Vital Signs with Jacob Effron and Nikhil Krishnan

Jacob and Nikhil sit down with Virgílio (“V”) Bento, Founder and CEO of Sword Health, the $3 billion company focused on improving pain management. They discuss Sword’s new AI care model, the evolution and key decisions behind Sword’s success, customer acquisition, and more.   (0:00) intro (1:15) Sword’s journey (9:13) advice on selling to employers (16:45) getting employees to use the product (18:...

Jacob and Nikhil sit down with Dr. Atul Butte, a professor at UCSF, Chief Data Scientist of the UC Health System, and a co-founder of numerous healthcare startups. They discuss Dr. Butte’s takes on healthcare AI opportunities, challenges, hype, and more.   (0:00) intro (0:31) AI hype through the years (5:44) when LLMs don’t work (8:42) when LLMs surpass humans (11:07) AI adoption timeline (13:22)...

Jacob and Nikhil sit down with Dr. David Shulkin, the former Secretary of Veterans Affairs who has also held roles as CMO of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, CEO of Beth Israel Medical Center, and Vice Dean of the Drexel University College of Medicine. They discuss David’s experiences innovating within the VA, meeting the health needs of a population, and more.   (0:00) intro (0:34) f...

Jacob and Nikhil sit down with Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve, Co-Founder and CEO of Alan. Alan is a multi-billion dollar French health insurance company that has expanded to become an all-in-one health platform for its consumers. They discuss Alan’s product strategy and business model, building AI for healthcare companies, what healthcare looks like in Europe, and more.   (0:00) intro (0:47) French...

Jacob and Nikhil sit down with Malay Gandhi, Head of Strategy & Corporate Development at Benchling. Malay previously served as CEO of Rock Health and SVP of Business Operations at Evidation Health, and his seminal pieces helped shape early digital health thinking. They discuss some of Malay’s early pieces, the future of life sciences & real-world evidence, building & scaling software at Benchling,...

Jacob and Nikhil sit down with Will Stokes, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer of Strive Health, a pioneer in value-based care that partners with payers and providers to care for patients with chronic kidney disease. They discuss the nuances of risk-based contracting, value-based models for specialists, selling to both payers and providers, and more.   (0:00) intro (0:39) when do risk-based model...

Jacob sits down with Dr. Amy Abernethy, whose health tech career spans from clinician and researcher to CMO at Flatiron Health to Principal Deputy Commissioner and Chief Innovation Officer at the FDA to CMO and President of Product Development at Verily to co-founder of her own non-profit to accelerate evidence generation. They discuss the current and future states of real-world evidence, how clin...

Oscar Health is a $4B public healthcare company, providing healthcare insurance to nearly 1 million members. Oscar is at the forefront of AI adoption, continuously developing new AI use cases in healthcare. On this week’s episode, we sat down with Oscar Health Co-Founder, former CEO, and now President of Technology Mario Schlosser to talk about where AI will have the biggest impact in healthcare,...

Jacob and Nikhil sit down with Sarah London, CEO of Centene Corporation, the largest managed Medicaid organization in the country, serving 15 million Medicaid members. They discuss Medicaid partnerships and redeterminations, SDoH innovation and outcomes, and payers vertically expanding their ownership.   (0:00) intro (0:39) Centene’s footprint today (1:37) working with startups (6:24) Centene’s pr...

Jacob sits down with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel again to discuss the future of health policy and care delivery, hyped innovations in healthcare, market trends among payers and providers, and more.    (0:00) intro (0:57) generative AI (4:08) the ethics of NOT using AI (7:04) ML-based risk adjustment (11:46) why didn’t hospitals become payers? (19:37) what does the future of hospitals look like? (26:15) ca...

Jacob and Nikhil sit down with Toyin Ajayi, Co-Founder and CEO of Cityblock Health, an SDoH-focused provider of primary care, behavioral health, and chronic disease management for Medicaid and dual eligible patients. They discuss innovating in Medicaid, engaging patients with digital solutions, building sustainable companies, and more.   (0:00) intro (0:50) the state of Medicaid innovation today (...

Jacob and Nikhil sit down with Marta Bralic Kerns, Founder and CEO of Pomelo Care, a multispecialty virtual medical practice that cares for mothers and babies from preconception to one year postpartum. They discuss payer contracting and Medicaid, career advice for those joining startups, why maternity care is such a pressing issue in the US, and more.   (0:00) intro (0:47) maternity outcomes in th...

Jacob and Nikhil speak with Farzad Mostashari, Founder and CEO of Aledade, which supports independent primary care practices to succeed in value-based care. Farzad talks about the current evidence of success in VBC, why VBC is still underhyped, barriers for Medicaid models, and more.   (0:00) intro (0:40) why we don’t see more doctors starting their own practices (8:32) what actually works in valu...

Jacob and Nikhil speak with Heather Fernandez, CEO and Co-Founder of Solv, a company that focuses on getting people access to high-quality, last-minute care. Heather discusses the future of urgent care, operating a digital health company during Covid, crafting a strong go-to-market strategy, the role of private equity in urgent care, and more.   (0:00) intro (3:07) what is Solv? (10:50) why is sch...

Jacob and Nikhil sit down with Mark Cuban to discuss his pharmaceutical startup, The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company. They discuss why Mark entered the healthcare industry, competing on price, staying curious, and the future of AI.   (0:00) intro  (1:05) Mark’s journey into healthcare  (3:57) how the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company works  (7:51) B2B angle and disrupting PBMs (12:51) getting in...

Jacob sits down with Marley Medical CEO Chris Hogg to discuss how he and his team select markets, think about go-to-market and utilize AI. Chris also reflects on his learnings from Propeller and more.   0:00 intro 1:08 digital health over the last decade 3:01 100Plus 5:45 Propeller and fitting into patients’ daily lives 12:37 is the B2B2C model flawed? 17:01 Marley Medical 19:32 selecting markets...

Jacob and Nikhil sit down with Sean Duffy, the CEO of health tech unicorn Omada Health, to discuss how Omada is using Large Language Models and incorporating GLP-1s into its care. They also hit on how Omada has thought and evolved its employer pricing.   0:00 intro 0:43 starting Omada Health 5:14 how Omada differs from Sean’s original vision 8:58 evolving employer pricing 16:31 how the care model...

Jacob sits down with PathAI Ceo Dr. Andy Beck to discuss the state of AI adoption in diagnosis, why Path acquired their own lab, pathologists' jobs in the future and nailing GTM to reach a ~$1B valuation.    00:00 intro  01:01 pathology and AI  13:30 nailing go-to-market strategy  19:47 how pathology labs can go digital  25:36 regulatory frameworks and roadblocks  33:05 do improvements in foundati...

Jacob and Nikhil sit down with Dr. Austin Chiang, an interventional GI doc and Chief Medical Officer of Medtronic’s GI business who also has >500K TikTok Followers. We discuss how social media companies deal with public health issues, how doctors can use social media, lessons from being a “physician influencer,” the consumerization of GLP-1s and more.   0:00 intro 1:02 how Austin got into medicine...

Jacob and Nikhil sit down with Dotmatics CEO Thomas Swalla to discuss R&D software, differences in software requirements across biotechs, growing through 11 acquisitions and expanding beyond life sciences.    0:00 intro 0:36 getting into healthcare 5:20 what R&D looks like today 8:03 what does Dotmatics do? 13:06 differences in software requirements across biotechs 20:15 bundling vs. “best-of-bree...

Jacob sits down with Insitro CEO Daphne Koller to discuss founding Coursera, where and how ML can drive the most impact in drug development, and if foundation models can transform core drug discovery work and edtech.   00:00 intro 00:59 Daphne’s journey 09:02 AI and biology discovery 10:42 insitro vs. traditional pharma 19:47 phenotyping patients 25:44 early mistakes 29:34 the future of data 35:16...

00:00 intro 01:08 James’ background 04:39 regulation of AI medical devices 14:43 impact of foundation models on healthcare 19:41 the future of cancer detection 23:47 real-world control arms 35:18 AI drift 37:42 over-hyped/under-hyped 40:03 most surprising AI interaction 

Jacob and Nikhil sit down with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and discuss his reflections on his “Why I want to Die at 75” piece, how publishing/financial incentives harm research, doctors' increasing social isolation and his love of chocolate-making.

Jacob sits down with HumanFirst CEO Andy Coravos and Orchestra CEO Ashoka Rajendra to discuss at home data collection in trials, Andy being an EIR at the FDA, why Benchling has been so successful and more.

Andy Slavitt, former Optum EVP, head of CMS, COVID advisor and healthcare.gov saver joins Nikhil and Jacob to discuss public/private sector collaboration, Optum’s evolution, and his lessons on communication from COVID. Andy also shared his career journey, what he would do if he was running United today and how the private sector can work better with the public sector.