When I saw the recent announcement from Hyro about their Proactive Px solution that includes a free AI agent for healthcare organizations in the wake of the financial impact the OBBBA, I wanted to learn more. It reminded me of all the free health IT resources that were offered in the wake of COVID-19. To learn more about what and why Hyro was offering this AI agent to healthcare organizations, I interviewed Aaron Bours, Chief Marketing Officer at Hyro. Check out details in our interview below.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and Hyro.
Aaron Bours: Our mission is to fundamentally improve how patients and providers connect. Hyro is the leading Responsible AI Agent platform for healthcare. We started by building inbound voice and chat agents that help patients route to the right point of care, schedule appointments, manage prescriptions, and get answers to their questions, safely and at scale. What makes us unique is our healthcare-first approach. Our agents are HIPAA-compliant, deeply integrated into EHRs like Epic, and designed to work seamlessly across call centers, websites, SMS, and mobile apps. Over the past few years, we’ve earned the trust of leading health systems like Intermountain, Baptist, Piedmont, and Sutter. Now, with Proactive Px™, we’re taking the next step—helping health systems go beyond automation of inbound patient inquiries, to actively engaging patients across the care continuum.
As the first employee and Chief Marketing Officer at Hyro, I’m proud of the team for now achieving “allbound” patient communications in the provider space. Having been recently hospitalized for 5 months, I’m acutely aware of the necessity of easier and faster patient access to care, and the impact healthcare-first AI solutions can have in real-world scenarios.
What are some of the big challenges you see healthcare organizations experiencing, especially thanks to the OBBBA (One Big Beautiful Bill Act)?
Aaron Bours: Well, the biggest challenge we see healthcare organizations experiencing is actually preparation – creating the necessary workflows and dedicating resources to plan for coverage disruption. Starting this November, OBBBA is expected to cause millions of Americans to lose or risk losing insurance. That includes 7.5 million Medicaid enrollees, 2 million ACA marketplace members, and millions more facing higher premiums and frequent eligibility checks. For health systems, that’s a dual crisis. On the one hand, patients may delay care or abandon treatment when they lose coverage and on the other, hospitals are staring down over $200 billion in projected uncompensated care over the next decade. Rural providers in particular are especially vulnerable, as even small shifts in coverage can push their finances into the red zone. So the challenge isn’t just clinical, it’s operational and financial, and it requires proactive outreach to keep patients informed, engaged and insured, where applicable.
What do these challenges mean for a healthcare organization? How does this compare to what many experienced during COVID?
Aaron Bours: For healthcare organizations, the implications are enormous. If patients fall out of coverage, the health system not only loses revenue but also risks the health of its community. Doctors may see patients skip visits, treatments get interrupted, and chronic conditions worsen because affordability becomes the barrier. During COVID, we saw call centers overwhelmed by sudden surges in demand. The challenge with OBBBA is different – it’s not an acute spike, it’s a long tail of constant churn and re-verification. COVID taught us the cost of being reactive. With OBBBA, we can’t wait until patients are confused or uninsured—we have to anticipate the disruption and engage before it happens.
How is Hyro trying to help organizations that are experiencing these challenges?
Aaron Bours: We’re stepping in with ARMR Outreach, which is a complimentary AI agent delivered as part of the Proactive Px launch. This agent calls and texts patients on behalf of the health system, explains upcoming potential coverage changes, and guides them through re-enrollment steps. For health systems, Hyro has removed the barriers to adoption as infrastructure and onboarding are provided at no cost and the only fees are for third-party API calls. The goal is simple, to make it possible for every health system, regardless of size or budget, to get ahead of OBBBA and protect both their patients and their financial stability. The ultimate goal here is to drive awareness.
Tell me more about what Proactive Px is and what part of it is free for healthcare organizations?
Aaron Bours: Proactive Px is our outbound patient experience platform. It flips the traditional contact center model on its head by enabling providers to initiate conversations instead of waiting for patients to call. Through voice and SMS agents, health systems can send reminders, coordinate prescriptions, prompt billing actions, and now, address coverage disruptions. The platform itself is a paid solution and is robust, with campaign management tools, real-time analytics, and deep EHR integrations. But within it, ARMR Outreach is a free component we’re offering to every health system to help mitigate the unique risks of OBBBA. We believe this is too big of a challenge for the industry to ignore, so we’re absorbing those costs to get it into production quickly. Good karma, good business.
What are some of the ways that healthcare organizations can use Proactive Px?
Aaron Bours: There are a number of ways, and we’re already seeing adoption across different use cases at Inova, Intermountain and Baptist. The most common is appointment and referral reminders, which help reduce no-shows and keep clinics running at full capacity. Health systems are also using it for billing outreach, sending nudges or reminders that accelerate collections and reduce confusion. Another major use case is prescription management, sending refill reminders or updates so patients stay on track with their medications. And of course, with ARMR, organizations can launch campaigns targeting patients at risk of losing coverage from OBBBA, guiding them step by step through re-enrollment. All of these campaigns can be built and tracked within our campaign manager, giving organizations full visibility into engagement and outcomes.
Does Proactive Px integrate with EHR vendors and what does that look like?
Aaron Bours: Yes, absolutely. We’ve designed Proactive Px to integrate with major EHRs, with Epic as our flagship integration. We’re actually the #1 AI agent solution in Epic’s Showroom. That means our agents can securely verify patients, access scheduling data, make or modify appointments, and coordinate prescriptions. We also integrate with CRM systems like Salesforce, as well as contact center telephony platforms. From a health system’s perspective, it looks seamless as the AI agents operate on top of the infrastructure and workflows they already have, pulling and pushing data back into Epic or their CRM without requiring a new system overhaul. It’s plug-and-play interoperability designed for healthcare’s real-world complexity.
How do you see voice agents evolving for healthcare organizations? What impact are they already having and how will that grow?
Aaron Bours: Voice agents are moving far beyond the simple “call deflection” tools of a few years ago. Today, organizations like Inova are using our inbound voice agents to resolve 50% of appointment scheduling calls, freeing staff to focus on higher-value care. The next evolution is outbound, where agents don’t just answer questions, but actively initiate conversations to prevent missed appointments, lapses in medication, or loss of coverage. Over time, these agents will become more context-aware, omnichannel, and fully integrated into the patient journey. They’ll be able to coordinate across inbound and outbound touchpoints, ensure continuity across SMS, calls, and apps, and surface valuable insights back to healthcare leaders. The impact is already measurable in terms of reduced no-shows, faster billing, and increased patient satisfaction. And as adoption grows, we expect voice agents will become as standard in healthcare operations as EHRs are today.
