The PennHealthX Podcast

Yakov Gradinar, CP, is the Chief Medical Officer of the Protez Foundation, a nonprofit organization that flies Ukrainian war amputees to the United States to receive custom prosthetics, rehabilitation, and counseling services. He trained as an orthopedic trauma surgeon in Ukraine before immigrating to the United States, where he retrained as a prosthetist. When the war in Ukraine escalated in 2022...

In this episode of the PennHealthX Podcast, Ziad Hassan and Habib Akouri sit down with Dr. Mucio Kit Delgado to explore his work at the intersection of emergency medicine, behavioral science, and health system innovation. Dr. Delgado is an emergency and addiction medicine physician-scientist at Penn Medicine, where he serves as Executive Director of Transformation Science & Behavioral Insights...

Dr. Dereck Paul, MD, is the co-founder and CEO of Glass Health , an AI platform helping clinicians with clinical decision-making, documentation, and workflow optimization. Dr. Paul’s path into healthcare innovation began long before residency — from studying music composition to applying to Y Combinator before even starting medical school. In this episode, Dr. Paul reflects on the pivotal decision...

Dr. Jason Chien, MD, MS, is the Chief Medical Officer of Mozart Therapeutics, where he leads clinical development of a first-in-class pipeline targeting autoimmune diseases, including type 1 diabetes and celiac disease. He trained in internal medicine, infectious diseases, and pulmonary and critical care medicine before building an NIH-funded research program at the University of Washington and Fr...

Hosts Isabella Stuart and William Hayes sit down with Dr. Jeff Stuart, co-founder of Resolve Conflict, board-certified anesthesiologist, and former Chief Medical Officer. They discuss his journey from early interest in medicine to a career that spans clinical practice, hospital leadership, and entrepreneurship, highlighting key inflection points and the value of staying adaptable. Dr. Stuart share...

Hosts Habib & Ziad sit down with Dr. Evan Fieldston, Associate Chief Medical Officer at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine, who focuses on improving healthcare systems for children and their families. They discuss his journey from childhood patient to physician-leader, how training in pediatrics, business, and public policy sh...

In this episode of the PennHealthX Podcast, Habib sits down with Dr. Akl Fahed to discuss his career as an interventional cardiologist, physician–scientist, and digital health entrepreneur working at the frontiers of genomic medicine and chronic disease care. Dr. Fahed serves at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute, where he leads an NIH-funded research program focused on using l...

Today, we’re taking with Dr. Beschloss. Dr. Beschloss is a resident physician in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and Wharton School, where he earned his MD/MBA. A Williams College alum, his work sits at the intersection of clinical care, health policy, and healthcare innovation. Before residency, he...

In this episode of the PennHealthX Podcast, Habib sits down with Dr. Kevin Volpp to discuss his career as a physician–economist and his pioneering work at the intersection of medicine, economics, and behavioral science. Dr. Volpp is the Mark Pauly President’s Distinguished Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, with joint appointments at the Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School...

In this episode of the PennHealthX Podcast, hosts Ziad Hassan and Habib Akouri sit down with Dr. Rachel Kelz to discuss her path into surgery and the wide-ranging impact of her career. Dr. Kelz is the William Maul Measey Professor of Surgery and Executive Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. She also directs Penn’s Center for Surgery and Health Economics, wher...

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Daniel Hashimoto, Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Biomedical Informatics. Dr. Hashimoto shares his journey at the intersection of surgery and artificial intelligence, exploring how computer vision and machine learning are reshaping surgical education and practice. He also refl...

In this episode, hosts Ziad Hassan and Habib Akouri sit down with Dr. Ryan O'Keefe for an engaging conversation that takes the podcast back to its original roots. Ryan O'Keefe, MD, MBA, is a hospitalist at Penn Medicine and creator of Point of Care Medicine. Point of Care Medicine is an online educational reference for students and physicians alike providing critical information in the form of cli...

In this episode, hosts Ziad Hassan and Habib Akouri sit down with Dr. Ryan Henrici for an engaging conversation that bridges science, innovation, and personal journey. Ryan Henrici, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist specializing in infectious diseases and hematology. A former Marshall Scholar, he serves as Vice President of Discovery Medicine at BigHat Biosciences, where he leads the development o...

Today's episode is a conversation between hosts Ziad Hassan and Habib Akouri and guests Michael Karamardian and Medha Sharma, previous Co-Presidents of PennHealthX.

Today’s episode is a conversation between Sope Eweje, one of the VP’s of Entrepreneurship and Ventures for Penn HealthX, and our guest, Dr. Josh Makower. Josh currently leads medical device investment as a general partner at NEA, one of the world’s largest and most active venture capital firms. Josh is also the Founder and Executive Chairman of ExploraMed, a medical device incubator that has creat...

Today’s episode is a conversation with one of my colleagues, Sandy Varatharajah. Sandy is a 2nd year MBA student and a member of the Healthcare Management program at Wharton. In the episode, we discuss what drew her to the healthcare space, her previous experiences, including interning at the white house, consulting, and working for CityBlock. We also discussed the decision to get an MBA, and some...

Today’s episode is a conversation I had with Dr. Arpan Parikh. Dr. Parikh was a colleague of mine at Wharton last year. He has since graduated and moved on to a role with CareMore Health. Dr. Parikh got his MD at Ohio State, and completed his residency in Psychiatry at Mt. Sinai in New York City. In the episode, we discuss what drew him to medicine and psychiatry, memories he had as a student, cli...

Today’s episode is a conversation I had with Dr. Adam Lessler, who is currently a Principal at Evidity Health Capital in New York City. He is a licensed physician with residency training in emergency medicine and over a decade of healthcare industry experience counseling Boards and senior leadership teams. Prior to joining Evidity, Adam was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company, where he ser...

Today’s episode is one I co-hosted with Mariam Alausa, who is the current co-VP of Curriculum for Penn HealthX. Our guest was Kwaku Owusu, who is the founder and CEO of DrugViu and TrialViu. Drugviu aggregates patient-related outcomes for people of color who take specific pharmaceutical drugs. TrialViu is a companion site that then educates those same patients about clinical trials, and then match...

Today’s episode is with Erik Maltais, who is the founder and CEO of IMMERTEC, which is a company using virtual reality tools to bring remote surgeons and trainees into the OR to teach them skills and how to use certain medical devices. He has a really cool background in both the business and medical worlds, and it was a pleasure to speak with him to learn about his journey, the process of founding...

This episode is a conversation I had with one of my friends and Wharton colleagues, Catherine Bryt. Catherine is the CEO and founder of Sibi Health. Put simply, Sibi Health is a marketplace for healthcare services, now serving the Philadelphia area. You can compare local doctors and pre-set service prices for both in-person and video visits, select, book, and pay in advance using a credit card or...

In this episode, back by popular demand, is Dr. David Nash. Dr. Nash was a guest back in March for episode #45 when we spoke about how population health transforming the healthcare system. We decided to have him back to continue the conversation and delve deeper into how clinicians are actually utilizing data being collected, and what the future holds. Dr. Nash is the Founding Dean of the Jefferso...

In this episode, I interview Zack Gray, who is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ophelia, which seeks to address the opioid epidemic by making medication-assisted treatment (MAT) private, convenient, and affordable for patients. Zack is a graduate of Columbia where he studied Astrophysics and Philosophy. After being in the working world for a few years, he pursued an MBA at Wharton. During this time, he w...

This episode is an interview with Dr. Jane Zhu. Dr. Zhu is an assistant professor of medicine at OHSU, and a practicing primary care provider. She studied global health at Duke, received both an MD and an MPP from Harvard, completed her internal medicine residency at USCF, and was a National Clinician Scholar at Penn. She remains a senior fellow for the Leonard Davis Institute at Penn, which is ho...

In light of the recent events across the country, I wanted to read a statement that Penn HealthX sent out to our community and the Perelman School of Medicine. Along with this, we decided to move up an episode in our release schedule with Michellene Davis. Michelle is a healthcare leader who has dedicated her entire career to addressing the Social Determinants of Health, especially as they impact...