SCAN Group has appointed its first AI chief executive as the insurer aims to further drive its technology-centric strategy.
Dr. Aman Bhandari most recently served as Vice President of Data Science at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, where he also played a key role in building the first data science team at Merck. Mr. Bhandari also spent time working in this field at the White House and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Bhandari told Fierce Healthcare that his previous experience in regulatory agencies made joining the SCAN team and leaving the biopharmaceutical industry for insurance felt like coming home. He said working on AI projects in the life sciences sector has highlighted the technology’s potential in healthcare.
“I’ve been looking at this from a pharmaceutical perspective, but now I wanted to really do this from a different side of medicine,” he said.
In this role, Mr. Bhandari will lead SCAN’s enterprise AI and data analytics strategy, with the goal of expanding new AI adoption across the company’s operations and care delivery businesses.
SCAN is committed to AI with a focus on empowering employees to build and apply AI tools that can improve their daily workflows and address challenges they may face on the job. As such, Bhandari and the AI team will report directly to Lindsey Crowley-Herbert, SCAN’s Chief People and Transformation Officer.
Locating the AI team within HR highlights the fact that making AI work requires more than just the technology itself, it requires a team that has the skills and embraces the culture needed to use the technology effectively.
Bhandari said approaching AI implementation in this way was especially appealing because the job is often treated as a “relay race.” In other words, when your part is complete, the baton is passed to the next group. Instead, it should be treated like an “orchestra” performance, where each player makes a necessary contribution to the end goal.
“We need a lot of people at the table with very important skill sets to make the orchestra sound like it should,” he said. “And I think SCAN allows us to do just that.”
SCAN said in its announcement that the company has been working on deploying AI tools for its teams for some time now. For example, SCAN has deployed call summary and interactive voice response tools to help member advocates support conversations, as well as a platform that allows medical records to be summarized as part of transitions of care.
SCAN CEO Sachin Jain, MD, said that given SCAN’s size, hiring the right talent is critical to driving innovation and keeping pace with larger companies. After a year-long enrollment period that saw SCAN grow to become 10 of the largest Medicare Advantage plans in the U.S., the team “wanted to start focusing on scalable infrastructure and architecture.”
“There are some very strong players in this space, but I think what was missing, frankly, was a mature corporate perspective on how to put all the pieces together,” he said. “I think a lot of Aman’s role is to really focus on us.”
Jain said Bhandari has worked on building AI infrastructure at multiple organizations and has experienced important failures and mistakes to learn the lessons needed to move forward. That perspective becomes a guiding force,
Additionally, AI development is often about throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks. Jain said the team will instead seek to plant seeds that have the potential to grow into a foundation the company can rely on for years to come.
“Many people say there are 1,000 flowers in bloom,” Jain said. “They don’t talk about 1,000 flowers dying.”
In addition to his significant experience in the field, Bhandari said his own health journey inspired his decision to improve healthcare from within. He said his first-hand experience with some of the biggest challenges facing patients made the opportunity here even clearer.
“We’re going to experiment with a lot of things, but really in the end it’s the results that matter,” he said. “And I think it’s important to state very clearly what we’re focused on.”
