ClearPath

ClearPath: From confusing coverage to confident care decisions

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About the Project

ClearPath helps people understand the real cost of care before they commit, using their insurance plan, medical bills, and financial context. We built it for the Startup Launchpad and Health Tech tracks with one goal: turn confusing healthcare paperwork into confident, actionable decisions in minutes.

What Inspired Us

We kept hearing the same story: people delay care because they have no idea what it will cost. Even with insurance, costs are opaque, fragmented across EOBs, bills, and plan documents. We wanted to build a product that feels like a personal financial navigator for healthcare, not a spreadsheet.

Customers and Target Market

Our primary customers are:

  • Students and young professionals with limited healthcare financial literacy.
  • Employers and universities that want to reduce avoidable costs and improve care adherence.
  • Health plans seeking better member engagement and fewer surprise bills.

Our initial target market is student health plans and self funded employers, where coverage complexity is high and cost confusion leads to delayed care.

What We Built

ClearPath is a unified app with:

  • Insurance Understanding: plan extraction, deductible and OOP tracking.
  • Document Intelligence: upload bills and EOBs, auto classify, and match.
  • Cost Estimator: compare care settings and estimate real out of pocket costs.
  • Scenario Planner: model payment plans using financial context.
  • AI Assistant: explain coverage and recommend next steps.

FinTech and MedTech Impact

ClearPath sits at the intersection of fintech and medical tech:

  • FinTech impact: We help users manage healthcare cash flow, predict expenses, and choose payment strategies. It’s like a personal finance tool built specifically for medical costs.
  • MedTech impact: We translate complex insurance and clinical workflows into actionable care decisions, helping people seek care earlier and avoid financial harm.

How We Built It

We used Next.js for the product experience, Prisma + SQLite for data persistence, and an LLM to interpret plan documents and generate structured recommendations. We modeled the financial logic with real world insurance rules (deductible, coinsurance, OOP max) and built a data pipeline that links documents to scenarios.

We designed the UI to feel like a real startup product: crisp, calm, and decision oriented. Every page ties back to a user outcome.

Challenges We Faced

  • Data ambiguity: Insurance documents are inconsistent. We built robust parsing and fallbacks to avoid brittle logic.
  • Realism vs. scope: We had to balance accuracy with the 24 hour timeline. We focused on end to end flow instead of edge cases.
  • Trust: It’s a high stakes domain. We added explainability, assumptions, and confidence levels to avoid “black box” answers.

What We Learned

  • Building in healthcare isn’t just about AI accuracy; it’s about trust, transparency, and workflow.
  • The best product demos tell a story with a clear “before → after” outcome.
  • Small UX details (audit trail, assumptions, confidence) dramatically improve credibility.

What’s Next

We want to:

  • Integrate real provider pricing and network verification.
  • Add a claims dispute workflow with auto generated letters.
  • Pilot with student health plans and employer benefits programs.

ClearPath is a step toward making healthcare costs predictable, transparent, and fair.

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