The Heart of Healthcare | A Digital Health Podcast

Is 2026 the year that changes everything in healthcare? Steve and Halle sit down with legendary healthcare VC Annie Lamont for their annual predictions episode to dive into 2026 predictions and trends that founders and operators should pay attention to.  We cover: 📉 Why 2025 was "the most brutal year ever" for health plans 🏥 Why providers outpaced payers in AI adoption and where the next wa...

For our first episode of 2026, Dr. Ezekiel “Zeke” Emanuel, oncologist, bioethicist, architect of the Affordable Care Act, and author of Eat Your Ice Cream joins us to share why he believes the longevity movement is overblown and how real health comes down to simplicity. In his new book, Zeke argues that instead of chasing expensive fads and wellness trends, we should focus on six straightforward h...

We’re closing out the year with a candid conversation about where America is headed. For our final episode of 2025, Halle and Steve sit down with entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang to talk plainly about the forces reshaping American life, from rising healthcare costs and gaps in coverage to AI-driven job disruption and the strain on the social safety net.  We cover: 🏛️...

Many clinicians quietly wonder if there's a “next chapter” beyond the hospital walls, and an increasing number are stepping into health tech roles that didn’t exist a decade ago. Dr. Reena Pande has lived that shift firsthand: from cardiologist at a top academic center, to early employee and CMO at AbleTo, to now leading clinician executive search at Oxeon. She joins us to unpack what it really ta...

Hemant Taneja believes you can sneeze and reach a billion dollars in healthcare revenue, but that most of that revenue tells you nothing about whether the system is actually getting better. This week, Halle sits down with the CEO of General Catalyst and author of The Transformation Principles to discuss what happens when you stop treating revenue as the primary KPI and start asking harder question...

The Haves & Have-Nots Of 2025 | Threshold Ventures Co-founder Emily Melton This week for our 2025 recap, we’re joined by VC Emily Melton, co-founder of Threshold Ventures. Melton highlights her reflection of 2025, which splits the market into "haves and have-nots" with nothing in between, noting the concentration of venture dollars on "high flyers" and the indifference shown to established com...

The first trillion-dollar healthcare company, a $298M longevity round, and a telehealth CEO headed for federal sentencing. Last month had range . Today on the show, Halle and Michael sort through the biggest December stories shaping the year ahead, from runaway longevity funding to a telehealth scandal headed for federal sentencing. We cover: 🧬 Two hot funding rounds in longevity, including Funct...

As millions of Americans hit the road to visit family for Thanksgiving, many will pass through, or return to, rural communities. Nearly 60 million Americans live in these areas, yet many struggle to access even basic healthcare as rural hospitals close at record rates. Dr. Jennifer Schneider, co-founder and CEO of Homeward Health, is tackling this crisis head-on by reimagining how care is delivere...

On the heels of raising $210 million at a $6 billion valuation, OpenEvidence is the fastest-growing physician app in history, now reaching over 40% of U.S. physicians and powering 17 million monthly clinical queries. In this conversation, co-founder and CTO Zack Ziegler shares how his background in early large language models led him to build an AI that helps clinicians make better decisions at th...

A billion-dollar startup. A promise to change healthcare forever. And behind the scenes… a massive lie. Tyler Shultz was just starting his career when he joined Theranos, only to discover that the company’s breakthrough blood tests didn’t actually work. Speaking up meant risking everything—his career, his family relationships, and his personal safety—but it also helped expose one of the biggest fr...

Does it feel like we packed in a decade of progress this year in digital health? We think so.  Today, Halle and Steve break down the biggest digital health stories of the moment, from funding trends to AI rivalries and new rules shaping the future of care. We cover: 💸 What non-AI healthcare startups should do in today’s AI-obsessed investor market 🧠 Is there room for more than one winner in...

Over 3 million clinicians around the world depend on UpToDate to guide patient care, and now the gold standard in clinical decision support is integrating generative AI. But in a world where AI models often hallucinate, how do you build something that doctors can actually trust? In this episode, Halle talks with Dr. Holly Urban, VP of Business Development and Strategy at Wolters Kluwer Health, abo...

Most people spend over 30 hours a year dealing with customer service—on hold, repeating account numbers, and navigating endless phone trees. But what if AI could fix that without losing the human touch? Clay Bavor, co-founder of Sierra (now valued at $10B) and former VP at Google, joins us to explore how AI agents are reshaping how companies interact with customers and what that means for the most...

This milestone 200th(!!!) episode of The Heart of Healthcare Podcast features none other than Dr. Tom X. Lee, the serial physician-founder behind Epocrates (acquired for $293M), One Medical (acquired by Amazon for $3.9B), and now Galileo, a tech-enabled medical group aiming to rewire care delivery from the ground up. We cover: 🧠 Why most doctors aren’t wired for management (and what traits he thi...

Happy Q4 Heart of Healthcare Listeners! We’re back with your monthly Digital Health Download, where we discuss the biggest industry headlines of the month.  We cover:  💊 Pharm tariffs, D2C drug ads, and TrumpRx?  📉 The ACA tax credit standoff and how it could double premiums for millions  🛒 UnitedHealthcare’s new storefront and what it signals about point solution fatigue 📈...

Cancer drugs cost more than ever, yet survival benefits are often modest—and in some cases, patients can’t even access the care that already exists.  After losing his father, Steve Jobs, to pancreatic cancer, Reed Jobs committed himself to making this the last generation that loses parents to the disease. Reed now leads Yosemite, a venture fund spun out of Emerson Collective in 2023, alongsid...

Some founders win support because of their product, others because of their story. In healthcare, where trust is everything, the ability to tell a compelling and authentic narrative can make or break a company. On this episode, Halle talks with longtime friend and colleague Christina Farr—reporter turned investor and now author of The Storyteller’s Advantage . Chrissy has spent thousands of hours...

Thanks to improved accuracy and new form factors, wearables have evolved from novelty step counters to tools that can predict illness, nudge healthier behaviors, and even influence alcohol consumption. But can they really bridge the gap between consumer wellness and enterprise healthcare? In this episode, ŌURA CEO Tom Hale discusses the lessons his team has learned from developing one of the most...

AI companies are hitting growth milestones in record time—some reaching $100 million in revenue in just two years. But while this pace feels familiar in tech, healthcare has always been slower to adopt new tools. That may finally be changing. Kent Bennett and Sofia Guerra of Bessemer Venture Partners join Steve Kraus to unpack findings from Bessemer’s State of AI 2025 report and what they mean for...

Healthcare’s “back-to-school” season delivered no shortage of big headlines! From Epic’s big leap into AI to a looming insurance “blood bath,” Steve and Michael break down the stories that shaped digital health this month. We cover: 🖥 Epic’s 200 new AI “colleagues” and what it means for the battle between systems of record vs. systems of action 💼 Why healthcare CEOs are cashing record paychecks d...

Healthcare costs keep climbing, and yet patients and employers often feel powerless to change the system. What if outsiders—those not steeped in the traditions of healthcare—are actually the ones best positioned to fix it? This special episode is a reshare from The Benefits Playbook podcast, where Halle joins Collective Health CEO Ali Diab. Together, they unpack what it takes to make health benefi...

Hospitals are under immense pressure: burned-out clinicians, outdated systems, and rising costs have made delivering care harder than ever.  Tanay Tandon, founder and CEO of Commure, shares how his team is rethinking hospital infrastructure by combining AI, forward-deployed engineering, and a provider-first mindset. Backed by over $750M in funding, Commure is using strategic M&A and next-...

One in four Americans is enrolled in Medicaid, yet the system designed to support them is constantly at risk—underfunded, politically vulnerable, and often overlooked. Dr. Alastair Bell, President and CEO of Boston Medical Center Health System, shares how his organization is reimagining what it means to care for underserved populations, while managing nearly 40% of Massachusetts’ Medicaid enrollee...

Three simple questions plague every American seeking healthcare: Where should I go? When can I be seen? And how much will it cost me? Despite seeming basic, these questions have remained largely unanswerable—until now. In this episode, we explore how Heather Fernandez, co-founder and CEO of Solv, is building the infrastructure behind same-day care for 210 million Americans. We discuss how AI is fi...

A new federal law is reshaping how healthcare is paid for and delivered in America. In this episode, Steve sits down with health policy expert Joe Mercer to unpack the details of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It’s the most significant healthcare legislation since the ACA, with ripple effects across Medicaid, rural hospitals, and the ACA exchange. We cover: 🧾 What Medicaid work requirements coul...