The Heart of Healthcare | A Digital Health Podcast
🏆 #1 podcast in the Top 100 Health Tech All-time charts Join us every Monday for conversations with the biggest names in digital health. Hosted by digital health veterans Halle Tecco, Michael Esquivel, and Steve Kraus. Learn more and submit your ideas for the show at the Heart of Healthcare website.
Episodes
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 frauds in Silicon Valley hist...
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 clinical decision support too...
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, about UpToDate Expert AI, a ne...
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 complex service industry i...
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 thinks translate to startup su...
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
📈 The GLP-1 gold rush: Remedy’s ...
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, alongside Investor Matt Bettonville....
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 hearing startup pitches, adv...
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 widely used health-tracking...
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. From “supernov...
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 despite shaky stock performan...
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 benefits simpler, more transparen...
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-gen tools like ambient AI t...
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 enrollees. In this conversation, we...
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 finally cracking the code on ...
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 could mean for coverage and chur...
Fresh off a $243 million fundraise from Oak HC/FT and A16Z, Ambience Healthcare is on a mission to kill medical billing — and build “Iron Man suits for doctors.”
Today we sit down with co-founder and CEO Mike Ng to talk about how Ambience is tackling one of healthcare’s most painful problems: the administrative burden that eats up 73% of a clinician’s day.
We cover:
🏥 How Ambience tackles both clinical documentat...
Dexcom generates more than $4 billion in annual revenue and has a market cap north of $30 billion, making it one of the biggest digital health companies in the world. And it all started with a better way to measure blood sugar.
In this episode, Halle is joined by Kevin Sayer, CEO of Dexcom, the company that pioneered continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). Under Kevin’s leadership, Dexcom scaled from $40 million to $4 billion ...
More than a thousand AI medical devices have FDA clearance, yet fewer than two percent of radiologists actually use them.
In this episode, Steve sits down with Dr. Brian Anderson—CEO and co‑founder of the Coalition for Health AI—to unpack why trust, transparency, and regulation could make or break the next wave of AI‑powered medicine.
We cover:
🤖 Why only 2% of radiologists use AI tools despite 1,000+ FDA‑cleared devices
🔍 W...
When Andrew Lacy launched Prenuvo, the medical establishment largely dismissed it as fringe. Now, some of those same skeptics are collaborating with him on research.
In this episode, Halle and Michael sit down with Andrew, founder and CEO of Prenuvo, to unpack what it takes to build trust in an unconventional idea. He opens up about how a moment of personal reckoning led him to pivot from tech to healthcare—and why he belie...
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