The Heart of Healthcare | A Digital Health Podcast

They built a $1.2 billion healthcare AI company in under three years, but they say the hardest part of healthcare AI isn't the AI. This week, Halle sits down with Assort Health co-founders and co-CEOs Jeffery Liu and Jon Wang, whose company reached a $1.2 billion valuation in under three years. They discuss why building great healthcare AI takes far more than good models, how they scaled from 15 e...

July marks five years of The Heart of Healthcare, and we're grateful for every listener who's tuned in. If you've enjoyed the show, please show your love by leaving us a review! This month, Steve and Halle take stock of an industry where capital is concentrating, incumbents are making big bets, AI is moving from promise to early proof points, and a public health crisis is quietly building in the b...

Back by popular demand, 3x Heart of Healthcare guest Eric Larsen joins Steve to answer listener questions on healthcare's AI revolution. Drawing on the ideas behind his latest essay, Healthcare's Oppenheimer Moment , Eric argues that healthcare may be approaching a once-in-a-generation inflection point, and discusses what leaders need to understand before it's too late. We cover: Whether foundatio...

Healthcare AI funding is booming, but the money is flowing to fewer companies than ever before. As investors pour capital into a small group of breakout winners, founders are navigating a fundraising environment where expectations seem to change every quarter. Based on interviews with 24 healthcare founders and a dozen healthcare investors, Halle breaks down what is actually happening in the marke...

Autonomous vehicles may be the closest real-world example of AI operating in life-and-death situations at scale. Justin Norden believes healthcare has a lot to learn from how that industry approached safety, testing, adoption, and trust.  This week, Michael and Halle sit down with the founder and CEO of Qualified Health, fresh off the company’s $125 million Series B, to discuss why healthcare...

Healthcare is simultaneously propping up the US economy and facing one of its most uncertain moments in years. This month, Halle and Steve unpack the growing contradictions shaping digital health right now: healthcare jobs are driving nearly half of US job growth while provider bankruptcies surge, AI is flooding into healthcare faster than regulators can keep up, and Washington continues to send m...

Most careers don’t follow a straight line. But few require starting over in full view of the public. This week, Halle sits down with Lance Armstrong to discuss how he rebuilt his life and career after multiple turning points, including surviving advanced cancer, and how those experiences shaped his perspective on health, performance, and reinvention. Now, through his venture firm Next Ventures, he...

AI in healthcare may be entering a new chapter, one where the biggest question is no longer whether the technology works, but who is willing to deploy it, measure it, and take responsibility for the risk. This week, Steve sits down again with Eric Larsen to revisit his predictions from last year’s Webby-winning episode on generative AI in healthcare. Eric argues that the first wave of AI has been...

Medicaid reimbursements are shrinking, providers are pulling back, and vulnerable populations are losing access to care. Akido Labs is betting that AI can expand care capacity fast enough to reverse that trend. This week, Halle sits down with Prashant Samant, co-founder and CEO of Akido Labs, to discuss what it actually takes to scale care with AI. They explore why Akido built a full-stack healthc...

AI is everywhere in healthcare, and May's big question is whether it's actually delivering. The money is flowing, the promises are bold, but some cracks are starting to show. Steve and Michael break down the month's biggest stories. We cover: Digital health hitting its strongest funding quarter since the pandemic peak, and why deal concentration tells the real story How Medvi built a billion-dolla...

Forty million people use ChatGPT for health-related questions every day, making it one of the most widely used tools for health information in the world . So what is their team doing to maximize impact and minimize harm? For one, they've brought in hundreds of physicians globally to continuously review outputs and shape how the models respond across different scenarios, literacy levels, and edge c...

Nearly one billion prescriptions are abandoned at the pharmacy counter every year, often because patients are blindsided by the cost. This week, co-host Halle Tecco is joined by Wendy Barnes, President and CEO of GoodRx, to discuss the chaos of prescription drug pricing, the murky world of Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), and how digital tools are changing patient affordability. They break down t...

Pete McCanna, CEO of Baylor Scott & White Health, believes that health systems are built around the wrong objective… and he has an ambitious goal to change that. This week, Halle sits down with McCanna to unpack how one of the largest and most successful health systems in the country is shifting from a supply-driven model to one built entirely around the customer. They discuss why legacy syste...

We’re back with our monthly rundown of the top headlines in health tech! Today, Halle flies solo to share the biggest stories that shaped Q1, from the rising pressures on PBMs to how consumers are using AI. Stories covered: What's happening to PBMs (it's not pretty) New data from Rock Health on consumer use of AI Social media companies find liable for addictive design Healthcare hiring is slowing...

Last year, his independent pharmacy spent $13 million on brand-name drugs for patients processed by the three biggest Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) which earned a profit margin of 0.01%. In this episode, Halle speaks with Alec Ginsberg, owner and fourth-generation pharmacist at C.O. Bigelow, the oldest surviving apothecary–pharmacy in the United States. Alec is fighting against the forces squee...

Chris Klomp, Director of Medicare and Deputy Administrator of CMS, and Senior Advisor to HHS Secretary RFK Jr., has big ambitions to reshape how healthcare works in the United States. This week, ​​Steve sits down with Klomp to discuss how his experience as a digital health entrepreneur is guiding his current role overseeing a roughly $2 trillion department. Klomp shares the government's strategy f...

This week, Halle and Michael sit down for a special in-person listener Q&A to answer a range of founder questions you submitted. Topics include: What investors are prioritizing right now and how first-time founders can stand out How to think about board seats What to do if your growth has plateaued Things to keep in mind when negotiating a health system contract How to think about choosing bet...

Breakthrough blood tests that can flag dozens of cancers before symptoms appear are gaining momentum, yet questions remain about accuracy, equity, and how these tools will fit into routine care. In this episode, Steve talks with Helmy Eltoukhy, co-founder and co-CEO of Guardant Health, a $14 billion publicly-traded precision oncology company. The conversation explores the science behind cell-free...

Pharma ads, biotech IPOs, $1M longevity programs, oh my! This month's Digital Health Download skews towards biotech, which is having a moment. Tune in to hear Halle and Michael cover the latest headlines. We cover: Why pharma ads are surging and the growing push for restrictions on D2C drug advertising Hims & Hers’ $1.15B acquisition of Eucalyptus, its global expansion strategy, and the F...

When Eric Lefkofsky’s wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, it exposed how little technology and data were shaping cancer care, pushing the serial entrepreneur to build a different model. Lefkofsky is the founder and CEO of Tempus, now a $10B publicy traded health tech company, and previously founded Groupon. At Tempus, he’s building a tech-first company applying multimodal data and AI to make di...

In this episode (recorded live), Halle Tecco speaks with Dr. Robert Wachter, Chair of Medicine at UCSF, about their concurrently released books on healthcare innovation and AI. They share thoughts on the dual challenge of innovation in healthcare and the role of AI, covering: Why past waves of tech failed to change healthcare and why AI may finally break through How AI is making a difference today...

Physicians now face a world where search bars, chat apps, and large AI models are becoming many people’s first stop for health questions, long before they enter a clinic. Former Google Chief Health Officer and national health IT leader Dr. Karen DeSalvo joins us to unpack what this shift means for clinicians, regulators, and patients, and why 15% of daily Google searches are questions no one has e...

We’re back with our monthly rundown of the top headlines in health tech! Today, Halle and Steve sort through the biggest stories shaping the year ahead, from AI prescribing to lawsuits galore. We cover: AI prescribing (in Utah!) The FDA updated guidance on clinical decision support for AI in medicine The lawsuit against Prenuvo after a missed stroke warning, and the broader debate over accountabil...

It has been said that we don’t have “big data” in healthcare, but instead a large amount of “small data.” In this episode, Halle speaks with Kyle Armbrester, CEO of Datavant and former CEO of Signify Health (acquired for $8B), about why healthcare data still moves the way it did decades ago and what it will take to modernize it at scale. Kyle reflects on building and leading large health tech comp...

This week, Steve sits down with Ankit Jain, co-founder and CEO of Infinitus Systems, to talk about why voice-based AI has become one of the most rapidly adopted tools in healthcare operations, what’s actually working in the field, and where the hype still outpaces reality. Ankit shares six years of lessons from building AI agents that handle 35-minute medical calls end to end, plus his predictions...