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Tech Topics In This Article: AI, Atlanta startups, Healthcare Technology
The sheer number of Americans seeking out mental, behavioral, and psychiatric health support just keeps rising. And yet, the workforce and the technology needed just isn’t keeping pace, says Atlanta entrepreneur Jim Szyperski.
As CEO of the newly-launched Atlanta-based Acuity Behavioral Health, Szyperski is looking to bring his years of experience scaling companies to the behavioral health technology space to help change that narrative. Acuity, and its Behavioral Health Acuity Index (BHAI), is a clinical-support solution that brings a new kind of AI-driven framework for standardizing, measuring, and optimizing inpatient psychiatric care. On top of giving healthcare professionals clinical decision support, it can help forecast out a hospital’s unique staffing needs based on behavioral health needs.
The goal is to help healthcare settings make better decisions about their patients, making the process “less reactive, less subjective, and more quantifiable,” Szyperski added.
Acuity was born out of the pandemic surge in patients coming to hospitals with behavioral health needs.
“Not only has the number of patients increased on a pretty accelerated curve, the severity of the symptoms are much higher than they used to be,” he explained to Hypepotamus. “[Patients] are staying longer, more people are showing up…and at the same time, we’re losing nurses by the hundreds of thousands.”
On top of that, behavioral healthcare professionals are often dealing with technology and systems that are outdated or are not standardized like they are in other areas of medicine.
Building In The Behavioral Health Tech Space
Szyperski has built up and led more than a handful of startups in the Atlanta area over his career, including those in EdTech, telecommunications, and FinTech. Under his leadership as CEO, Southeast-cased companies like WebTone, Intellivoice, and Power Generation Services, Inc. reached successful acquisitions.
He ultimately found himself drawn to the behavioral health space. While there are meditation and telehealth therapy platforms that focus on the B2C side of mental health, Acuity focuses on the “clinical operations” and B2B side of the industry, which Szyperski said he hopes will ultimately improve patient outcomes.
A group of behavioral health experts from institutions like Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care, Penn Medicine Princeton House Behavioral Health, Yale New Haven Health, and others across the U.S. are building Acuity alongside Szyperski.
Atlanta investors have taken note. The Acuity team announced last week it had successfully raised a $1.5M seed funding round led by Valor Ventures, an early-stage firm focused on AI and B2B software companies in the Southeast.
Szyperski said the Valor Ventures investment gives Acuity “some gas in the engine to really start doing the things we need to do” when it comes to hiring.
“We have a product that is ready to go. Now in 2025 we’re really pushing [that product] out there and really trying to change the paradigm of behavioral health care.”
