UT Research Foundation announces its second Accelerate Fund investment
The recipient of the $150,000 investment is VisualizAI, a pioneering artificial intelligence start-up focused on revolutionizing healthcare claims processing.
The University of Tennessee Research Foundation’s (UTRF) Accelerate Fund has announced its second investment of $150,000 will be made in VisualizAI, a pioneering artificial intelligence start-up focused on revolutionizing healthcare claims processing. Previously, the fund invested in Orion Therapeutics, a biotechnology start-up developing next-generation RNA medicines through a novel drug delivery system.
Both ventures call Knoxville home.
Co-founded by Jian Huang, a UT Knoxville Professor in the Tickle College of Engineering, and Mac Bartine, its Chief Executive Officer, VisualizAI aims to commercialize UTK’s AI-driven data visualization and analytics platform, which enhances knowledge capture, efficiency and accuracy in data-intensive professional settings.
“We are tag-teaming on this,” Bartine explains, noting that the cost of care is going up, but the quality of care is going down. “Healthcare needed help with the denial and underpayment by insurance companies.”
Launched in 2023, the Accelerate Fund provides pre-seed and seed investment to support high-potential start-ups that bring UT innovations to the market. UT Knoxville’s Chancellor’s Innovation Fund and UTRF’s Entrepreneurial Fellows Program were crucial in supporting Huang and his UTK team, helping to de-risk the technology and develop a minimum viable product.
“These funding opportunities provided a platform for us to deploy our research in the real world and validate the most compelling use cases,” said Huang. “We’re in an exciting position – our platform has matured and already has pilot customers.”
“We’re thrilled about the momentum VisualizAI is building,” added Bartine. “This seed round investment from UTRF’s Accelerate Fund is pivotal in demonstrating the value offered to investors in our seed round and moving us forward in both our product and growth initiatives.”
At the heart of VisualizAI’s offering is ClaimsAgent, an AI system designed to give healthcare providers a strategic tool in claims processing. ClaimsAgent can analyze thousands of claims, identifying patterns in denials and underpayments—such as missing records or coding errors—and recommending corrective actions.
“UTRF is proud to invest in a startup using AI to transform healthcare claims processing,” said Maha Krishnamurthy, UTRF President. “Our investment will enable VisualizAI to advance its pilot trials, validate its technology, and demonstrate its impact to healthcare providers.”
Denied and underpaid insurance claims pose a significant challenge in healthcare, obstructing providers’ earned revenue and impacting their financial stability. In 2023, according to federal transparency data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, insurance companies denied 19% of in-network claims and 37% of out-of-network claims.
“Through AI, ClaimsAgent provides diagnostic, descriptive, prescriptive, and predictive support for healthcare claims processing,” said Huang. “Artificial intelligence is a powerful ally—doing tedious jobs at a higher volume and more efficiently than staff teams of many healthcare providers.”
VisualizAI is not either Co-Founder’s first start-up. Both have launched other ventures.
“We started with a focus on nonprofits,” Huang said, adding that he was pleasantly surprised where they landed.
Looking back, Bartine says finding the right market fit took six to nine months. “No one on the founding team was an expert in healthcare claims,” he explained, a point Huang noted in crediting insights from PYA, the power behind teknovation.biz and a national player in healthcare consulting with clients in all 50 states.
With the additional funding through the UTRF Accelerate Fund, VisualizAI has set its sights on raising a seed round of $500,000 to $1 million to accelerate its growth.
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