CVS Aetna's New Generative AI Assistant Aims to Simplify Health Care

CVS Health CVS Aetna’s latest offering aligns with its strategic efforts to move away from the transactional approach to health care to a consumer health experience. The company is rolling out a generative AI-powered conversational experience in its digital channels that will simplify health care, allowing members to quickly and easily navigate their benefits for a personalized experience. Unlike other industry alternatives, where conversational AI is relegated to a chat window, Aetna is embedding generative AI across its end-to-end digital experience.

The embedded approach ensures the Aetna assistant synthesizes all relevant information for the member. It will deliver immediate, easy-to-digest answers for the user, removing the need to weed through links or complex content. According to the company, members will not need to use technical healthcare terminology such as “prior authorization" or “claims" to get answers, but instead can use plain language and receive a response that is personalized, easy to understand and visually dynamic.

Aetna initially launched the new capability to a beta population in October and will expand access throughout the year and in the first half of 2026. Near-term enhancements will include proactive AI insights for member and multimodal interaction support, including voice, text and screen-reader capability.

The assistant will also be embedded within Aetna Care Paths, a new digital offering available through the Aetna Health app, announced as part of the company’s ongoing technology investment to improve the experience for medical professionals and their patients. Featuring a U.S. patent-pending technology, Aetna Care Paths gives clarity about procedures and benefits that may be encountered and personalized care recommendations, all in one convenient location.

News From CVS Health Rivals — CAH & CNC

Cardinal Health CAH recently completed the acquisition of Solaris Health, a leading urology management services organization (“MSO”). The buyout adds more than 750 providers across more than 250 practice locations in 14 states and adds immediate scale to the Urology Alliance within Cardinal Health's leading multi-specialty MSO platform, The Specialty Alliance. Further, the company delivered a 22% year-over-year revenue growth in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, while non-GAAP diluted earnings per share (EPS) increased 36%.

Centene Corp. CNC company, Wellcare announced plans to offer Medicare Advantage (“MA”) to over 51 million beneficiaries in 32 states and Prescription Drug Plan (“PDP”) products to more than 8 million members across all 50 states. This includes 51 new counties across eight markets, with a focus on D-SNPs, enhancements to the Wellcare Spendables card and improving member experience.

CVS Stock Performance, Valuation and Estimates

Year to date, CVS Health’s shares have increased 70.5% compared with the industry’s 4.9% growth.   

CVS Health is trading at a forward 12-month price/sales (P/S) ratio of 0.24, lower than the industry average of 0.45.

See how the analysts are projecting CVS Health’s 2025 and 2026 earnings.

CVS currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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