theCUBE's Coverage of Google Cloud at HIMSS26 | Rajiv Batra, Google Cloud & Stephanie Rickard, Cognizant

Rajiv Batra, Google Cloud & Stephanie Rickard, Cognizant

In this interview from theCUBE's coverage of Google Cloud at HIMSS26 in Las Vegas, Stephanie Rickard, vice president of healthcare strategy and growth at Cognizant, joins Rajiv Batra, director and head of North American global systems integrators partnerships at Google Cloud, to talk with theCUBE's Rebecca Knight about how their partnership is moving healthcare organizations from predictive models to agentic AI that reshapes clinical and operational workflows. Batra frames the current landscape as a gap between legacy systems and AI-native infrastructure, with Vertex AI and Gemini's natively multimodal capabilities serving as the bridge for healthcare's mix of text, images, voice and structured data. Rickard highlights how agentic AI creates a digital workforce that uses ambient listening to capture clinical encounters, auto-generate documentation and auto-submit claims, keeping humans in the loop while dramatically reducing administrative burden. Key themes include a real-world deployment with one of the largest not-for-profit insurers in the U.S., where Cognizant used agentic AI to transform the appeals and grievances process — reducing the dedicated review team from 20 to five full-time employees in just seven months, achieving 90% automation accuracy and delivering $1.4 million in savings over three years. Batra underscores that the strongest results emerge when organizations prioritize elevating the patient experience over pure cost reduction, creating a positive loop of better outcomes and lower operational expense. Both guests envision a three-to-five-year horizon in which providers, labs, pharmacies and payers converge into a connected, intelligent ecosystem offering a holistic view of every patient — a future they argue is already taking shape as early wins in responsible AI build the trust needed to scale across the enterprise.

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More from theCUBE's Coverage of Google Cloud at HIMSS26

Rajiv Batra

Director, NorthAm GSI Partnerships

Google Cloud

Stephanie Rickard

VP, Healthcare Strategy & Growth

Cognizant

play_circle_outline Cognizant emphasizes responsible AI with human-in-the-loop for trust in healthcare deployments

play_circle_outline Bridging Legacy Systems to AI: Vertex AI as Integration Glue and Gemini’s Multimodal Agent Strategy

play_circle_outline Beyond Prediction: Agentic AI Automates Ambient Listening, Clinical Documentation, Coding, and Claims

play_circle_outline Case Study: Digital Workforce Automation Cuts Appeals from 20 to 5 FTEs, $1.4M Saved, 90% Accuracy, Continuous Model Learning

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Rajiv Batra, Google Cloud & Stephanie Rickard, Cognizant

Rajiv Batra

Director, NorthAm GSI Partnerships Google Cloud

Stephanie Rickard

VP, Healthcare Strategy & Growth Cognizant

In this interview from theCUBE's coverage of Google Cloud at HIMSS26 in Las Vegas, Stephanie Rickard, vice president of healthcare strategy and growth at Cognizant, joins Rajiv Batra, director and head of North American global systems integrators partnerships at Google Cloud, to talk with theCUBE's Rebecca Knight about how their partnership is moving healthcare organizations from predictive models to agentic AI that reshapes clinical and operational workflows. Batra frames the current landscape as a gap between legacy systems and AI-native infrastructure, wit... Read more

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What does Cognizant bring to its partnership with Google Cloud that helps healthcare organizations adopt and trust Google Cloud technologies? add

What does it take, technically and organizationally, for partnerships to bridge the gap between cutting‑edge platforms like Vertex AI and Gemini and the legacy systems used by many healthcare payers? add

What does the shift from predictive AI to agentic AI look like inside the clinical workflow? add

How did automating appeals and grievances with agentic AI affect the human side of the operation (staff roles, workload) and what measurable business outcomes (FTE reduction, cost savings, accuracy) resulted? add

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Rajiv Batra, Google Cloud & Stephanie Rickard, Cognizant

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Rebecca Knight

>> Hello everyone, and welcome to theCUBE's coverage of the Google Cloud Partner AI series here at HIMSS in Las Vegas 2026. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We've got two terrific guests for this next segment. I would like to welcome Stephanie Rickard, VP Healthcare Strategy and Growth at Cognizant. Welcome, Stephanie.

Stephanie Rickard

>> Thank you, Rebecca.

Rebecca Knight

>> And Rajiv Batra, Director, North American GSI partnerships at Google Cloud. Welcome, Rajiv.

Rajiv Batra

>> Nice to be here.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Stephanie, I'm going to start with you because from a strategy perspective, healthcare is one of the hardest verticals to crack. It is highly regulated. It's slow to adopt technology. It is fragmented. Talk a little bit about what Cognizant brings to this partnership that makes Google Cloud technologies really land in organizations.

Stephanie Rickard

>> Yeah. Thanks so much, Rebecca. It's a great question. Healthcare is a very difficult vertical and industry to get into, especially considering the lack of trust on incorporating AI into the solutions. Cognizant has a very sound approach on ensuring that a human remains in the loop and we have a responsible approach to AI. So of course, we understand our clients dynamically. We offer solutions today that they trust and utilize throughout their ecosystem. So by incorporating that responsible AI, we can bring in partners, ensure that we're applying the right automation and addressing their specific pain points, again, using that extreme of responsible approach by having humans always be in the loop with that decision making.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Rajiv, I'm interested in your perspective in terms of what makes this Cognizant and Google Cloud relationship genuinely different. And when did you personally know that it was more than your average strategic alliance?

Rajiv Batra

>> First of all, I would like to really thank Stephanie and Cognizant for a fabulous relationship we have over the years. When we actually are in the middle of customer, helping the customer, the key differentiation which a partner brings to the table is the deep industry knowledge, understanding of the system around it, right? And how a technology like, cutting edge technology like AI can actually play the role in helping transformation. Right. And that is the place where Cognizant plays an enormous role, right? You can see the strength in their solutions combined with their industry knowledge and the core of prioritizing how do we help customers transform, right? So Cognizant has been a phenomenal strategic partner. I've been working with them for a very long time, so it's great to be here.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Vertex AI and Gemini are cutting edge, but a lot of healthcare payers are still running on legacy systems. And so from a partnership standpoint, Rajiv, what does it take to bridge that gap technically and organizationally?

Rajiv Batra

>> Excellent question, right? I think we are in a tale of two islands right now. If you look at the world right now, there is a legacy world where the customer stands right now, and then there's a future world of AI where everything should be. And we believe there's a bridge required to pass. And that is the place where Cognizant, Google comes together with the whole technology solution. So for example, right, Vertex is our glue, which brings the whole IT ecosystem together to really interoperability, talk to each other, build agents, roll out agents. Right. On the Gemini, on the other hand, is our natively multimodal platform, multimodal LLM. And the reason I'm so proud of that multimodal part of it, right, if you look at healthcare, and we'll get into more into it, right? It's one of the only domains where you constantly deal with text, you deals with images, you deal with voice and data, and how do you natively process all that stuff? That is the place where I think Gemini shines it and Vertex becomes the platform to build those agents and roll out.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah, that's a great point, that it's so many different facets here. And this is a great segue into the work itself, Stephanie, because you've described this moment as a shift from predictive AI to agentic AI, where it doesn't just flag something, but it actually takes action. Can you tell our viewers a little bit about what this actually looks like from inside the workflow?

Stephanie Rickard

>> Absolutely. Yeah. So those legacy models where we're just able to provide those predictive solutions isn't quite good enough. So we're trying to shift further left and not only create and share those insights as early in the encounter as possible, but also using agents to create a digital workforce. So where we can use ambient listening to capture all of the care and communication that was established during that encounter, auto create that clinical documentation in order to ensure that it was properly captured and all of those critical details were provided, using then the ability to auto create that claim, auto code that claim and auto submit it. So by instilling these agentic AI, we can truly create autonomous and constant learning where we're creating that digital workforce for our payers and for our providers to just really create maximum efficiencies and reduce that cost and administrative burden across the board.

Rebecca Knight

>> So from my perspective, I'm hearing you talk and it sounds as though therefore it's more time spent with clinicians and the patient. It's making sure that important details don't fall through the cracks.

Stephanie Rickard

>> Exactly.

Rebecca Knight

>> Rajiv, you're sitting across from healthcare CIOs and COOs all the time making a case for this. What are objections do you hear to this? I mean, and how do you work through it as a partnership?

Rajiv Batra

>> Before I come to the objections part, I'm going to double down on what Stephanie mentioned, right? I think we are at a place where caregiving is truly about the patient and the caregiver, how exactly you're coming together. And if you look at the history of healthcare, these systems and clinically entering those manual entries take all your time, right? And as we basically move towards that agentic AI, we are seeing, when I sit in front of the customers and leaders, right, is we're bringing back empathy back to the systems. Right. We are bringing back what customer really needs the care for. But coming to the objections, right, there are some seriously areas where our customers have questions, and I think rightly so, right? Healthcare is also a very compliant, regulated industry, right? How do you basically make sure that the tools and the agents which you are launching are secure by nature, secure by design, right? How do you ensure that the data privacy is kept in mind? How do you basically make sure that the patient confidentially kept in mind? So those are some of the questions. And I'm so proud that those are the things which we have natively taken care as we go and launch our products. For example, right, Gemini is HIPAA-compliant and that's by definition is something which... And again, the second part I will deep dive before giving it to Stephanie is like, our models are not trained on customer data, right? So if a customer basically uses the models and the platform which we provide, it is there in their own firewall, right? So it's not used to train on their data, which is a very big security kind of assurance of our customers on the-

Rebecca Knight

>> And for privacy and for all of those really important issues when it comes to your health data.

Rajiv Batra

>> Absolutely.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Stephanie, I want to talk a little bit about how you've actually done this kind of work in practice. I know you've worked with one of the largest not-for-profit insurers in the US to transform their appeals and grievance process. Can you tell our viewers a little bit about that in terms of the human side of the transformation, as well as what the business outcomes were?

Stephanie Rickard

>> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's a constant challenge that we have not only within appeals and grievances, but really applying so much staff and manual review to all areas of operations. And so when we look at appeals and grievances specifically, this payer had 20 team members that were dedicated to reviewing every appeal that would come in. They have to understand the type of appeal it is, the subcategory, the level of priority, and that was taking an exhausting, extreme amount of staff time. And so by using agentic AI, we were able to automate that entire process where the agents can now read policies, read the documentation, read the clinical notes, and understand exactly what type of triaging needs to take place so that the staff can reduce their time and spend it focusing on just what requires their review when the agents can then apply the classification, apply the priority, and they can ensure that these team members are only spending their time on critical reviews. We were able to reduce their team down from 20 to five FTEs in just seven months. We were able to experience a $1.4 million savings over three years, just from the appeals and grievances automation that we were able to accomplish. And it is at a 90% accuracy currently when we look at that process. And the beauty of our partnership with Google is the autonomous and continual learning that's always taking place with the models, where we're going to continue to increase that 90% accuracy to even greater levels so that we have reduced cost, maximized team efficiencies, and ultimately like we're all aiming towards, greater transparency, greater visibility and care for our patients and our members.

Rebecca Knight

>> So those are really impressive numbers. 90% automation accuracy, 1.4 million in savings, and those are really the kind of results that build momentum.

Stephanie Rickard

>> Exactly.

Rebecca Knight

>> How does that change your conversation with that customer for subsequent deals and also expansions with that customer, particularly, as you said, going on to the continuous learning that is necessary for these systems to operate?

Stephanie Rickard

>> Yeah. I think by tackling something like appeals and grievances, it's going to give them the confidence to be able to expand this to other areas of their operations. We could apply the same scenario to care gaps and quality metrics reviews, payment integrity. So by laying the foundation with something that's not directly within the core adjudication process, it's something that happens after, it's instilling that confidence that Cognizant and Google can deliver the type of agentic AI that we're looking for and that that confidence will really set the foundation for greater scalability and usage of agentic AI throughout their operations.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Rajiv, health payers are juggling thinner margins, more regulation, rising expectations all at once. When you're helping a new customer figure out what they want to do with agentic AI, where they want to go, how do you help them figure out their priorities in terms of where they start?

Rajiv Batra

>> That's a great question, right? There are two ways to look into it. And there is always this part which Stephanie mentioned about how do you really automate, streamline the processes, move from those click-based models, click-based platforms to really agentic models where you are really... That's one way. And the focus is on operational rigor, ensuring that manual work is reduced, and how do you elevate the upskill part of the employee experience also, right? But then there's a second piece of it. And the second piece also we truly believe is the part of how do you really change the patient experience? How do you transform that experience because that is the heart of how the provider system works, right? And that is the second piece of it. Now that is a balancing act between do you want to basically save cost first or you increase patient experience? But in my experience, what we have seen is the best case is where we're able to elevate the patient experience. And that creates this positive loop of reduced cost and overall better service to our end customer.

Rebecca Knight

>> Okay. So I mean, that's actually a great segue into our final question, which is looking out three to five years, you're both describing a future in which AI becomes the actual backbone of our healthcare operating model. How do you describe the... You're talking about elevating the patient experience, which is of course what should be the guiding principle of all of the work everyone's doing here at HIMSS, but how does that actually look for the role of a clinician or a team member in a healthcare organization? And what do you think is the future that they most would want to see too and how you're helping achieve that? I'll give you, you start, Rajiv, and then I'll give Stephanie the final word.

Rajiv Batra

>> I think we always think that patients, when we walk into the caregiver office, we are dealt with empathy and the doctors are talking about it, but it's the reverse is also true. Doctors also want to do the same. They actually want to spend time with you looking into your eyes and literally understanding you versus typing on a keyboard, enter every word you say about it, right? And that future, in my view, is right here. We're already there. The agentic motion is helping doctors, providers do more time. But to your question, where do we see from three to five years from time? I think that is the place where we see various systems coming together as a one connected ecosystem. So even today, right, we are looking at a provider side of it, the lab side of it, the pharmacy side of it, and automating those processes. But as we move forward into this journey, we'll be able to look at a holistic 360 degree picture of a caregiver and a patient and how do we bring it all together versus interpretating everything together. But I'll love to see your views on that.

Stephanie Rickard

>> Yeah, I completely agree. I think that as we continue to set the stage for some responsible AI today, providers are going to be able to glean the value of spending more time with their patients. Kind of that flagship AI use case has been like this ambient listening. And I think that in itself, instead of having the patient stare at the back of their provider or their clinician, they can have that time one-on-one, knowing that their AI solution is there to support them and capture all of the appropriate documentation and capture all of that required content. So not only are we going to start to see the providers start to trust this, but they're going to see the impact that it has on their patients. And this foundation that Rajiv mentioned that is already here today is going to continue to expand where we have insights that are given in a pre-care setting so providers know exactly what their patient needs when they come in, no retrospective reviews, no chart chasing. And when they start to see some of the administrative reduction and the higher satisfaction of their patients, that's going to really allow them to continue to scale this across their operations. And having a connected and intelligent ecosystem is going to be even more critical to ensure that all of these insights are delivered across care, core adjudication, quality management, to really having a connected and intelligent ecosystem. And I think that that foundation is here today and we're going to continue to see that expand as that trust and partnerships like Google and Cognizant continue to make that a realization for our clients.

Rebecca Knight

>> Well said, Stephanie and Rajiv, thank you so much for joining us here on theCUBE.

Rajiv Batra

>> Thank you so much.

Stephanie Rickard

>> Thank you, Rebecca.

Rajiv Batra

>> Thank you for having us.

Stephanie Rickard

>> Thank you, Rajiv.

Rebecca Knight

>> And thank you so much for tuning in to theCUBE's coverage of the Google Cloud Partners AI series here at HIMSS 2026. I'm Rebecca Knight.