The Hidden Costs of Healthcare

It hits us when we're most vulnerable: a medical emergency, an urgent diagnosis, or a sudden need for care. And instead of finding comfort, we’re tangled up in red tape. The system meant to support us becomes an added source of stress. It’s the crushing uncertainty of how long we’ll have to wait, how deep the expenses will run, or whether some error-filled piece of paperwork will throw our treatment into chaos.

It’s so frustrating. The system that’s supposed to care for us, especially when we’re at our weakest, often fails us instead. Administrative errors, delays, and inefficiencies in healthcare don’t just drain our tax money and wallets; they take a real human toll. The back-and-forth between hospitals and insurance companies leaves us waiting and worrying, stuck in a mess we never asked for.

In this week’s edition, we’re spotlighting three Israeli health insuretech companies that are taking on these inefficiencies head-on, determined to make medical insurance and hospital administration work better, faster, and with less stress for all of us.

DigitalOwl: AI That Supercharges Insurance Processing

How long should someone have to wait for the medical care they urgently need? A week? A month?

When you’re in pain, facing uncertainty, or waiting on a life-changing treatment, every hour feels like an eternity.

Yet, for the insurance industry, determining the right coverage or processing a claim is anything but straightforward. It often means sifting through thousands of pages of medical records, each one packed with complexity and crucial details. Underwriters and claims specialists spend hours, even days, piecing together the story behind each case.

DigitalOwl, an Israeli insurtech startup, is changing that reality by bringing life-saving speed and precision to this process. Their AI-driven platform summarizes medical cases, surfaces actionable insights, asks critical follow-up questions, and cross-references medical histories to ensure no detail goes unnoticed.

Their AI identifies incomplete treatments, flags compliance issues, and assesses the severity of medical conditions, reducing the time spent on each claim by nearly two-thirds. This means insurance teams can make faster, better decisions, getting people the coverage and care they deserve sooner. Because when hours feel like an eternity, speed isn’t just about efficiency.

It’s about empathy.

Nym: Automating Medical Coding

If DigitalOwl speeds up insurance decisions, Nym takes a scalpel to inefficiencies on the hospital side.

Healthcare systems, particularly in the USA, are sick—and not just from a medical standpoint. Administrative costs now swallow over 40% of total hospital expenses. Let that sink in: forty percent.

It’s staggering, and it begs the question: How much more health could we provide if we reduced this burden? How many more lives could we impact if hospitals spent less manpower on paperwork and more on patient care?

This is the challenge Nym set out to tackle. The Israeli company developed an autonomous medical coding engine that transforms complex, error-prone coding processes into something instant and reliable. In seconds - yes, seconds - Nym’s engine translates patient records into medical codes with over 95% accuracy, all without human intervention.

Why do medical codes matter? Every diagnosis, procedure, or service provided to a patient is assigned a unique code. These codes are critical because they form the language hospitals use to communicate with insurance companies for billing. Accurate codes ensure hospitals receive proper reimbursement for patient care and claims are processed efficiently. But with over 150,000 codes in the system, manual coding is prone to errors and delays.

By automating this process, Nym helps hospitals reduce administrative costs by up to 35%.

Nym is leading the charge, showing how Israeli innovation can bring healthcare’s focus back to what truly matters: care, not paperwork.

Bluespine: Detecting Costly Billing Errors, Protecting Employers

If Nym reduces inefficiencies in hospital billing, Bluespine targets a different problem: billing errors that cost insurers millions.

It’s a painful reality: up to 80% of medical bills contain errors, and these mistakes overwhelmingly lead to overcharges.

Enter Bluespine, an Israeli startup that’s tackling this issue head-on. They’ve built an AI-driven claims cost reduction system that finds overcharges with impressive accuracy.

What sets Bluespine apart is their focus on self-insured employers - companies that manage and pay for their employees' healthcare claims directly, instead of buying traditional health insurance. These employers bear the full risk and reward of healthcare spending, making precise cost management essential.

Bluespine’s AI engine integrates data from multiple sources, such as summary plan documents and carrier billing guidelines, to scrutinize each claim in the context of an employer’s specific health plan terms.

In one recent case, Bluespine analyzed $43 million in claims for a mid-sized employer and uncovered $3.9 million in billing errors.

And here’s the best part: Bluespine only charges if they save you money. It’s a model built on trust and results, making healthcare smarter, fairer, and more efficient.

Doing the research for this episode led me to think: What if DigitalOwl, Nym, and Bluespine combined forces to tackle healthcare’s administrative nightmare together?

Picture the impact. DigitalOwl’s AI would summarize medical records and provide instant insights, helping insurers make decisions in minutes. Nym’s autonomous medical coding engine would eliminate human error, translating patient records into accurate codes in seconds, ensuring hospitals get reimbursed quickly and correctly. Then Bluespine’s precision claims auditing would catch billing errors before they cost a fortune, making healthcare expenses more transparent and manageable.

Together, these three companies could completely transform the administrative side of healthcare, slashing inefficiencies from end to end. The result? Less wasted time and money on paperwork, fewer infuriating delays, and more resources going to what truly matters: saving lives, supporting patients, and empowering medical professionals.

Imagine a healthcare system with dramatically lower overhead, where technology doesn’t just cut costs but actually improves outcomes.

This is the future we could be building—one where Israeli health insuretech innovation makes healthcare faster, smarter, and so much less frustrating for everyone.

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Aron Brand CTO at CTERA · Inventor, 40+ Patents · Advisor · Generative AI ·…