The Founder: Christopher Barnett

Barnett’s path to building a healthcare AI company is unconventional. He started his first business at 18 with a high school equivalency diploma and some community college courses, building a group of companies in real estate before pivoting to healthcare. Over time, he founded and scaled a family of healthcare businesses under ICBD Holdings, including ABA Centers of America, Exact Billing Solutions (a revenue cycle management company), and now CurativeAI.

The ABA Centers origin story is personal. Barnett and his wife struggled to access timely autism care for their daughter Madison, navigating misdiagnosis and long waitlists before finding effective ABA therapy. The experience drove him to build a company that could eliminate the access barriers he had experienced firsthand. ABA Centers opened its first clinic in 2020 and grew to over 2,500 employees across 13 states and Puerto Rico by 2025, caring for over 700 children. The company claims an outcomes-focused approach: average treatment hours below 25 per week (compared to the 40-hour models common at other large providers), with a defined “graduation” pathway where clients exit ABA therapy as their clinical needs are met.

In late 2024, Barnett stepped back from daily management of ABA Centers, installing Jason Barker — formerly the COO of ChenMed, a senior primary care company — as CEO. Barnett moved to the chairman role, freeing himself to focus on CurativeAI and the broader technology vision. The company also began conversations with capital partners for the first time, exploring debt capital to fuel the next phase of growth after years of self-funding.

“We’ve proved the model. We’ve proved the concept. We proved our scalability. We want to make a larger impact: we want to work towards a national brand, and you’re going to see a lot of that happen over the next 12 to 24 months.” — Christopher Barnett, Behavioral Health Business, December 2024

The Company: CurativeAI

CurativeAI is a separate legal entity from ABA Centers of America, incorporated as Curative AI, Inc. and headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. The company was co-founded by Barnett and Luyuan Fang, who serves as CEO and President. The leadership pairing is deliberate: Barnett brings the healthcare operating experience and the clinical environment in which the technology is being built and tested; Fang brings the AI engineering expertise and the enterprise technology architecture.

Fang’s credentials are significant. He previously served as Chief AI Officer at Change Healthcare — the healthcare technology company that was acquired by Optum/UnitedHealthcare for $13.5 billion. At Change Healthcare, Fang’s AI platforms supported the largest healthcare financial and administrative network in the United States, processing 50 percent of all U.S. claims. Before that, he served as Chief AI and Data Officer at Prescryptive Health, landing AI solutions in a network of 50,000 pharmacies, and founded Expedia Group AI Labs, supporting all 14 Expedia brands. The move from processing half of America’s healthcare claims to building AI for a 44-clinic ABA company represents a deliberate bet that the lessons of enterprise healthcare AI can be applied at the clinical level.

The company describes itself as building “healthcare artificial intelligence software that streamlines clinical and operational workflows.” Its platform ingests clinical and administrative data to generate insights, predict risk, and automate routine tasks. Products in development include generative assistants for documentation and triage, analytics for population health, and EHR-integrated decision support. The $9.8 million investment is entirely self-funded by Barnett — not venture capital, not PE money, not debt.

The Architecture: What Is Actually Being Built

Based on public statements, Crunchbase filings, and Barnett’s interviews, CurativeAI’s product suite includes several components:

Proprietary Electronic Health Record (EHR). ABA Centers of America runs on a proprietary EHR built by what was initially called ABATECH (the technology arm later rebranded as CurativeAI). Unlike most ABA providers, which use third-party practice management platforms like CentralReach, Ensora, or Hi Rasmus, ABA Centers operates on its own system. This gives CurativeAI direct access to the full clinical data pipeline — assessments, treatment plans, session data, progress notes, and outcomes — in a format the company controls. The EHR is not yet offered to external organizations; it is currently used exclusively within ABA Centers.

Clinician-level data collection. The platform includes data collection tools designed for use by RBTs and BCBAs during therapy sessions. The goal is to capture behavioral data at a granularity that enables AI-driven analysis: not just whether a target was met, but the context, timing, prompting level, and environmental conditions surrounding each data point. This level of structured data capture is what differentiates AI-ready clinical data from the PDF-based documentation that most ABA providers still use.

Payer negotiation and RCM tools. Barnett’s ownership of Exact Billing Solutions — a standalone revenue cycle management company — gives CurativeAI a data pipeline into payer interactions: claims submissions, denials, appeals, and reimbursement patterns. AI tools built on this data could predict which claims are likely to be denied, recommend optimal coding and documentation, and provide data-driven leverage for rate negotiations with payers. Fang’s Change Healthcare background — building AI that processed 50 percent of U.S. claims — is directly relevant to this product category.

Generative AI for documentation. Like CentralReach’s cari™ and RethinkBH’s Session Note AI, CurativeAI is building generative AI assistants for clinical documentation. The difference is that CurativeAI’s models are trained on data from its own proprietary EHR within ABA Centers, creating a closed-loop system where the AI learns from the specific clinical workflows, documentation patterns, and outcomes data of the organization it serves.

Population health analytics. The most ambitious component. CurativeAI’s Crunchbase profile describes analytics for population health — the ability to analyze clinical trends across an entire patient population rather than individual cases. In ABA, this could mean identifying which treatment protocols produce the best outcomes for specific client profiles, which supervision models correlate with faster progress, or which assessment tools best predict long-term treatment needs. This is the kind of aggregate outcomes analysis that the ABA industry has struggled to produce.

The Incubation Model: Building in Production

What makes CurativeAI structurally different from other ABA technology companies is the incubation model. The platform is not being built in a lab and then sold to providers. It is being built inside a live, high-growth, multi-state ABA operation. Every feature is tested with real clinicians, on real caseloads, with real payer interactions. The feedback loop between the technology team and the clinical team is immediate and continuous.

This is the same approach that enabled companies like Epic Systems (which built its EHR in partnership with large health systems), athenahealth (which used its own network of physician practices as a development platform), and ChenMed (which built proprietary technology inside its own primary care clinics) to create technology that works in production rather than just in demos. The risk is that software built for one organization’s workflows may not translate cleanly to others. The advantage is that the software has been stress-tested in an environment where failure has real consequences.

Barnett has stated publicly that CurativeAI’s ambitions extend beyond ABA. The company’s mission statements reference “revolutionizing hospital systems around the world” and “redefining the operation and delivery of care.” Whether CurativeAI remains ABA-focused or expands into broader healthcare — leveraging Fang’s enterprise-scale experience and Barnett’s operating infrastructure — will likely depend on the success of the incubation phase and the company’s ability to attract external capital and customers.

The Context: Why This Matters for ABA

A proprietary, AI-powered technology stack that can document services, predict denials, measure outcomes, and demonstrate value to payers addresses every one of those challenges simultaneously. If CurativeAI delivers on its stated capabilities, it would represent the most vertically integrated technology play in the ABA industry — a single company that owns the clinical operation, the EHR, the data pipeline, the AI models, and the billing infrastructure.

The risks are equally significant. CurativeAI’s technology is unproven outside its parent organization. The $9.8 million investment, while impressive for a self-funded venture, is modest by enterprise healthcare software standards. The company’s ability to attract external customers depends on whether it can separate the technology from the ABA Centers brand — a brand that is simultaneously celebrated (EY Entrepreneur of the Year, Inc. 5000 #5) and embroiled in litigation (the Publix RICO lawsuit, the Point32Health counterclaim). And the competitive landscape includes CentralReach, which has billions of data points, Insight Partners’ backing, and years of market penetration.

But the bet is live. The technology is in production. And the man who built the fastest-growing ABA company in America from a standing start in 2020 is now applying the same approach to the technology infrastructure that the entire industry will need to survive the next decade.

AT A GLANCE

Company: CurativeAI (Curative AI, Inc.); HQ: Bellevue, Washington
Founders: Christopher Barnett (Chairman) and Luyuan Fang (CEO/President)
Investment: $9.8 million, entirely self-funded by Barnett (no VC, no PE, no debt)
Parent Ecosystem: ICBD Holdings: ABA Centers of America (44 clinics, 10 states, 2,500+ employees); Exact Billing Solutions (RCM); CurativeAI (technology)
Barnett Background: Serial entrepreneur since age 18; EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2024 national overall (first healthcare provider); Inc. 5000 #5 (2024, 32,000% 3-year growth); Temple University board; personal connection to autism (daughter Madison)
Fang Background: Former Chief AI Officer, Change Healthcare (acquired by Optum/UHC for $13.5B; AI processed 50% of US claims); Chief AI/Data Officer, Prescryptive Health (50,000 pharmacies); Founder, Expedia Group AI Labs (14 brands)
Products in Development: Proprietary EHR (currently ABA Centers-exclusive); clinician-level data collection; payer negotiation/RCM AI tools; generative AI for clinical documentation; population health analytics
Incubation Model: All technology built and tested inside ABA Centers’ live 44-clinic operation before external release; closed-loop feedback between engineering and clinical teams
ABA Centers Stats: Founded 2020; 44 clinics in 10+ states + Puerto Rico; 2,500+ employees; 700+ children in care; avg <25 hrs/week treatment; defined graduation pathway; CEO Jason Barker (ex-ChenMed COO) installed Dec. 2024
Technology Evolution: Originally called ABATECH; rebranded as CurativeAI; currently not offered to external organizations; broader healthcare ambitions stated
Competitive Landscape: CentralReach (cari™, Insight Partners-backed, billions of data points); RethinkBH (Session Note AI); Hi Rasmus (60 countries); Raven Health (small practice); Ensora (clinical dashboards)
Key Risk: Unproven outside parent organization; $9.8M modest by enterprise standards; brand association with ongoing litigation (Publix RICO, Point32Health counterclaim); must separate tech from ABA Centers brand to attract external customers
Key Advantage: Vertically integrated: owns clinical operation + EHR + data pipeline + AI models + billing infrastructure; technology stress-tested in live production environment; Fang’s enterprise-scale AI credentials
Stated Ambition: Beyond ABA: “revolutionize hospital systems around the world”; broader healthcare AI platform

SOURCES & REFERENCES

Company Website: curativeai.com (About page, founders, mission)
Crunchbase: Curative AI, Inc. profile (Bellevue, WA; founders; product description; active status)
BHB Coverage: Behavioral Health Business: “ABA Centers to Double Footprint” (Aug. 2023); “Fast-Growing ABA Centers Names New CEO” (Dec. 2024)
EY Award: Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2024: Christopher Barnett national overall winner profile
Inc. 5000: Inc. Magazine 2024: ABA Centers of America #5 (32,000% 3-year growth)
Temple University: Barnett College of Public Health profile; ABA Centers Autism Lab ($1M gift, 2022); commencement address (2025)
YPO/ICBD: YPO profile (Nov. 2024); ICBD Holdings leadership page (Christopher Barnett bio)
Published: BreakingNewsABA.com — March 2026