Atlantic Health to Deploy Artera’s AI Agents for Colonoscopy Patient Outreach

Why It Matters

The deployment directly tackles low colorectal‑cancer screening rates by improving prep compliance, which can boost early detection and reduce costly advanced‑stage treatments. It also demonstrates a scalable AI‑driven model for patient outreach across health systems.

Key Takeaways

• AI agents cut manual outreach time 38% in month one.
• 39% of contacted patients confirmed colonoscopy attendance.
• Multilingual support includes Spanish, improving patient comprehension.
• Knowledge base limited to 80 approved FAQs prevents hallucinations.
• First outbound AI use for Atlantic Health's patient communication.

Pulse Analysis

Colorectal cancer remains a leading cause of preventable death, yet one‑third of eligible adults skip screening due to the daunting bowel‑prep regimen. Traditional outreach—often a single SMS prompting a simple confirmation—fails to address the nuanced questions patients have, leading to cancellations and no‑shows. By integrating conversational AI into the pre‑procedure workflow, health systems can transform a passive reminder into an active education tool, potentially raising early‑detection rates and saving lives.

Atlantic Health’s collaboration with Artera introduces an "agentic" AI phone call that engages patients in their preferred language, notably Spanish, and draws from a curated knowledge base of over 80 institution‑approved FAQs. The system’s strict walled‑garden architecture ensures the agent never accesses external data, eliminating the risk of hallucinated medical advice. This controlled, yet conversational, approach not only personalizes the patient experience but also safeguards compliance with clinical protocols, positioning the health system at the forefront of responsible AI adoption.

Early metrics are promising: manual outreach effort dropped 38% within a month, and 39% of patients reached by the AI confirmed their appointments—a notable uplift compared with legacy SMS campaigns. These results suggest that AI‑driven outreach can deliver measurable efficiency gains while enhancing patient adherence. As more providers seek to close preventive‑care gaps, the Atlantic Health‑Artera model offers a replicable blueprint for leveraging AI to boost screening uptake, reduce operational costs, and ultimately improve population health outcomes.