Kai Romero is Head of Clinical Success at Evidently. The company is one of many that are using AI to dive into the EMR and extract data to deliver it to clinicians. It works to get really great information from the EMR to various flavors of clinicians in a fast and innovative way. Kai leads me on a detailed exploration of how the technology gets used as a layer over the EMR. And Kai shows me the new version that allows and LLM to deliver immediate answers from the data. This is a demo you really need to see to understand how AI is changing, and improving, that clinical experience. Meanwhile Kai is fascinating. She was an ER doc who became a specialist in hospice. We didn’t get into that too much, but you can tell about her input into Evidently’s design — Matthew Holt
Justin Schrager demos Vital.io
Justin Schrager is the CMO of Vital.io. Their technology sits in the hospital telling patients what is going on with their care while they are in the hospital, particularly in the ER. Justin showed a deep demo about the patient experience of using Vital.io which includes what the patient can expect and guides them through the confusing workflow. It allows the patient to make requests, and also lots of guidance about what is happening to them, or for example what lab results might mean. It goes as far as helping people book appointments for follow up with the right doctor. We had a great chat about the product and also about the realities of running a tech company that has to integrate with Epic and many other EMRs.–Matthew Holt
Greg Whisman, CareMore Health
Greg Whisman is the Chief Medical Officer of CareMore Health, a venerable prepaid medical group caring for seniors. It’s been part of Anthem/Elevance for many years but this year spun off as part of a larger PE backed group called Millennium. We really got into the what and the how of primary care for seniors and, yes, we delved deep into the future of primary care. This is a topic that will never die on THCB and getting a real expert to opine on it was really valuable. This is a great conversation–Matthew Holt
Sami Inkinen, Virta Health
Virta Health is in the diabetes reversal business. It’s a medical group that for a decade has been aggressively coaching people with diabetes and cardiometabolic disease to radically change their eating habits–basically to eat the right things for them, to saity. Some how in a nation obsessed with processed food and carbs they have succeeded for a lot of people. And the business is growing fast, with over $160m in annual run rate. Ten years in since it started I spoke with CEO Sami Inkinen about how and why it works, and what the future for this approach is in a world of GLP1s (and no there’s no GLP sales in that revenue number!)–Matthew Holt
Avasure: Tech for helpful watching & remote care in hospitals
Lisbeth Votruba, the Chief Clinical Officer and Dana Peco, the AVP of Clinical Informatics from Avasure came on THCB to explain how their AI enabled surveillance system improves the care team experience in hospitals and health care facilities. Their technology enables remote nurses and clinical staff to monitor patients, and manage their care in a tight virtual nursing relationship with the staff at the facility, and also deliver remote specialty consults. They showed their tools and services which are now present in thousands of facilities and are helping with the nursing shortage. A demo and great discussion about how technology is improving the quality of care and the staff experience–Matthew Holt
Lynn Rapsilber on Nurse Practitioners
There are a lot of nurse practitioners in the US–over 400,000 (compared to around 900,000 MDs & DOs), and we are training 40,000 a year. But how they are going to be used is not entirely clear. Lynn Rapsilber is an NP whose organization, the National Nurse Practitioner Entrepreneur Network, is working to help her fellow NPs with their professional and business development. She came on THCB to discuss how NPs are developing and how she thinks NPs will contribute in the future as we deal with the current crisis in primary care–Matthew Holt
TytoCare–The Last Few Inches of Telehealth?
Tamir Gottfried, the Chief Commercial and Strategy Officer at TytoCare came on THCB to show us how their remote device works to deliver the last few inches of telehealth. Most telehealth is just a video call but with Tyto’s device, the patient can asynchronously (and/or synchronously) take their vital signs including videos and pictures of the skin, ears, mouth, heartbeat et al, and share it with their doctor. It actually amazes me that they haven’t been more popular but in the last few years Tyto has made significant inroads with health plans and providers delivering their devices, as well as adding chronic care management module, with a forthcoming smart clinic (AI) companion. Tamir explained who, how what and why to me, and gave a not too gruesome demo–Matthew Holt
Penguin–The Flightless Bird of Health AI
Fawad Butt and Missy Krasner started a new AI company which is building a big platform for both plans and providers in health care. Penguin Ai has a cute name, but is serious about trying to provide an underlying platform that is going enable agents across the enterprise. They are health care only, as opposed to the big LLMs. But does health care need a separate AI company? Are the big LLMs going to give up health? And what about that Epic company? Join us as we discuss how this AI thing is going to be deployed across health care, and how Penguin is going to play. Oh and they raised $30m series A to start getting it done–Matthew Holt
Boulder Care: Stephanie Strong & Marianna Zaslavsky
Stephanie Strong, CEO & Marianna Zaslavsky, the (relatively new) Head of Growth at Boulder Care came on THCB to tell Matthew Holt about their service which delivers medication assisted treatment for those suffering from substance used disorder, via telehealth. Stephanie has been one of the leading advocates for getting patients, especially those on Medicaid, access to treatment. She led a campaign to get the DEA to continue to allow substance abuse treatment using medication via telehealth. Marianna joined this summer with the goal of helping patients get access via managed care plans. We discussed a lot about the potential for Boulder to continue its harm reduction strategy for patients, and also the potential limits that might be coming via Medicaid reductions as part of the BBB. Stephanie & Boulder are supporting a campaign called Majority for Medicaid which is raising awareness about the impact of Medicaid cuts on these patients. Some of those stories are here
You can also text MAJORITY to 50409 to urge your representative to protect the promise of Medicaid.
Dr Kaelee Brockway on AI for physical therapy training
Dr Kaelee Brockway is a professor of education and physical therapy who has built a series of AI based “patients” for her PT students to train on. Kaelee is a pioneer in using these tools for training. She showed me the personas that she has built with LLMs that are now being used by her students to figure out how to train their soft skills–a huge part of any training. This a great demo and discussion about how clinical professionals are going to use LLMs in their training and their work–Matthew Holt
