Getting life insurance used to mean waiting weeks while underwriters manually sifted through hundreds of pages of medical records. Miss one critical detail? Your premium could be wildly off—or worse, your claim denied years later. LexisNexis Risk Solutions just changed that game. Their new Medical Insights tool, launched November 11, 2025, automates the extraction of vital health data from electronic health records (EHRs), slashing approval times and improving accuracy for U.S. life insurance applicants.
This isn’t just another tech upgrade. It’s a fundamental shift in how insurers evaluate your health—and what that means for your wallet.
Why Manual EHR Review Was Costing You Time (and Money)
Before Medical Insights, underwriters faced a brutal reality: manual extraction of risk data from sprawling EHRs. Imagine reading through 200+ pages of medical notes, lab results, and vitals to find the 10 data points that matter for pricing your policy. Slow. Error-prone. Expensive.
Justin Baker, Associate VP of Life Underwriting Solutions at LexisNexis, explained the problem: “Currently the only way for an underwriter to quickly identify important risk data in an EHR is to collect it manually and read the full EHR.” That inefficiency meant longer wait times for applicants and higher operational costs for insurers—costs often passed to consumers through premiums.
The bigger risk? Mortality slippage—when insurers underestimate health risks because critical data got buried or overlooked. Miss a diabetes diagnosis in page 87? That policy gets mispriced, and the insurer (or policyholders collectively) eats the loss when claims exceed expectations.
How Medical Insights Actually Works (The Technical Breakdown)
LexisNexis’ solution goes beyond basic EHR summaries. It structures the chaos:
- Automated extraction of vital signs: Blood pressure, heart rate, BMI—pulled directly from records and standardized across different healthcare systems’ formats.
- Lab result parsing that flags abnormal values (cholesterol over 240, A1C above 6.5%) without human review of each result individually.
- Material health condition identification: The system recognizes diagnoses that actually impact mortality risk—cancer, heart disease, diabetes—and ignores the noise (like a 2010 sprained ankle).
- Cross-source synthesis that compares data from multiple providers to catch inconsistencies or confirm patterns.
The result? Underwriters get a structured dashboard instead of a PDF dump. Risk assessment happens in hours, not weeks.
3 Ways This Changes Your Life Insurance Experience
1. Faster approvals without the paperwork runaround
Accelerated underwriting programs—where healthy applicants get instant or near-instant decisions—were limited by data bottlenecks. Medical Insights expands who qualifies by giving insurers confidence in automated decisions. You might skip the medical exam entirely if your EHR data checks out.
2. More accurate premium pricing
Better data = better risk assessment = premiums that actually reflect your health. If you’re healthier than the standard questionnaire suggests, structured EHR data proves it. Conversely, if you’ve got a condition you forgot to mention, the system catches it before the policy issues—avoiding nasty surprises during claims.
3. You get to see (and correct) the data used against you
Baker emphasized a crucial consumer protection: “Data that can be audited, disclosed to applicants and corrected if needed.” Found an error in your medical records? Under HIPAA, you can request corrections. Now that actually matters for underwriting because insurers use the structured data directly.
Should You Apply for Life Insurance Now or Wait?
If you’re healthy and hate medical exams, this is your moment.
Insurers rolling out Medical Insights will likely expand their accelerated underwriting programs in 2025-2026. That means more applicants qualify for no-exam policies with instant decisions. But there’s a catch: the data needs to exist. If you haven’t visited a doctor recently, your EHR might be sparse—and insurers could still require traditional underwriting.
Action steps:
- If you’re shopping for life insurance, ask your agent if the carrier uses advanced EHR analytics like Medical Insights.
- Request your medical records from your primary care provider—review them for errors before applying.
- Schedule annual checkups. Ironically, more medical data helps you if it’s good data (normal vitals, controlled conditions).
The Mortality Slippage Problem Insurers Won’t Tell You About
Here’s what most consumers miss: life insurance pricing assumes a certain percentage of policyholders will die within each year. When actual deaths exceed predictions—mortality slippage—insurers lose money. They respond by raising everyone’s premiums.
Medical Insights attacks this problem by surfacing hidden risks during underwriting. That undiagnosed high blood pressure? The early-stage kidney disease missed in a rushed doctor visit? The system flags it. Better risk assessment at signup = fewer surprise claims = more stable premiums long-term.
Translation: Even if you’re perfectly healthy, you benefit when the insurance pool is accurately priced. Fewer subsidy leaks from mispriced policies means your rates stay competitive.
What About Data Privacy? (The Elephant in the Digital Room)
Legitimate concern. Insurers accessing your full medical history feels invasive. But consider the alternative: you provide the same information via paper forms and medical exams—just less efficiently.
Key protections under current law:
- HIPAA authorization required: You must consent before insurers access EHRs during underwriting (separate from treatment access).
- Use limited to underwriting: Data can’t be shared for unrelated purposes like marketing.
- Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA): Protects against misuse of genetic test results in health and life insurance (though GINA doesn’t cover life insurance—something to watch).
- State insurance regulations: Vary by state, but generally prohibit discrimination based on lawful off-duty activities and certain health conditions.
LexisNexis touts the auditability of Medical Insights as a feature. Unlike black-box algorithms, underwriters can trace exactly which data points influenced a decision—and you can request that audit trail.
Industry Impact: Who Wins, Who Loses?
Winners:
- Large insurers with tech budgets to integrate advanced analytics gain competitive advantage in speed and accuracy.
- Healthy consumers who qualify for accelerated underwriting get better deals faster.
- Reinsurers benefit from reduced mortality slippage on policies they back.
Losers:
- Small insurers without resources to adopt these tools fall behind on turnaround times.
- Applicants with messy or sparse medical records may face longer underwriting as systems flag inconsistencies requiring human review.
- Traditional paramedical exam companies see shrinking business as more policies go exam-free.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) will likely scrutinize how automated underwriting affects access and fairness—especially if certain populations systematically lack quality EHR data.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will Medical Insights make life insurance cheaper for me?
Not directly, but faster underwriting cuts insurer costs, which can translate to lower premiums over time. More importantly, accurate risk assessment means you pay a price that matches your actual health—if you’re healthy, you’re not subsidizing mispriced policies. Expect incremental savings (5-10%) rather than dramatic drops.
Can I opt out of EHR-based underwriting?
Yes, but you’ll likely default to traditional underwriting with medical exams and longer wait times. Some carriers may require EHR authorization for their fastest approval tracks, so opting out could mean waiting weeks instead of days. You can also apply with insurers that don’t use advanced EHR analytics yet—though that list is shrinking.
What happens if my medical records contain errors?
Medical Insights’ structured format makes errors more visible—which is actually good for you. Under HIPAA, you can request corrections to your medical records from your healthcare provider. Once fixed at the source, the corrected data flows into underwriting. Justin Baker specifically noted the system delivers “data that can be audited, disclosed to applicants and corrected if needed.” Request your records before applying so you have time to fix issues.
How does this compare to MIB (Medical Information Bureau) reports?
MIB tracks your insurance application history (what you’ve disclosed to other insurers), while Medical Insights pulls clinical data directly from healthcare providers. They’re complementary. MIB catches applicants lying across multiple applications; Medical Insights verifies the underlying health facts. Expect insurers to use both—MIB for fraud detection, Medical Insights for risk assessment.
When will my insurance company start using this technology?
LexisNexis launched Medical Insights on November 11, 2025, but rollout timing varies by carrier. Large insurers with existing LexisNexis relationships may adopt it within 6-12 months. Smaller carriers could take 2-3 years. Ask your agent directly: “Does your underwriting use structured EHR data?” If they don’t know, that’s probably a “no” for now.
The Bottom Line: Your Life Insurance Just Got Smarter
Medical Insights represents the insurance industry catching up to how healthcare already works. Your doctor stopped using paper charts years ago—why should underwriters still manually read PDFs?
For consumers, this means faster decisions, more accurate pricing, and transparency into what data drives your premium. The trade-off? Insurers see more of your medical history—but they were always entitled to it; now they just process it more efficiently.
If you’re shopping for life insurance in 2025, ask about accelerated underwriting powered by EHR analytics. You might skip the medical exam, save weeks of waiting, and secure a better rate—all because technology finally automated what underwriters have been doing by hand for decades.
One thing’s certain: the days of insurers making billion-dollar bets based on incomplete medical data are ending. Whether that’s good news depends on what’s in your medical records.