Pretty Good AI vs Clarion (formerly Anaphero)

First, the name

Clarion and Anaphero are the same company, founded as Anaphero and now selling as Clarion. The corporate record still reads “Anaphero (operating as Clarion)”.

This matters for one practical reason: buyers who did diligence on Anaphero in 2024 and buyers evaluating Clarion in 2026 think they are looking at two different companies. They are not. If you have old notes on Anaphero, confirm they still apply; the product has moved since then and current scope is what counts.

Two different bets on the same problem

Both products exist because clinics miss a large share of their inbound calls. From there the strategies diverge.

Clarion is building a communication layer that works across the kinds of organizations that have the most calls: health systems, virtual care companies, and at least one large health insurer. Breadth is the point. A layer that only worked in one record system would not serve that customer.

We made the opposite bet. athenaOne only, with production access to 820+ athenaOne APIs. Depth is the point. Finishing a referral, correcting an eligibility failure or working a balance touches far more of athenaOne than answering a question does. We build workflows around athenaOne’s records and the practice’s rules, connecting the steps needed to move the work forward and making exceptions visible to the team.

Neither is wrong. They are answers to different questions.

What the marketplace record shows today

As of 5 September 2026, on athenahealth’s own published numbers:

• Clarion: listed 17 February 2026, 18 practice connections, no reviews published, 8 specialties, requires athenaClinicals and athenaCollector.
• Pretty Good AI: 42 practice connections, 19 ratings, all five-star. athenahealth Marketplace partner since 2025.

Read that as a time-on-platform difference, not a verdict.

Where the comparison actually gets decided

If you are an athenaOne ambulatory group, the question is how much of athenaOne the vendor can reach. Ask both vendors to name the specific athenaOne objects they write to, such as appointment types, provider groups, template slots, the order and tickler queue, eligibility and the payment lifecycle, and how failures surface. Answering a call is table stakes now. Finishing the work behind the call is not.

If you span several record systems, the question inverts. A vendor that only works in athenaOne leaves the rest of your organization on the old process. Pretty Good AI currently serves athenaOne practices; in a mixed-EHR organization, scope the engagement to the operations running on athenaOne.

If you are a virtual care company or a payer, that is outside our current scope, and we will say so on the first call.

What to ask both of us

1. Name the athenaOne records you write to, not just the workflows you support.
2. Show a live practice at our size and specialty, and let us call the number.
3. What happens when the agent cannot resolve the call: where does the work land, and who sees it?
4. Send the current SOC 2 report and the standard BAA.
5. What does the invoice look like at our call volume, in writing, month to month?

Those five answers separate the field faster than any comparison page, including this one.

Scope to confirm for your practice

Multi-system, health system, virtual care or payer: that is outside our current scope. Pretty Good AI currently serves athenaOne ambulatory practices.

athenaOne ambulatory group where the constraint is that work does not get finished: depth in one system is the thing that moves your numbers, and that is the whole bet we have made.