Penn Venture Lab is working with two artificial intelligence-based health care startups as a part of its VIP-X Accelerator program this semester.
The VIP-X Accelerator is a three-month program designed to help Penn undergraduate and graduate student startups refine their strategies and advance toward their goals through advising, funding, and peer support. The fall 2024 cohort includes seven projects, two of which — Horus Health and Felicity — focus on addressing inefficiencies in medical billing and insurance workflows.
Horus Health was created by College sophomore Akhil Peddikuppa in collaboration with Vanderbilt University student Ishan Mahajan and Massachusetts Institute of Technology student Dat Tran. The startup is building tools that use AI to find and correct errors in medical billing systems.
“You see statistics from articles like NBC that 80% of medical bills have errors in them,” Peddikuppa said. “We’re building software to essentially autonomously parse through healthcare systems billing data and coding data to identify erroneous bills.”
Since joining the program, Horus Health has honed in on one of its goals: finding at least 10 health systems by February 2025 to launch its product. As of now, the product has been approved to pilot with Penn Medicine, Care Max, and Boston Medical Center, according to Peddikuppa.
“We spent a lot of time interviewing people really trying to understand the field that we’re working in,” Peddikuppa said. “[VIP-X] was very helpful in terms of helping us figure out what we’re building and how to find our niche so we can grow from there.”
The other health care startup in this semester’s cohort is Felicity, an AI product that will help healthcare companies automate their browser-based insurance workflows. Felicity co-founder and Wharton MBA student Saahil Madge said that the startup hopes to correct errors in health care processing.
“A lot of these workflows can only be done on a browser, so a lot of these companies are paying people to make searches for every single patient that they’re working with,” Madge said. “It’s very error prone so we’re building a product that makes it easy to automate.”
Madge highlighted that VIP-X provided Felicity with “effective strategies for cold outreach” and generating leads for partners and customers.
Both Mahajan and Madge noted the guidance from School of Engineering and Applied Science professor and Venture Initiation Program advisor Jeffrey Babin as a highlight in their VIP-X experiences. Mahajan cited Babin’s experience in health care and developing “go-to market strategies” as important factors in Horus Health’s communication with health systems and negotiations around pricing.
Venture Lab Marketing and Digital Studios Director Taylor Durham highlighted the new opportunities that the VIP-X program and Venture Lab offers to students.
“We’re not just fostering a sense of community, we’re fostering a new third space for almost 4000 students to explore what entrepreneurship has to offer,” Durham said.
The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.
Donate