Connected Intelligence: How Discovery Health is transforming personalized healthcare with AI
Dr. Ronald Whelan, CEO of Discovery Health, explains how Connected Intelligence leverages AI and health data to advance personalized healthcare, improve clinical decision-making, and deliver better health outcomes.
Dr. Ronald Whelan, CEO of Discovery Health, explains how Connected Intelligence leverages AI and health data to advance personalized healthcare, improve clinical decision-making, and deliver better health outcomes.
Discovery was recognized in the GenAI Innovation of the Year category at the Qorus Innovation in Insurance Awards 2026.
Can you introduce Discovery Health, tell us about yourself, and describe your role at the company?
Discovery is a South African-founded organization with a global footprint across healthcare, insurance, banking, and wellness. Our pioneering Shared Value model is guided by a core purpose: to make people healthier and enhance and protect their lives.
Discovery Health is our healthcare business and South Africa’s leading health insurance administrator and managed care provider. We administer healthcare benefits for approximately 4 million beneficiaries, including those covered by Discovery Health Medical Scheme, South Africa’s largest open medical scheme, which serves more than 2.7 million beneficiaries and holds a 58% market share. Through our scale, data capabilities, and partnerships, we work to improve health outcomes and make healthcare more precise and personalized.
As CEO of Discovery Health, my role is to lead the business and drive innovation that improves the quality, value, and accessibility of healthcare for the millions of members and clients we serve, both today and in the future.
What makes you most proud of Connected Intelligence?
What makes me most proud is seeing Connected Intelligence translate sophisticated technology and data into something genuinely useful to people as they manage their health.
Built on a platform encompassing more than 60 million life-years of clinical, behavioral, and healthcare data, Connected Intelligence creates a personalized health story for each person. It helps our care teams and coaches better understand individuals while providing people with insights that help them understand their health and navigate their personal healthcare journeys.
The response to Connected Intelligence has been very encouraging: in a recent survey, 97% of users rated their personalized health insights reports as highly insightful and useful. Ultimately, that is what matters most. Personalized, proactive healthcare should turn complex health information into meaningful insights that help people make better-informed decisions about their health and well-being.
What’s the most important thing you would tell someone considering a similar project?
The biggest lesson from Connected Intelligence is that artificial intelligence is only as powerful as the people and data behind it.
Discovery Health combines deep actuarial, clinical, and data science expertise with extensive longitudinal health data. That combination allows us to apply advanced technology with a deep understanding of healthcare, individuals, and the complexities of improving health outcomes.
Trusted, high-quality data is equally important. The longitudinal health records and governance frameworks Discovery Health has built over many years provide the context and integrity needed to turn data into meaningful insights.
For organizations considering a similar project, the lesson is straightforward: start with great people and trusted data, then use technology to solve a real problem for the people you serve.
What’s next for Connected Intelligence?
Our immediate focus is on embedding Connected Intelligence more deeply into care coordination, coaching, and multidisciplinary clinical workflows. In parallel, we are extending these capabilities across care journeys, including cardiovascular and oncology care, as well as hospital stays. Our aim is to provide healthcare professionals and patients with increasingly personalized information and insights to support better-informed clinical decisions and more coordinated care.
Ultimately, our ambition is to create a healthcare experience in which every interaction builds on a deeper understanding of the individual, helping guide the next best clinical step toward the best possible health outcome.
What would you say to companies considering entering the 2027 Insurance Innovation Awards?
Innovation is essential for every organization, but it also needs to be tested beyond the boundaries of your own business. Awards such as these provide an opportunity to benchmark your work against leading innovators, learn from ideas across the global insurance industry, and challenge your own thinking.
They also provide valuable international recognition for the teams behind the innovation. The Qorus Innovation in Insurance Awards offer an opportunity to celebrate what those teams have achieved while demonstrating the real-world impact of their work.
Ultimately, the innovations that matter most are those that create measurable value for the people they serve. Awards such as these provide an important platform to recognize and share that impact.
What does this award mean to you and your innovation team?
This award is, above all, recognition of the people behind Connected Intelligence. It reflects the talent, commitment, and collaboration of teams across Discovery Health who took an ambitious idea and translated it into something with real impact. That is what makes this recognition particularly meaningful.
I am incredibly proud of what the team has achieved, and even more excited about the potential of what comes next.
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