E145 Inside a Physician-Innovator’s Mind: Dr. Josh Tamayo-Sarver on AI, ER Care & What Really Works

In this episode of The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, host Michael Stamatinos sits down with Dr. Joshua Tamayo-Sarver, ER physician, PhD in epidemiology, and VP of Innovation at Inflect Health, for a deep and refreshing conversation at the intersection of clinical care, technology, and entrepreneurial grit.

Dr. Tamayo-Sarver is not just a practicing emergency physician with a PhD in epidemiology. He’s also the Vice President of Innovation at Inflect Health, the innovation arm of Vituity, which supports over 700 hospitals across the United States. From clinical settings to startup boards, from patent filings to patient care, Josh is one of those few people who genuinely operates across every layer of healthcare, technical, clinical, operational, and strategic.

In this conversation, you’ll get a seat at the table with someone who’s not theorizing from the sidelines, but actively building and deploying solutions in high-stakes environments.

Highlights from this episode include:

* How a 16-year-old coding a billing tool ended up becoming one of healthcare’s most respected clinician-innovators

* What it means to live in two worlds, emergency medicine and long-horizon innovation, and how they inform each other

* The cautionary tale of a highly accurate cardiac prediction algorithm that failed because it didn’t fit physician workflow

* Why the secret to scalable innovation isn’t more tech, it’s smarter integration into natural clinical decision-making

* The inside story of building a new ambient documentation system that reached 75–80% adoption without onboarding

* How Josh thinks about partnering with startups, identifying "bleeding neck" problems, and deciding when to build vs. buy

* Tactical advice for frontline clinicians who want to innovate but aren’t data scientists, coders, or venture-backed founders

Josh also shares the emotional story of a patient he saved as a newborn, and encountered again 10 years later. It's a powerful reminder of why the hard work of transformation is worth doing.

If you’ve ever struggled to bridge the gap between vision and execution in healthcare, this episode offers a masterclass in how to do it with empathy, rigor, and meaningful scale.

Connect and Learn More:

Learn about Inflect Health: https://inflect.health

Learn about Vituity: https://www.vituity.com

Connect with Dr. Joshua Tamayo-Sarver on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-tamayo-sarver-md-phd

About the Show:

Hosted by Michael Stamatinos, The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show features intimate conversations with healthcare leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, and changemakers who are rewriting the rules of what's possible. Our goal is to create a platform for real, nuanced dialogue—where stories of transformation, failure, and progress can be shared for the benefit of a wider community.

If this episode sparked something for you, please consider sharing it with a clinician, founder, or executive who’s pushing for change. These conversations are meant to move beyond the echo chamber, and your support helps make that happen.

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The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

Find out more about how we are building bridges within healthcare. Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn.

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/