Munich-based ExB Group is a Cognitive Computing research and technology company that develops state-of-the-art AI core technologies. The startup developed an AI platform to configure, train and deploy processing modules. While industry-unspecific, it has been applied in the insurance, health and mobility sectors. The product, called Cognitive Workbench is self-learning software for the processing and analysis of unstructured text and partially structured data such as tables and invoices as well as image / document data. The Cognitive Workbench (CWB) will output a docker to easily deploy it for processing large data volumes.

The Cognitive Workbench uses latest NLP techniques incorporating the best fitting machine learning paradigms to holistically process incoming communication. The system is fully scalable, self-learning and thus able to handle cases, which might not have been foreseen and trained. Consequently, the product is cloud and on-premise ready, which makes it well suited for industries that handle sensitive personal data, such as like insurers, patients and drivers.

ExB, meaning External Brain, is currently working together with 50 percent of the main car insurers and 33 percent of the main health insurers in Germany and is the winner of many prices and competitions like the Allianz Hackathon.

In the context of insurance, typically, digitalization, business organization and innovation units are excited to learn about the product. The CWB is used in both, optimization as well as in exploration scenarios. Expert reports, certificates, doctors’ letters, customer letters: an inbox is manifold. The Cognitive Workbench ensures up to 3x higher recognition quality in document processing.

AI to solve an age-old problem
ExB applies AI to solve an age-old problem: Automated processing of incoming communication. The handling of incoming documents is one of the highest cost drivers in claims processing and policy administration. Traditionally, this process is managed by combining specialized system for OCR, rule-based extraction and classification mechanisms and many manual processing and correction steps in between.

Furthermore, ExB’s AI platform can help organizations in terms of Expert Acceleration. AI has the power to increase productivity even in areas where human intelligence was previously indispensable. This applies, to scenarios in which difficult cases have to be assessed and evaluated, such as the well-founded analysis of complex documents.

How it works

One central platform for many AI applications.

Usually, the handling and processing of incoming mail at insurance companies is managed by a combination of various in-sourced, monolithic sub-systems. These include special tools for optical character recognition (OCR) and rule-based extraction and classification mechanisms. In between there are various manual processing and correction steps. They do not have self-learning algorithms that improve results and recognition rates during a training process. With the help of machine learning based systems like the Cognitive Workbench, the essential information from the correspondence can be recognized, extracted, correctly assigned and stored and this also in mutual interactions to each other.

In other words, the system is actually understanding a document/incoming mail to a full extend and can process it automatically. The complete automation of the workflow enables insurance companies to save resources, effort, time and costs and to provide superior customer service. Furthermore, it helps in terms of expert acceleration.

For example: comprehensive claim reports. These must be read by experts in order to process the case professionally, which takes a lot of time. ExB’s AI solution can now extract the essential information from such long texts and prepare it for the claim specialist automatically. This provides the expert with a concise summary of the core statements and thus saves a lot of time. Even medical records or extensive reports from the Medical Service of Health Insurance Funds (MDK) can be quickly read and their contents recorded in this way. Since the time of experts is valuable and expensive, this procedure can save massive costs.

Why we selected ExB for DIA Munich
Read patient files, evaluate laboratory reports, process invoices, summarize medical publications. The Cognitive Workbench from ExB can do it all. The Cognitive Workbench uses latest NLP techniques incorporating the best fitting machine learning paradigms to holistically process incoming communication. The system is fully scalable, self-learning and thus able to handle cases, which might not have been foreseen and trained.

At DIA Munich ExB sets the example of the power of the Cognitive Workbench in the fields of Expert Acceleration handling a specific case in the realms of an elderly care examination report together with a spokesperson of ITSC.

Dr. Ramin Assadollahi, CEO and founder of ExB and Georg Schepers, Business Development Manager of ExB shared a demo of an elderly care examination report with
Jan Kekeritz, Chief Digital Officer of ISTC

Check out their live demo here:
https://www.itcdiaeurope.com/dia-tv/video/cognitive-workbench-automated-processing-of-incoming-communication/

Who is ExB?
ExB Labs GmbH with its subsidiaries is a German research and technology company for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and develops state-of-the-art core technologies in the areas of NLP and Machine / Deep Learning. The company specializes in the production of self-learning software platforms for the analysis of large quantities of unstructured and partially structured text and image data. ExB’s software solutions are not only web and cloud based, but also embedded and applicable on mobile devices. The company was founded in 2000 by the computer linguist and clinical psychologist Dr. Ramin Assadollahi. The ExB Group currently employs more than 70 people at its locations in Munich (headquarters) and Leipzig.

”ExB means External Brain, isn’t that enough of a vision?” Dr. Ramin Assadollahi ,CEO and founder of ExB

Dr. Ramin Assadollahi – CEO and founder of ExB
Georg Schepers – Business Development Manager of ExB

Dr. Ramin Assadollahi , CEO and founder of ExB

https://www.exb.de/