Clearstep

Models run the conversation and the voice module; licensed protocols decide acuity. The platform has six modules: chat triage, a voice agent that handles inbound and outbound calls end to end, clinical intake with decision support, a co-pilot for call center agents, schedule optimization, and a workflow builder driven by prompts. In the triage module, natural language processing reads a patient's own description of symptoms and chooses follow-up questions, while the disposition comes from Dr. Barton Schmitt's nurse telephone triage protocols.

The voice agent and the prompt-driven builder would not exist without models; the triage disposition would, as a protocol decision tree. That is a model-driven core module on a platform whose clinical logic is licensed content.

The product triages patients directly, and no escalation mechanism is described. The chat "triages and navigates like a nurse", assessing symptoms, deciding acuity and booking the patient at the matching level of care; the voice agent handles calls "end-to-end, from triage and scheduling to outbound care management". The disposition logic is Dr. Barton Schmitt's nurse triage protocols, and the call center co-pilot keeps a human agent in the loop for that module.

For the patient-facing chat and voice channels, nothing says when a person takes over, what red flags trigger a live handoff, or who reviews dispositions; the terms tell users to call 911 if they think they have an emergency.

The clinical content is named and the models are not. The triage logic is identified as Dr. Barton Schmitt's nurse telephone triage protocols, extended for specialty and virtual care; the AI is described by function (natural language processing that reads free-text symptoms and asks about ten fewer questions than competitors, a voice agent, prompt-driven workflow building) under the banner "Advancing Clinical Superintelligence". No model, provider, training data, accuracy method or version practice is published, and where the licensed protocols end and the company's models begin is not defined.

The host and the clinical content licensor are named; the model layer is not. The security page names Amazon Web Services as the host (with KMS, GuardDuty and Inspector) and GitHub Advanced Security for code scanning, and the triage content is Dr. Barton Schmitt's protocols. No language or speech model provider is named for the chat, voice or workflow builder, and no subprocessor list is published.

The voice agent means patient audio passes through speech services the company does not name.

Named customers and scale are published, with the company's own figures and no method. The home page says the platform is used across more than 300 hospitals and health systems. It names the Defense Health Agency and Defense Innovation Unit, for whom it is the smart routing engine of the Military Health System digital front door for 9.5 million beneficiaries, as well as Baylor Scott & White and Mount Sinai. Baylor Scott & White's chief executive is quoted on rerouting 80 percent of patients headed to the emergency department to urgent care or virtual visits.

The module figures (97 percent clinical accuracy, 35 to 55 percent call deflection, 25 percent shorter handle time, 99 percent protocol compliance, 6 percent utilization gain, 5 to 10 percent wRVU lift) carry no site, period or method, and there is no published triage accuracy, concordance with nurse decisions or adverse event data.

Some handling commitments are published, and symptom data feeds the algorithms. The FAQ says all data is encrypted in transit and at rest, user identifying data is stored only after explicit consent and kept separately from medical data, and IP addresses are never stored. The privacy policy (2018) says self reported symptoms and history are used to improve care recommendations and, aggregated and anonymized, to refine the company's diagnostic matching algorithms. The same policy lists IP address among data collected automatically, which the FAQ contradicts.

No retention period or de-identification method is stated, and nothing says whether voice call recordings are kept. Safety engineering, meaning how an unsafe disposition is caught, is not published.

A privacy document reaches the triage tools, and no business associate position is taken. The privacy policy (effective December 2018) covers the website's web and mobile applications and tools, including self-reported symptoms and medical history, and the FAQ describes PHI protections (encryption, consent before storing identifying data, separation from medical data). Nothing on the site states business associate status, an agreement or HIPAA scope.

The product handles symptom histories on behalf of health systems, which makes the company a business associate for those deployments.

Controls are described with an outside check, and no certification is named. The security page says the company regularly engages outside application security experts for third-party penetration tests covering source code, the running application and the deployed environment, uses GitHub Advanced Security (CodeQL, secret scanning, Dependabot), encrypts data at rest and in transit with AWS KMS, and runs on AWS managed containers with GuardDuty and Inspector. No SOC 2, HITRUST or ISO certification, test cadence or trust portal is published.

The product triages patients to a care setting and no regulatory position is stated. The triage page says patients describe symptoms and receive "clinically validated care recommendations" that navigate them to the emergency department, urgent care, primary care, specialty, virtual care or self-care; the voice agent triages calls end to end; the intake module gives "real-time decision support at the point of care, pre-ordering diagnostics at the front desk". The software itself assigns acuity and a care setting. The protocols behind it are named (Schmitt), but no clinician decides the disposition the patient receives.

The terms say the company does not provide medical advice and its content is for information only, which the triage and decision support pages contradict.

There is no published account of how the models are tested or governed. The platform page calls the triage chat "clinically validated" and shows "97%+ clinical accuracy" with no method, comparison or population, and the site offers no governance process, model documentation or subgroup result.

The risk is specific. The triage engine interprets how a patient describes a symptom, and descriptions vary with first language, health literacy and age, so a misread is likeliest for the patients a digital front door is meant to reach, including the 9.5 million military beneficiaries the Defense Health Agency program covers.

The published terms concede error and accept no responsibility for it. The terms of use (August 2021) cover the website and all tools and services offered through it; they say a triage symptom checker "cannot be error free", that the company "cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information conveyed by any of its products or services", disavow liability for engagement with the content, provide everything as is, and require users to indemnify the company. No error rate, correction route or remedy is published, and health system contracts are not.

Under-triage is the failure that matters: a patient told to wait who needed care does not come back through the same channel.

Named record systems, with a summary written back. The FAQ says Clearstep is a member of Epic's AppOrchard program, integrates with facility, scheduling, EMR and CRM data, and can push a summary of each encounter back to be stored as a record; the symptom checker page names Epic, Cerner and Meditech, and the platform books patients to a provider, visit type and time slot. All modules are said to integrate with any EHR and contact center platform.

No integration documentation, resources or live connection at a named customer is published.

A single hosted service on a named cloud, with location implied. The security page says the application is hosted on Amazon Web Services and deployed as containers on AWS managed services, with keys held in AWS Key Management Service; the privacy policy says the company operates from the United States under US law. No region, residency commitment or tenant separation is stated, and the Defense Health Agency deployment's hosting authorization is not described.

No price is published, and the pricing model is. The FAQ says Clearstep is software licensed for a fixed monthly fee, with variable fees for the features selected and the scale of the implementation, sold in several product bundles; the platform is white-labeled to the health system, and the company offers a custom ROI model. No figure, tier or unit of scale is given.

Settings and channels are named, with named deployments behind part of them. The platform serves health systems and the Military Health System's digital front door, through web chat, voice, call center co-pilot, clinical intake and scheduling, and the triage content covers adult and pediatric telephone triage extended to specialty and virtual care. Named deployments include the Defense Health Agency, Baylor Scott & White and Mount Sinai, and the company reports use across more than 300 hospitals and health systems.

Nothing published covers language support, accessibility or how pediatric and adult triage differ in the product.