Overview
James K. Min, MD, is founder and chief executive officer of Cleerly, a cardiology AI company founded in 2017 in Denver that analyzes coronary CT angiography scans to quantify and characterize atherosclerotic plaque. Cleerly’s leadership page describes a powerfully diverse expertise team united by a common mission; Min leads as Founder and CEO.
Cleerly’s clinical thesis is that many heart attacks occur in arteries that appear only mildly narrowed on conventional grading scales, and that detailed plaque phenotyping from AI-enhanced CT analysis can identify at-risk patients earlier.
Role and company
As Founder and CEO, Min leads Cleerly’s executive team including Chief Commercial Officer Jim Hartman, Chief Medical, Scientific and AI Officer Udo Hoffmann, MD, and Chief Technology Officer Michal Sofka per the leadership page. Cleerly sells to cardiology practices, hospital imaging departments, and preventive cardiovascular programs offering coronary CT angiography.
Min’s physician-founder background shapes Cleerly’s clinical messaging toward cardiologists who order coronary CT rather than pure radiology IT buyers alone.
Company-building or leadership context
Min founded Cleerly in 2017 in Denver, drawing on academic cardiology imaging research emphasizing plaque burden over stenosis percentage alone. Cleerly built validation evidence through clinical studies intended to support physician adoption and payer coverage — a dual track requiring coding and coverage milestones beyond FDA clearance alone.
Denver headquarters situate Cleerly in a growing health-tech cluster while maintaining access to national cardiology opinion leaders influencing coronary CT adoption guidelines.
Background and career context
Cleerly’s leadership page identifies Min as Founder and CEO without listing full academic appointments on the cited page. His public identity is tied to coronary plaque AI quantification — a category where reimbursement milestones matter as much as algorithmic accuracy for commercial scale.
Min remains the executive face of Cleerly through CPT coding and payer coverage announcements documented on Cleerly press pages.
Public milestones
2017: Cleerly founded in Denver by James Min, MD. October 2024: Cleerly announced CPT Category I code for plaque analyses per official press page. January 2026: Cleerly announced Aetna coverage approval for Cleerly services per official press page.
The sequence — coding milestone first, major payer coverage second — mirrors how cardiovascular diagnostics advance commercially in the United States.
Why their work matters
Cleerly under Min tests whether coronary CT AI can achieve payer-backed preventive cardiology workflows — Aetna coverage being a concrete insured-population expansion. Plaque phenotyping AI challenges decades of stenosis-centric risk assessment that missed non-obstructive vulnerable plaque.
For healthcare AI readers, Cleerly competes with inflammation-focused CCTA vendors like Caristo but emphasizes plaque volume and composition quantification — complementary cardiovascular AI theses.
Sources and references
Primary sourcing: Cleerly leadership page, reviewed July 10, 2026.
- Cleerly — Leadership (cleerlyhealth.com)
Founded 2017 in Denver per company press materials. CPT and Aetna milestones from Cleerly official press pages.
Cleerly’s leadership page emphasizes powerfully diverse expertise united by a common mission under Min’s founder-CEO direction. October 2024 CPT Category I coding and January 2026 Aetna coverage milestones documented on Cleerly press pages give Min’s commercial team concrete reimbursement anchors rare among coronary CT AI vendors still pursuing payer policy alignment.
Min’s Cleerly competes in a cardiovascular AI market where plaque burden phenotyping challenges decades of stenosis-percentage risk grading — a clinical thesis Min advances as practicing cardiologist founder rather than radiology IT vendor, shaping product messaging toward cardiology service line leaders who order coronary CTA.