Last year I wrote about bringing Truven back to its roots, and one important part of that was bringing back our client conference. It’s only been a few weeks since our 2025 Truven Health Insights Summit and I’m still marveling at what an energizing experience those two days were.
We had participation from employers, health plans, public plan sponsors, and benefits advisors – and the feedback was overwhelming. Attendees appreciated the vast array of perspectives and the opportunity to talk to and learn from other Truven clients, even if they weren't in the same industry.
One employer told us, “I was able to learn how different employers are utilizing Truven Health Insights and it has given me new ideas and inspired my creativity.” That’s exactly the kind of feedback we love to hear!
We are also grateful to have had participation from our partners at Morgan Health. Managing Director of Healthcare Innovation Rivka Friedman – recently named one of SCALE’s Top 60 Most Influential Leaders in Healthcare side chat to kick off the event.
I had three top takeaways from the two-day event:
1. Costs create pressure, but health and benefits leaders are finding creative solutions
Everyone in healthcare is facing the same challenge: costs. With a projected 9% rise year-over-year in employer-sponsored healthcare costs, it’s becoming even more difficult for employers, health plans, and benefits advisors to manage programs while controlling costs. We heard from several clients that are applying data and analytics to better manage their population health and financial outcomes.
One regional health plan is taking data extracts from Health Insights to drive powerful use cases across provider insights, member outreach, and employer reporting. Another health plan is integrating data from the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index into its Health Insights data warehouse to gain a more complete picture of its population and support care coordination strategies.
Of course, prescription drugs were a hot topic. We had a fascinating panel discussion where presenters shared varied experiences and strategies for dealing with the rising costs of GLP-1 drugs – and everyone's in a different place.
We also heard about the importance of benchmarking your data to drive relevant industry or geographical comparisons. Clients recommended leveraging not only MarketScan® Data, but also pulling in other industry benchmarks, such as Reimbursement Benchmarks for medical procedures or NADAC and Cost Plus for drugs.
All this sounds easy on paper, but we know it takes work. From our own recent research, we know that 37% of employers, health plans, and brokers lack high-quality, reliable data on health outcomes, and 33% fall short on analytics or data science talent within their organizations. That’s where Truven comes in, and the conference demonstrated the great outcomes clients are achieving.
2. Employers need a focused benefits strategy
It’s important for employers to ensure their benefits programs have a clear mission, hold vendors to clear and measurable KPIs, and are supported with buy-in from across the organization. DTE Energy and Eaton Corporation both provide model examples.
DTE continues to infuse wellbeing into its culture. The commitment it has shown to develop and improve upon its award-winning Culture of Health program is impressive. DTE shared powerful examples of how its custom dashboard system, powered by Health Insights, helps their team synthesize data to obtain insights that drive action.
As for Eaton, the company has always taken a strategic approach to employee benefits. This includes being able to take tangible data back to its C-suite to show whether benefits changes have had the desired impact. Eaton has previously discussed how it looks to Truven “to help create that measurement strategy to evaluate some of the benefits designs and program changes [they’ve] made over the years.”
We’re proud to work with clients like these and are excited to see how they will continue to positively impact their employees.
3. AI is on the horizon, but data quality is key
Finally, our breakout discussion on the use of AI in the healthcare benefits world provided an intriguing look at the road ahead. The promise of AI is vast, along with its applications. Reliability and accuracy are of the utmost importance, and because data is fragmented, there is an opportunity to unify data more seamlessly.
This is where Truven is uniquely positioned, as our proven processes ensure excellent data quality and vast support for different data types. These factors help us to stay innovative in this space, and the principles Merative has adopted are key in shaping Truven’s AI strategy.
There are also varied areas of AI applicability, including having the ability to catch trends early so that they can intervene proactively before they escalate. We’re ready to dive into those patterns and ensure that we’re staying at the forefront of the best ways to use AI.
Onward to the 2026 Truven Health Insights Summit
Talking with clients is my favorite part of the job, and while we provide many opportunities for our clients to discuss strategies and collaborate throughout the year, nothing beats meeting with them face-to-face. We look forward to creating more opportunities to do this in the future – including with next year’s Truven Health Insights Summit. Stay tuned!
