The Future of Personalized Healthcare Experiences Is Here: Inside the IBM and Adobe Partnership

As digital change accelerates across healthcare, payors face an urgent need to modernize how they communicate, educate, and engage. The AI-Orchestrated Experiences portfolio from Adobe and IBM represents a new paradigm where data, design, and intelligence work seamlessly together to improve outcomes for every stakeholder.

In this episode of the AI at Health series on The Beat Podcast, host Sandy Vance sits down with Melissa Geissler, Partner for Healthcare and Life Sciences Strategy and Transformation at IBM, and Ted Roman, Healthcare and Life Sciences Digital Strategy Principal at Adobe, to unpack one of the most exciting partnerships in healthcare AI right now. Together, IBM and Adobe are building AI-orchestrated experience solutions that help payers deliver personalized, seamless, and scalable member experiences without the white-glove price tag. From helping members find the right health plan to automating prior authorization and appointment booking, this episode is a must-listen for any payer, provider, or health tech leader who wants to understand where consumer experience in healthcare is headed next. 

In this episode, they talk about:

• Healthcare is data-rich, but still behind every major retailer when it comes to personalized member experiences
• IBM and Adobe are combining platform capabilities, agentic AI, and change management into one integrated framework
• AI agents can now handle health plan selection, appointment booking, and benefits navigation for members
• Brokers serving small and mid-size employers are one of the most underserved audiences in healthcare technology
• The best AI strategy starts with defining the business problem first, then building the technology around it
• Social determinants of health data can now be integrated into personalized member recommendations
• Organizations that feel under-resourced are the ideal candidates for AI-orchestrated experiences
• The partnership is already live with clients and expanding into provider and life sciences use cases 

A Little About Ted and Melissa:

Ted Roman, PhD, brings over a decade of expertise in healthcare and life sciences research, management, technology, operations, and digital strategy to Adobe. He is a principal in the Digital Strategy Group, serving organizations globally pursuing more interconnected experiences. Prior to Adobe, Ted served the needs of Highmark Health and McKinsey & Company's clients. He holds a PhD in Computational Biology from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He also earned bachelor's degrees in computer science and mathematics from Case Western Reserve University.

Melissa Geissle is a Partner at IBM, leading Public Market activities, where she applies experience strategy and service design to solve complex innovation challenges and leads a diverse team of designers, researchers, analysts, and strategists to help organizations create meaningful stakeholder connections while improving market outcomes. Over two decades, she has partnered with healthcare, life sciences, government, and nonprofit organizations to define and execute digital health initiatives, applying data-driven insights and ecosystem platform capabilities to redefine strategic marketing, service, and digital engagement functions. Melissa holds a BA in Economics from Bates College and an MBA from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, and has participated in global corporate citizenship initiatives across the UK, South Africa, and Poland.