APIs and Insurtech

We take a closer look at the Insurtech sector and pick out 4 online tools that offer their APIs for medical, driving, life and other types of insurance to the public. Insurtech is –for the time being– the fintech companies' little brother. The technology for the insurance market is advancing at a slower pace than in the financial markets, although they share a large part of the same spirit.
2 min reading
APIs / 29 August 2018
APIs and Insurtech
APIs and Insurtech

BBVA API Market

We take a closer look at the Insurtech sector and pick out 4 online tools that offer their APIs for medical, driving, life and other types of insurance to the public. Insurtech is –for the time being– the fintech companies' little brother. The technology for the insurance market is advancing at a slower pace than in the financial markets, although they share a large part of the same spirit.

Insurtech is –for the time being– the fintech companies’ little brother. The technology for the insurance market is advancing at a slower pace than in the financial markets, although they share a large part of the same spirit.

The world of insurance works by a simple equation, where adjusting the variables to the maximum can bring incredible profits. The more information is obtained, received and combined with others, the more these values can be adjusted to make our insurance business more efficient and profitable.

As an element related to Banking as a Service, we are now entering the terrain of Big Data, with databases full of tables with millions of rows of information on customers, cases, situations and behaviors in the hope of finding patterns on which to locate new algorithms, and of course, APIs.

Although Insurtech is among the fields with the most promising future, associated to platforms like blockchain, there are already several online tools distributed internationally that allow us to work with developers in the field of medical, driving, life and other types of insurance.

pokitdok

If you work in the health insurance industry, your life revolves around X12 transactions, creating appointments, combining databases on patients’ health, treatments and doctors. All of this is precisely what’s enabled by pokitdok.

It has an extremely detailed and well-documented API with libraries for the most common programming languages, and over one dozen endpoints to work with, arranged in various groups:

•       Identification and monitoring of treatments, including appointments

•       Patients’ databases with specific identification methods.

•       Connection with pharmaceutical plans, including medication prices in different plans.

•       Management of prices and availability of insurance in the United States.

Eligible

This is another API for the health insurance industry, this time focused on the patients. Eligible is 100% compatible with HIPAA, the US legislation regulating the portability of healthcare insurance.

Its methods, although less varied than those of pokitdok, allow a highly efficient management of customer data, hospital stays and payment claims.

This last section of the API is undoubtedly one of the most important and the one that can be best integrated with other online banking APIs such as those of BBVA API Market. Combining the payment systems for invoicing patient treatments and operations directly with the banks’ systems can offer more tailored solutions that increase the efficiency of each transfer, or help design more suitable financing solutions.

FitSense

Connecting the data on patients’ physical activity in their daily life with their medical records can lead to more effective treatments. This is the idea behind FitSense: an API and platforms to link the everyday data collected by patients’ wearable devices and smartphones with their insurance companies.

Healthier patients could be rewarded with cheaper insurance policies. Data on healthcare habits could include the distance covered each day, hours of sleep, calories consumed or whether or not the customer is a smoker.

Apple HealthKit

This is one aspect particularly promoted by Apple. HealthKit is a set of APIs with which developers can add and read data in a centralized way. An insurance company could easily connect a personalized app for its customers, and –with their approval– collect the necessary data.

Both the iPhone and the Apple Watch, which are in the pockets and on the wrists of millions of people all around the world, have HealthKit fully integrated. Apple offers extensive and detailed documentation on its platform, ideal for developers starting out in the world of Insurtech.
 

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