Raising Health

Elliot Cohen, cofounder of PillPack, joins Julie Yoo, a16z Bio + Health general partner. Together, they discuss Elliot's experience designing and building a consumer-first pharmacy alongside TJ Parker. Elliot's journey with PillPack began when he noticed his father struggling with a mail-order pharmacy that couldn’t get the simplest thing right: the correct version of a pill. Elliot shares the nit...

In this episode, Slingshot AI cofounders Daniel Cahn and Neil Parikh join a16z Bio + Health general partner Julie Yoo to explore how their mission to transform mental health care with AI took shape. Drawing from their unique journeys—Daniel as the son of a psychologist and Neil as a former medical student-turned-entrepreneur—they discuss the challenges and opportunities of building AI models to mo...

Dr. Muthu Alagappan, MD, founder and CEO of Counsel Health, joins Julie Yoo, a16z Bio + Health general partner, to dive deep into the company's vision for revolutionizing healthcare through AI-powered asynchronous care. Together, they unpack how Counsel enables on-demand access to real doctors for instant medical guidance, lessening patient reliance on Google and alleviating system inefficiencies...

Ankit Jain, CEO and cofounder of Infinitus Systems, Inc, joins Julie Yoo, a16z Bio + Health general partner, to discuss Infinitus's work in solving one of healthcare's most pressing challenges: workforce shortages. Leveraging LLMs and AI voice agents, Infinitus automates repetitive tasks, such as benefits verification and prior authorization, freeing up human talent for higher-value roles. Ankit r...

Alexander Saint-Amand, cofounder and CEO of Topography, reflects on his journey from leading Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG), a pioneer in expert networks, to tackling systemic barriers in clinical trials at his current company, Topography. Inspired by personal experiences, Alexander’s mission centers on democratizing access to clinical research by transforming community-based practices into thriving h...

Rajaie Batniji, MD, PhD, Afia Asamoah, JD, and Sanjay Basu, MD, PhD, cofounders of Waymark, join Vineeta Agarwala, MD, PhD, a16z Bio + Health general partner, to discuss their transformative approach to Medicaid care delivery. This episode dives into their rising risk signal prediction framework, where cutting-edge machine learning predicts patient needs and enables community-based care teams to r...

Hippocratic AI cofounder and CEO Munjal Shah joins a16z Bio + Health general partner Julie Yoo to explore the incredible potential of generative AI in transforming healthcare delivery. Together, they discuss the emerging "voice renaissance" in healthcare, the nuances of designing safe and empathetic AI interactions, and how Hippocratic AI is addressing safety concerns with innovations like multi-L...

Jeff Margolis, founder of TriZetto, joins Julie Yoo, a16z Bio + Health general partner, to share the journey of building an iconic company in healthcare infrastructure. From the early days of managed care to creating a three-pronged platform uniting computing power, software, and data analytics, Jeff reflects on TriZetto’s groundbreaking model that reshaped payer-provider transactions and set indu...

In this episode, Matt Wilsey joins Jorge Conde to share the profound personal story of his daughter Grace's diagnosis with NGLY1 deficiency and how it catalyzed his journey to founding a biotech startup, Grace Science, aimed at developing a cure for his daughter’s condition. Matt emphasizes the importance of strategic partnerships, like his collaboration with Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi, and s...

Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi joins Jorge Conde to unravel the concept of bioorthogonal chemistry.  Carolyn traces her pioneering path from early studies in carbohydrate chemistry to how her lab developed the revolutionary ability to manipulate chemical reactions inside the human body.  Together, they highlight the intersection of cutting-edge academic research and the challenges of translating...

In this episode, a16z partners Jorge Conde and Jay Rughani sit down with Sajith Wickramasekara, CEO and cofounder of Benchling, to unpack the evolution of Benchling from idea to transformative software platform. Saji discusses his journey from software engineer to building Benchling and digitizing biotech workflows for industry giants like Sanofi. Together, they also talk about the increasing comp...

Join healthcare expert Dan Rosenthal and a16z Bio + Health general partner Julie Yoo in a deep dive into the evolution of provider networks and their strategic importance in the health insurance ecosystem.  Dan discusses how networks are built, managed, and optimized for both cost and quality—including the complexities of payor-provider contracts, the future impact of transparency laws, and opport...

Chris Ellis, CEO and Adam Stevenson, president, both cofounders of Thatch, join Julie Yoo and Jay Rughani of a16z Bio + Health. In early 2020, a new policy called ICHRA altered the insurance market, which had remained largely unchanged for decades. As you’ll hear in the episode, it’s been slow to catch on — but the cofounders of Thatch think it’s a game changer. Together, they discuss these key ta...

Jonathan Lim is the CEO of Erasca, but his career path took him on a fascinating journey from practicing as a surgeon to leading life science companies. In a recent conversation, Lim shared valuable insights about his transition to the biotech world, his leadership experiences, and the lessons he's learned while founding and guiding organizations through high-stakes decision making.  Reflecting on...

In this episode, Vijay Pande and Daisy Wolf of a16z Bio + Health join a16z Podcast host Steph Smith to make a provocative case for why technologists—not just medical professionals—are key to reinventing healthcare. They argue that to transform a sector representing 20% of U.S. GDP, innovation must move beyond curing diseases toward tackling healthcare’s broken systems.  By likening the healthcare...

Marta Bralic Kerns, founder and CEO of Pomelo Care, joins Will Shrank, MD, a16z Bio + Health venture partner. Together, they talk about the innovator’s dilemma with building in the Medicaid space, how Pomelo partners with managed care plans, and the opportunity to potentially lower costs through providing additional support to pregnant women. This is the third episode in our Medicaid Matters serie...

Nikita Singareddy, cofounder and CEO of Fortuna Health, joins Will Shrank, MD, a16z Bio + Health venture partner. Together, they discuss building a useful and convenient platform for Medicaid enrollees, listening to patient feedback to improve, and the complexities of different states’ Medicaid processes. This is the second episode in our Medicaid Matters series. Listen to previous guest Mark Smit...

Over the next three episodes, we’re going to talk about why Medicaid matters, and the potential for technology to make it easier for enrollees to access and utilize the program. Our first guest is Mark Smith, MD, Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSF.  He was the founding President and former CEO of the California HealthCare Foundation from 1996-2013, which is where he began his work to improve M...

Vijay Pande, PhD, founding partner of a16z Bio + Health, joins Derrick Harris, host of the AI + a16z podcast . Together, they discuss how computer science has subsumed biotech. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Casey Means, MD, a Stanford-trained physician, cofounder of Levels, and author of the new book Good Energy, joins Vijay Pande,  PhD, founding partner of a16z Bio + Health. Together, they discuss the downsides of physician specialization, the rising tide of chronic illness in the U.S., and how tracking biomarkers might allow people to determine the best nutrition options for their unique physiology...

Greg Meyers, EVP and Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Bristol Myers Squibb, or BMS, joins Jorge Conde, general partner at a16z. This is a follow-up to their 2023 episode , where they discussed how biopharma can adapt to AI. Now, they revisit the conversation to see what’s changed and what hasn’t. Together, they chat through tech as a competitive differentiator for large companies, generativ...

Michael Crackower, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer of Ventus Therapeutics, and Jason Burch, PhD, join Vineeta Agarwala, MD, PhD, general partner at a16z Bio + Health. Together, they talk about how Ventus approaches drug discovery and why they believe we’re in the early stages of small molecule innovation. Specifically, we’ll hear about the ReSOLVE platform, which enables the drug hunting team to mor...

Bowen Liu, PhD, investing partner, and Surya Ganguli, PhD, venture partner, join Vijay Pande, PhD, general partner of a16z Bio + Health. Together, they detail different methods through which AI could assist drug development, the opportunity for AI to flag new targets and compounds for scientists to investigate, and the science fiction-sounding notion of developing a foundation model that untangles...

Bruce Levine, PhD, the Barbara and Edward Netter Professor in Cancer Gene Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania, joins Jorge Conde, general partner, and Ginger Liau, partner at a16z Bio + Health. Bruce talks about how his time working in a lab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia inspired him to work on translational therapies. Together, they also discuss barriers to access for cancer th...

In this episode, a follow-up to our episode Grand Challenges in Healthcare AI, Julie Yoo and Vijay Pande, a16z general partners, answer audience questions about AI applications in healthcare. Together, they dive into cost and implementation challenges, the data landscape, and what the patient experience might look like. If you liked this episode, listen to Grand Challenges in Healthcare AI here or...