Artificial intelligence-powered dental health startup Retrace Labs Inc., backed by Intel Corp. and SoftBank Group Corp., today launched out of stealth mode with a product claimed to be a first for the U.S. dental market.

Founded in 2016, Retrace offers a network that allows real-time connectivity between payers, providers and patients to enable instant payments based on quality measures. The company’s intelligent automation solutions are said to streamline the complexity of dental administration with scalable end-to-end services powered by AI technologies.

Retrace claims that its “revolutionary network” connects providers and payers to streamline the entire dental patient experience from start to finish while providing the right incentives to get providers paid immediately.

The solution comes after a turbulent year with the COVID-19 pandemic where providers and practice owners saw as much as a 95% drop in patient volume, forcing some payers to reimburse premiums. In addition, practice owners are suffering from costly overhead while facing tremendous administrative inefficiencies, long claim processing times, uncertainty and inconsistent collections.

Under the hood, the Retrace platform leverages AI and infrastructure built specifically for oral health to deliver a number of key benefits. They include instant value-based payments, provider and procedure quality ratings, administration efficiency and interoperability.

That last is particularly notable in that Retrace’s platform shepherds providers and payers through a complex system of traditionally disparate workflows to ensure the right treatment is delivered at the right time with the proper incentive structures. The Retrace platform also offers patients transparency in understanding what insurance coverage they have, what proposed treatments from providers are covered and to what extent, and what their payment obligations are for different treatments.

“While we are seeing innovation across the healthcare and insurance industries, today’s U.S. healthcare infrastructure isn’t equipped to handle real-time connectivity or support AI technologies to their full extent,” Dr. Ali Sadat, Retrace’s founder and chief executive, said in a statement. “We built our AI from the ground up with the right infrastructure to incentivize providers in a simple way to deliver high-quality, evidence-based care to help patients.”

Although launching out of stealth only today, the Retrace platform already connects to more than 200 external network connections. It is accessible by invitation and referral only to all 200,000-plus domestic oral health providers.

According to Pitchbook, Retrace has raised $18 million in venture capital funding to date. Partners from Stone Point Capital are investors in the company along with Intel Capital and SoftBank Ventures Asia.

Image: Retrace