Under the alliance, Emdeon will incorporate FICO Insurance Fraud Manager into its healthcare revenue and payment cycle transaction processing network in order to offer an enhanced fraud prevention solution to the 1,200 payers currently using Emdeon.

The parties believe the combination of Emdeon's healthcare data and central position in the healthcare workflow, complemented by FICO's sophisticated analytics, will result in an important solution to the marketplace.

Industry estimates place the cost of healthcare fraud, waste, and abuse at $200 to $600 billion annually--costs that are ultimately borne by health insurance payers and consumers. FICO and Emdeon identified millions of dollars in cost-saving opportunities when they examined claims with indications of fraud, waste, or abuse during a pilot study performed with de-identified data from just two U.S. states.

"Creating an efficient healthcare system helps all stakeholders: payers, providers and consumers, and that is why it is one of Emdeon's top priorities," says George Lazenby, CEO of Emdeon. "By putting FICO's advanced, predictive fraud analytics into the hands of payers that pay the nation's healthcare claims, we are helping our customers address one of the largest, most debilitating sources of friction in the healthcare system and ultimately creating change that will lead to efficiency."

"As Congress and the American people grapple with the magnitude of the landmark healthcare bill, our work with Emdeon is focused on a very practical matter: reducing the costs borne by healthcare payers and taxpayers," says Mark Greene, CEO at FICO.