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A denied claim is often created way before it reaches a payer. An authorization can be missed before the visit, documentation can remain incomplete after care or a coding issue can pass into billing unnoticed. By the time the denial appears, several teams may already have touched the account and the correction can require another round of manual work. R1 has built Phare OS around changing that sequence. Rather than placing isolated automation tools at different points in the revenue cycle, the platform connects patient access, claim preparation, payer interaction and account resolution through shared data and AI-driven decisioning. The aim is to identify problems earlier and keep responsibility for the account moving forward instead of handing unfinished work from one queue to another. That changes the role of automation. Instead of completing a single task faster, R1 is using AI to coordinate what should happen next across the revenue operation. Give Every Decision the Same Context Revenue-cycle work becomes fragmented when each team sees only the part of the account assigned to it. An authorization specialist may know why approval was difficult, while a denial team later sees only the payer response. Valuable context can disappear between those stages.
Long before Erez Druk founded Freed, he saw firsthand what becoming a doctor demanded from someone he loved. He met his wife, Dr. Gabriela Meckler, just before medical school. Over the next decade, he watched her move through training, COVID-19, residency and into family medicine. He saw the commitment clinicians brought to patients and how documentation and administrative work consumed the time and energy surrounding that care. Three years ago, after closing his first startup, UrbanLeap, watching Meckler and other clinicians struggle with administrative work gave Druk a problem he understood personally and wanted to solve. That idea became Freed, an AI clinical scribe and workflow platform designed to take administrative work off clinicians’ plates. During patient encounters, it captures conversations, converts speech to text and generates notes clinicians can review and edit. The platform has expanded to clinical evidence, coding support, pre-charting and patient communication and continues evolving to address more of the work that keeps clinicians inside the EHR instead of focused on care. “Freed is truly a labor of love,” says Druk. “When you truly understand your users, you can build something much more empathetic and useful that really fits their needs.”
Revenue cycle management (RCM) has long been an integral part of providing a better patient experience. The industry, however, is reaching an inflection point. Providers must navigate reimbursement pressure, staffing challenges, compliance requirements, shifting payer behavior and rising patient expectations, all while maintaining a seamless care experience. As solutions emerge to address individual pieces of this complex equation, healthcare organizations face a new challenge—choosing technology that reduces complexity rather than adding another layer to an already fragmented revenue cycle management process. ImagineSoftware positions itself as the technology backbone behind efficient revenue cycle operations. Its flagship platform, ImagineOne, equips providers, billing companies and RCM organizations to operate securely, improve financial performance and maintain compliance. Its objective is not to replace RCM professionals, but to empower them to work better and scale as they need. By automating repetitive tasks, ImagineSoftware frees staff to focus on complex responsibilities, patient care and growth while taking on more business without increasing staffing costs.
A senior patient was trying to manage a severe urinary tract infection from home. She had no transportation, no backup plan. But she happened to be on the phone with her Aviator advocate. Within hours, the advocate helped her identify a same-day primary care option, connected her doctor with a pharmacy that could deliver medication to her home and arranged transportation for a follow-up visit. What could have become an emergency-room trip instead became a same-day solution. The case reflects a broader challenge facing many older adults. Most of Aviator’s patients are seniors managing multiple chronic illnesses. They see several specialists and insurers, and their medical records rarely follow them between visits. Transportation, Medicare benefits and paperwork often become the patient’s problem alone. That is where Aviator steps in, combining human advocates with AI-powered technology to help patients navigate healthcare. Patients interact only with human advocates; the AI works behind the scenes to support them. Its internal Aviator OS platform handles much of the work that supports those advocates.
What if you could overcome your operations, efficiency, and compliance challenges all with the help of a single, intelligent platform? With AkitaBox, this isn’t just a possibility— it’s a reality. AkitaBox’s comprehensive asset and facility management platform transforms how healthcare facilities and other institutions manage their infrastructure. By integrating real-time asset data management with a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), the platform provides facility managers instant access to critical insights, from asset conditions and lifecycle status to anticipated replacement costs. Leveraging AI-powered data capture tools, AkitaBox enables users to collect, update, and retrieve asset information seamlessly via mobile devices – even offline. Whether scanning serial numbers or automating data entry, the platform eliminates inefficiencies and creates consistency —making facility management faster, more accurate, and effortlessly scalable. “We’ve made asset management easier by bringing together cutting-edge technology and intuitive tools, enabling organizations to streamline and optimize their facilities,” Geoff Baron, Director of Product. Interactive Floor Plans and Smart Asset Relationships Locating and managing assets is one of the biggest challenges in facility management, but AkitaBox transforms this process by visualizing assets directly on interactive floor plans. Instead of relying on outdated records or cumbersome spreadsheets, facility managers can click on a floor plan to locate assets like medical gas valves and instantly access maintenance history, warranties, and condition reports. One of AkitaBox’s standout features is its asset relationship system, which offers a detailed, interactive view of how different assets within a facility are interconnected. For example, if an HVAC unit malfunctions, AkitaBox can immediately identify which other units it supports or which power sources feed into it—eliminating guesswork and speeding up troubleshooting. For complex environments like hospitals, where system dependencies are critical, this level of clarity most importantly helps protect patients while helping prevent costly downtime and ensuring seamless operations. By empowering teams with a comprehensive view of their assets, AkitaBox enables more efficient management and proactive maintenance.
Lisa Beekman, Director of Revenue Contract Management, Wellstar Health System
Jerald M Archibeque, Director, Hospital Billing, Presbyterian Healthcare Services
Sadie Wangler, Director of Diagnostic Imaging, Tahoe Forest Health System
Dawn Miller, Radiation Services Director, LCMC Health
Julie Seibert, Assistant Vice President of Behavioral Health, NCQA
Jonathan Koval, SVP and GM, Pharmacy Care, Weight Health and Direct-to-Employer Rx, Transcarent
Kevin Watson, MD, FAAP, Assistant Director Clinical Informatics - Specialty Systems, Akron Children’s Hospital
AI-powered revenue operations platforms streamline healthcare revenue cycles, enhance forecasting, improve visibility, reduce errors, and support growth.
Technologies that enhance the quality of both the clinical experience and patient experience are becoming more critical to the future of healthcare.
AI Connecting Clinical Care and Revenue Systems
Our cover story recognizes R1 as the AI-Powered Revenue Operations Platform 2026 for its Phare OS platform, which connects patient access, claim preparation, payer intelligence and account resolution through shared data and AI-driven decisioning. Its approach moves revenue-cycle intervention upstream, helping identify authorization, documentation and coding issues before they become downstream payment problems. Payer Atlas, informed by more than 1,500 live payer connections and over 600 million annual transactions, further strengthens the platform’s ability to incorporate payer behavior into revenue decisions.
The issue also features Aviator, recognized as the Best AI-powered Patient Advocacy Solutions 2026, for combining dedicated human advocates with AI-powered technology. Its Aviator OS and Copilot support advocates with research, coordination and next-step recommendations, allowing them to focus more attention on patients and families. Freed, the Top AI-Clinical Scribe Platform 2026, extends clinical AI beyond documentation through clinical evidence, coding support, pre-charting and patient communication while keeping clinicians in control of final outputs. ImagineSoftware, recognized as the Top Automated Medical Billing Software 2026, advances automated revenue cycle management through ImagineOne, combining workflow intelligence, AI models and agentic frameworks.
Contributor perspectives add important clinical and financial context. Kevin Watson, MD, FAAP, Assistant Director Clinical Informatics - Specialty Systems at Akron Children’s Hospital, explores the growing relationship between AI, clinical informatics and pediatric gastroenterology, including opportunities in diagnostics, personalized medicine and predictive analytics. Jerald M Archibeque, Director, Hospital Billing at Presbyterian Healthcare Services, examines denial prevention, predictive analytics and the importance of analyzing multiple revenue-cycle KPIs together.
Together, these stories illustrate how healthcare technology is moving toward connected systems that support better decisions across the patient and revenue journey while preserving the role of clinicians, advocates and healthcare professionals.