cedars-Sinai, CenterWell, Cigna, Cleveland Clinic, Cost Plus Drug, CVS Caremark, CVS Specialty, Duke Health, Emory Health, Florida Blue, Geisinger, Highmark BCBS, Humana, Intermountain Health, Johns Hopkins, Kaiser Permanente, Mass General Brigham, Mayo Clinic, Mount Sinai, NimbleRx, Optum, Oscar, PillPack, Providence Health, Rush Health, Sutter Health, UnitedHealthcare, UPMC, UPMC Health Plan, Walgreens, and Walmart Pharmacy

About Corporate Insight

Corporate Insight (CI) delivers competitive intelligence, user experience research and consulting services to the nation’s leading financial services, insurance and healthcare organizations. As the recognized industry leader in customer experience research for over 30 years, CI offers a best-in-class research platform and unique approach of analyzing the actual customer experience to help organizations advance their competitive position in the marketplace.

About CI’s Healthcare Research

CI’s Health System Monitor, Health Plan Monitor, Medicare Monitor and Pharmacy Monitor are subscription-based competitive intelligence research services focused on the digital healthcare experience. Each service provides subscribers with firsthand insights into the public site, member or patient portal and mobile experiences across leading healthcare organizations, delivering competitive analysis reports, updates and capability tracking to help subscribers identify emerging trends and maintain a competitive edge.

Patrick Flood
Corporate Insight
pflood@corporateinsight.com