SCRA Announces Investment in Hank AI

Monday, November 30th, 2020

South Carolina Research Authority (SCRA) announces its affiliate, SC Launch, Inc.’s, investment of $200,000 to Hank AI. The Columbia-based company is a leader in medical coding and compliance automation. 

Hank AI became an SC Launch Member Company in 2019 and successfully progressed through the program, receiving an Acceleration Grant and eventually becoming an SC Launch, Inc. Portfolio Company by receiving this investment. 

“Hank AI is really making a difference in the health care industry,” said Lee MacIlwinen, SCRA Investment Manager. “Medical coding is an operation every health care provider has to perform to be paid. Anything that makes this process run more smoothly is going to be a win for the industry.” 

“SCRA has supported us from the very beginning and we can’t thank them enough,” said Jack Neil, MD, Hank AI CEO. “They believed in our people, mission, and methods. They took the time to listen and understand our short- and long-term vision. In addition to financial support, SCRA has provided guidance and opened doors in our region to accelerate traction. What we’ve been able to develop is a game-changer for health care billing, and that benefits everyone - patients, providers, and suppliers - and we’re still in the first inning of our company’s life. We’re on a mission to free humans from digital work and create an environment that unlocks the human potential.”

Hank AI helps medical coders increase their productivity and accuracy by providing an easy-to- use interface for manual keyword searches against their database of medical codes and transforming free text medical records into a list of the most probable codes. Their platform learns from the human experts and augments their workflows, ultimately automating an increasing subset of this work. 

“Health care billing administration is a complex operation, and Hank AI is helping to reduce errors and improve the overall claims process,” said Bob Quinn, SCRA Executive Director. “We look for companies that are providing technological solutions to a problem or process, and Hank AI has done just that with their cognitive automation tools.” 

Hank AI was recently named one of the leading companies profiled in artificial intelligence, in the medical coding automation market. This was noted in Techno Weekly’s 2020 Market Research Report, which carries in-depth case studies on the various companies which are involved in artificial intelligence of medical coding.