RELX in the US

LexisNexis Risk Solutions

“We help our clients let the good customers in and keep the bad guys out,” says Kim Sutherland, vice president of market planning at LexisNexis Risk Solutions. It’s a simple statement. But delivering on that promise requires complex sets of data, sophisticated analytics and multiple forms of artificial intelligence to create tools that protect companies and their customers in a world full of risks.

Those risks are increasing as online marketplaces enable individuals to do everything from executing peer-to-peer transactions to making online adjustments to their banking or shopping accounts. “There’s a lot more self-service today,” says Sutherland. “And all that opens the door to fraudulent actors.”

But if the digital world is becoming riskier, technology is helping make it safer. For LexisNexis Risk Solutions that means taking a holistic approach that harnesses diverse forms of identity—from traditional ID such as a driver’s license to the identities used online—to create a comprehensive picture of every customer.

“There’s your name, address, and date of birth,” says Sutherland. “But when someone is applying for a new bank account or access to their or others financial or personal information, we help our customers by using digital behavior risk signals to indicate whether the person is transacting in more of a low-risk manner or behaving more like a fraudster or bot.”

LexisNexis Risk Solutions turns all this data and intelligence into solutions for its customers so that when, for example, consumers are shopping online they are not faced with onerous verification processes but can conduct transactions easily, rapidly—and with high levels of security.

Behind this seemingly seamless process is complexity. Take one of the company’s products, LexisNexis ThreatMetrix. This tool trains algorithms on billions of data points and signals, which are enriched by continuous feedback data from billions of transactions to increase both the accuracy of risk detection and the recognition of trusted users and credible transactions.

“Fraudsters follow the path of least resistance, what’s trending and what will be most lucrative,” Sutherland explains. “We are always looking at how technology is evolving and how consumers are adopting it. And that drives the way our solutions are developed.”

That constant march of change keeps the company on its toes. Tools that combine rich data with advanced technology can benefit customers in other industries, too. This includes property insurers. Inflation combined with rising claim severity (partly due to increases in extreme climate events), is making it harder for these companies to execute timely, informed and accurate underwriting decisions.

Analytics and predictive modelling can help. By layering geospatial and climate data onto historical claims data, losses data, property attributes, building permits and digital images, products such as Total Property Understanding help insurers make faster and more informed assessments of property risk that are also more accurate.

Elsevier Health

For Jan Herzhoff, president of Elsevier Health, the benefit to healthcare professionals of the company’s products is based on a combination of two assets: evidence-based information and technologies that provide that information when and where it is needed.

Delivered through channels such as clinical decision support tools and mobile apps, the information might help nurses and doctors as they undergo their training or the continuing education needed to stay on top of their field. Or it might be real-time information that enables clinicians sitting with patients in hospitals or clinics to make more informed decisions about care pathways.

“Everything we do is to help healthcare professionals be the best version of themselves and to improve outcomes for the patients they serve,” says Herzhoff.

As an information and analytics provider, Elsevier certainly has global reach. Its databases, search tools and applications are available in 50 percent of medical schools worldwide, explains Herzhoff. But in a highly regulated sector, the company also must also design products for specific markets—including the US.

In April 2024, for example, Arizona State University, Chamberlain University, Miami-Dade College and other educational institutions signed up to support the testing and roll-out of Sherpath AI, the company’s new generative AI chat for nursing students in the US.

The tool allows users to ask questions as if they were talking to a human tutor or expert. And it combines Elsevier's trusted nursing education content with advanced generative AI. As students and nurse educators progress through their studies, exams, and transition into clinical practice, Sherpath AI offers a powerful form of support.

Evidence of the impact that access to data and intelligence can have on patient outcomes emerged in the results of a 2023 study of Elsevier’s ClinicalPath, a point-of-care tool that increases the consistency and efficacy of cancer care by providing clinicians with treatment recommendations.

Conducted by Cone Health Cancer Center and presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the study yielded striking results: patients whose treatment was guided by ClinicalPath were half as likely to die within three, six, or 12 months compared to those whose care was either partly informed by the tool or not at all.

New technologies can also supercharge existing tools. In the case of Elsevier’s evidence-based search tool ClinicalKey, generative AI is reducing the time taken to answer clinical questions.

“ClinicalKey is our flagship product for point of care globally,” explains Herzhoff. “But we found it was taking minutes to answer simple questions, and for more difficult questions it could take hours or weeks. Now, with the AI component, it can find the right answers in seconds.”

Of course, while the cutting-edge technologies that deliver clinical information form an essential part of Elsevier’s contribution to healthcare, so is a more traditional form of information delivery: the medical journal. With a portfolio of more than 2,900 publications, including the Lancet and the many journals of Cell Press, Elsevier is a world leader in primary scientific research.

Cell Press articles have led to biological breakthroughs, as did Shinya Yamanaka’s 2006 paper on stem cells. His research, which won the 2012 Nobel Prize, demonstrated the possibility of reprogramming cells, advancing disease research and paving the way for the replacement of damaged organs, or even the growth of new ones.

As Herzhoff points out, Elsevier journals—distributed and accessed via Elsevier’s ScienceDirect, the world’s largest database of peer-reviewed scientific and medical research—add to the rich content that is advancing science and improving health outcomes. “We produce the latest, highest quality evidence-based content,” he says. “And our tools tap into an ocean of content.”

LexisNexis Legal & Professional

To say that technology has revolutionized the practice of law would be a serious understatement. Artificial intelligence, analytics, machine learning and natural language processing have made it possible to sift through millions of documents—from dockets, pleadings, and motions to unstructured data such as emails and news articles—at speeds previously unimaginable. And by generating new insights, these technologies are enabling lawyers to build smarter legal strategies.

In fact, in a 2023 LexisNexis Legal & Professional survey, almost all respondents said they believed that generative AI tools would have an impact on their work, with about half saying these tools would significantly transform the practice of law.

With tech investments of more than $1bn over the past decade and more than 2,000 technologists working on its products, LexisNexis Legal & Professional has been part of this revolution from the outset. “People think of us as a legal information solution,” says Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of LexisNexis North America, UK, and Ireland. “But we’re really more of a technology company.”

Smart acquisitions have helped the company expand its range of tools. In 2015, for example, LexisNexis Legal & Professional acquired Lex Machina, which uses natural language processing to mine, tag and categorize millions of dockets, patents, case outcomes and other legal documents.

Combining Lex Machina’s capabilities with the vast array of documents in LexisNexis databases, LexisNexis Legal & Professional gives lawyers an unprecedented view of everything from market trends to judicial tendencies and allows them to predict the success of different legal strategies. “We’re helping lawyers become better lawyers,” says Fitzpatrick.

But while these kinds of legal tech products have been transformative, he believes generative AI is opening the door to even more opportunities for legal analytics and data-driven insights. “We’ve been using AI for more than a decade,” he says. “But it’s generative AI that’s really accelerating the pace of change.”

Among the most powerful of its tools is Lexis+ AI, a generative AI assistant with a conversational search format that enables drafting, summarization and document analysis, along with verifiable, linked legal citations.

Customer interest in Lexis+ AI has been growing rapidly, says Fitzpatrick. “The use cases for law firms are very clear,” he says. “We’ve never seen technology adopted this quickly in the legal space before.”

But for LexisNexis Legal & Professional, the launch of each new tool is just the beginning. Harnessing feedback from users is a critical part of its product development, enabling continuous improvements to be made based on what works for the industry. In April 2024, for example, it unveiled its second-generation version of Lexis+ AI, which gives users an increasingly personalized experience.

Lexis+ AI not only helps lawyers make more informed decisions faster but also frees up their time for other work. “Our vision is that every lawyer will have their own personalized generative AI assistant to take over a lot of the simpler legal tasks and make them more efficient,” says Fitzpatrick. “That will allow attorneys to spend more time focusing on the deep critical matters that create the most value for clients.”

Exhibitions (RX)

Anyone who thinks technology is removing the need for real-life interaction should take a look at RX, the exhibitions business of RELX. In the US, where RX shows are a mixture of B2B and B2C events, steadily rising revenues reflect the fact that the appetite for face-to-face connections is far from diminishing. Since the pandemic, demand for live events has rebounded and today, as more people work remotely, their desire to meet in person is as strong as ever.

“People crave face-to-face experience,” says Scott Stevens, head of digital, data and registration at RX United States. “Being at trade shows with industry peers and professionals provides chances to connect and reconnect with people.”

The RX experience goes beyond networking, however. Take Vision Expo, which attracts more than 26,000 industry professionals across two annual shows in New York and Las Vegas. The events combine continuing education and professional development with optical product roll-outs, attracting attendees from optometrists, opticians, and technicians to brands and retailers.

But if the face-to-face experience drives demand for events such as Vision Expo, the digital engagement and event data capture tools RX is developing enhance that experience, enabling exhibitors to connect with customers digitally before meeting in person, and helping both buyers and sellers to learn about market trends, to source products, facilitate meetings and to complete transactions.

For example, a tool called Emperia allows exhibitors to download an app that scans an attendee’s badge and provides the information on that attendee gathered during registration. “They can rate and add notes to each interaction and at the end of each day they receive [a] digital file of all their connections,” explains Stevens.

This data is consolidated on another tool, Exhibitor Dashboard, which integrates registration and matchmaking data with a show’s directory and lead retrieval systems, making it easy for exhibitors to assess their performance in real-time. Exhibitors can see, for example, how often their company profile has been viewed, which of their products are generating greatest interest and how many sales leads they have captured using Emperia.

Transparent and quantifiable data helps customers increase their return on investment, better understand how to use RX events to build their businesses and improve their competitive standing from show to show. It also provides RX key insights so that events can continuously evolve and improve the experience for both buyers and sellers.

“Digital is never going to replace face-to-face,” says Stevens. “But it can be a real value add in terms of augmenting the face-to-face experience. Pre-show, at-show, and post-show digital tools maximize the experience and convey the value of the show to customers.”

While the content, products and technologies available through RELX businesses deliver numerous benefits to both B2B customers and the consumers they serve, RELX resources and capabilities also play a direct role in helping solve some of society’s biggest challenges.

Part of this means using technology responsibly, particularly when it comes to deploying artificial intelligence in a sector dealing with highly confidential matters. For example, LexisNexis Legal & Professional has designed Lexis+ AI to enable users to easily manage or delete their prompt conversation history when a session is over.

Transparency and accuracy are also priorities for legal clients, which means providing sources and citations for AI-generated output. “We consider the real-world impact on people,” says Fitzpatrick. “We explain how our solutions work. And we take action to prevent the creation or reinforcement of unfair bias.”

Sometimes, working with others is what drives positive impact. For example, in 2000, employee volunteers at LexisNexis Risk Solutions designed and donated the ADAM Program to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). The innovative technology rapidly distributes photos of missing children to police, news media, schools, businesses, medical centers and individuals within a targeted geographic area. Since its inception, the program has disseminated over a million poster alerts each year featuring over 1,200 missing children, which has helped NCMEC resolve more than 94 percent of missing children cases through photo distribution and other efforts.

Technology also helps achieve a fairer, more inclusive society. Elsevier discovered this when in 2019 it acquired 3D4Medical, creator of Complete Anatomy, the world’s most advanced 3D educational anatomy platform. “It was the market leader in creating 3D anatomy education but it only had white male models,” explains Herzhoff.

After the acquisition, Elsevier launched a female model and then created models in a wide range of skin tones and facial features, allowing users to customize their model for a more inclusive educational experience.

Because the app is used by a third of the world’s medical students, unconscious bias in the medical profession can be tackled at scale. “When we acquired the company, 100 percent of these future doctors were training on a white male model,” he says. “Now 77 percent have opted for a different representation.”

At LexisNexis Risk Solutions, data also plays a role in advancing financial inclusion, particularly in the US, where 20 percent of adults are “credit invisible” (meaning they have no credit history) or have insufficient credit history. Relying on traditional data leaves these borrowers without access to the loans needed to improve their lives.

With the help of LexisNexis’ credit risk assessment solutions, lenders can use alternative data and predictive modelling to assess creditworthiness, which creates more lending opportunities while fostering financial inclusion. In short, everybody wins.

Running through these and other innovations is a thread that connects all RELX companies: the ability to harness technology for good.