Executive Summary. As healthcare grows more fragmented and costly, Transcarent CEO Glen Tullman explains why consumer-directed platforms powered by generative AI are emerging as the next structural shift. He outlines how WayFinding moves from search to agentic action, why aligned incentives matter more than added features, and how responsible automation must keep clinicians firmly in the loop.
Healthcare leaders increasingly recognize that access, cost, and navigation remain deeply broken for consumers. In this conversation, Transcarent CEO Glen Tullman discusses why consumer-directed care has become the next frontier, how generative AI enables “magic-like” WayFinding experiences, and what it takes to align incentives around outcomes rather than volume. Drawing on multiple public-company leadership cycles, Tullman frames AI not as a replacement for clinicians but as the orchestration layer that removes friction, improves predictability, and restores trust in the healthcare journey.
AITJ: Glen, you’ve led multiple public companies and landmark IPOs, but with Transcarent, you’ve chosen to disrupt from the consumer’s side first. What convinced you that “consumer-directed care” was the next frontier in healthcare transformation?
Healthcare today is too often confusing, complex, and costly . . . and the public will tell you that it’s getting worse rather than better. People don’t know where to turn, what to do next, or who they can trust. And that uncertainty shows up at the very moments when individuals and families are most vulnerable. That’s exactly why we built Transcarent — and why we’re so proud of WayFinding, which is the first and only comprehensive health and care platform that uses AI to empower health consumers.
We’ve used technology in every other industry to empower consumers, improve the experience, improve the quality, and reduce costs . . . travel (Expedia), banking (SoFi), information (Google, ChatGPT), transportation (Uber, Lyft). In healthcare, the middle is making it more difficult than ever. It creates more friction and is taking all of the money. So, using technology to address all the challenges . . . an experience that’s easy to use, that consumers love, that delivers better quality and instant access to care feels like a no brainer. And that’s what we’ve created at Transcarent. We’re replacing the legacy navigators with a next generation platform. WayFinding is designed to support people as they move along their health and care journey.
People don’t know where to turn, what to do next, or who they can trust.
Glen Tullman
You describe Transcarent’s platform as delivering a “magic-like” health experience through generative AI. Can you walk us through a real-world example of how that magic plays out in a member’s journey?
To paraphrase author Arthur C. Clarke, technology, perfectly applied, is indistinguishable from magic. When I talk about a “magic-like” experience, I’m talking about removing friction at every step of a person’s health and care journey.
Picture a busy working mom juggling a full day of Zoom calls when her child comes down with a sore throat and fever. She opens the Transcarent app and describes her child’s situation. The AI Care Assistant asks a couple of simple follow-up questions, looks at her benefits, and then does the hard part for her: it finds a high-quality, in-network pediatrician and books an appointment on her behalf that fits her schedule or she can chat with a doc in 60 seconds, 24 hours a day.
That's the power of WayFinding. Our AI doesn’t just answer questions -- it drives action by routing consumers to the right benefit, surfacing high‑value providers, and coordinating urgent or complex care all in one app. To the consumer, it should feel like magic.
The WayFinding platform’s latest update was revealed at CES2026. What does version 2.0 signal about the evolution of consumer expectations in healthcare—and what’s next on the roadmap?
With WayFinding 2.0, we’ve moved from search to chat, to the “agentic action era” in healthcare. Consumers don’t just want answers; they expect systems that do things for them. Like a good personal assistant would. That’s the level of proactive, personalized service people already experience in other industries . . . and now they can expect it in health and care with Transcarent.
At CES, we introduced Advanced Symptom Checking (to figure out what’s wrong), Agentic Scheduling (to find an available, in network physician and book an appointment for you), “Total Recall” Memory (to remind you what the doctor said and what care you should have requested), and Personalized Health Paths (to provide monthly personalized longevity suggestions and care follow-ups). Healthcare is playing catch-up to every other industry, but we’re moving quickly.
You’ve often said healthcare innovation is not just about technology but solving problems for real people. What’s one problem that keeps you up at night—and what’s Transcarent doing about it?
The problem that keeps me up at night is simple and fixable: people delaying or avoiding needed care because the system is too confusing, too expensive, or both. In the wealthiest country in the world, with the best doctors and hospitals, too many families are still asking, “Can we afford to go to the doctor?” or “Where do I even start?” These kinds of delays turn manageable issues into crises.
We tackle the problem from three angles, and they all start with making access to high-quality healthcare easy for consumers. First, we give people one place to go -- not ten apps or a stack of membership cards and phone numbers. With WayFinding, you can just ask Transcarent what you need and get clear, personalized guidance right away. Second, we don’t just stop at answers. We wrap people in integrated Care Experiences so they can go from a question to actual care without getting handed off or starting over. Our platform includes almost every leading point solution . . . Hinge and Sword in MSK, Carrot, Progyny, Maven, and Midi in women’s health, and a host of others. And third, we change the economics. We bring transparency and accountability to things like pharmacy and surgical costs, so employers and families are paying for better outcomes, not more complexity or unnecessary surgery. Our commitment is to drive quality and accessibility up, and drive costs down.
Capping COE (Center of Excellence) case management fees at $6,500 is a bold move. How did you arrive at that number—and what structural shift are you hoping this transparency will catalyze across the industry?
For years, COE vendors have charged case management fees that quietly rise with the cost and complexity of surgery. So, the more you spend, the more they make. That never sat right with me. We looked at years of performance data across thousands of surgical episodes and asked a simple question: What is a fair, flat fee that supports high‑touch navigation and clinical oversight without rewarding higher bills?
By capping all surgery case management fees at $6,500 and setting prices before surgery, we’re drawing a line in the sand: no more runaway, percentage-based fees that grow as claims grow. We’re calling on our peers to put outcomes first, make pricing predictable, and rebuild trust in employer healthcare by aligning their business models with what’s right for people. And I expect the fees to come down next year, along with the cap. If we’re going to make care better that also means we have to drive down costs.
Many platforms “add more” to fix healthcare’s complexity. Transcarent aims for subtraction. What did you have to say no to, or strip away, to create a simpler and smarter experience?
Traditional navigation stacks up call centers, portals, point solutions, and apps, each with its own login and phone number. We said no to that complexity. Instead of asking people to remember which hypertension or cancer solution vendor to download, or which 1‑800 number to use, we built a single front door that unifies benefits navigation, clinical guidance, and care delivery.
Behind the scenes, it’s all integrated. We stripped away duplicative intake forms, redundant phone trees, and disconnected vendor hand‑offs, and replaced them with one coordinated experience that routes people to high‑value options and stays with them through resolution. Through our Experience Store, employers can contract with any of the leading point solutions and have them directly integrated into their Transcarent experience, easier for the employers and easier for the employees.
In the time it takes to dial a legacy navigator, you can have your answer on our WayFinding platform or be connected to one of our point solution partners. Or talk with a real person.
You’ve repeatedly emphasized aligning incentives around outcomes rather than volume. How difficult is it to shift this mindset within a system still entrenched in fee-for-service economics?
It’s tough because fee‑for‑service isn’t just a payment model, it is muscle memory. For decades, people have been rewarded for more procedures, and more visits without asking if people are actually healthier. When you start talking about being paid for avoided surgeries, better treatment plans, fewer ER visits, or lower pharmacy trends, you’re asking the system to go against the how it is designed. Healthcare is the only industry that, despite the addition of technology, has not moved providers and consumers closer together. Instead, the middle has grown - as have costs.
The good news is that self‑insured employers and forward‑thinking health plans are already there. They live in a world of total cost, outcomes, and experiences.
We’ve built Transcarent around aligned incentives and performance guarantees tied to measurable savings and improved care. Is it difficult? Yes. But when you can show that avoiding unnecessary care and cutting readmissions lowers costs, the conversation shifts from “if we can get there” to “how fast can we get there?”
Healthcare is the only industry that, despite the addition of technology, has not moved providers and consumers closer together.
Glen Tullman
From Livongo to Transcarent, your work has often blended proactive, personalized care with powerful data. How do you strike the right balance between automation and the irreplaceable role of human clinicians?
Our philosophy is simple, help clinicians focus on what they do best: listen, diagnose, treat, and reassure. With WayFinding, generative AI interprets questions, checks benefits, surfaces options, personalizes the experience, and coordinates next steps. But when it comes to clinical judgment, physicians, nurses, and Health Guides step in. Our technology lets physicians focus on what they were educated to do, not look up pharmacies or deal with billing.
Our AI is designed to support navigation and decision‑making, not to diagnose, treat, or replace clinicians, and we use multi-layer safety guards, human review, and continuous monitoring to keep it that way.
You spoke about participating in a CES panel on the 2035 vision for healthcare. If we fast-forward to that year, what do you hope people will say Transcarent helped make inevitable?
When Transcarent launched WayFinding in 2024, we set out to do something fundamentally different: put clinically-led, trusted generative AI directly into the hands of health consumers (our Members) so they could understand their benefits, get guidance, and access care in as little as 60 seconds in One Place. That work mattered—and it worked. Today, more than a million of our Members rely on our WayFinding platform.
By 2035, I hope people look back and say Transcarent led the way to put consumers in control of their health and care, and paved the way for an experience that health consumers actually like to use. And we did so by taking cost out of the system.
I believe that, to quote my friend and probably the best venture capitalist in the business today, Hemant Taneja, “Technology can create abundance in health and care.”
If employers, health plans, and families assume their health and care experience will be personalized, trustworthy, and on their terms, then we’ll have done our job. We’ll have raised expectations so high that a better system wasn’t just possible; it was unavoidable.
Having led companies through IPOs, major acquisitions, and paradigm shifts—what is the one leadership lesson you’ve carried from Enterprise Systems to today’s AI-driven future at Transcarent?
I continue to believe that great companies start with great people. I still believe that and will continue to lead with that mindset. It is all about having great people and treating your people well.
I would add, speed still matters. Now that might be more true than ever before. I often ask the team, “Why not today?” I truly believe that delivering a better health and care experience is too important to wait for. Every day matters.
Great companies start with great people. And speed still matters.
Glen Tullman
