Spotlight: Arman Sharafshahi @ Eccoverse AI
A spotlight is a short-form interview with a leader in health tech. In this spotlight, you'll hear from Arman Sharafshahi, founder and CEO of Eccoverse AI.
What does Eccoverse AI do?
Eccoverse is an AI operations layer for healthcare practices. Our agents answer patient calls, book directly into the EMR, run outreach campaigns, and process the faxes and emails that pile up at the front desk, such as referrals, records and intake packets. We work inside the systems practices already use, including eCW, Athena, ModMed and many others, so the job is actually completed in the chart and the schedule instead of being passed to another person.
How did you end up working in health tech?
I've been in health tech for my entire career. I started Accelarad out of graduate school at Georgia Tech, and we spent the next fifteen years on one problem: getting a CT, MRI scan or X-ray from one hospital to another as easily as you'd share a photo. Repeat scans were costing the system billions and delaying care simply because images couldn't move. By the time Nuance acquired us in 2014, our network connected well over a thousand facilities.
Eccoverse grew out of watching what happens at the front desk. Practices hire people because they want to care for patients. Then those people spend most of their day on hold with payers, returning voicemails, retyping faxes into the EMR and chasing no-shows. We built Eccoverse to take that work off their plate: answering the calls, booking the visits, checking coverage and filing the paperwork, directly in the systems the practice already uses. When it works, the person at the front desk gets to look up from the screen and actually talk to the patient in front of them.
How does your role intersect with revenue cycle management (RCM)?
Most of what I build sits at the front door of the revenue cycle. When our voice agent books a patient or our intake agent processes a referral, it checks coverage in real time: plan status, PCP, copays and in-network benefits. Staff then find problems before the visit, not weeks later as a denial.
What do you think RCM will look like two years from now?
Eligibility will stop being a batch job the day before the visit. It will be checked continuously, every time the practice touches the patient: on the phone, at referral, during a recall campaign. Practices will catch plan changes, PCP reassignments and terminated coverage while there's still time to act.
Most of the revenue cycle will run on its own. AI agents will verify coverage at booking, collect what patients owe, request authorizations, file clean claims and work denials from start to finish. People will handle only the exceptions, which frees them to spend their time with patients.