Jason Prestinario is CEO of Particle Health. The company is best known for its current lawsuit against Epic, but behind that there is a real company delivering a set of products as on ramp for clients wanting to access health data. Particle was cut off from access to Carequality & Epic a couple of years back but is now both delivering services to its customers and separately suing Epic for being an abusive monopoly regarding its payer platform. I had written about this a couple of years ago but I used this chance to catch up with Jason, to see what the sate of play was. He explained that Carequality said that Particle was right in the original dispute, and why they were right and Epic was wrong. The court case continues. But it’s interesting to hear from someone in the middle of the new disputes about data. — Matthew Holt
Mario Danek, QNovia
Mario Danek is CEO of QNovia, a behavior change platform focusing on smoking cessation product. Essentially the problem with smoking cessation nicotine products is that they don’t deliver the “hit” of a cigarette as quickly as a cigarette or a vape. Mario’s new vape-like product delivers a nicotine replacement therapy (think like Nicorette gum) just as quickly as the form factor it’s replacing. He is hoping that the device/drug/and forthcoming mental health support will be the engine to reduce the current smoking rate from the stubborn level it’s got stuck at. He told me about its likely time to commercialization–Matthew Holt
Preeti Bhargava, Arintra
Preeti Bhargava is CTO of Arintra. She is the living embodiment of my crack that the smartest people in the world spent the 2010s convincing people to click on ads and now spend their time figuring out how to bill payers more for providers doing the same work. Arintra is in the RCM business. It uses AI to read the medical chart and automatically generate claims using fewer human coders, and generating up to a 5% revenue uplift for one customer, Mercy Health. Of course those paying those claims may have noticed, so we had a chat about the emerging AI RCM arms race–Matthew Holt
Jesse Shoplock, Inbox Health
Jesse Shoplock is SVP of Business Development at Inbox Health. They are trying to help one of the messiest parts of American health care, figuring out both how much patients owe at the point of care and how to actually help the providers get paid. As of now 70% of patients don’t know what they owe, and in some cases those patients payments are 30% of total revenue and a bug chunk of that isn’t being collected. Jess told me how they are helping practices fix that. (And in the answer to my question Jesse didn’t know, they’ve raised some $55m so far)–Matthew Holt
Ratnakar Lavu, Elevance
Ratnakar Lavu is the Chief Digital Information Officer of Elevance, the holding company of Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in some 14 states (usually called Anthem Blue Cross). We had a great chat about what the priorities are for Elevance, and Ratnakar’s goal is to use tech to make the member experience simple. They are leaning heavily on AI and chatbots to help members inform themselves, and to help providers speed up approvals for prior auth et al. We also discussed how they work with vendors and how they help them scale.–Matthew Holt
Michael Dalton, Ovatient
Michael Dalton is CEO of Ovatient — it’s a telehealth company built on Epic that comes out of health systems (Medical University of South Carolina and Metro Health, Cleveland, OH). It does the integration and care continuity between its medical group and health systems (a little like KeyCare which also serves health system). I asked him why this is different from other telehealth companies? Those systems wanted something embedded in their own tech stack, that could bill insurance etc. Their clients are using Medicaid, cash, Blue Cross, etc. He told me about the patient experience, how they get to Ovatient and how the company works–Matthew Holt
Lauren Ranalli, Town Square Health
Lauren Ranalli is the VP of Patient & Community Engagement at Town Square Health, a brand new medical group setting itself up for the senior population. There have of course been a lot of attempts to create new primary care medical groups. Town Square has its roots in Oak Street but is adding immediate visits (during primary care visits) with specialists which the believe will close the care loops and provide better care. Their goal is to be efficient on staffing, use AI and then take risk. Personally I’m not sure that’s the best tactic…so Lauren and I had a good chat about their strategy, and how the heck we fix primary care in America–Matthew Holt
Oren Nissim, Brook.ai – Figuring out RPM
Oren Nissim is the CEO of Brook.ai which is making some waves in the remote care space. Their goal is to use remote patient monitoring to help providers reduce readmissions, and help patients stay on their care plans. For example they get more than 80% of their populations into hypertension control within 10 weeks, and reduced CHF readmissions some 90%. Late last year they raised $28m in Series B funding ($40m in so far), and Oren told me about their process and their business at the VIVE conference in Feb 2026–Matthew Holt
Miriam Paramore, RxUtility
In this quickbite interview recorded at the Feb 2026 VIVE conference, I am talking with Miriam Paramore. Miriam is building RxUtility, which is helping consumers access the lowest drug prices at the point of dispensing. That means BOTH bringing in all those manufacturers coupons and getting the lowest cash prices. How does it work? Why is drug pricing such a mess? Miriam tells all!— Matthew Holt
Sofia Noori, Nema Health
Nema Health has cracked the code on PTSD and has an amazing study showing that their technique of intensive cognitive processing therapy is over 99% effective in flat out curing it in under a month. CEO psychiatrist Sofia Noori took me through what PTSD is, a full demo of how their solution works, and showed me what the study shows. Sofia is one of the brightest CEOs in mental health (and also a former Health 2.0 intern!), and Nema’s solution is extraordinary.–Matthew Holt
