Can AI Technologies Free-up Travelers with Pre-existing Conditions?

By Milan Korcok

Expanding the availability of travel insurance to people with pre-existing conditions is an initiative not without risk.  But given improved methods of gauging the true health status of applicants, including those in less than perfect health, the TI marketplace can expand greatly, to the advantage of sellers as well as populations now going unserved.    

In 2020, the British Insurance Brokers Association directed all travel insurance sellers to channel applicants with problematic health issues to companies specializing in offering benefits to customers with pre-existing conditions. The plan was called “signposting” and it was designed to urge insurers to tailor products for people with special needs.

 It is encouraging to see that in the UK, there are now growing numbers of insurance products designed for applicants with pre-existing conditions (cancer, cardiac symptoms, mobility issues, even for persons with terminal conditions) who previously would have been barred from ever enjoying the riches of travel.  Largely, this has come about through the refinement of medical underwriting procedures that can more precisely diagnose the risk levels of travel insurance applicants who, for the most part, have had to rely on their own knowledge of their medical history—not always communicated to them clearly by busy physicians or their own understanding of arcane medical terminology.

Questionnaires designed to elicit applicants’ health status can be daunting, not only because they may not be sure about the specific purposes of the medications in their cabinets, but also because they know that each Yes answer to a medical question will likely “ring up the tab” on the price of their policy. In effect, self-completing a medical underwriting questionnaire is a conflicting interest. But up until now there has been little option—other than asking one’s personal GP to help in completing their application, which is often not practicable. To date, falling into broad classifications such as high blood pressure, or diverticulitis, or diabetes has been enough to raise the cost of insurance beyond the reach of otherwise quite healthy people whose named conditions belie the fact that with proper medication, attention to doctors’ orders and maintenance of healthy lifestyles, they can be better risks than applicants less attentive to their true health.  

 Thanks to advances in risk-rating technologies, it’s now possible to glean more precise and fruitful information from an applicant’s medical records that would normally have been unattainable. Some of these can ascertain the prospective traveler’s risk level in a matter of moments and give the underwriter more realistic and clearer guidance to the most appropriate level of coverage and subsequent premium cost.

 There are also advanced artificial intelligence and data analytics technologies that can synthesize thousands of pages of a patient’s electronic health records (EHRs) records in a matter of minutes and produce two or three-page summaries of key risk factors along with recommendations for coverage options. Certainly, such technologies are raising concerns about patient privacy among insurance regulators and government health privacy rules in the UK, US and Europe. And that may be their biggest hurdle to widespread availability just yet.  But technological advancement –which usually has some downsides along with its advantages--has a way of ultimately permeating the way we live and work. And for insurers as well as their customers, achieving an appropriate balance, may be no simple thing.

 But for both producers of travel insurance, and their customers, particularly those in less-than-perfect health, and that’s most of us, attention must be paid.

Milan Korcok is a national award wining medical writer who has been covering international medical and travel health issues for leading professionals journal in the United States, Canada, and the UK for many years. He works and resides in Florida.