SEATTLE – Varolii, Inc., a Seattle-based provider of automated communications services, has added features to its healthcare offering that are designed to make automated phone calls more personal.

The company last month rolled out a new version of its Unified Varolii Interact outbound communications platform, which allows customers such as health plans, PBMs, pharmacies and physician practices to deliver targeted messages to clients. Officials also unveiled four new applications: Individual Decisioning (ID), Call Me Now, Generations and Contact Center Agent.

Michael Ross, the company’s vice president of healthcare, said Varolii reduces the wastefulness and annoying aspect of mass calls. “This type of outreach can be a blunt instrument,” he said. “And what you end up doing is sending a large number of people the same message.”

Varolii ID allows customers to target specific individuals, customizing communications into four categories: individual vs. transaction, individual vs. group outcome, complete history vs. latest response and pattern analysis vs. standard treatment.

Ross said the software allows providers “to deliver the most valued streams of communication” to a directed audience, reducing wasteful efforts and driving clinical decisions. “In any given message, I can adjust which kind of conversation streams are appropriate or relevant,” he said.

“For the first time, organizations see a complete picture of how each individual responds and prefers to communicate, and actually leverage that intelligence to get a better result,” added Jeffrey Read, Varolii’s executive vice president. “The added bonus is Varolii performs all the data compilation, analysis and segmentation, effectively relieving our clients of a cost- and time-prohibitive burden.”

As for the other new products, Call Me Now enables customers to control the timing, channel and circumstances under which they can receive calls, while Contact Center Agent allows organizations to better manage their call centers. Generations, meanwhile, allows customers to tailor messages based on the recipient’s age range, such as Generation X or Y, Baby Boomer or senior.

“Different generations really, ideally should be communicated with in different ways,” said Ross. For instance, messages to older generations might be expressed more slowly, with key points repeated and emphasis placed on phone numbers. Younger generations, meanwhile, might by given their messages by cellphone or text message.

The company – derived from Pons Varolii, the neural pathway that relays information from the part of the brain controlling motor skills to the region that reasons, remembers, improves and learns – has roughly 380 customers, Ross said, with about 75 in healthcare, a field the company entered about five years ago.