Clearstep

Clearstep is a Chicago-based healthcare technology company that builds AI-driven patient access software for health systems, payers and digital health providers. Its platform centers on a symptom-checking and care-routing engine: a conversational chat assessment triages acuity and directs patients to an appropriate level of care, provider, visit type, time slot and modality. The triage logic is built on Dr. Barton Schmitt's nurse triage protocols, which the company says have been used in more than 200 million call center encounters, and has been extended to specialty and virtual care.

The current platform is organized into six modules that share a common clinical engine: AI Chat & Triage; AI Voice Automation for inbound and outbound patient calls covering triage, intake, scheduling and outbound care management; AI Clinical Intake & Decision Support, which collects patient history, HPI and ROS before or at the point of visit and generates structured clinical summaries; AI Call Center Decision Support, a co-pilot for non-clinical agents; AI Optimized Scheduling for clinically qualified self-scheduling, template redesign and slot filling; and AI Workflow Building for prompt-based construction of scheduling and other decision trees. The modules integrate with EHR and CCaaS systems, and Clearstep states integrations with facility, inventory, scheduling, EMR and CRM databases, membership in Epic's App Orchard, and the ability to push encounter summaries back into the record.

Earlier positioning described the product as "Smart Care Routing" virtual triage, letting patients check symptoms, view care options ranked by clinical relevance, convenience and price, compare prices and book online. A COVID-19 screener released in March 2020 extended the same engine to pandemic screening.

Founding story

Co-founders Adeel Malik and Bilal Naved met at the University of Maryland while both pursued degrees oriented toward academic medicine. Their paths diverged when Naved began an MD/PhD at Northwestern University and Malik went into healthcare consulting at Accenture; both observed inefficiencies in care routing, with Naved seeing patients reach the ER after missed touch points and Malik tracking industry trends such as AI diagnostics. The concept crystallized during a conversation while the two were vacationing in Greece, and took several months to build out. They applied to Y Combinator and were selected for interviews, flying to California with only a concept and no deck; they were not admitted, but the process convinced Malik to leave his job and pursue Clearstep full time. Naved co-founded the company during his MD/PhD and is now Chief Product Officer as well as a faculty member in Mount Sinai's Department of AI.

Business model

Clearstep sells its platform to health systems, payers and digital health providers as a SaaS solution licensed for a fixed monthly fee, with additional variable fees tied to the selected features and the scale of the implementation. Deployments can be white-labeled to a customer's brand, colors, logos and triage endpoints, and configured with the customer's provider, facility and scheduling data. The core symptom-checking and care-routing engine is sold alone or with additional modules, offered in product bundles.

Recurring SaaS licensing: a fixed monthly license fee plus variable fees based on the selected feature set and the scale of deployment, with bundled product configurations available.

Traction

Company materials state that Clearstep is used by more than 300 hospitals and health systems, cite 97%+ clinical accuracy and triage in under three minutes, and report module-level outcomes including 35-55% call deflection, a 25% reduction in call center handle time, 99% protocol compliance, a 6% increase in calendar utilization and 40% improvement in appropriate provider utilization. Named customers and partners include Baylor Scott & White Health, Mount Sinai Health System (which built a self-triage system with Clearstep), BayCare Health System, CVS, DuPage Medical Group and the Defense Health Agency, whose Digital Front Door smart routing engine serves 9.5 million military beneficiaries. In 2021 the company reported hundreds of thousands of users since its 2018 start, 95% triage accuracy, and a COVID-19 screener deployed to millions of people through partners.

Latest developments

Clearstep's platform is now presented as six AI-native modules spanning chat and triage, voice automation, clinical intake and decision support, call center decision support, optimized scheduling and workflow building, described as an "AI brain" for patient access and positioned under the trademarked phrase "Clinical Superintelligence." The company has been selected by the Defense Innovation Unit and the Defense Health Agency to power the smart routing engine of the Military Health System's new Digital Front Door, covering 9.5 million military beneficiaries, and states use across more than 300 hospitals and health systems. Recent published resources address AI-powered access as a competitive edge, healthcare workflow automation across intake, triage and clinical decision support, and AI overviews in healthcare search.