The Pulse by Wharton Digital Health

In this episode, I sat down with Buck Poropatich, Head of Lyft Healthcare. Lyft Healthcare launched in 2016 as part of Lyft's broader efforts to address transportation barriers in healthcare. Today, Lyft Healthcare partners with 9 of the 10 largest US health systems, non-emergency medical transportation brokers, and the top 10 payers to provide rides across the patient journey.

By providing reliable transportation through its extensive network, Lyft Healthcare helps reduce patient no-shows, enhance the member experience, and ultimately improve patient outcomes. Since he joined in 2019, Buck has helped secure key partnerships with industry leaders like ChenMed, CVS, and Kroger Health, alongside countless others. 

Buck and I discussed: 

• Lyft Healthcare’s founding story after the company discovered a hidden product-market fit in the healthcare industry.
• Creative partnerships with companies like Best Buy Health and Instacart Health that have enhanced Lyft Healthcare's services and expanded their reach in the healthcare space.
• Lyft Healthcare’s alignment with the shift towards value-based care, as transportation plays a strategic role in improving care adherence, member satisfaction, and managing total cost of care.
• Future expansion plans for Lyft Healthcare include expanding their Medicaid footprint, extending their Lyft Assisted product, and leveraging mobile app technology and data modeling to improve the member experience.

Our guest on this episode is Nawal Roy. Nawal Roy is the founder and CEO of Holmusk, a company that specializes in real-world evidence, AI-powered analytics, and digital solutions to solve the evidence gaps problem in mental health.

Last year, Holmusk raised a series B funding round of $45M, led by Veradigm, a leading provider of healthcare data and technology solutions. Powered by this investment, Holmusk’s NeuroBlu database recently reached a pivotal milestone of 4 million patient lives, becoming the largest NLP-enriched, de-identified real-world data platform designed for behavioral health and mental health research. 

Nawal and I discussed:

• Holmusk’s founding story, how Nawal connected his background and skill sets in finance to healthcare, and where he saw opportunities in building a “Bloomberg Terminal” for behavioral health 

• Holmusk’s flagship platform, Neuroblu, which organizes and analyzes a large volume of real-world data to provide insights for research, care improvement, and marketing purposes

• Generative AI and natural language processing (NLP) and their the potential to revolutionize mental health care by enabling precision psychiatry, improving the standardization of treatment protocols, and bridging the evidence gap

• Holmusk’s  active partnerships with healthcare systems, pharma companies, and government organizations to expand its data set and drive meaningful change in the industry

Our guests this episode are Dr. Sameer Berry and Sam Holliday, co-founders and CMO and CEO of Oshi Health. Oshi Health is a virtual gastrointestinal care clinic increasing access to care for the one in four Americans with digestive disorders. In this episode, I spoke with Sameer and Sam about:

• Oshi’s high-touch, integrated care model for GI patients

• Purpose-built clinical workflows to improve outcomes and cost savings

• Oshi's partnerships with independent GI practices and health plans

• The future of virtual first specialty care

In this episode, I sat down with Ankit Jain, Founder and CEO of Infinitus Systems. Founded in 2019, the company automates tedious and time-consuming administrative processes across the healthcare ecosystem with AI to free up clinician time and improve access, adherence, and affordability. Infinitus is the only solution that automates the entire phone call process to complete benefit verifications. Infinitus returns that hard-to-find information so providers have the most comprehensive view of treatment coverage and can confidently move forward with a patient treatment plan. The company has raised money from Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Coatue, and a number of other healthcare luminaries.

Ankit and I discussed: 1) The company’s “spark story,” and how a Google digital assistant for restaurant, spa and salon reservations was pivoted to fill an unmet market need in healthcare, 2) The importance of freeing up time spent on administrative workflows for clinicians to serve patients, 3) Applications of AI in healthcare to solve for areas of unmet need

Our guest on this episode is Pablo Pantaleoni, the Chief Digital Officer of LifeStance, a mental health care company focused on providing evidence based medically driven treatment services for children, adolescents and adults suffering from a variety of mental health issues in an outpatient care setting, both in person and through his digital health, telemedicine offering.

In this episode, Pablo discussed: 1) His unique background and path to LifeStance. 2) LifeStance’s value proposition in the digital mental health space. 3) AI’s role in combating the mental health crisis. 4) Advice for young entrepreneurs in this space.

Siva Namasivayam is the co-founder and CEO of Cohere Health, an AI-powered platform that simplifies the time-consuming prior authorization process for health plans & providers. In this episode, Siva and I discussed his path to entrepreneurship, responsible use of AI in utilization management, how Cohere is transforming prior authorization from an administrative burden into a quality improvement process.

In this episode, I sat down with Belinda Tan and Noah Craft, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs at People Science. Founded in 2019, People Science is a human-centered clinical research platform addressing the need for rigorous clinical science to back alternative medicines and wellness solutions that do not typically fall under traditional Western medicine. The company’s platform studies a range of solutions spanning microbiome and food-as-medicine interventions, natural and synthetic psychedelic medicines, cannabis and cannabinoids, functional medicines, and digital therapeutics. Its user-facing app called Chloe (Consumer Health Learning and Organizing Ecosystem) supports users to test these alternative treatments on themselves, and enables users to view personal results in real time while comparing themselves to others. People Science secured its $8.5 million seed funding through two rounds, most recently in December 2022.

Belinda, Noah and I discussed: 1) Their founding story and unique co-CEO leadership model, 2) The philosophy behind the People Science platform, including the nuances of alternative medicines compared to traditional Western medicine, 3) The business model, including both how studies are launched with B2B partners and the consumer-facing app (Chloe), and 4) Insights and advice from having co-founded and co-led not one, but two, companies together.

Our guest on this episode is Todd Park. Todd is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Devoted Health, a Medicare Advantage “payvider” providing virtual and in-home medical care for older Americans and leveraging their technology platform to drive clinical results. Founded in 2017, Devoted’s team of over 2,000 cares for nearly 124,000 members across 14 states. Todd previously served as the White House Technology Advisor and the HHS Chief Technology Officer in the Obama Administration, and was the co-founder of athenahealth and Castlight.

In this episode, I spoke with Todd about

• His entrepreneurial journey
• His time in the White House
• Why Devoted is situated to transform the healthcare experience for older Americans

In this episode, I sat down with Dawn Alley, President of Decision Support at Carebridge, a company that works with health plans and states to care for individuals receiving long-term support services. Prior to joining Carebridge, Dawn spent about a decade working in the federal government as Chief Strategy Officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), and before that as Deputy Senior Advisor for Value-based Transformation at HHS.

Dawn and I discuss:

• The main initiatives she worked on at CMMI including the Accountable Health Communities Model and Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program

• Lessons learned during her tenure about implementing and delivering healthcare models at scale

• Why Dawn is excited about the future of long-term care services and why she believes in Carebridge’s model

In this episode, Zaid Malhees sits down with Misha Palecek, who currently serves as the Chief Transformation Officer for DaVita Kidney Care, a leading provider of kidney health services for more than 250K patients globally. Misha joined DaVita in 2005 and has stood up several ventures under the DaVita umbrella, including serving as President of Paladina, a start-up primary care business affiliated with DaVita. In Misha’s current role, he’s focused on business growth through strategic value-based care partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, joint venture partnerships, and care delivery innovations across the kidney care continuum.

In this episode, I sat down with Dr. Bassem Mikhael, SVP, of the Clinical Enterprise at Somatus. Started in 2016 by Dr. Ikenna Okezie, Somatus partners with clinicians, health plans, health systems, and multi-disciplinary community-based care teams to improve health, quality of life, and cost of care for patients with kidney disease. Somatus employs over 1,450 team members and serves more than 150,000 patients across 36 states. Dr. Mikhael and I discuss:

1) The vital role that kidneys play in maintaining health, the issues that arise from diseased kidneys, and how these challenges translate into per patient costs that are 10x higher, on average, than those for patients without kidney disease, 2) The traditional model for treating patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) and how Somatus’ model realigns incentives to focus on integrated, preventative, and patient-centered care, 3) Why the federal government, CMS, and CMMI have prioritized investments in kidney care and what we’ve learned from their initiatives and care model tests, and 4) Clinical innovations that make Dr. Mikhael optimistic about the future for patients living with kidney disease.

In this episode, I sat down with Anna De Paula Hanika, Co-Founder & CEO of Uno Health. Founded in 2019, Uno enrolls Medicare members in the federal and state programs – Medicaid, the Medicare Savings Program, SNAP, energy assistance programs, and more – that they are eligible for, benefiting both the member and payor. Uno has put over $10M back into the pockets of low-income Americans. Its investors include Google Ventures, General Catalyst, Floodgate, and Cowboy Ventures.

Anna and I discuss: 1) How she became interested in solving challenges related to the US healthcare systems and identified enrolling seniors in federal and state programs as the particular problem she wanted to solve, 2) Uno’s business and operational model and value proposition to payors and members, 3) The ways Anna has seen these safety net programs work really well and less well and how supplemental benefits programs from payors can fill some existing gaps, and 4) Lessons she’s learned during her journey as an entrepreneur and advice she has for people starting tech-enabled services businesses.

Our guest on this episode is Mark Cuban. In addition to a storied business career that includes owning the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and a role on ABC’s Shark Tank, Mark is the founder and lead investor in the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, a generic pharmaceutical distributor that prices medications at cost, plus a 15% administrative markup and any relevant pharmacy and shipping fees. Founded in early 2022, over 1.7M patients have signed up for the service in their first year, and Cost Plus Drugs now offers over 1,000 generic medications for purchase on their website. Mark founded the company with CEO Dr. Alex Oshmyansky, a pediatric radiologist who originally tried to start an organization similar to Cost Plus Drugs as a non-profit, before pivoting and convincing Mark to be his partner.

In this episode, I spoke with Mark about:

• His journey to starting Cost Plus Drugs
• How the company is able to drive down prices so drastically compared to the existing players
• How incumbents, such as traditional pharmacy benefit managers and new entrants, such as the Amazon RxPass, will impact the success of Cost Plus Drugs

In this episode, I sat down with Marina Tarasova, co-founder & COO of Paloma Health, the first and leading virtual clinic, modernizing thyroid care. Marina started Paloma Health with her co-founder and Paloma’s CEO, Guillaume ("G") Cohen-Skalli in 2018. Paloma’s model offers holistic care for hypothyroidism & Hashimotos, reducing the cost to treat these patients by over 60%. With their full stack approach, Paloma is drastically cutting the time patients have to wait to start treatment, and they are seeing better outcomes and patient satisfaction than traditional brick and mortar clinics. Last year, Paloma raised their series A round of funding led by SpringTide Ventures. With the investment, they’re continuing to build towards their goal of becoming the leading thyroid care experts and highlighting the importance of personalized thyroid care.

Marina and I discuss:

• Her path to starting Paloma Health and how her experience at large healthcare organizations led her to building in the digital health space

• How virtual specialty clinics can prioritize growth through the physician shortage

• How Paloma’s specialization in hypothyroidism and their holistic approach allows the virtual clinic to make strides in patient experience, symptom improvement, and cost of care

In this episode, I sat down with Sam Shear, CEO of Yes Hearing. Founded in 2019, Yes Hearing is an online provider of hearing care and hearing aids, partnering with 400+ audiology providers to provide in-home services such as phone and video consultations, hearing tests, hearing aid fitting, programming, and follow-up care. Through their unique model, Audiologists and hearing specialists bring the clinic directly to patients’ living rooms; the company is now the largest in-home hearing care provider in the world. The company was founded in 2019, and secured its $10M Series A funding in 2022.

Sam and I discussed: 1) Yes Hearing’s background and mission, including personal family anecdotes that led him to start the company, 2) The company’s clinical model, go-to-market strategy, patient journey, and dedication to iterative feedback & improvement, 3) Trends in the broader hearing care and at-home care industries, including both tailwinds and barriers to patient adoption, and 4) Entrepreneurial advice relating to fundraising with investors, scaling with payers, and believing in the potential of an early-stage company!

In this episode, I sat down with Anne-Maree Cantwell, Venture Partner at Empactful Capital. Founded in 2016 by veteran healthcare operators and investors, Empactful Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm that deploys targeted funds to invest in digital health companies that operate in the value-based care and behavioral-mental health verticals. Empactful brings its healthcare industry operating expertise and relationship leverage to help its portfolio companies scale.

In this episode, Anne-Maree and I discussed: 1) Her background in medicine, and how that helped her both scale telehealth at Kaiser Permanente and become a Venture Capital investor,  2) Experiences scaling telehealth before the pandemic telemedicine boom, and what constitutes a successful telemedicine program, including the future of virtual care, 3) Empacful Capital’s approach to investing in leading digital health companies that are tech-enabled, including a recent investment example, Care Continuity, and 4) Perspectives on key digital healthcare trends in 2023, including the online treatment of higher acuity mental health disorders, AI applications on patients and providers, and use of consumer devices to detect medical conditions.

Our guest on this episode is Dr. Farzad Mostashari. Farzad is the co-founder and CEO of Aledade, a primary care enablement company that partners with independent PCPs to transition to value-based care and, as a result, maintain their independence. Founded in 2014, Aledade works with 11,000 physicians across 40 states and DC, accounting for 1.7M patients under management in Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Commercial and Medicaid contracts. Farzad previously served as the National Coordinator for Health IT in the Department of Health and Human Services, he completed medical school at the Yale School of Medicine and a Master’s in Population Health from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Earlier this year, Aledade raised a $123M Series E round of funding led by OMERS Growth Equity.

In this episode, I spoke with Farzad about:

• His journey to starting Aledade and the role policy expertise and evidence have played in the company’s success
• Why he and the company are betting on independent physicians as the drivers of change in value-based care
• How Aledade became the rare profitable health tech company

In this episode, I sat down with Iman Abuzeid, MD, CEO and Co-Founder of Incredible Health. Founded in 2017, Incredible Health, the highest valued tech-enabled career marketplace in healthcare, transforms the hiring process for both nurses and health systems. In August 2022, Incredible Health raised an $80M Series B round led by Base10 Partners. The company partners with over 600 top health systems across the country, has over 10,000 nurses joining its platform every single week, and has reduced the average timeline for hiring a nurse from 82 days to less than 14.

Iman and I discuss: 1) her background in medicine and how she became a startup founder in the healthcare ecosystem, 2) the current nurse staffing crisis that’s on track to leave the US 1M nurses short by the end of 2023 and how we got here, 3) how Incredible Health is reducing nurse burnout, improving retention, and empowering hospitals to set up their nursing workforces for career advancement, and 4) Iman’s evolution as a leader and how she has invested in herself and her team to keep up with the company’s growth.

In this episode, I sat down with Vijay Kedar, CEO and Co-Founder, of Tomorrow Health. Founded in 2017, Tomorrow Health builds technology to improve the way home-based care is ordered, delivered, and paid for. In August 2022, Tomorrow Health raised a $60M Series B round led by Bond. The company partners with over 100 health plans across the country, experienced a 317% increase in ARR year over year between 2021 and 2022, and has grown to 100+ employees.

Vijay and I discuss:

• His early career as an investor, why he transitioned to an operator role at Oscar Health, and what he took away from each of these experiences
• How a personal experience with home healthcare inspired him to start a company in the space
• How Tomorrow Health is shifting incentives for key players in home health including patients, provider, and payors
• Where Vijay sees Tomorrow Health headed in the future as well as the digital health industry more generally

In this episode, Zaid Malhees sits down with Nick Desai, CEO and Founder of Renee. Founded in 2021, Renee is the developer of patient-centric software designed to improve healthcare services for elderly and underserved patients. The company's application helps schedule appointments, request in-home services, fulfill medication prescriptions, and share vital signs remotely. Renee recently raised $4.4 million in a second seed round led by Quiet Capital. Other investors include Mucker Capital, Fika Ventures, Tau Ventures, Global Founders Capital, SaaS Ventures, City Light Capital, and the AARP.

Our guest on this episode is Sean Duffy. Sean is the co-founder and CEO of Omada Health, a virtual integrated care solution that helps people manage a range of conditions, including pre-diabetes, diabetes, hypertension, and musculoskeletal conditions. Founded in 2011, Omada works with over 1500 employers, health plans and benefit consultants to deliver integrated care pathways for over half a million members. Earlier this year Omada raised a $192M Series E round of funding led by Fidelity.

In this episode, I spoke with Sean about:

• His journey to starting Omada and launching one of the earliest virtual specialty care models
• Turning Omada into a one-stop-shop for employers and health plans in a sea of point solutions
• A new survey of healthcare buyers’ perspectives on virtual care offerings

In this episode (and Jing’s last for The Pulse!) we are excited to feature Erica Jain, the Co-Founder & CEO of Healthie. At Healthie, Erica empowers health and wellness organizations to launch & scale their businesses and build long-term relationships with their clients to deliver personalized, preventative care.

Healthie is an API-forward platform that allows companies to build the back-office infrastructure systems necessary to support patient-centric operations. Healthie uniquely enables companies to effectively dispense longitudinal care. Healthie recently raised $16.5M in Series A funding in a round led by Velvet Sea Ventures with participation from Greymatter Capital, Watershed Capital, and Builders VC.

We discussed:

• Designing a solution to support longitudinal care coordination between patients and their care teams, improving upon the legacy healthcare infrastructure systems geared towards one-time episodic care.
• Healthie’s API-first, out-of-the-box offering enables healthcare companies of any size to focus their resources on developing their core product without sinking resources into creating complex backend systems.
• The importance of operational excellence for healthcare startups and continued interest from venture capital firms and other investors to accelerate innovation across the healthcare industry.

In this episode, we sat down with Cindy Adam, Co-Founder & CEO of Choix and a nurse practitioner. Choix is a telehealth clinic offering abortion care and sexual and reproductive health care to patients in their homes. Choix recently raised $1M in seed funding in a round led by Elevate Capital.

We discussed:

• The recent history of abortion care in the U.S. and the legal implications of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion.
• The clinical background of medicated abortion care and how permanent FDA authorization for providers to mail mifepristone, the pill used in medicated abortions, enabled abortion care to be practiced through telehealth.
• The importance of the November midterms and potential regulatory shifts after voters express their views on abortion at the polls.

In this episode, I sat down with Colin Quinn, President of Included Health Communities & Co-Founder of Included Health. Colin started Included Health in 2019 to improve care equity for underserved populations, starting with LGBTQ+ individuals. In May 2021, the recently merged Grand Rounds, a care navigation company, and Doctor On Demand, a virtual care company, acquired Included Health. In October 2021, the new entity rebranded as Included Health, which provides integrated navigation and virtual care across everyday and urgent care, primary care, behavioral health, and specialty care.

As President of Included Health Communities, Colin leads the organization’s work on health equity and raising the standard of care for underserved populations. The company’s first offering, which we discuss in-depth in the episode, is tailored to the LGBTQ+ population. Colin and his team are also working on a solution designed to serve the black community’s needs.

Colin and I discuss:

• His path to founding Included Health and how his prior experiences at a Fortune 500 company and a startup prepared him to start his own company
• His decision to sell to employers as well as how employer healthcare purchasers’ priorities have evolved in recent years
• What Colin and his team learned from the research study they conducted and how its findings influenced the company’s trajectory and product strategy
• Why partnering with Grand Rounds and Doctor On Demand made sense for Included Health and why the new entity took on his original company’s name
• What it will take to rebuild trust in healthcare amongst populations for which that trust has been broken

In this episode, we sat down with Kevin Dedner, Founder & CEO of Hurdle Health. Based in Washington D.C, Hurdle Health provides culturally intentional teletherapy to eliminate barriers that make it harder for people of color to get mental healthcare. Hurdle Health raised $5M in seed funding, led by Point 406 Ventures and Seae Ventures. F-Prime also participated in the round.

We discussed:

• Kevin’s personal struggles with finding culturally responsive mental healthcare as the motivation for founding Hurdle.
• Hurdle’s emphasis on training its therapists in cultural humility to provide more efficacious mental healthcare for low to moderate-acuity patients.
• How minority founders must build a solid business plan instead of only following a vision and nurture mentor relationships to raise capital and overcome systemic barriers for launching successful companies.

In this episode, we connected with Josh Hix, Co-Founder and CEO of Season Health. Season Health is a platform that connects members with healthy meal ideas and grocery options to help members and providers manage chronic conditions. Prior to starting Season Health, Josh co-founded the meal prep delivery service Plated, which led to an appearance on SharkTank.

Season Health recently raised $34M in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. LRV Ventures, Company Ventures, Cityblock CEO Toyin Ajayi and other angel investors also participated in the round. Prior to this, Season Health raised $11M in seed funding.

• Leveraging Josh’s prior experience co-founding Plated to realize a vision of creating a consumer-grade software platform that connects food and medicine.
• Season Health’s mission to make nutritious food more accessible by shaping the increasingly digital food environment and partnering with payers to make food more affordable to improve health outcomes for patients with chronic diseases.
• Partnering with healthcare industry leaders Geisinger, CommonSpirit, and Cricket Health to scale Season Health’s offering and enrich scientific research linking nutrition with better chronic disease management.

Our guest on this episode is Dr. Jerrica Kirkley, co-founder & Chief Medical Officer of Plume. Plume delivers gender-affirming care via telehealth for trans and non-binary individuals, currently operating in 41 states. Plume provides hormone-replacement therapy, such as estrogen and testosterone, as well as letters of support for gender-affirming surgery or changing name or gender markers for its patients. Jerrica and her cofounder, Plume CEO Dr. Matthew Wetschler, raised a $14M series A round of funding last year Craft Ventures.

In this episode, Jerrica and I discussed:

• Her journey to starting Plume
• Her experience as a patient and provider of gender-affirming care
• The current anti-trans political climate and Plume’s role as an advocate for the trans and nonbinary community

To celebrate Pride Month 2022, please consider a donation to The Trevor Project.

Our guest on this episode is Kelsey Mellard, founder & CEO of Sitka, a virtual specialty consultation company facilitating primary care and specialty communication via video consults, also known as eConsults or “curbside consults”. Sitka and their virtual specialty provider network, Sitka Medical Associates, work with payers, provider groups and accountable care organizations to improve access to specialty care while avoiding unnecessary specialist costs. Last year, Sitka raised a $14M series A round of funding led by Venrock.

In this episode, Kelsey and I discussed: (1) her journey to starting Sitka and how her time in the public sector has impacted her career (2) how Sitka closes the specialty access gap by removing scheduling inefficiencies and virtually connecting PCPs and specialists, and (3) her experience as an early-stage founder, including how she navigated taking parental leave as a Series A CEO

In this episode, we chatted with Dr. Somi Javaid, Founder & Chief Medical Officer of HerMD. Dr. Somi Javaid is a board-certified OBGYN and pioneer in the women’s sexual healthcare space. She founded HerMD, a female-forward, insurance-based women’s healthcare center to help educate, advocate for, and empower women to take control of their health care. Recently, HerMD raised $10 Million in their Series A fundraise to bring their unique healthcare model to women across the US. JAZZ Ventures led the Series A round.

We discussed:

• Watching her mother struggle to receive the care she needed and experiencing personal job dissatisfaction and burnout led Dr. Somi Javaid to found HerMD, a clinic specializing in menopause and female sexual health, designed to empower both patients and clinicians to create a positive care experience.
• The importance of promoting access to innovative therapies treating menopause and female sexual health disorders through insurance reimbursement, opening physical locations in “flyover” states, and championing education and patient advocacy.
• The rise of female healthcare-focused startups is likely to persist in conjunction with more VC funding, with opportunities for consolidation and collaboration across brands.

In this episode, I sat down with Isabelle Kenyon, CEO and Founder of Calibrate. Founded in 2020, Calibrate is a metabolic health company on a mission to change the way the world treats weight. In August of 2021, Calibrate raised a $100M Series B round led by Founders Fund and Tiger Global. Since then, the company has hired hundreds of new employees and onboarded thousands of new patients, released its first Results Report, and geared up to launch its first enterprise clients.

Isabelle and I discuss: 1) Isabelle’s own interactions with the healthcare system and why these experiences led her to commit to spending her career building a better, more consumer-centric system, 2) Why Calibrate’s emphasis on metabolic health represents a paradigm shift in how we treat weight loss and obesity, 3) Calibrate’s clinical model that combines medication, a holistic curriculum guided by synchronous 1:1 video coaching, and community, 4) The company’s plans to expand access to treatment through enterprise partnerships, and 5) Isabelle’s focus on developing both her own and her company’s self-awareness as Calibrate’s leader.

In this episode, I sat down with the co-founders of Equip, Kristina Saffran and Erin Parks, PhD. Equip provides virtual, evidence-based eating disorder treatment, and the company has expanded rapidly over the last few years. In February 2022, it raised a $58 million Series B funding round from The Chernin Group, Tiger Capital, General Catalyst, and other existing investors.

Erin, Kristina, and I discuss: 1) how they met and why starting a company together was the right move, 2) what’s happening in a person’s body and mind when they have an eating disorder, 3) Equip’s family-based treatment model and the company’s holistic approach to defining access, 4) why virtual care works well for eating disorder treatment, and 5) lessons that Erin and Kristina have learned from each other as co-founders and their advice on navigating the co-founder experience.

In this episode, we sat down with Virgílio “V” Bento, Founder & CEO of SWORD Health. SWORD Health aims to bring world-class musculoskeletal (MSK) care to patients around the world by connecting members with physical therapists and digital therapists through a member app that combines sensor technology with telemedicine to prevent, relieve, and accelerate the healing of acute conditions, chronic pain, and post-surgical recovery. SWORD Health raised $163M in their latest Series D round led by Sapphire Ventures. This latest fundraising round brings SWORD’s valuation at $2B.

We discussed

• Drawing inspiration for the genesis of SWORD Health after V’s brother got into a car accident and could not access the high quality physical therapy he needed for a speedy recovery.
• Delivering precision care through AI that generates personalized care plans for each patient with the guidance of physical therapists.
• How SWORD Health’s proven clinical model, created to address MSK-related issues, could target other conditions in the future.

This episode’s guest is Frank Cheung, CEO and Co-Founder of Cerebrae, a startup that aims to accelerate the adoption of value-based care by helping providers and payers measure, forecast, and validate the financial ROI of emerging approaches to patient care. Through this work, they aim to radically simplify the process of commercializing value-based care delivery. They are backed by several investors, including StepStone, Fika, Susa, TenOneTen, AME Cloud Ventures, Knollwood, Route 66, and SaaS Venture Capital.

Our guest on this episode is Stephen Smith, CEO of NOCD, a digital health company delivering high-quality virtual care for patients with obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD. NOCD performs over 140,000 virtual therapy sessions annually, and has established a community-driven model that connects patients around the world to peers and licensed therapists. Last year, NOCD raised a $33 million Series B round of funding led by F-Prime Capital and received their initial backing from 7wireVentures.

In this episode, Stephen and I discussed: 1) His own experience searching for diagnosis and treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder and how this led him to founding NOCD. 2) How NOCD cares for patients with OCD and connects to patients who have not yet been diagnosed. 3) Why focusing on the OCD population positions NOCD well to attract top therapists and move to value-based care.

In this episode, we sat down with Jia Jia Ye, CEO & Co-Founder of Springtide Child Development, a company that provides integrative, evidence-based, and family-centered care for children with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD. With four clinics open across Massachusetts and Connecticut, and a fifth coming soon, Springtide’s rapid growth is enabling families to better plan for the future, providers to focus on patient care in a coordinated environment, and payors to see what value-based behavioral care for ASD looks like.

We discussed: 1) How Jia Jia developed a passion for working in healthcare and how the industry’s mission-orientation and the complexity of its problems have kept her engaged over time, 2) The elements of Springtide’s clinical model that differentiate it from how care for ASD typically looks, 3) The superior clinical outcomes and expanded access to care that Springtide is demonstrating as a result of its intentionally-designed care model, 4) What the future of Springtide holds and why the company is focused on closing the gap between behavioral and medical care, and 5) Jia Jia’s leadership style, why it works for her, and what she enjoys most about being the CEO of high-growth company.

In this episode, we sat down with Andrew Hines, Founder & CEO of Canvas Medical. Andrew and his team at Canvas Medical build software and APIs to power collaboration between caregivers and developers. Canvas Medical raised $17M in Series A funding in April, 2021.

We discussed: Canvas Medical’s vision of building a software platform that connects electronic medical records (EMR) with clinician input that allows software developers to collaborate closely with practitioners and adapt workflows to accommodate evolving care models. The potential for Canvas Medical to facilitate idea exchange between ambulatory clinics and accelerate clinical research development by breaking down data silos. The importance for digital health startups to identify the user and the purchaser, and be critically honest about who would pay for the product or service.

In the latest episode of The Pulse Podcast by Wharton Digital Health, we interview veteran entrepreneur, Allon Bloch. His latest venture is K Health, a company that is seeking to democratize access to medical information. They do this by allowing users to interact with an AI chatbot that gives them access to data on how millions of people with similar symptoms were diagnosed and treated. On top of providing this information free of charge, they offer telehealth consultations at an industry leading (i.e., low) price point.

During the episode, we discuss how K Health is able to offer telehealth services at such a low cost as well as Allon’s vision for the impact a platform like K Health can have on the dissemination of medical information.

In this episode, we connected with Yury Yakubchyk, the founder and CEO of Elemy. Elemy is an industry leading tech enabled provider of high quality pediatric behavioral care. Inspired by his own personal journey in overcoming childhood ADHD, Yury co-founded Elemy to repair the flawed model of care for childhood behavioral conditions such as autism. Under Yury's leadership, Elemy has grown from 109 employees at the time of the company's seed round to more than 1,000 employees at present. Elemy raised $219M in their Series B funding round, catapulting the startup to unicorn status with a total valuation of $1.15B. Elemy's investors include prominent names such as SoftBank, Chelsea Clinton, and Ashton Kutcher.

We discussed:

• Inspired by the hustle of the informal economy of Queens, Yury co-founded two startups prior to Elemy. The common thread across all of his companies is solving a complex problem in an industry where consumers face many pain points.
• Elemy’s focus on caring for high acuity pediatric populations through a hybrid model of care run on an integrated software platform that coordinates caregivers physically visiting patients at home.
• The importance of destigmatizing mental health to accelerate the expansion of pediatric behavioral health services to more patients in need.

Our guest on this episode is Holly Maloney, a Managing Director at the venture capital firm General Catalyst, where she has a focus on healthcare specifically. She has invested across the digital health space, with companies including Cityblock, Olive, SonderMind, Transcarent, and, most recently, Ribbon Health.

Our guest on this episode is Dr. Ashwini Zenooz (“Ash”), CEO of Commure, a platform that enables health systems, digital health companies, and 3rd party developers to more quickly build interoperable data-driven products for healthcare. Their goal is to facilitate new clinical and operational workflows that leverage a health system’s data infrastructure to improve the patient experience, perform better in value-based arrangements, and expand access to care. Commure recently closed a $500 million fundraise across two rounds led by Human Capital and Greenoaks Capital, and received its initial backing from General Catalyst.

In this episode, we sat down with April Koh, the CEO and founder of Spring Health, a comprehensive mental health benefit for employers. April is currently the youngest female to run a unicorn company.

We discussed:

• Spring Health’s focus on providing precision mental healthcare through its proprietary predictive algorithms and science-backed methodology of collecting patient self-reported data
• The critical role data plays in improving the accuracy of Spring Health’s predictive algorithms, continuously upgrading customized member experiences, and helping clinicians enhance the efficacy of their care
• Upcoming plans to explore value-based payment models and investments for international expansion, family care offerings, and harmonizing workplace performance with employee work / life balance
• The challenges and opportunities of starting a company as a young woman of color, and how April’s entrepreneurial journey led her to be the youngest female running a unicorn company

In this episode, we interview Chris Severn, the Co-Founder and CEO of Turquoise Health, a company working to bring real price transparency to healthcare. With recent and upcoming waves in pricing legislation, combined with its fundraise led by a16z earlier this year, Turquoise is tackling the transparency problem from several angles by creating new tools for patients, payers, and providers.

In this episode, we sat down with Karan Singh, Co-Founder & COO of Ginger, now Headspace Health, through a merger with Headspace that was announced in August, 2021. Headspace Health is the world’s leading provider of mental health and wellbeing solutions.

We discussed:

• Ginger’s mission to address mental healthcare gaps by creating a comprehensive digital on-demand solution offering full stack mental health services at an affordable rate
• Potential reforms to make mental healthcare more accessible through reimbursement parity and interstate licensing
• The strategic rationale behind merging Ginger and Headspace into Headspace Health and what this means for users

In this episode, we interview Fay Rotenberg, CEO of Firefly Health. We chat about her experience joining Firefly Health in 2017, discussing how what started as a virtual-first primary care offering has developed into a solution that will help consumers get, find, and pay for care.

Firefly Health is trying to deliver concierge medicine at scale. They began with a virtual-first primary care offering that used an innovative leveraged care team approach to care for and build trust with their patient population, which is primarily chronically ill, commercially-insured individuals. As they grew, they added in a virtual specialty network and a set of “last mile care delivery” partners to extend their network of physicians to cover more of the care their patient’s needed. Now, after a $40M Series B raise in April of this year, led by andreessen horowitz, they are launching their own health insurance product, targeting smaller/ mid-market employers and allowing them to pool risk to share in the savings achieved by the Firefly model.

In this episode, we interview the GoodRx co-founder and CEO, Doug Hirsch. We chat about his experience founding GoodRx, covering topics ranging from a time when his father literally knocked on pharmacy doors in NYC to get drug prices to their recent public offering.

GoodRx seeks to expand access and affordability for prescription drugs. To do this, they process ~200 billion daily cash-pay price points for generic drugs from pharmacies, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), and retailers to then help a consumer choose the right way for them to get access to the medication they need. As they’ve continued to grow, they’re also sought new ways to extend their impact, including through a telehealth offering to actually write prescriptions as well as products surrounding branded drugs.

In this episode, we interview  Michelle Carnahan, President of Thirty Madison. We discuss Michelle’s pivot from pharmaceutical executive to leader of a health tech unicorn and what that means for Thirty Madison going forward.

Thirty Madison’s mission is to be a human-first healthcare company delivering specialized care and treatment to everyone. They recently completed a $140M Series C raise led by HealthQuest Capital. They join Maveron and Polaris Partners as lead investors in Thirty Madison.

In this episode, we interview Saeju Jeong, the Co-Founder and CEO of Noom. Founded in 2008, the company’s mission is to help people everywhere lead healthier lives through behavior change. Although today they are best known for their weight loss app, the company is making a push to extend its behavior change platform further into chronic care, supported by their recent $540 million Series F growth round led by Silver Lake.

In this episode, we chatted with Vijay Patel, Co-Founder and Partner at CVS Health Ventures, a $100M fund dedicated to investing and partnering with high-potential health technology startups aimed at building towards CVS’ vision of creating more consumer-centric care.

We discussed:

• The establishment of CVS Health Ventures as a fund dedicated to digital health opportunities, creating the potential for longer-term strategic actions and extended time horizons for realizing investment payoff
  
• The mandate of CVS Health Ventures to not only invest in but also partner with high-potential, early-stage digital health companies to forward CVS Health’s strategic goals of making health care more affordable and accessible for consumers
  
• Leaning into CVS Health’s role as a trusted health care provider in communities by continuing to partner with local and national organizations to expand health care access
  
• Investing in behavioral health, diagnostics, and virtual care delivery assets and capabilities - trends accelerated by COVID-19 and likely to persist