Artera vs Hyro (2026)
Two patient communication platforms that most health systems will see in the same evaluation. Artera, formerly WELL Health, runs AI agents across voice, text, email and web for more than 1,000 customer organizations. The agents schedule, collect intake, verify insurance, run referral and care gap outreach and take payments, and Artera's own teams build custom agents inside the subscription. It also sells a federal edition to the VA, the Defense Department and the Indian Health Service. Hyro builds conversational agents for health systems and payers across the call center, website, text and mobile apps, on a knowledge graph built from each customer's own data. It handles scheduling, provider search, refills and IT help desk requests, and runs outbound campaigns such as coverage renewal outreach. The overlap is real, so the choice turns on scope. A health system that wants one platform across the whole patient journey, or has a federal footprint, looks at Artera. One that wants agents answering from its own approved sources and tied into its IT service desk looks at Hyro.
- One platform across voice, text, email and web, from scheduling and intake to insurance checks, outreach and payments, in more than 100 languages.
- A federal edition with FedRAMP High authorization, serving the VA, the Defense Department and the Indian Health Service.
- Named attestations: SOC 2 Type 2, HITRUST and four ISO standards, with a statement that identifiable patient information does not train its models.
- Answers drawn from sources the health system approves, through a knowledge graph built from its own data, with fallback between large language model providers.
- Reach beyond patient access: MyChart password resets and IT help desk requests, with a ServiceNow partnership for service desk tickets since August 2026.
- Named health system customers including Tampa General Hospital, Intermountain Health, Baptist Health, Inova and Hackensack Meridian Health, and an Epic Showroom listing.
This comparison is published by AI Health Index, an independent research platform that compares healthcare AI vendors objectively. Artera and Hyro are each graded against the same capability taxonomy, from each vendor's own public materials and the regulatory record, under the AI Health Index verification standard. No vendor pays for placement, and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Plain facts
Side by Side
Select any grade to read the note behind it.
Product updates
The latest logged changes from each vendor, newest first, each linked to its source.
Artera
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Product / capability
Artera's 7 October release sends blocked numbers an automated emergency response telling them to call 911 or reach their care team by text or spoken message.
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Product / capability
Artera AI agents can now listen for the voicemail beep and start speaking when recording begins, turned on for each agent individually.
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EHR / interoperability
The 25 Sep Artera Harmony Federal Edition release changes Intake Hub to match patient forms to appointments using the EHR's event ID, so renaming an appointment type in the EHR no longer stops forms from being assigned.
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Hyro
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Model / architecture
Hyro published a breakdown of the architecture behind its patient scheduling agent, disclosing that it orchestrates seven distinct smaller models rather than driving the workflow from one large language model.
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EHR / interoperability
Hyro has launched a new integration with ServiceNow to deliver voice and digital self-service capabilities for health systems.
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Each vendor in one paragraph
Written to be quoted whole. Each paragraph opens the AI Health Index profile of the vendor: what the product is, who buys it and what it does.
Artera, formerly WELL Health (a US company unrelated to Canada's WELL Health Technologies), sells a patient communication platform, Artera Harmony, with AI agents across voice, text, email and web. The agents answer calls around the clock; schedule, reschedule and cancel appointments; collect intake forms and medical history; verify insurance; run referral and care gap outreach; and answer billing questions and take payments.
Source: AI Health Index, September 2026
Conversational AI agent platform for health systems and payers, covering the call center, website, text messaging and mobile apps. Agents handle appointment scheduling and management, provider and location search, prescription refill requests and status updates, frequently asked questions answered from sources the health system approves, MyChart password resets and IT help desk requests, handing complex calls to staff.
Source: AI Health Index, September 2026
Questions buyers ask
How do Artera and Hyro work with the EHR?
Artera's integrations page names Epic, Oracle, MEDITECH, Veradigm, athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Greenway and NextGen, among others, through API, FHIR and HL7v2 connections that carry communication to and from the record, including updating appointment status. MEDITECH sells the integration as its own Expanse Patient Connect product, integrated with its MyHealth portal, and publishes a hospital case study on reduced no-shows.
Hyro is listed on Epic's Showroom, where the listing describes appointment scheduling and management, prescription refills, MyChart password resets and provider and location searches, and the home page describes using Epic's APIs for patient record identification, scheduling management and prescription support: reading the record and writing to it. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 25, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How are Artera and Hyro priced and sold?
Artera sells an enterprise subscription to provider organizations, and to federal agencies through a General Services Administration Multiple Award Schedule contract. Its solutions page says custom agents built by its AI Service Squads, such as password resets, lab result notifications, prescription refills and insurance verification, are all included in the subscription.
For Hyro, a public return on investment calculator estimates time and cost savings, and the home page claims a 5.5 times return within six months, but neither shows what the product costs. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 25, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How do Artera and Hyro handle patient data?
Artera says it does not use identifiable patient information to train its models. Its marketplace copy also says insights from its 1,000-plus customers continuously improve the platform, which the exclusion does not rule out if de-identified conversations are used; nothing states whether they are, what de-identification method applies to message text and call audio, or whether a customer can opt out.
In Hyro's case, the privacy policy adds that anonymized or de-identified information may be used and shared without restriction, for example to improve the services, and that an internal retention policy prevents perpetual retention, with no periods given. By design the customer defines and restricts the knowledge sources an agent may use, and each foundation model step receives only the context it needs. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 25, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Which settings and specialties do Artera and Hyro cover?
For Artera, the specialty pages describe workflows rather than results, and the 109-plus languages carry no per-language evidence.
With Hyro, coverage is organized by organization and channel rather than specialty: health systems, federally qualified health centers (sold on multilingual access), children's hospitals and payers (member and agent experience), across calls, websites, text and mobile apps, with an outbound line for ACA and Medicaid coverage renewal outreach. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 25, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Related comparisons
Other published head to head assessments involving these vendors or their closest peers.
Both records were reviewed on this site in September 2026. Artera lets staff take over any conversation with its full history, and one customer story describes symptom based triage that sends alarm symptoms to on call clinical staff. Neither Artera nor Hyro publishes the rule that decides when an agent hands a call to a person.
Neither publishes performance by caller language or accent, which is where a voice agent fails silently. Ask both for escalation rates by caller segment. Artera publishes no price. Note the name collision: Artera is not ArteraAI, a separate prostate cancer company.