"There is a growing consensus that workplace health & wellbeing strategies should adopt digital tools to deliver personalised support and proactive interventions."
Chronic condition management relating to Income Protection (IP) – especially Group Income Protection (GIP) – isn’t well discussed. And yet, chronic condition management has the potential to afford benefits to both employers and staff.
For employees, it’s about helping more people self-manage their health conditions, take control of their lives, and stay in ‘good work’ that will help them thrive. For employers, it can help reduce absence, improve presenteeism, and prevent staff from falling out of employment altogether. All of which represent significant and growing issues to society.
Legal & General (L&G) recently published the final instalment of its chief medical officer report, which investigates chronic condition management and the purpose of protection. It also considers how artificial intelligence (AI) could support insurers with prevention and early intervention.
“As an occupational health physician, chronic condition management is where I see some of the most exciting developments and future possibilities in terms of AI.”
Digital health tools are already re-shaping our healthcare ecosystem, potentially reaching vast audiences and helping level the playing field. While clinical care often focuses on diagnosis and treatment, protection products and occupational health strategies must also focus on function – supporting people to sustain work capacity, not just manage symptoms.
This is increasingly important as an ageing population and a rising number of people living with long-term health conditions place new demand on how we support people to stay in work.
“There is a growing consensus that workplace health & wellbeing strategies should adopt digital tools to deliver personalised support and proactive interventions.”
Our data shows that this adoption is becoming a reality. Usage of our long-term condition management support app CONNECTPlus (provided by HCI) was up by almost a quarter (24%) last year. Support like this is designed to pave the way for personalisation and proactivity. For example, better self-management of hypertension or diabetes could help reduce cardiovascular complications and preserve function.
This kind of support should afford scalable and inclusive aid for employees, as well as their families, human resources (HR), and line managers to help them understand specific conditions and associated needs.
In terms of what AI will bring to chronic condition management, Richard Wyatt-Haines, director at HCI, explained that “AI presents various opportunities. Firstly, it will be possible to interact proactively with patients in real-time as they add data to the app about their symptoms. This could make it much more interactive.
“Secondly, the use of AI to interrogate data on an anonymised basis will enable us to identify health management solutions that can focus on wellness, recovery, and disease management in different ways than are possible right now.”
“Health & welfare systems can no longer cope, as evidenced by the government’s ongoing ‘Get Britain Working’ review.”
The Independent Commission for Healthier Working Lives, supported by The Health Foundation, says the solution lies in deep-rooted change, in public policy and workplace practices. It recently highlighted the role of insurers and the value of expanding the use of IP to encourage wider access to vocational rehabilitation (VR).
VR sits within the ecosystem of multidisciplinary support offered by GIP. Arguably, everything needs to operate hand-in-hand: to help prevent illness from occurring in the first place and, when it does strike, to support people back to ‘good work’ that’s beneficial for their health.
The onus is on us, as an industry, to talk about this with clients so they can make use of everything available to them.
AI is helping, but it’s no silver bullet. The crucial ingredient is industry-wide engagement.
