By Austin Tsai
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Imagine a world where filling out government benefit applications no longer feels like navigating a maze of paperwork and red tape. A world where technology takes over the burden of tedious forms and language barriers, allowing families to access the help they need with the ease of a few clicks. That world isn’t some far-off future—it’s happening right now. At the heart of this transformation is Link Health, an organization harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to close the gap in public benefits access, putting over $2.4 million worth of funding back into the community.
Link Health is a nonprofit organization which utilizes on-the-ground staff, known as ambassadors, to health screenings and connect patients to essential services, while simultaneously employing remote enrollment processes. This helps to take advantage of the over $80 billion in state and federal benefits that go unused every year by signing patients up for eight often underutilized assistance programs for low-income individuals like Lifeline, SNAP, WIC, and Medicare Savings Program. Oftentimes, patients may not know they are eligible for such programs and slip through the cracks, which then results in the observed underutilization of said programs. To combat this, Link Health integrates its staff into hospital workflows, streamlining data collection and program applications by partnering with major health systems across the country. This approach allows the organization to bridge healthcare and social services, ensuring patients receive both medical care and critical federal benefits assistance.
Part of Link Health’s workflow is entering patient information into often cumbersome and difficult enrollment forms. By incorporating AI into their operations, Link Health has managed to significantly streamline its workflows and improve the services it provides. Through the help of the AI for Impact Co-op Program at Northeastern University’s Burnes Center for Social Change, students built a generative AI tool for Link Health allowing for seamless data entry. The team of three students developed the technology over the course of three months. Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology (using a camera to identify certain parts of an image), the organization can extract information from patients’ IDs and automatically populate it into various applications for government benefit programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Medicare Savings Program, and Child Care Financial Assistance. This automation eliminates the need for manual data entry, reducing errors and freeing up valuable time for team members to focus on more meaningful tasks such as understanding a patient’s context on the front-end, being able to submit much more enrollment applications on the patient’s behalf on the back-end, as well as following-up with the patient when they have received approval of their application. As one ambassador put it “It’s really convenient because it lets me talk to and get to know the patients more, rather than making me ask a series of questions.”
Link Health employs AI translation tools like CalliopeAI to improve communication with patients whose first language is not English. Designed for healthcare settings, these tools support over 400 languages and dialects, including specialized medical terminology. Features such as two-way, conversational interpretation enable ambassadors to interact more effectively with patients in real time. By integrating tools like CalliopeAI’s, Link Health helps eliminate language barriers, ensuring that individuals from diverse backgrounds can access essential health and financial support. The result? A more efficient operation that can better serve a larger, more diverse community.
In just two years, Link Health has leveraged artificial intelligence to significantly expand its reach and impact, underscoring the transformative potential of technology in the health and social services sectors. By integrating AI into its workflow, the organization has streamlined processes, allowing for more efficient data entry and management. Being able to simply fill out information by taking a picture of a patient’s information, more applications are able to be filled out in a much shorter time. By being able to store data in an AI powered database, it has enabled easier follow-up and tracking of approved applications. This has resulted in nearly 2,000 families being enrolled in government benefits programs, with a staggering $2.4 million in funds dispersed to households in need. AI’s ability to automate and optimize operations has been instrumental in accelerating Link Health’s mission, ensuring that aid reaches those who need it most. As the organization continues to grow, the use of AI promises to further enhance its capacity to deliver critical support to vulnerable communities.
The impact of AI at Link Health and the capabilities of Calliope AI are a microcosm of the broader potential AI holds across various sectors. Whether it’s improving healthcare delivery, aiding child support case workers, supporting operations for city governments, or even how governments can accomplish similar things as Link Health is currently doing, AI has the capacity to revolutionize the way we approach some of the world’s most pressing challenges. In the right hands, the power of AI has shown to be able to bolster productivity for all types of employees. However, this potential can only be realized if we approach AI with an open mind and a willingness to adapt.
AI is here to stay, and resisting it out of fear would only mean missing out on the myriad benefits it can offer. Embracing AI doesn’t mean handing over the reins to machines; it means leveraging its strengths to augment human capability and improve our quality of life. AI technology will continue to evolve, and with it, so too will its capacity to aid, protect, and empower us. From healthcare to education, from business to government support structures, AI’s applications are as diverse as they are transformative.
The promise of AI is not in some distant future—it is in the choices we make today. By embracing AI and guiding its development responsibly, we can harness its power to bring about larger, positive change. It’s time to look at AI not as a looming threat, but as a powerful ally in the quest for a better, more equitable world.
Austin Tsai is a graduate student at Northeastern University, currently in his last year of the MPH program. Apart from his studies, he is currently working as a Policy Associate for Link Health, writing publications for the organization and working alongside ambassadors to enroll patients into government benefits at the Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center.
Author: Austin Tsai
