Pear Healthcare Playbook: Recent Episodes
Pear VC
We share stories from trailblazing entrepreneurs on how to build a digital health business from 0 to 1.
Today, we're so excited to get to know Web Sun, President and Co-Founder of Komodo Health. Komodo Health leverages data-driven insights to enhance patient care and alleviate disease burdens. Their platform analyzes de-identified real-world data from a wide range of sources to offer detailed patient-level insights around treatment, diagnosis, costs, and outcomes for millions of patients across the U.S. Web oversees operations including business development, sales and marketing, and people.
Prior to founding Komodo Health, Web was a managing director at Zephyr Health, a leading life sciences data and insights solution provider, running all non-Engineering functions. He spent nearly eight years as vice president at Campbell Alliance (now Syneos Health) where he advised enterprise life sciences companies across corporate development, brand management and marketing, commercial effectiveness and medical affairs initiatives.
Web also served as an Executive Advisor to Reify Health, Heads Up Health and other healthcare/healthtech startups focused on Big Data, SaaS, Healthcare IT, and Predictive Analytics to improve patient outcomes.
In this episode, we explore Komodo Health's origins, the creation of their MVP and key products, their transformative impact on healthcare, their future with AI, and Web's unique insights for founders navigating the data science and healthcare landscape.
Welcome back to the Pear Healthcare Playbook! Every week, we’ll be getting to know trailblazing healthcare leaders and diving into building a digital health business from 0 to 1.
Today, we're thrilled to introduce Ron Vianu, the CEO and visionary behind Covera Health. Covera Health is a pioneering AI-enabled diagnostic technology company, specializing in radiology performance measurement and its consequential impact on healthcare. With a career spanning over three decades, Ron has been a driving force at the intersection of healthcare, technology, and insurance.
Ron's entrepreneurial journey began over 30 years ago, founding his first health tech company while a senior at NYU. His first deep exposure to the field of Radiology was with Spreemo, a company he founded with his co-founder, an orthopedic surgeon, in 2010. Spreemo was a referral management platform in the occupational medicine space. Spreemo grew to over 200 employees across offices in New York City and Dallas and received significant investment from venture and PE investors.
In this episode, we talk about Ron’s work with Spreemo, how he started Covera Health, the partnership with Walmart, his thoughts on the future of AI in radiology, and advice he has for founders.
Founded in 2020, Pearl Health was incubated by AlleyCorp and has raised a total of $95M in funding from 8 investors, led by Andreesen Horowitz and Viking Global Investors. Pearl now has over 100 employees and closed a $75M Series B in January of 2023.
Pearl Health is a provider enablement and value-based care technology company that helps primary care providers and healthcare organizations succeed in value-based care, starting with ACO REACH and, soon, MSSP and Medicare Advantage.. Pearl does this by helping PCPs and their staff focus attention on high-risk patients and conditions, enabling practices with insights to programs deliver high quality, holistic care to patients at the right time. In 2024, Pearl is partnering with about 1,800 primary care providers, who collectively serve more than 80,000 patients, across the US in 43 states and Washington, D.C.
With over 20 years of experience in healthcare, Jennifer started her career at Triage Consulting Group. She then served as a consultant at Deloitte for 5 years and moved on to Takeda Oncology where she was an Associate Director in market access. She then spent six years at athenahealth where she served in a series of roles in product management, ultimately concluding as an Executive Director for product management.
After Athena, Jennifer moved onto a VP / Head of Product role at Hint Health and finally became the Chief Product Officer at Pearl Health in 2021. Jennifer holds a BA from University of California, Berkeley and an MHA from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In this episode, we learn how Pearl Health is trying to improve primary care provider workflows in value-based care, how Jennifer thinks about product management, and where Pearl Health is going next, with their partnerships with retail pharmacies.
This week, we’re super excited to chat with Dr. Matt Lungren, Chief Data Science Officer for Microsoft Health & Life Sciences.
At Microsoft, Dr. Lungren focuses on translating cutting-edge technology, including general AI and cloud services, into innovative healthcare applications. As a physician and clinical machine learning researcher, he maintains a part-time clinical practice at UCSF while also continuing his research and teaching roles as adjunct professor at Stanford.
Prior to his role at Microsoft, Dr. Lungren was a clinical interventional radiologist and research faculty at Stanford Medical School where he led the Stanford Center for artificial intelligence and medicine and imaging. His scientific work has led to more than 150 publications including work on multimodal data fusion models for healthcare applications. On top of all of that, Dr. Lungren is also a top-rated instructor on Coursera with his AI and Healthcare course designed to help learners with non-technical backgrounds.
In this episode, we talk about Matt’s clinical, academic, and private sector experiences, how technology within the radiology field has developed throughout time, and exciting new Microsoft HLS Research projects and the impact of AI research on healthcare.
Welcome back to the Pear Healthcare Playbook! Every week, we’ll be getting to know trailblazing healthcare leaders and dive into building a digital health business from 0 to 1.
Today, we're so excited to get to know Wei-Li Shao, President of Omada, a virtual care program that blends human experiences technology and behavior science to help people with chronic conditions achieve their healthy goals. With over 25 years of global healthcare experience, Wei-Li has worked in digital care, biopharmaceuticals, imaging, and diagnostics spanning many therapeutic areas. Before joining Omada, Wei-Li held prominent executive roles at Eli Lilly and Company in the USA, China, Taiwan, and New Zealand. His educational background includes dual degrees in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Wisconsin Madison, complemented by an MBA in marketing from the Kellogg School of Business.
In this episode, we discuss Omada Health's core operations, discuss the optimal timing for startups to bring in C-suite executives, explore Omada's journey to serving 1 million members, examine its pioneering work in the GLP-1 (Glucagon-Like Peptide-1) space, and uncover how Omada leverages AI to enhance its services.
This week, we’re super excited to chat with Brian Anderson, co-founder of CHAI, Coalition for Health AI, and Chief Digital Health Physician at MITRE.
CHAI is a community of academic health systems, organizations, and expert practitioners of artificial intelligence and data science. Brian leads research and development efforts across major strategic initiatives in digital health, partnering with the US government and private sector companies.
Prior to joining MITRE, Anderson led the Informatics and Network Medicine Division at athenahealth, where he launched a new model of clinical decision support leveraging artificial intelligence. He has also served on several national health information technology committees in partnership with the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC). On top of all that, Brian is also a Harvard Medical School Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics and senior advisor for ARPA-H in Clinical Trial Innovation. Anderson completed his clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital and completed his B.A. and M.D. degrees at Harvard College and Harvard Medical School.
In this episode, we talk about Brian’s career journey from clinical practice to digital health, CHAI’s efforts to establish AI process standards for healthcare, the concept of a federated network of assurance labs, and advice for the health AI innovation community.
Today we're thrilled to get to know Robin Shah! Robin is the founder and CEO of Thyme Care, a groundbreaking oncology management platform. Thyme Care is a value-based cancer care enabler, collaborating with payers and providers to transform the experience and outcomes for individuals with cancer. Thyme Care's approach combines human guidance with data and analytics to guide patients through their cancer journey. The company partners with health plans and risk-bearing providers to assume accountability for enhanced care quality, improved health outcomes, and reduced total cost of care.
Robin's journey in transforming cancer care began at Flatiron Health, a leading healthcare technology company led by two remarkable founders Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg. There, he served as Vice President of Provider Marketing and Strategy, focusing on developing successful go-to-market strategies for both patients and healthcare providers. His passion for building a stronger future for community oncology led him to OneOncology, where he played a crucial role as a founding member. At OneOncology, Robin served as the Chief Development and Marketing Officer, overseeing provider development, marketing strategy, technology integration, and analytics, setting the stage for his work at Thyme Care.
In this episode, we discuss Robin's journey into the field of oncology, the inception of Thyme Care, the significance of care navigation in cancer, Thyme Care's strategic approach and achievements, as well as valuable advice for entrepreneurs, including guidance on choosing the right investment partners.
Today, we’re excited to get to know Ellen Dasilva and Matthew Woo, Co-Founders at Summer Health, the company bringing real-time pediatric care to your phone.
Summer Health is a pediatric tele-health company focused on radically simplifying access in pediatrics. With Summer Health, you can text a pediatrician (just as you might a friend) for any concern you have about a child, whether urgent or innocuous. Founded in 2022, Summer Health has raised a total of $7.5M in seed funding co-led by Sequoia Capital and Lux Capital. The round also included participants such as Box Group, Chelsea Clinton’s Metrodora Ventures, and many others.
Ellen began her career in investment banking at Barclays Capital before moving into tech at X (formerly known as Twitter). After graduating from business school, she joined as the 8th employee of the consumer telemedicine business hims&hers. Matthew started his career in consulting at Simon-Kucher & Partners. He then spent 9+ years in tech where he held various product roles at Meetup, Yo, Intercom, UJET and Meta/Whatsapp.
Ellen holds a BA from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Matthew holds a BA in Business from Ivey Business School at Western University.
In this episode, Ellen and Matthew chat with us about building a delightful consumer experience in healthcare, their co-founding journey, and developing a stellar team.
Welcome back to the Pear Healthcare Playbook! Every week, we’ll be getting to know trailblazing healthcare leaders and dive into building a digital health business from 0 to 1.
Today, we're excited to get to know Christopher Molaro. Chris is a West Point graduate who served in the U.S. Army for five years, including a tour in Iraq as a platoon leader. Coming back home, he experienced firsthand the gaps in the behavioral health system and how veterans and civilians alike face too many barriers when it comes to receiving appropriate, timely care.
While pursuing his MBA at Wharton, Chris met his future co-founder Adam Pardes, and the two agreed–even the most engaging digital mental health apps in the world wouldn’t truly change the problem until the care providers were a part of the solution in a meaningful way. And so they created NeuroFlow.
In this episode, Chris and I discuss his journey from a military background to enrolling in Wharton's MBA program. We dive into the inception of NeuroFlow, its go-to-market strategy, partnerships, fundraising insights, the future of NeuroFlow, and the valuable advice he has for aspiring founders.
Today, we're excited to get to know Tina Beilinson Keshani. She's the co-founder and CEO of Seven Starling, a digital clinic making high quality mental health care more accessible for expecting and new mothers. Before Seven Starling, Tina spent six years at Warby Parker in strategy and helped them launch their first optometric telemedicine service in 2015. She worked alongside Warby Parker CEOs, Neil and Dave, learning firsthand how to build and scale a company that also does good in the world. Her experience lies not only in scaling, high growth startups, but also building patient centric digital care experiences.
In this episode, we talked about Tina’s journey towards entrepreneurship, her time with Warby Parker, how she and her co-founders built Seven Starling, the success of her maternal mental healthcare company, and advice she has for founders.
Today, we’re excited to get to know Bobby Guelich, Co-Founder and CEO at Elion, the Glassdoor for Healthcare Tech.
Founded in 2022, Elion has raised $3.3 million in seed funding from NEA, Max Ventures, 8VC, AlleyCorp, Charge Ventures and Floating Point.
Bobby has spent decades making build versus buy decisions at various companies and now is dedicated to the problem of improving that experience in healthcare. Bobby began his career in investment research at Bridgewater Associates and later worked as a VP of Customer Care Strategy and Head of Sales at Oscar Insurance. After that, he spent three years at Formation Bio (formerly TrialSpark), a technology company that specializes in clinical trial management, eventually transitioning into an Advisory Role. In May 2022, he founded Elion.
Bobby earned an AB in Economics and Finance from Princeton and briefly attended Stanford Graduate School of Business before he pursued an opportunity at Oscar Insurance.
In this episode, we learn about the Elion marketplace and reviews platform, how Bobby advises founders on building versus buying and coming up with a taxonomy for the health tech software stack.
Today, we're excited to get to know Aaron Neiderhiser and Coco Zuloaga. Aaron and Coco are the CEO and CTO of Tuva Health, a healthcare data analytics company simplifying claims and EMR based analytics to supercharge and standardize data-driven innovation.
Founded in 2021, Tuva has raised about $4m from YC, Virtue, BoxGroup, and some angel investors.
Aaron and Coco are experts at using data science and data analytics to help providers understand how to coordinate care and reduce unnecessary healthcare costs. Prior to Tuva, Aaron served as the Senior VP of Technology at Health Catalyst, a top company providing data and analytics technology to healthcare groups, and worked as a statistical analyst at the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing. During his time there, he met Coco Zuloaga, who would later become his co-founder and CTO. Coco is an experienced data scientist and has held various roles such as senior director of data science at Big Squid Inc and VP of Data Science at Strive Health.
Aaron earned a B.A. in Economics from Coe College and a M.A. in Economics from the University of Colorado Denver. Coco completed a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering and Physics from Technologico de Monterrey, an M.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, and a Ph.D. from Rice University.
In this episode, we learn how Aaron and Coco are trying to democratize and standardize healthcare analytics, speculate on the costs of the lack of standardization in healthcare, and learn about how open-source projects can fix this.
Today, we're excited to get to know Yubin Park, PhD. Yubin is the Chief Data and Analytics Officer at ApolloMed, a leading physician-centric, technology-powered, risk-bearing healthcare company. Yubin leads Apollo’s data team in building data analytics tools to improve the efficacy of value-based care delivery.
Founded in 1992, ApolloMed (NASDAQ:AMEH) is a risk-bearing healthcare company of over 10k providers, using next-generation analytics technology to deliver high-quality value-based care to more than 1.3 million members.
Yubin has decades of experience applying machine learning and data mining techniques to help providers understand how to coordinate care and reduce unnecessary healthcare costs. Prior to ApolloMed, Yubin served as Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Orma Health which was acquired by Apollo Medical Holdings. Prior, he was the CEO/CTO and Co-Founder of Accordion Health, a data-driven platform for value-based care (acquired by Evolent Health). He now serves as the Chief Data and Analytics Officer at ApolloMed.
Yubin is an Adjunct Professor at Emory University teaching a graduate level course in Machine Learning. He holds advanced degrees in Machine Learning and Data Mining from UT Austin, and a bachelor's in Electrical Engineering from KAIST. He regularly publishes research and analytics on LinkedIn, often breaking down complex healthcare papers from JAMA and NEJM to make them easier to understand for less technical audiences.
In this episode, we cover Yubin’s founder journey pivoting into value-based care and building/selling his companies, approach to leadership, how ApolloMed differentiates itself in providing value-based care, and advice for technical founders.
Today, we’re excited to speak with Arvind Rajan, Co-founder and CEO/Executive Chairman of Cricket Health.
Arvind led Cricket Health which is a technology-enabled specialty care provider for patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end-stage renal disease (ESRD). In August 2022, Cricket Health merged with Interwell and Fresenius Health Partners to form the new Interwell Health, a leader in value-based kidney care.
Before co-founding Cricket Health, Arvind served as Managing Director and Vice President of New Markets at LinkedIn, where he was responsible for the company’s growth and operations in Asia Pacific and Japan.
Arvind has spent most of his career building companies across a wide range of industries. Although the industries have been different, every one of these companies was trying to create transformative change that would have a positive impact on the world.
In this insightful discussion, Arvind opens up about his career path, the challenges and successes in building Cricket Health from scratch, practical advice for fundraising, and valuable insights for aspiring startup founders such as strategies and tips for conducting productive board meetings.
Today, we're excited to get to know Dr. Michael Howell. He's the Chief Clinical Officer at Google where he leads the team of clinical experts providing guidance for Google Health products, research and services. He has dedicated his career to improving the quality, safety and science of how care is delivered and helping people get the best information across their health journey. He previously served as the Chief Quality Officer at the University of Chicago and was an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. He's published more than 100 research articles, editorials, and book chapters and is a nationally recognized expert on patient safety and quality.
In this episode, we talked about why Google got into healthcare, Google’s 3Cs for health, how to create a clinical team within a tech company, the implications of artificial intelligence, and advice for founders in the AI/LLM space.
We're excited to get to know Dr. Patrick Carroll, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Hims & Hers, an American telehealth company that provides access to prescription and nonprescription solutions online and through a variety of retailers nationwide (and in the UK)! Dr. Carroll is a physician and executive who leads clinical quality and the expansion of Hims & Hers into all 50 states. Previously, Dr. Carroll served as the Group Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Walgreens, overseeing retail clinic business units, as well as clinical programs and health system alliances. He is also the former CMO and VP at Integrated Care Partners at Hartford HealthCare.
In this episode, we dive into Dr. Carroll’s experience in Primary Care, his work with Walgreens and the retail model of healthcare, Hims & Hers' focus on the consumer and why it has been successful, along with challenges in the DTC space for healthcare.
Today, we’re excited to get to know Dr. Karen Murphy, EVP, Chief Innovation Officer and founding director of the Steele Institute for Health Innovation of Geisinger. Karen has worked to improve and transform healthcare delivery throughout her career in both the public and private sectors. Before joining Geisinger, she served as Pennsylvania’s secretary of health addressing the most significant health issues facing the state, including the opioid epidemic. Prior to her role as secretary, Dr. Murphy served as director of the State Innovation Models Initiative at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services leading a $990 million CMS investment designed to accelerate health care innovation across the US. She previously served as president and CEO of the Moses Taylor Health Care System, and as founder and CEO of Physicians Health Alliance. Karen has a PhD, MBA and RN degree!
Founded in 1995, Geisinger is an integrated healthcare system that includes 13 hospital campuses, two research centers, the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, and a health plan that serves approximately 600,000 members. Geisinger’s more than 30,000 employees, 2,500 providers, nearly 500 residents and fellows, and 360 medical students serve and care for the three million residents in Pennsylvania.
In this episode, Karen shares her wealth of experiences from RN to CEO of a health system, Geisinger’s exciting merger with Kaiser to form Risante Health, and key characteristics of a successful partnership between system and startup, her approach on working with startups as an innovative health system.
This week, we’re super excited to get to know Frank Cheung, co founder and CEO of Accorded, an actuarial intelligence company for value-based contracting. Frank is a health actuary with over 18 years of experience. Prior to starting Accorded, Frank led the Analytics function at Collective Health. Prior to Collective Health, he was at Deloitte Consulting working with institutional payers and providers on value-based care and alternative payment models. And prior to Deloitte, Frank was also at Blue Shield of California. Frank is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries.
Founded in 2019, Accorded is an actuarial intelligence company with a mission to build a frictionless, sustainable value-based contracting ecosystem. To date, value-based care contracting incurs large operational costs in the form of actuarial resources, consultants, and time. The Accorded Platform simplifies and scales value-based contracting with tools to empower companies at any stage of their value-based care journey to forecast, contract around, and validate the financial value of care.
In this episode, Frank discusses the incentives in value-based care, how to pitch to investors unfamiliar with the healthcare world, and his pathway to fixing the frustrations he experienced in 15 years of his career in healthcare.
Today, we’re excited to get to know Vivek, AI researcher at Google and one of the lead researchers for Med-PaLM2, and Viswesh, CTO and Founder of Valar Labs!
Vivek is a Research Scientist at Google Health AI advancing biomedical AI to help scale world class healthcare to everyone. Vivek is particularly interested in building large language models and multimodal foundation models for biomedical applications and leads the Google Brain moonshot behind Med-PaLM, Google's flagship medical large language model. Med-PaLM has been featured in publications such as The Scientific American and Forbes. Vivek graduated with his masters from UT Austin in Computer Science and Bachelors at National Institute of Technology in India.
Viswesh is the CTO and Co-Founder of Valar Labs. Valar Labs is building clinical grade deep learning to analyze each patient's characteristics and provide clarity to oncologists during decision making. Their AI is built with oncologists at the center and provides interpretable and actionable insights. Prior to founding Valar Labs, Viswesh was a Research Assistant in Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) leveraging cutting edge artificial intelligence to solve healthcare problems. He was also the founder of Kanna, a patented and clinically-validated method to detect Amblyopia in children in India. Viswesh graduated with a bachelors in Computer Science at Stanford.
In this episode, Vivek and Viswesh shares how they got into Healthcare AI research and how they fell into different career paths, one leading Research at Google Health AI and the other as the CTO and Co-Founder of Valar Labs. We talk about the future of LLMs in healthcare, and also how to build defensibility in AI healthcare startups.
Today, we're thrilled to introduce you to Kevin Mahoney, an exceptional individual with an extensive background in healthcare leadership. Kevin has been an integral part of Penn Medicine since 1996, holding various leadership positions within the health system and the Perelman School of Medicine. His transformative projects have elevated Penn Medicine's clinical care, teaching, and research missions.
Before joining Penn Medicine, Kevin displayed exceptional leadership as the vice president for Johnson and Higgins, focusing on risk transfer and alternative risk management strategies. He also held administrative roles at Bryn Mawr Hospital and Episcopal Hospital.
Kevin's insights on health equity, access to quality care, and social justice have been featured in prestigious publications like the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Modern Healthcare recognized his influence by including him in its list of the 100 most influential people in healthcare in 2022.
In this episode we talk about Kevin’s journey to healthcare leadership, the increasing costs of care, how founders can partner with Penn Medicine, and insights on the consolidation in healthcare.
Today, we're excited to get to know Dr. Andrew Schutzbank. Andrew spent almost a decade at Iora health, where he held the esteemed positions of Medical Director and Senior Vice President, overseeing clinical operations and product development. He was also the Chief Product Officer at Cricket Health, an organization dedicated to value-based kidney care. He was the Corporate Development Operating Partner at SCAN and now contributes as a board member, advisor, and investor for multiple startups.
He is also a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Schutzbank completed his residency at Beth Israel and holds an MD and MPH from Tulane University, along with a BA in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania.
In this episode we talk about his journey to medicine, experience with Iora and Cricket Health, what he looks for in a healthcare pitch, tips/tricks for founders, and insights on the high burnout rate among clinicians.
Today, we're excited to get to know Dr. Marketa Wills, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Johns Hopkins Health Plans, who focuses on optimizing clinical and quality outcomes for approximately 700,000 Johns Hopkins health plan members while efficiently managing costs of care.
Marketa previously worked at several national health plans, including United Healthcare, WellCare Health Plans and Centene Corporation. She's also a McKinsey & Company alum (Cleveland Office) where she served a broad range of payer and provider clients on a variety of strategic and operational engagements. She holds an MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and an MBA in Finance and Healthcare Management from the Wharton School of Business. She also trained in adult psychiatry at Harvard's MGH/McLean Adult Psychiatry Residency Program.
In this episode we talk about Marketa’s path in medicine, what her role as Chief Medical Officer entails, how she thinks about partnerships with payors, advice she has for founders, and what she is excited about for the future of medicine.
Note: since the recording of the podcast, Johns Hopkins HealthCare has changed its name to Johns Hopkins Health Plans.
Today, we’re excited to get to know Alexandre Lebrun, CEO and Cofounder of Nabla, a personalized AI assistant for doctors. Before founding Nabla, Alex was the Head of Engineering at Facebook AI research for almost four years, and is a seasoned entrepreneur, having sold his previous companies Wit.ai, an AI platform that makes it easy to build apps that understand natural human language, to Facebook in 2015 and VirtuOz, a customer service chatbot, to Nuance Communications in 2012.
In this episode, Alexandre shares his experiences after 22 years and founding 3 startups, why proprietary data is more important than ever for defensibility, tactics on GTM and customer focus specific to healthcare buyers, and opportunities and safety for generative AI in healthcare.
Founded in 2014, Aledade works with over 11,000 physicians across 40 States accounting for 1.7 million patients under management in Medicare, Medicare Advantage, commercial and Medicaid contracts.
Farzad Mostashari has spent his career in health care policy and Health Information Technology.
Farzad previously served as the National Coordinator for Health IT in the Department of Health and Human Services. Prior to his work at the Office of the National Coordinator, he founded the NYC Primary Care Information project, which equipped physicians and underserved communities with electronic health records. He completed medical school at the Yale School of Medicine and a Master’s degree in Population Health from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
In this episode we talk about Farzad’s journey to healthcare, how he started Aledade, the importance of independent physicians in value-based care, how Aledade scaled as a profitable health tech company, and advice he has for founders.
Samir is on a mission with his team at firsthand to change the way that individuals who struggle with serious mental illness (SMI) access care and support. Severe mental illness (SMI) is defined as mental/behavioral health issues that cause functional impairment by limiting one or more major life activities (schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, etc.) firsthand helps SMI patients engage with the healthcare ecosystem by focusing on delivering real outcomes for a population that has historically been underserved, stigmatized, and deprioritized. In fact, only 64.5% of adults living with SMI received treatment last year.
firsthand was founded in 2021 and recently raised 30 million in series B funding led by Google Ventures.
In this episode, Samir talks about his path to entrepreneurship, being a serial entrepreneur, how he started firsthand, and his advice for founders in healthcare.
This week, we’re excited to get to know Sachin Jain, CEO of SCAN Group & SCAN Health Plan. Sachin Jain is charged with leading the organization’s growth, diversification, and emerging efforts to reduce healthcare disparities. Founded in 1977, SCAN Health Plan is a not-for-profit, Medicare Advantage plan that provides healthcare coverage to Medicare beneficiaries in California, Arizona, Texas and Nevada.
SCAN’s revenues top $4.3B and the organization serves 300,000 patients. Under Sachin’s leadership, SCAN has grown its revenues by more than $1B.
Previously, Dr. Jain was President and CEO of CareMore and Aspire Health. Dr. Jain is also an adjunct professor of medicine at the Stanford University. Prior to joining CareMore, Dr. Jain was global Chief Medical Information & Innovation Officer at Merck & Co. From 2009-2011, Dr. Jain worked in leadership roles at the US Department of Health and Human Services, where he was senior advisor to the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and many other leadership positions in healthcare policy.
Dr. Jain graduated from Harvard College with a BA in government and continued on to earn his MD from Harvard Medical School and MBA from Harvard Business School. He trained in medicine at the Brigham and Women's Medicine and Harvard Medical School, and continues to practice medicine.
This is a packed episode. Sachin shares his thoughts on toxic positivity in the healthcare industry, impact over virtue signaling, clinician burnout, and his predictions for the future of healthcare.
Today, we're excited to get to know Dr. Rushika Fernandopulle, previous Chief Innovation Officer of One Medical, an organization dedicated to providing human-centered, technology-powered primary care to people across every stage of life.
In an acquisition that shook the healthcare industry in September 2021, One Medical completed the purchase of Iora Health - a primary care organization that prioritizes human-centered, value-based care. The deal, which amounted to a staggering $1.4 billion, was a testament to Iora Health's success in delivering high-quality care at lower costs, while improving patient satisfaction.
The visionary behind Iora is none other than Dr. Rushika Fernandopulle, who spent decades improving the quality of healthcare delivered to patients. He was the Executive Director of the Harvard Interfaculty Program for Health Systems Improvement, and Managing Director of the Clinical Initiatives Center at the Advisory Board Company. He also serves on the staff at the Massachusetts General Hospital and on the faculty of Harvard Medical School.
In this episode, Dr. Fernandopulle talks about his path to medicine, describes how he started and grew Iora Health, the acquisition by One Medical, and the future of primary care.
Today, we’re excited to get to know Dr. Neil Patel, Chief Health Officer of Patina Health, a new model of primary care for adults 65 and over that reimagines the journey of aging through virtual and home-based care.Dr. Patel is a trailblazing healthcare leader who has been involved in innovation in the primary care space. Prior to joining Patina, Neil served on the executive leadership team of the Boston based startup, Iora Health, leading special projects across different regions in the US. He also served as the medical director at Grameen VidaSana, Harken Health, Freelancers Union, and the Atlantic City Special Care Center described in Atul Gawande’s influential 2010 “Hotspotters” article. Neil went to college at the College of New Jersey, and went to Rutgers New Jersey Medical School for his MD. He trained in family medicine at Boston University.
Patina raised 50 million of Series A venture funding in a deal led by Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures, along with F-Prime capital, Rock Springs Capital, and Viking Global Investors.
In this episode, Neil shares his journey in medicine, his work in healthcare leadership as one of the founding team members of Iora Health and Patina Health, and advice he has for founders who are trying to improve healthcare delivery.
Today, we’re excited to get to know Justin Barad, CEO and Co-Founder of Osso VR, a surgical training platform that uses virtual reality to accelerate surgical training and improve surgical outcomes.Designed for medical device companies and practicing surgeons of all skill levels, Osso uses cinema quality-VR to offer a realistic, hands-on training environment. In two recent randomized peer-reviewed studies, surgeons training with Osso VR showed anywhere from a 230% to a 306% improvement in overall surgical performance compared to traditional training. Today, Osso VR is available in more than 40 countries, partnering with leading global medical device partners including Johnson & Johnson, Stryker, Zimmer Biomet, Medtronic, Endologix, and Smith + Nephew. Osso recently raised a $66M Series C led by Oak HC/FT.
In this episode, Justin tells the story of his unlikely journey from video game developer to orthopedic surgeon to VR company founder. He also gives valuable advice about prototyping, early recruiting, and the difference between seed fundraising and Series A. Finally, Justin shares what he’s excited about for the future of virtual reality.
Today, we’re excited to get to know Sarah Jacobson, CEO and Co-Founder of FairStreet, the new startup Medicare agency that helps independent agents grow faster. Founded in 2021, Fairstreet empowers the 55 million Americans 65 and older to make confident and well-informed health insurance choices, starting with Medicare enrollment. They’re building the platform used by top independent insurance agents to help older adults navigate the complex world of Medicare.
Fairstreet most recently raised a Seed Round led by Fika Ventures along with Pear and 645 Ventures. We’re proud to be pre-seed investors in FairStreet!
FairStreet was founded by Sarah Jacobson and Tori Seidensteen after meeting at Stanford Business School. Tori was a software engineer on Facebook’s health team, growing from 0 to 50 million users in two years. Sarah was previously a product manager at Square and Stride Health, a health insurance marketplace.
In this episode, Sarah shares wise insights on user and hypothesis driven prototyping and creating fast iteration cycles, as well as founder motivation strategies such as building structure to create a sense of progress in the 0 to 1 stage.
Today, we’re excited to get to know Vijay Kedar, CEO and Co-Founder of Tomorrow Health, a technology-driven healthcare company changing the way individuals and families manage healthcare at home. Tomorrow has partnered with over 125 health insurers and provider organizations to coordinate and deliver home-based care for their members. Tomorrow Health is a fully integrated solution that matches patients with suppliers spanning 40,000+ products and services and tracks every step in delivering at home care.
Founded in 2017, Tomorrow Health most recently raised a $60M Series B led by Bond Capital along with previous investors such as Andressen Horowitz and Obvious Ventures.
Prior to founding Tomorrow Health, Vijay was the Senior Director of Care Innovation at Oscar Health and drove Oscar’s case management strategy and operations. Vijay earned his MBA at Harvard Business School and BA in Government and Economics from Harvard as well.
This week, we’re super excited to get to know Sonia Millsom, CEO of Oxeon, a trusted healthcare firm, powering change through talent, entrepreneurship and investment. She is a veteran healthcare leader who has been at the forefront of value-based healthcare, with extensive experience growing mission-driven innovative companies, as well as serving as an adviser, board member and investor.
Prior to joining Oxeon, Sonia served as the Chief Commercial Officer at Maven Clinic, which achieved the first unicorn valuation in women and family health. Before joining Maven, she was Chief Growth Officer at Boston-based startup Iora Health, where she helped strengthen the organization’s revenue and oversaw an expansion that led to its $2.1 billion acquisition by One Medical. Sonia also held leadership roles at Best Doctors, Health Dialog and UnitedHealthcare. She is also a board member for Clever Care Plan, Quilted Health and Suvida Health. She is an advisor to a number of early stage startups including, Stellar Health, QHLTH and Flourish Fund. Sonia has a MPH from Columbia University and a BA from Boston College.
In this episode, Sonia shares her experiences across the ecosystem from the payer to provider sides, and from large public companies to small startups, all the while empowering diverse leaders in the healthcare space.
Today, we’re excited to get to know Vivek Garg, CMO and SVP of Primary Care for Humana. Vivek currently leads national clinical strategy and excellence, care model development and innovation, and the clinical teams for Humana's Primary Care Organization (CenterWell Senior Primary Care and Conviva Care Center) as Chief Medical Officer (CMO), serving over 240,000 seniors across the country.
In this episode, Vivek shares his incredible journey from joining as the first medical director of One Medical and Oscar Health to serving as the CMO and CPO of Caremore to leading Humana’s Primary Care group, technology’s role in combating burnout, and tactical advice on working with larger health plans like Humana and tips on how to sell your first pilot (hint: it is not to sell your product at freemium).
Today, we’re excited to get to know Caitlin Reiche, Chief Commercial Officer at Zus Health — the first Chief Commercial Officer we’ve had on the podcast! Founded in 2020, Zus Health is a health data platform designed to accelerate healthcare data interoperability by providing easy-to-use patient data at the point of care.
At Zus, Caitlin leads the commercial organization with the goal of growing the Zus builder community and is responsible for marketing, sales, partnerships and customer success. Prior to Zus, Caitlin was the Chief Operating Officer of Buoy Health and led Product Strategy at Patient Pop and Athenahealth. She graduated with a MS in Health Policy and Management from Harvard Chan School of Public Health and a BA in Psychology from Middlebury College.
In 2021, Zus raised a $34M Series A financing led by Andreessen Horowitz and followed by F-Prime, Maverick, Rock Health, Oxeon and more.
In this episode, Caitlin shares about her various roles in health tech, building community in the health tech space, the new era of Data as a Service companies, and what it means to be a Chief Commercial Officer at a quickly-growing startup.
This week, we’re super excited to get to know Erica Jain, CEO and Founder of Healthie, infrastructure for next generation digital health organizations that offer virtual-first care. Healthie’s API-first and fully brandable suite of solutions - EMR, coaching platform, scheduling software, and patient engagement - enable healthcare builders to launch and scale best-in-class experiences for their members and quickly scale a provider network. Currently, more than 2,000 organizations use Healthie’s services and organizations that use Healthie work with more than 2 million patients on the platform.
Erica shares about Healthie’s early founding days in a business school classroom (staying focused on the prize, skipping a Brazil trip to pursue Healthie 24/7), building customer love and scaling to thousands of providers, valuing a pathway to profitability (before it was cool in 2022), and the power of collaboration with other tech players in the quickly-evolving healthcare infrastructure industry.
This week, we’re super excited to have Brandon Li, co-CEO and co-founder of Power, a platform to find promising new treatments through clinical trials. Power’s platform allows patients and providers to search every trial currently available in the U.S. It includes over 30,000 clinical trials and 100,000 researchers spanning 10,000 medical conditions.
In Aug 2022, Power announced a $7M seed round led by Footwork and CRV.
Brandon has spent a long time building and scaling consumer marketplace platforms to help people navigate traditionally opaque industries. Prior to founding Power, Brandon was the Head of Bizops at Thumbtack where he led growth strategy for the Home improvement marketplace. He landed at Thumbtack after Setter was acquired, where he was the GM of California. Before Setter, he spent time at McKinsey as an Engagement Manager focused on fast growth marketplace clients.
Brandon has a background in high growth companies—Brandon is a serial entrepreneur, starting multiple companies across logistics, hometech and even suits! Another native guest from Canada, Brandon graduated from University of Toronto in Industrial Engineering.
In this episode, we discuss how to navigate the idea maze, building from patient perspectives, and the emerging field of new pharma tech companies.
This week, we’re super excited to chat with Andrew Arruda, CEO, and Co-Founder of Flexpa, the fastest way for your digital health app to connect to new Patient Access APIs
Founded in Jan 2021, Flexpa allows its customers to support linking data sources from Medicare, individual & family, and employer group plans from Unitedhealthcare, Anthem, Humana, and more. In this episode, we learn about Andrew’s unique journey into healthcare entrepreneurship as a confluence of the pandemic, love, near-death experience and friendship, the changing landscape of healthcare data regulations, and running a solid fundraising process.
In June 2022, Flexpa announced an $8.5M seed round led by General Catalyst.
This week, we’re super excited to chat with Troy Bannister, CEO and Co-Founder of Particle Health, a user-friendly API platform shaping the new standard for healthcare data exchange. Founded in 2018, Particle Health’s comprehensive API uniquely combines data from 270 million plus patients’ medical records by aggregating and unifying healthcare records from thousands of sources. With this approach providers are able to easily obtain clinical data points without complex technology integrations, putting actionable patient health data at their fingertips.
In this episode, we learn about Particle Health’s founding story, define healthcare data access and frameworks and the regulatory tailwinds for healthcare data access in the broader healthcare system. Is healthcare ready for the blockchain? We find out here!
Particle Health raised $25M to accelerate their platform growth from Canvas Ventures. The financing brings the organization’s total capital raised to $39M.
This week, we’re super excited to have Karan Singh, COO and Co-Founder of Headspace Health, a leading provider of mental health and wellbeing solutions, touching the lives of over 100 million people in 190 countries As Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer, Karan drives clinical strategy, business development, research, and oversees daily operations for Ginger. He has worked across the healthcare ecosystem, from consulting with leading bio-pharma clients at ZS Associates to commercializing a health data analytics solution at Humedica. Karan holds his MBA from MIT Sloan and graduated with his Bachelors from UC Berkeley.
Founded in 2011, Ginger provides personalized mental health support from behavioral health coaching, therapy, psychiatry, and self-care resources, all from the privacy of a smartphone.
Last year, Headspace and Ginger merged to form Headspace Health, which is valued at $3B. Before Ginger was acquired, Ginger had raised $220M+ in funding. Now Headspace Health combines Ginger’s therapy, psychiatry and coaching offerings together with Headspace’s mindfulness and meditation services. Mindfulness by Headspace, human-to-human support by Ginger. Through their flagship Headspace brand, they have touched the lives of over 100 million people in 190 countries through mindfulness tools for managing stress, sleep, and focus. Headspace for Work and Ginger is distributed through over 3,500 enterprises today.
In this episode, we talk about what it was like founding Ginger, and establishing new business models (one of the first digital health companies that sold to employers at scale), and the incredible journey a decade later touching over 100m lives globally. Karan is extremely humble and grounded and I think we can learn a lot from his leadership style and his perspectives and philosophy on founder work-life balance.
This week, we’re super excited to chat with Kristina Saffran, CEO and Co-Founder of Equip Health, a leading virtual, evidence-based eating disorder treatment provider. Founded in 2019, Equip Health helps families recover from eating disorders at home. Equip provides virtual, evidence-based care provided by a dedicated five-person team that empowers families to help their loved one achieve lasting recovery. Kristina has dedicated her life to ensuring people have access to quality and affordable treatment. Before starting Equip, Kristina was CEO and Co-Founder of Project HEAL which she started at age 15. Project HEAL is a foundation that provides funding for eating disorder treatment grants to those without financial access and has a network of 100,000 people across 40 chapters worldwide. She is a Mental Health Advisory Board Member at Verily Life Sciences and previously worked as a research coordinator at the Stanford University of Medicine after graduating from Harvard in Psychology.
In February 2022, Equip announced that they raised a $58 Million Series B Funding Round led by The Chernin Group, joined by Tiger Global, General Catalyst, Stripes Group and more, to scale access to their treatment.
In this episode, we talk about Kristina’s experience with eating disorders, her journey through nonprofits and academia to eventually founding Equip, and how she has scaled a tech-enabled services business profitably in all 50 states.
This week, we’re super excited to have AmirAli Talasaz, co-CEO and co-founder of Guardant Health, a leading precision oncology company focused on helping conquer cancer globally.
Founded in 2011, Guardant Health is focused on helping conquer cancer through the use of its proprietary blood-based tests, vast data sets and advanced analytics. Guardant’s solutions include treatment selection, recurrence detection and early detection of cancer. The Guardant Health oncology platform leverages capabilities to drive commercial adoption, improve patient clinical outcomes and lower healthcare costs across all stages of the cancer care continuum.
Through multiple rounds of private financing, Guardant Health raised over $500 million from investors including Sequoia, Khosla, Lightspeed, OrbiMed, and Softbank, and Pear! and Guardant completed a successful IPO in October 2018.
This week, we’re super excited to have Corbin Petro, CEO and Co-Founder of Eleanor Health. In this episode, we cover how Eleanor Health utilizes a value-based care model for health plan's most vulnerable and complex populations. We dive into different levels of risk and discuss tradeoffs for a startup at different stages. Founded in 2019, Eleanor Health provides evidence-based, whole-person care specializing in addressing the unique complexities of individuals and populations with substance use disorders and mental health needs. Eleanor Health leverages proprietary technology and data-driven insights, compassionate teams, and value-based payment to deliver superior clinical and financial outcomes.
Eleanor recently announced last month that they raised a $50M Series C Round led by General Catalyst with participation from Warburg Pincus, Townhall Ventures, Northpond Ventures and Rethink Impact.
This week, we’re super excited to have Tara Viswanathan, CEO and Co-founder of Rupa Health, a healthcare company building the digital platform for the next evolution of medicine: root cause medicine.
Founded in 2020, Rupa is revolutionizing medicine by enabling access to root cause medicine, where practitioners aim to identify and solve the true underlying causes of an illness. A root cause approach looks at a person's health holistically and employs advanced comprehensive diagnostics to understand everything from genetics to diet, stress, cortisol levels, the microbiome, and more. Rupa solves the most difficult part of practicing root cause medicine: lab work.
Prior to founding Rupa, Tara was on the early team at Parsley Health working on product and operations after earning her bachelor's degree from the Wharton School and master’s in management science at Stanford University. On top of this, she's also a certified nutrition and wellness consultant! In March this year, Rupa announced a $20 million Series A round led by Bessemer with participation from First Round Capital, Lachy Groom, and more.
This week, we’re super excited to have Carolyn Witte, CEO and Co-Founder of Tia.
Founded in 2017 by Carolyn Witte and Felicity Yost, Tia is blending in-person and virtual care services. Tia’s “Whole Woman, Whole Life” care model fuses gynecology, primary care, mental health and evidence-based wellness services to treat women comprehensively — a stark shift from fragmented care for different "body parts'' or life stages. Prior to founding Tia, Carolyn was a Team Lead at Google Creative Labs, developing and growing Google’s core mobile consumer products, Search, Maps and Translate. In September 2021, Tia raised $100M in Series B Round led by Lone Pine Capital.
This week, we’re super excited to have Rachel Blank, CEO and Co-Founder at Allara. Founded in August 2020 and based in New York, Allara wants to help women better manage chronic conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS. It currently affects one in 10 women of childbearing age.
Prior to founding Allara, Rachel was the Director of Strategy at Ro, where she launched their women's health brand, Rory. Rachel earned her MBA from Harvard Business School.
This week, we’re super excited to have Priyanka Jain, CEO and Co-Founder at Evvy. Founded in 2020, Evvy is on a mission to radically reinvent how we understand and treat the female body, starting with the vaginal microbiome. Prior to Evvy, Priyanka was the Head of Product at Pymetrics for four years and earned her Bachelor’s degree at Stanford University. In July 2021, Evvy raised a $5M seed round led by General Catalyst.
Evvy was founded to serve the unmet needs of 30% of women in the US. The vaginal microbiome is one of those aforementioned signals as the cause of some of the most common conditions in women — yeast infections, recurrent UTIs, bacterial vaginosis, aerobic vaginitis, cytolytic vaginosis, etc. Not only are these conditions highly prevalent, affecting over 30% of women every single year, but these conditions are extremely debilitating to physical, emotional, and mental health and highly stigmatized. Vaginal infections have incredibly outdated diagnostics and treatments, as well as one of the highest recurrence rates in medicine
This week, we’re super excited to have Elizabeth Burstein, CEO and Co-Founder at Neura Health. Founded in 2020, Neura Health is a virtual neurology clinic with a mission to improve the access and quality of neurological care: increase convenience, improve outcomes, and lower costs. Neura Health's platform connects patients to neurologists, with built in neurology-specific symptom monitoring and condition-specific diagnostic tests. The company’s first app focus is on chronic headache and migraine. Prior to founding Neura Health, Liz was the Head of Product at Maven Clinic and Director of Product at ZocDoc.
Neura Health recently announced that they raised a $2.2M seed round with Pear VC, Norwest Venture Partners, Global Founders Capital, Index Ventures, and Next Play Ventures.
In this episode, we’re super excited to have Lucia Huang, CEO and Co-Founder at Osmind, the operating system for neuropsychiatry. Founded in 2020, Osmind provides software and data for precision mental health to help the 22M Americans with treatment-resistant mental health conditions. Prior to founding Osmind, Lucia was the Director of Operations and Finance at Verge Genomics, a next generation neuroscience drug discovery company.
In July 2021, Osmind raised a $15M Series A led by Future Ventures! We’re a proud early supporter at Pear VC as well.
In this episode, we’re excited to learn from Vik Bakhru, Chief Health Officer at Circulo Health. Circulo is building the Medicaid insurance company of the future to provide tech-enabled, world-class care to the nation’s most underserved populations. Vik is also currently a member of the clinical advisory board at Bright Health and a practicing Staff Physician at UCSF Medical Center. Prior to Circulo, Vik was the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer at SameSky Health (formerly Consejosano) for almost 4.5 years and COO of First Opinion.
In February 2021, Circulo launched out of stealth at $50M led by Drive Capital, General Catalyst, Oak HC/FT and SVB Capital.
In this episode, we’re super excited to have Connor Hailey, CEO and Co-Founder of Axle Health here with us today. Founded in 2020, Axle Health enables any healthcare organization to send health professionals to patients’ homes to administer blood draws, vaccines, injections and other physical services. We dive into Axle's founding story, the future of home health, landing their first pilot and then converting their pilots into expanded contracts as well as figuring out how to stack rank features during early stage product development.
Axle Health has raised a $3M seed round led by Pear VC in Spring of 2021.
In this episode, we’re excited to learn from Pouria Sanae, CEO and Co-Founder of ixLayer, which provides an elegant solution for integrated health systems to easily deploy and manage affordable and reliable remote lab testing solutions. In March 2021, ixLayer raised an oversubscribed $79M Series A led by General Catalyst— Pear has been a proud investor in ixLayer since the pre-seed and seed days.
In this episode, Vivien gets to know Manav Sevak, the CEO and Co-Founder at Memora Health, the intelligent platform that simplifies how patients and clinicians navigate complex care journeys.
Memora Health has developed the most comprehensive end-to-end platform for analyzing and structuring fragmented health care journeys. Memora uses artificial intelligence to digitize and automate patient communication workflows, ultimately helping organizations dramatically improve patient outcomes and operational efficiency.
In May 2021, Memora raised a $10.5M venture round led by a16z, with participation from AlleyCorp, Martin Venturesand angels such as Zach Weinberg and Nat Turner, Co-Founders of Flatiron, and Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s Thirty Five Ventures.
In this episode, Vivien interviews Tom Lee, Founder of Galileo, One Medical and Epocrates. Tom is currently the CEO and founder of Galileo, a modern medical group committed to making quality health care affordable and accessible to all.
Galileo raised a Series C round from Foresight Capital, with previous investors including Oak HC/FT, Redpoint, and DNA Capital. Prior to Galileo, Tom also founded One Medical, a national leader in tech-enabled primary care that went public in 2020 and Epocrates, a medical reference app still widely used today. On top of all this, Tom is also a board certified internist who completed training at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital.