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Claimable cofounders from L to R: Zach Veigeiles, Alicia Graham and Warris Bokhari.

Industry watchers predict generative AI could lead to an administrative battle of the bots between doctors and health insurers over care decisions. That leaves patients in limbo without access to medications or other treatment while institutions duke out prior authorization and denial letters by fax, phone or algorithm. Warris Bokhari is trying to change that by putting the power of AI in the hands of patients.

Bokhari, a physician-executive who has worked at Amazon, Apple and Anthem (now Elevance Health), saw that large language models like GPT-4 could be useful to summarize information for patients at different reading levels. The idea behind Claimable, his startup that launched Wednesday, is to use these models to flip the script. Or in his words, to “take a patient story and transform it into something compelling to an insurance company.”

The company is starting by partnering with rheumatology clinics, since many patients with conditions like arthritis are on expensive drugs known as biologics, which are often subject to prior authorization. For Bokhari, this fight is personal, his mom had rheumatoid arthritis, but because he grew up in England, his family didn’t have to go bankrupt to afford medication.

While building in stealth mode, he found that health insurers are often issuing denials because the guidelines for certain diseases are significantly out-of-date. Bokhari said Claimable........

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