Voice assistants are becoming a major part of our daily lives, and hype from frontier rabo Like Openai Talking about chatbots has sparked debate about whether it would actually replace actual human connections.
But in many health and social care contexts, Voice AI is about filling gaps and releasing staff from busy work, rather than replacing human connections. In US clinics, AI-powered voice tools are already calling insurance companies and processing documents, releasing staff for more meaningful patient-oriented jobs.
On an individual level, AI voice peers intervene to provide conversation and comfort to people who may not have anyone else to talk to.
Cutting the administrator's headache
One of the major issues with healthcare in the US is that staff members spend time on the phone with their insurance company, chasing approvals, waiting on hold, dealing with endless paperwork.
Cencora, a leading US healthcare distributor and practice provider, faces this problem every day. The team handles profit verification, pharmacy services, and specialized drug management. This is a task that requires a large number of repetitive calls.
“There are a lot of administrative calls that need to be made,” said Jeff Buck, Senkora's vice president of digital solutions. According to internal audits, benefits verification calls at Cencora can take up to 90 minutes and could spike 10 times the volume in January.
Human staff handled all the calls, but as demand grew, Buck says Senkora turned his attention to Infinitus, a San Francisco startup founded by former Google engineer Ankit Jain, to help Senkora automate the process.
Ankit Jain is the CEO of Infinitus. Infinitus
Infinitus develops AI agents to handle calls, gather information, and flag tricky cases for human review.
Jain said after seeing Google's AI calling on behalf of a user called Duplex Voice AI, he could recognize that the idea could address Healthcare's chronic sound resistance issue. “No one joins healthcare to wait on hold. People work in healthcare to serve patients,” Jain told BI.
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Infinitas voice agent, Eva helps Senkora make calls, ask questions and automatically update records instead of staff waiting for the line. “Eva actually talks with payer counselors and changes the way they ask questions based on how the payer responds,” Buck said. If something is unknown, Eva added that it escalates to humans.
Cencora says monitoring remains important and all EVA calls are recorded and spot-checked by quality teams. According to Cencora, Eva has completed as many calls as its 100-plus full-time staff members, and the process demands four times faster than before. “Our tests even showed that EVA captured and addressed the inconsistent information that came up during verification,” Buck added.
Jeff Buck is Vice President of Senkora's Digital Solutions Senkora
“Healthcare can't hallucinate,” Jain said. The agent added that he only said that it was “pre-approved.”
A 2024 Mayo Clinic review found that AI-powered document tools, including audio-to-text and note summaries, can significantly reduce clinicians' time spent in paperwork, free up more time for patient care, and reduce burnout. Some studies cited in the review found that AI assistants can reduce document time by up to 70%, but the results vary depending on the settings and tools.
But even with a victory like Cencora, Jain said deploying new technologies in healthcare means long sales cycles and constant profits from investment audits. “When a lot of the industry is still running through faxes, changes move slowly,” he said.
Everfriends and Hume Ai add empathy
Voice AI doesn't just free up management time. It also intervenes to provide comfort and dating to those who need it most.
For entrepreneur Daniel Hungerford, the potential of the technology became clear after his father died and his mother was left alone. “Every time she said, 'The only person I've spoken about today,' it broke my heart,” Hangerford told BI.
This led him to build Everfriends, a smartphone app that acts as a digital companion for the elderly and people with dementia. “We set out to create a peer who is surreal, caring, empathetic digital best friend,” Hangerford said. “We know that we can never replace human contact, but our goal was to simulate as closely as possible due to these gaps in life.”
Hungerford used Hume Ai, a New York-based startup led by Google and Meta veteran Alan Cowen, to build a companion who can speak with true empathy. “We can now have a model that will listen as they speak,” Cowen told Business Insider.
Alan Cohen is Hume's CEO. Hume AI
Hume's system relies on emotional samples labeled with millions of people. Hungerford says it helps them to master the user's mood and intentions and respond in a way that feels natural. If someone sounds anxious or sad, AI will adapt. “If you jump into Everfriends and act a little down today, you know you're down today,” Hungerford said. For people with dementia, it either slows down or repeats themselves if necessary, he added.
Hume's empathetic voice AI model. Hume
Hungerford said hundreds of people have used their eternal friends so far. Family helps loved ones feel connected, he said.
A 2025 review of 13 studies reported that around 85% of studies in older adults who used voice assistants reduced loneliness, especially when devices were personalized and given the support to start. However, the authors stated that more research and more diverse samples are needed.
Why do Voice AI need humans?
Each founder agreed that Voice AI is not a silver bullet. There are technical and social limitations, especially for older users and those with strong accents and cognitive declines, from voice errors and background noise to privacy and digital exclusion.
Jain said trust and transparency are essential. “The voice agent says, “I can't do that, so let me find another AI agent or human agent that can take it.”
Similarly, Voice AI is not a substitute for human connection or surveillance, but it can be a powerful complement. All the founders said their skills were designed to support them, not replace humans.
For Buck, success depends on combining people with technology. “Real power doesn't replace people, they marry AI,” he said.
Hungerford said, “We know that human contact will never be replaced, but our goal is to simulate as closely as possible due to the gaps in our lives.”
Cowen agrees. “The goal is not to make AI completely human, it's about whether people feel they're listening, getting what they need and coming back.”
He added, “Realism should not be the goal. We optimize whether users feel that their goal has been achieved and don't feel they owe everything to AI.”
