Despite the explosive growth of insurtech over the last several years, people still often don’t understand what it is or how it can affect workers’ compensation. Insurtech is the process of using new technology to create an outstanding customer experience through a simplified, efficient understanding of our current insurance model, which results in significant savings. To put it in a different way, insurtech uses things like wearable activity tracking devices to gather data that they then use to customize competitively priced products. For example, a Des Moines, Iowa based insurtech startup created a wearable wrist device that captures what is going on in the workplace environment. This includes slip hazards, fall hazards, trip hazards–essentially anything that can provide real time data about dangers in the workplace. They use the data then to improve safety processes. The data instantly uploads to a cloud where safety managers can view dashboard results. Ultimately, this device is designed to help mitigate workplace safety events and then decrease the injured workers’ downtime post incident.

Designed to Help Injured Workers get Back to Work Faster

The goal is to make the workers’ comp process more efficient for everyone—including the employers—simply by reducing claims either through prevention or in the moment

.. For instance, companies with wearable devices can track employee movements down to the last repetitive motion they are making. This would then alert the worker of the potential danger which decreases the chance of injury.

Technology from Start to Finish

Technology is also helping streamline the entire claim process, so workers get rapid treatment and thereby a rapid recovery back to work. Employees are now filling out automated forms with their baseline data pre-populated. Some companies even allow you to submit a claim via mobile app. And then there is the physiological technology, such as the device that alerts workers if they have poor posture. Another device, constructed from a fabric material, can measure stress levels and will alert the worker if they get too high. There is even hard hat device that can detect a concussion. It is true some people find wearables intrusive, but the fact is in the workplace, they are preventing accidents and streamlining the recovery process. This improves outcomes on multiple levels.

Insurtech is designed to bring down workers’ comp expenses. With upcoming labor shortages, immigration issues, and an aging workforce, something must  give in the workers’ compensation industry and perhaps innovation is one of the solutions. Let’s hope companies continue to become more sophisticated so they can leverage technology to decrease cost and make the process of workers’ compensation that much smoother.