Turning promising science into something the market understands and believes in is rarely straightforward. Leila de Koster shares how Hale navigated the realities of building a novel therapeutic category from the ground up, overcoming entrenched assumptions, earning trust across investors, regulators, and the veterinary market, and reaching the development and funding milestones that demonstrate the category is real.

Payment integrity is becoming an increasingly important lever for health plans as medical costs rise, avoidable spend persists, and the vendor ecosystem continues to expand. Within this broader PI agenda, pre-pay is quickly moving to the forefront as plans increase investment, broaden use cases, and look to shift more intervention upstream. Yet the path forward is becoming more complex: health plans are largely retaining multiple pre-pay partners and expanding scope, even as gaps remain around ROI, error identification, reporting, and commercial flexibility. At the same time, AI and analytics are becoming central to payer strategies, while adoption of GenAI and agentic AI varies by use case and delivery model. Commercial expectations are also evolving, with growing interest in hybrid pricing alongside traditional contingency structures.

• How should health plan leaders navigate this expanding ecosystem, determine where vendors are delivering value, and position their pre-pay programs for the next phase of growth? 
• How the outsourced PI landscape is evolving as health plans increase pre-pay investment, broaden priorities, and expand scope with existing partners
• How vendor performance is tracking against health plan expectations, and where AI, analytics, and automation are changing what plans want from their partners 
• How health plans are rethinking commercial models and which emerging trends are likely to shape the next phase of pre-pay PI