Healthcare IT · Practice management for elective care
Decoda Health
A Toronto founded startup building an all in one EMR and practice management platform for med spas, wellness clinics and other elective care practices, with AI agents woven into scheduling, charting and follow up. It started in Y Combinator's Summer 2023 batch as an automated medical coding and billing tool, then rebuilt itself around the whole clinic.
Six systems, one visit
On its own website, Decoda walks through a single patient visit end to end. A prospect sees an Instagram ad and taps “Book Now.” An automated nurture sequence follows up within 30 seconds. When the patient texts to ask about openings, the company says its AI responds in about four seconds with three available slots. Forms go out and come back signed before the visit. A SOAP note is generated from the conversation during the appointment. Payment is collected, inventory is deducted, and the next visit is suggested automatically.
That is the pitch: replace the five to ten separate tools a typical med spa runs, from scheduling to charting to payments to patient texting, with one system that an AI layer sits on top of.
The problem it names
Decoda's own description of the market is blunt: med spas, wellness clinics and aesthetics practices run on a patchwork of disconnected software, and staff spend hours a week just moving information between systems instead of treating patients. The company's Y Combinator listing and a profile published by the accounting firm Fondo both describe the same gap, missed calls, manual follow up, fragmented charting, as the reason the category is ripe for a single AI native platform.
The segment Decoda has chosen, wellness, longevity, anti aging, medical aesthetics, dermatology and cosmetic surgery, sits outside core medical insurance billing. That is a deliberate choice the company states directly: a largely cash pay category, growing quickly, and historically underserved by EMR vendors built for insurance heavy general practice.
Two Canadians, and a different starting product
Decoda Health was founded by Daniyal Afzal and Kevin Cheng, both Canadians, according to BetaKit's coverage of Y Combinator's Summer 2023 Demo Day. Afzal had previously held operations and capital markets roles at the fintech firms Jeeves and Revolut. Cheng had worked as a data platform engineer at Enlitic, an AI focused healthtech company. Neither founder's academic background or exact prior titles were found in independent reporting.
At Demo Day in September 2023, BetaKit described the company differently than it describes itself today: “Decoda Health is developing an autonomous medical coding and billing solution. Using artificial intelligence (AI), the startup aims to turn clinician notes into claims.” The stated goal then was to help clinics save money on coding costs, reduce claim denials, and cut claim processing time “from days to seconds.” BetaKit and CB Insights both listed the company as based in San Francisco at that time.
The product Decoda describes today, an all in one EMR and practice management system for elective care clinics, is a different business than the coding and billing automation tool it pitched at Demo Day. Whether that is a full pivot or a broadened scope is not addressed in any source found; the company's own site now lists billing as one module among many, not the product itself.
From YC batch to 150 clinics
Decoda's Y Combinator company page states the business is live in more than 150 clinics, processing more than $100 million a year in transactions, and says it grew more than tenfold in six months. The same page says the platform has saved customers $7 million in admin time and generated more than $20 million in new revenue for them. All of these figures are the company's own claims; no independent verification of transaction volume, admin time saved or revenue generated was found.
Customer testimonials on Decoda's own site name several multi location med spa groups: Rivas Weight Loss, described as 15 locations, and quoted through its clinical operations manager Sophia Ro; The Refinery Medspa & Wellness, 2 locations, quoted through co-CEO Karin Stoldt; Lush Medspa, 2 locations, quoted through operations manager Elizabeth Fleet; and Hebe Medical Spa, 3 locations, quoted through operations manager Caitlin Williams and aesthetic injector Sally Delory. A single location practice, A Fresh Face, is quoted through owner Wendy Bowers. These are company published testimonials, not independently confirmed customer relationships, but they are named clinics rather than anonymous references.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| FDA, clinical trials, NIH, NSF, PubMed | No FDA 510(k) or PMA record, no registered trial, no NIH award, no PubMed entry, and no NSF award tied to Decoda Health was found. The NSF award records matched by name search all belong to unrelated academic health science centers. | Not found |
| SEC EDGAR | A search of EDGAR's company database for Form D filings under “Decoda” and “Decoda Health” returns no matching filer. The only near name match, Decodable Inc, is an unrelated data streaming company that filed its own Form D in 2022. | Not found |
| Named customers | Rivas Weight Loss (15 locations), The Refinery Medspa & Wellness (2 locations), Lush Medspa (2 locations), Hebe Medical Spa (3 locations) and A Fresh Face (1 location) all appear by name in testimonials on Decoda's own website, each attributed to a named staff member. | Company-stated |
| Scale claims | 150+ clinics live, $100M+ processed annually, $7M in admin time saved, $20M+ in new customer revenue, and 10x growth in six months, all stated on Decoda's Y Combinator company page. No independent figure to check any of these against was found. | Company-stated |
| Integration partner | Spakinect, a Good Faith Exam provider, is named as an exclusive partner on Decoda's own partnerships page, which states 28 state coverage. Spakinect's own site lists Decoda among good faith exam integrations. | Partner-stated |
| YC batch and team size | Y Combinator's company page lists Decoda Health as Summer 2023 batch, founded 2023, team size 19, status active, with Garry Tan as primary partner and an office in Toronto. | YC data |
| Headquarters | Y Combinator's own page lists a Toronto office. BetaKit's 2023 Demo Day coverage, CB Insights and GetLatka all describe the company as based in San Francisco. | Differs by source |
| 2023 product description | BetaKit and CB Insights both describe the company at its 2023 YC launch as an autonomous medical coding and billing tool, distinct from the all in one elective care EMR the company markets today. | Differs from current pitch |
Read plainly: nothing in the federal record systems checked for this profile, FDA, clinical trials, NIH, NSF or SEC, contains a Decoda Health entry. That is not unusual for an early stage software company outside medical devices, and it does not by itself cast doubt on the business. What is unusual is the gap between the coding and billing tool BetaKit described in 2023 and the elective care EMR platform the company sells today, and the disagreement between sources on where the company is actually based.
What to watch
- Whether Decoda files a Form D or another public funding record that would independently confirm the amount it has raised.
- Whether any of the named testimonial clinics, or new ones, are confirmed as customers outside Decoda's own marketing.
- Whether the company clarifies its current headquarters, given the split between Toronto and San Francisco across sources.
- Whether the original medical coding and billing product resurfaces as a distinct offering, or stays folded into the billing module of the broader platform.
In their words
“Decoda Health is developing an autonomous medical coding and billing solution. Using artificial intelligence (AI), the startup aims to turn clinician notes into claims.”
BetaKit, Meet the Y Combinator Summer 2023 cohort, Sept 6, 2023 · Independent
“We're live in 150+ clinics, processing $100M+ annually, saving $7M in admin time, and generating $20M+ in new revenue for our customers.”
Decoda Health, Y Combinator company launch post · Company-stated
“AI gives tiny teams massive leverage. As a team of <10 people, we've already out-shipped incumbents with 500-person orgs.”
Decoda Health, Y Combinator company launch post · Company-stated
“The great customer service, the speed of which they innovate and build our platform, and the product itself is beyond what I ever expected.”
Sophia Ro, Rivas Weight Loss, 15 locations, Decoda Health website · Company-stated
“The team is on top of every question we have, easy to work with, and open to tailoring the system to how we actually operate.”
Sally Delory, Aesthetic Injector, Hebe Medical Spa, Decoda Health website · Company-stated
“Yes, it is a startup, but in my opinion, this is an advantage because they are going above and beyond to customize this to how we function as a business.”
Elizabeth Fleet, Operations Manager, Lush Medspa, Decoda Health website · Company-stated
“Where [our old EMR] took days to respond to an issue, my Decoda team is on it in minutes. They are customizing the entire platform for our practice.”
Wendy Bowers, Clinic Owner, A Fresh Face, Decoda Health website · Company-stated
Related companies
Sources
- IndependentMeet the Y Combinator Summer 2023 cohort startups with Canadian connections
- IndependentDecoda Health company profile, financials and headquarters listing
- IndependentDecoda Health funding and investors listing
- IndependentDecoda Health revenue and team size estimate
- IndependentDecoda Health funding round profile
- Public recordEDGAR company search, Form D filings for “Decoda” and “Decoda Health”
- Public recordNSF award database search for “Decoda Health”
- CompanyDecoda Health company page, launch post and Toronto office listing
- CompanyDecoda Health homepage, investor page and partnerships page
- PartnerDecoda Health launches, the operating system for elective care
- PartnerSpakinect x Decoda partnership page
- CompanyDecoda Health listing
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
