Following record-breaking temperatures that affected more than 200 million Americans over the Fourth of July weekend and on the heels of back-to-back heat waves that have set national records across much of Europe, Hippocratic AI today announced that its climate-responsive voice AI agents are now available for health systems and payers across the country to deploy immediately, as healthcare organizations prepare for ongoing heatwaves and extreme weather brought on by El Niño.

The launch of rapid-response resilience agents builds on the recent successful outreach conducted by EmblemHealth and other clients who have deployed the agents to help vulnerable patients during extreme heat, cold, smoke and other factors.

The outcomes are real: During one recent heat wave, EmblemHealth’s bilingual voice AI agent, Rachel, reached more than 16,000 members in 24 hours, identified that 10% needed further help, and earned a 9.02 out of 10 member satisfaction score. The agent, powered by Hippocratic AI, conducted clinical heat stroke assessments, safely routed vulnerable individuals to local cooling centers, and identified urgent health issues. Since then, the program has expanded to over 50,000 heat outreaches to prepare members in advance of the recent July 4th weekend heat dome in NYC, a set of 15,000 cooling-benefit outreaches conducted in April and May — and most recently calls to prepare vulnerable members from exacerbations due to bad air quality in NYC driven by the Canadian wildfires.

The agents, built on the only generative voice AI platform proven safe enough for clinical interactions, can check on vulnerable patients, provide valuable education, assist in getting transportation to cooling centers and escalate when a member is in danger. They have already been proven in the field on both ends of the temperature scale: reaching members during New York’s last 2 summers of historic heat waves, and standing ready for cold-weather events, wildfire smoke, and seasonal flu surges.

“Before clinical-grade agentic AI this kind of rapid response simply wasn’t available,” said Dr. Daniel Knecht, MD, MBA, Chief Medical Officer and SVP, EmblemHealth. “Today we are able to deliver a new dimension of personalized outreach to our members by standing up thousands of clinical calls at a moment’s notice. Using this technology, alongside environmental, weather, and infectious disease signals – we’re advancing precision population health and a more personalized, preventive care model.”

EmblemHealth is able to identify its most vulnerable members using risk factors such as the urban heat island effect, heat vulnerability, social vulnerability, clinical risk, and medications, informed by precision environmental intelligence, to target outreach to members most at-risk of climate-related illness.

Extreme heat and cold, air-quality risks, and other extreme weather incidents can aggravate asthma, COPD, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes — the chronic conditions that already drive significant U.S. healthcare spending and put millions of Americans at risk. Most care teams cannot reach their highest-risk populations at the scale or speed a weather emergency demands. Hippocratic AI’s voice agents close that gap with high-volume concurrent call capacity, clinical-grade safety, and the conversational empathy needed to keep people engaged, especially those who are older, isolated, or managing multiple conditions.

“Climate continues to have an outsized impact on health – from heatwaves to extreme cold to smoke inhalation, we know these events can trigger chronic and underlying health problems,” said Paul Walsh, Meteorologist and Chief Weather Officer for ERaaS Health. “Precision environmental intelligence coupled with Hippocratic AI’s rapid response agents are allowing us to predict, prepare and respond to major events.”

Forecasters at the World Meteorological Organization and NOAA expect El Niño to strengthen rapidly through the fall, raising the odds of more frequent and more severe heat waves, droughts, and extreme weather worldwide, making durable, always-on outreach infrastructure a necessity rather than a convenience for the populations most at risk. Historically, capacity, not intent, has been the binding constraint on reaching vulnerable populations during these events. Hippocratic AI’s voice agents extend the human workforce rather than replace it, and are built to scale instantly when an alert is issued, whether that alert is a heat advisory, a cold-weather warning, or a wildfire smoke event.

Built for every climate event, not just one

The same agent infrastructure that responded to the Northeast heat emergency already extends across a full range of climate and health events:

  • Allergen and air-quality alerts: agents proactively reach members with asthma, COPD, and seasonal allergies when pollen counts spike or air quality deteriorates, confirming inhaler access, refill status, and trigger-avoidance plans.
  • Year-round climate-health response: from wildfire smoke to extreme cold to flu surges, health systems and payers can activate a Resilience Agent the moment a region issues an alert, reaching members who are not being served today.
  • Equity reach: the same infrastructure extends to rural members, Spanish speakers, and high-utilization patients who have historically been underserved by traditional outreach.

About EmblemHealth

EmblemHealth is one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health insurers, serving members across New York’s diverse communities with a full range of commercial and government-sponsored health insurance plans for employers, individuals, and families. With a commitment to value-based care, EmblemHealth partners with top hospitals and doctors, including its AdvantageCare Physicians, to deliver quality, affordable, convenient care. At more than a dozen EmblemHealth Neighborhood Care locations, members and nonmembers can receive community-based health and wellness guidance and resources. For more information, visit emblemhealth.com.

About Hippocratic AI

Hippocratic AI is a native generative AI company on a mission to address the global shortage of clinicians and deliver healthcare abundance. A global leader and pioneer in safety-focused generative AI agents for healthcare through building a patented safety constellation architecture, Polaris, enabling non-diagnostic AI agents to support patients through natural conversations across a range of use cases, including care navigation, follow-ups, chronic disease management, education, preventative care, and much more across the patient and member continuum.

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