Colin Drylie, a former senior executive at Humana with two decades of healthcare transformation experience, has been named Chief Operating Officer of Longitude FX, the financial experience platform being developed by Longitude Health. The appointment, effective June 1, 2026, places Drylie at the operational helm of an artificial intelligence-enabled shared services platform designed to modernize patient access, billing and revenue cycle functions across Longitude Health's member health systems. Drylie's selection underscores the health system consortium's aggressive move to scale a technology-driven solution to one of healthcare's most persistent operational bottlenecks: fragmented patient financial workflows and contact center operations.
Jim Lester, CEO of Longitude FX, said the appointment reflected the organization's need for leaders who understand healthcare complexity and can execute transformation at scale. Lester emphasized that Drylie's enterprise-level modernization experience at Humana would be instrumental as the platform aims to help health systems reduce fragmentation, automate manual workflows and strengthen patient engagement. The appointment came as the Longitude Health Board of Managers approved funding for Longitude FX's launch, positioning the initiative as the consortium's latest bet on health system-owned operating platforms. The role signals confidence in an aggressive operational launch timeline, with the platform built around shared infrastructure, common integrations and an AI-enabled orchestration layer that can extend to revenue cycle management and broader enterprise functions over time.
Drylie most recently served as Senior Vice President of Experience Transformation at Humana, where he pioneered digitally enabled customer journeys and led enterprise portfolio modernization across 120 contact center sites employing 35,000 associates. His track record spans Medicare product strategy, corporate strategy and clinical innovation roles within the insurer. Before Humana, Drylie spent time as a project leader at Monitor Group and Doblin, the latter a design-driven innovation firm now part of Deloitte Consulting, where he worked on strategy and business model innovation across healthcare and other sectors. He earned a Bachelor of Commerce with Distinction from Queen's School of Business in Ontario, Canada, and serves on the board of Aspen RxHealth, a specialty pharmacy venture. His background combines strategy, technology and design disciplines, positioning him as a practitioner of transformation rather than purely a technologist or consultant.
Longitude Health, founded in October 2024 by Baylor Scott & White Health, Memorial Hermann Health System, Novant Health and Providence, and now expanded to include Michigan Medicine as a fifth member, operates as a member-owned consortium designed to develop and scale solutions addressing healthcare's core operational challenges. The organization represents 140 hospitals across 10 states and roughly $60 billion in patient revenue. It has already launched Longitude Rx, a specialty pharmacy platform, and Longitude PHM, a population health management initiative led by former Blue Cross Minnesota CEO Craig Samitt. Longitude FX targets what the consortium views as urgent: the patient financial experience, which it describes as often frustrating for both patients and providers alike due to opaque billing, fragmented systems and excessive call volumes that strain both payers and providers.
Drylie's appointment suggests Longitude Health is betting heavily on technology and organizational scale to solve problems that have proven resistant to standalone health system solutions. By placing an executive with Humana's contact center and digital transformation credentials in charge of operations, the consortium appears to be signaling that execution capability, rather than technology alone, will determine whether the platform can deliver the promised 40 to 50 percent cost reductions through pooled investments and standardized workflows. Whether Longitude FX can persuade a fragmented health system market to cede control of patient financial interactions to a shared platform remains the critical test; Drylie's responsibility will be translating the consortium's collaborative model into operational discipline and member adoption at scale.
