CVS Health puts AI at the center of its consumer engagement strategy
At its December 2025 investor day, CVS Health introduced an AI-native consumer engagement platform meant to simplify how people handle prescriptions, benefits, and care. The move reframes technology as a core growth engine, not a back-office utility.
The platform connects CVS Pharmacy, CVS Caremark, Aetna, and care delivery businesses into one digital experience. The aim: lower friction for consumers and drive enterprise-wide efficiency.
What the AI-native platform does
CVS is embedding AI across its technology stack-personalization, workflow automation, and predictive insights included. As executive vice president and chief experience and technology officer Tilak Mandadi put it, AI isn't an add-on; it's built in end to end.
Practical applications are already in play: conversational tools for customer support, automation to reduce administrative load, and ambient AI to help clinicians with documentation. The company describes the platform as a digital front door that links mobile apps, web tools, and in-person care across pharmacies, clinics, and care teams.
While this isn't a marketplace play, CVS expects the platform to drive transactions and service use by guiding people to relevant offerings through digital channels.
Scale, intent, and scope
CVS estimates it reaches 185 million consumers annually-scale the company expects to use more effectively through data and digital engagement. Chief executive officer David Joyner said the goal is to remove fragmentation and make care simpler to use.
The intent isn't to be a general online retailer. As Mandadi noted, the focus is helping people take the next best step in their care-refilling a prescription, booking care, or understanding benefits.
CVS is also preparing to commercialize parts of the platform for employers, payers, and partners-what executives call "engagement as a service." Timelines and targets weren't disclosed, and leadership emphasized that execution for CVS's own consumers comes first.
Operating model implications for executives
- Make AI the architecture, not a toolset: unify data, identity, and decisioning so personalization and automation work across lines of business.
- Build a single consumer experience across pharmacy, benefits, and care-one app, one profile, one thread.
- Use next-best-action logic to prompt fills, care scheduling, and benefits use at the right moment.
- Automate front-line and back-office workflows (call centers, pharmacy ops, clinical documentation) with measurable SLAs.
- Create partner-ready capabilities ("engagement as a service") without distracting from core delivery.
- Bake in privacy, security, and model governance from day one to maintain trust and compliance.
KPIs to watch
- Active users across properties (DAU/MAU) and cross-product sign-ins
- Next-best-action activation and conversion rates
- Prescription fill and refill adherence, gap-closure rates
- Call deflection, average handle time, first-contact resolution
- Clinician documentation time per encounter
- Digital-to-physical conversion (appointments, pickups, vaccinations)
- Unit cost to serve, labor productivity, and cycle time reduction
- Margin per member/per household and lifetime value
- Adjusted EPS growth (CVS targets mid-teens through 2028)
Financial outlook tied to digital execution
CVS raised its 2025 revenue outlook to at least $400 billion and issued initial 2026 guidance. Chief financial officer Brian Newman said the company expects mid-teens adjusted EPS growth through 2028, driven by cost discipline, margin improvement, and technology-enabled productivity.
The message is clear: the earnings story depends on shipping real digital performance, not slideware.
Execution priorities and risks
The strategy depends on disciplined delivery across data integration, change management, and cross-channel experience design. CVS is in partner discussions, but internal quality comes first.
- Ship a unified consumer experience spanning pharmacy, benefits, and care with one identity and consistent design.
- Scale conversational AI with clear escalation paths, quality thresholds, and compliance guardrails.
- Automate pharmacy workflows (prior auth, refill outreach, claim edits) and track impact on speed and accuracy.
- Quantify outcomes: adherence, access, satisfaction, and cost to serve-tie wins to P&L.
- Stand up partner-ready APIs and consent management for future "engagement as a service."
- Run model risk management: monitoring, bias checks, drift detection, and transparent human oversight.
Why this matters for peers
CVS is signaling what the next phase looks like: consumer engagement becomes the core product, and AI becomes the operating system for the enterprise. Physical footprint still matters, but the differentiator shifts to who can connect data, decisions, and delivery in one experience.
CVS is No. 101 in the Top 2000 by ecommerce sales, and it's betting that engagement-more than square footage-will drive growth and efficiency. The playbook is adaptable: start with one identity, one data layer, one orchestrated experience, then scale automation where it pays back first.
Further reading
Investor materials and updates: CVS Health Investor Relations
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