From promise to practice. Perceptions and barriers to AI-assisted services in Swiss health insurance

Abstract

The healthcare sector is a key area for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, with health insurance companies expecting benefits from chatbots, voicebots, and digital apps. In Switzerland, however, little is known about how customers perceive such AI-assisted services. Addressing this gap, we conducted two qualitative studies. In Study 1, expert interviews (n = 6) with Swiss health insurance companies (SHIC) were conducted and supplemented with a document analysis. In Study 2, consumer interviews (n = 12) evaluated the consumers’ perspective. Our findings reveal four key value propositions of AI-assisted services that align between experts and consumers: enhanced efficiency, constant availability, cost reduction, and personalization. In addition, six factors impacting consumers’ intention to use AI-assisted services were identified (performance expectation, effort expectation, type of request, preferred communication channel, data security and transparency, and social influence). This study contributes to the research on AI acceptance in healthcare by extending UTAUT2 with contextual insights from the Swiss health insurance sector. From a practical perspective, SHIC must address the concerns of their customers and ensure that AI-assisted services function correctly and reliably from the start to maintain their customers’ trust.