Clinician-driven artificial intelligence platform Anterior and health tech company Stellarus on Thursday entered into a strategic partnership to automate prior authorizations.
The partnership aims to support providers by automating tasks such as case investigation and policy enforcement, allowing teams to focus on complex decisions. The companies say providers will receive initial approval faster, ultimately providing members with faster access to care.
Through this partnership, Anterior’s clinical AI will be integrated with Stellarus’ AtlasIQ platform to help health plans quickly deploy prior authorizations. All final decisions will be made by licensed clinicians, not AI tools, executives say.
“Every plan wants to use AI and wants to transform,” said Anterior CEO Abdel Mahmoud, MD. “We know we have the data, but we don’t know where to start.”
The new partnership between Anterior and Stellarus aims to bridge that gap.
Stellarus is a healthcare technology company spun out of Blue Shield of California earlier this year. This health solutions company provides technology backbone and digital capabilities to nonprofit organizations, communities, and regional health plans.
Mahmoud told Fierce Healthcare that the two companies have a “common vision.”
“We recognize the same data challenges across healthcare, we recognize the interoperability issues, but we also recognize the opportunities as well,” Mahmoud said. “Many answers, many inefficiencies can be solved with today’s technology.”
Mahmoud said pre-approval is the “low hanging fruit” for automation.
“There’s a lot more you can do downstream if you structure pre-authorization,” he said. “We can move forward with a lot of proactive care.”
Skepticism and concern about AI in the medical field “comes from a good place,” Mahmoud said, adding that Stellaris represents “a good and appropriate use of AI.”
“The fact that we’re partnering with them sends a signal to the market that we’re serious about it,” he said.
Stellarus President and CEO Vanessa Colella said in a statement that Anterior’s leadership and “commitment to responsible automation make it an ideal partner.”
“Combining Anterior’s decision-making capabilities with Stellarus’ core platform and domain expertise provides plans with a way to automate the most complex parts of prior authorization without sacrificing clinical integrity or governance,” said Collella. “This partnership is designed to reduce turnaround time and manual reviews while ensuring all decisions are accountable, auditable, and aligned with plan-specific clinical policies.”
As the partnership progresses, executives said it will expand into care planning, policy optimization and broader utilization management.
