Blue Shield of Calif., Kony to Revamp Insurer's Mobile

Health insurer Blue Shield of California (San Francisco) has contracted with Kony Solutions to develop and deploy new mobile and multichannel applications on the KonyOne Platform, the companies announced today.

Blue Shield refers to the initiative as its "Multi-Channel Center of Excellence," chartered with "ensuring the company offers the most innovative, valuable and state-of-the-art mobile and multi-channel services for its customers," according to a company statement. The company is also in the midst of a modernization project in which it is moving to TriZetto's Facets for policy administration.

Blue Shield will use Kony's mobile application development platform and its healthcare "accelerator" application to build custom applications for its customers, as well as cloud and service offerings that will be rolled out later this year.

"Delivering a high-quality multi-channel experience is now part of the basic RFP for most of our customers, and they require mobile offerings that are robust, scalable and can handle all the different devices that members want to use," said Michael Mathias, CIO of Blue Shield of California. "We selected Kony because they offer a robust platform that covers the full range of devices and will integrate easily with our systems."

Mathias last CIO of Aetna, which also selected Kony for a mobile revamp last year.

[Q&A with Alfa Insurance on its Kony partnership and mobile innovation]

Nathan Golia is senior editor of Insurance & Technology. He joined the publication in 2010 as associate editor and covers all aspects of the nexus between insurance and information technology, including mobility, distribution, core systems, customer interaction, and risk ... View Full Bio