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Our vision at Sun Life Health is to empower you and your employees to live your healthiest lives

We provide support at every stage no matter where you are in your journey.

Health is dynamic, so we continuously look for ways to enhance support and digital solutions. Our 2020 addition of Lumino Health Virtual Care, powered by Dialogue, is one example. Increasing awareness of this service helps keep plan members healthier, with ready access to physical and mental health care. Since May, registration in Lumino Health Virtual Care has increased by 33%. We also had the opportunity to highlight new mental health solutions available to further support plan members. Lumino Health Virtual Care’s Stress Management and Well-Being program was successfully piloted with several Clients in 2021. You can learn more in our Look Ahead to 2022 section.

Here are some of the key solutions we introduced this past year to enhance health supports for you

Our free strategy toolkits can help Clients of all sizes. This year we introduced our musculoskeletal toolkit. About 20% of disability claims through Sun Life last year were related to musculoskeletal conditions. And 40% of those claims affected the back and neck.

We designed the toolkit to help you improve employee musculoskeletal health. By doing so, you can reduce associated absence, disability and productivity costs.

In addition to these toolkits, other robust and targeted health strategies can help you keep employees healthy and at work. Our Integrated Health Solutions team continues to work with larger Clients to develop and implement these strategies.

We are piloting the use of the Manage my pain app as an added tool to empower those plan members on disability in their recovery journey. The app lets plan members easily track how they feel each day, including pain levels and the use of pain medication and its effectiveness. It then uses this information to highlight patterns and trends and help the plan member communicate more effectively with their health team.

We are also studying two new concepts in the management of mental health related absences. You can read about these in the mental health section.

In addition, we recently moved to a new streamlined disability appeal process. Our new approach is simpler, more transparent and enhances the plan member experience. This new process can help employees decide on the next steps if we’ve declined their claim. If they choose to appeal, we’ve made the process easier and more efficient.

We expanded our roster of health and wellness guides. All Canadians now have access to Lumino Health guides on:

  • back pain prevention
  • type 2 diabetes
  • emotional wellness
  • stress and anxiety
  • fitness
  • healthy eating
  • virtual care
  • newborns
  • caregivers, and
  • health at home during COVID-19.

Lumino Health also hosted a new “Health Talk”: Youth Mental Health and Stories of Hope, and more are coming.


We recently launched our new Family Building program. The program supports plan members who need additional help, through fertility treatments or surrogacy arrangements, to build their families.

Sun Life is the first major insurance company in Canada to offer coverage for expenses related to fertility treatment and surrogacy. It demonstrates our industry-leading actions on benefits that enhance diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) for our Clients.

We introduced several features in 2021 that can help plan members manage their benefits. Many of these features can also help plan members reduce costs, for both them and their plan.

  • Greater health consumerism. We expanded the ways in which plan members can compare costs and availability of paramedical providers.
     
  • Ella, Sun Life’s digital coach. Each year, more plan members are interacting with Ella. They report a better online experience with their Sun Life benefits.

    2021 was no exception. Ella offered over 29 million suggestions or ‘nudges’ to plan members as of November 2021. Ella provides reminders and support for plan options, online claims, prescriptions and mental health.

  • Access to benefits through voice channel. One-third of Canadian households have smart speakers that deliver voice services like Alexa. For those who use these voice channels, we’ve made it even easier to manage their benefits.

    In 2021, we expanded our voice-enabled applications. Plan members can connect to their benefits by voice through an Alexa device or app. They can also do it directly through the my Sun Life mobile app. They can use Alexa in several ways, from submitting claims, to checking coverage, to searching and booking health appointments. Alexa submit a claim is an industry first in Canada. Alexa will ask plan members for the basic information needed to submit massage, chiropractic, physiotherapy and psychologist services and enter it for them.

  • New ways to access benefits information. In 2021, we launched Chatbot. It’s a virtual agent that communicates with plan members in the Click to Chat feature on mysunlife.ca. It means plan members no longer have to wait in a queue for answers to simple questions. And they can still connect with a live agent at any time during their chat.

    We also expanded the functionality of the my Sun Life mobile app. Plan members can now view their Explanation of Benefits on the app. This provides plan members with an improved claims experience, offering them the information they want, where they want it.