Holly Hester-Reilly

He fell in love with an AI chatbot; then built a $24M healthtech company from scratch. Now clinicians are champions of his product. (but he had 0 healthcare experience) Alex LeBrun, Nabla's CEO, shared a fascinating story with me: Years ago, he was captivated by an AI chatbot named Cybele. This "online dating" experience sparked his passion for AI. Here's how he did it with 0 prior experience and connections in healthcare: 1. Started his own clinic ↳ Invested heavily in creating a learning environment ↳ Operated in two countries to avoid cultural bias ↳ Observed real healthcare processes firsthand ↳ Gained credibility in the industry 2. Found the right partners ↳ Looked beyond conventional healthcare thinking ↳ Avoided those fixated on minor EMR improvements ↳ Built relationships with forward-thinking clinicians 3. Learned from your mistakes ↳ Acknowledged the high cost of building a clinic ↳ Used the experience to gather crucial initial data ↳ Leveraged it to build a strong clinician network 4. Focused on distribution, not just product ↳ Made the product accessible to individual doctors ↳ Let users become product champions 5. Made his product frictionless ↳ Created a simple Chrome extension ↳ Enabled instant trial without complex setup ↳ Designed for overwhelmed, time-poor doctors ↳ Prioritized ease of use over feature overload 6. Adapted the product to individual needs ↳ Recognized diverse documentation styles ↳ Allowed personalization down to user level 7. Built a community of champions ↳ Focused on delighting individual users ↳ Encouraged word-of-mouth promotion ↳ Leveraged doctors' influence in hospitals The key to disrupting healthcare as an outsider is to stay curious, adapt quickly, and solve real problems. PS: Are you an outsider with a bold idea for healthcare? Your fresh perspective might be exactly what the industry needs. Listen to the fascinating episode here: Apple Podcasts: https://hubs.la/Q02CS_300 Spotify Podcasts: https://hubs.la/Q02CTkn60 #CharmHealth #DigitalHealthDisruptors #HealthcareAI #ClinicalAI #AIInnovation #Nabla #AlexLebrun #HealthcareRevolution #Podcast #AIChampions #MedicalTechnology

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There appears to be a "Superstar Effect" in healthcare and biomedical AI research right now. A small percentage of publications are truly novel methods contributions that introduce new capabilities or behaviors; whereas a majority of contemporary research publications are focused on implementation science to assess the real-world utility and performance of new methods. This dynamic seems different from prior eras, when the translational infrastructure for implementing novel AI methods was largely unavailable. While methods research often captures more attention and accolades, both types of research are critical – novel methods without implementation science lacks translatability; implementation science without novel methods lacks novelty. If our goal is to invent and deploy transformative AI methods in real-world healthcare and life sciences contexts, we ought to continue encouraging and rewarding stellar implementation science work alongside breakthrough methods development.

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We conclude differently that Bigs aren’t getting it right so -give up on innovative care delivery. Nope. 35m get their primary care +msk/behavioral and more at work for free or near free. Direct care,called near site or onsite is offered at jumbo employers in much of the F100 and its doubling every 30 months. NPS scores are 88-98 in direct care. World class status. Excerpt Walgreens paid a fortune for VillageMD, then even more for Summit Medical Group . At one point in late 2021, VillageMD CEO Tim Barry told me that their main issue was the execution risk of having to open more clinics per week then Starbucks did at the height of its expansion. Walgreens made a minority investment then kept doubling down on its bet- three years later it has written off the whole $8bn and its stock price is worth less now than doctor network Doximity. Both of these companies and CVS have shown that it’s really hard just to get the basics right opening clinics in retail stores. That’s despite the fact that most Americans have no pcp and can’t get an appointment with a captive audience walking into their stores every day picking up meds. CVS has the added issue of trying to integrate a decent sized insurer into its operations just at the time when the Medicare Advantage gravy train is running out of steam. CVS’ CEO Karen Lynch took over Aetna, a CVS Health Company recently and then this past week was dispatched to the cheap seats herself. (Don’t feel too bad for her, she’s getting $4m a year to “consult” with the board). Two things have hit Medicare Advantage. First the government is starting to look into risk adjustment upcoding. CVS, you may recall, bought Signify Health, a company specializing in sending nurses into seniors’ homes to perform said upcoding. Secondly, #MedicareAdvantage plans had surprisingly little information about and control over their members who were being cared for by their non-risk bearing delivery system (which is to say, most of it). They appeared to be totally surprised that post pandemic procedure numbers ratcheted up and were powerless to stop it. Well, Wall Street noticed. Similar problems have hit Optum the engine behind UnitedHealthGroup’s profitable growth for the past decade or so. It’s not just the biggest health tech company in America, it’s also the biggest medical group owner—even if CEO and bumbling Englishman Andrew Witty doesn’t seem to know how many doctors it controls. They are being exposed in Stat on a weekly basis for basically semi-frequently causing their doctors to lie about their patients’ health status, just as the The Wall Street Journal accuses their associated health plan of inventing diseases and procedures—all to bill the government more. You can argue back and forth but it does appear that the strategy of buying every medical group it can see and provider fracking appears to have hit a bumpy road. https://lnkd.in/gzT25DcN

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$40M isn’t just a win for TailorMed—it’s a seismic shift for healthcare’s affordability game. Out of New York City, co-founders Israel (Srulik) Dvorsky (the vision guy) and Adam Siton (the tech genius) are taking a broken system and building something that actually works. Their play? Smashing the financial barriers that leave patients stranded, one automated solution at a time. Here’s the magic: TailorMed’s platform doesn’t just identify funding gaps—it connects the dots. Think 750+ hospitals, 1,300 clinics, and 600 pharmacies using their tech to access 6,000+ financial resources with zero friction. Real-time API connections? Check. Insurance coverage analysis? Check. Automated enrollment that actually works? You get the idea. It’s seamless, it’s scalable, and it’s changing the way healthcare providers and patients approach affordability. This latest round—$27.5M in equity and $12.5M in debt led by Poalim Tech —brings their total funding to $69M, and the backers read like a who’s who of impact-driven investors. Windham Capital Partners is leading the charge, with Samsung Next, BrightEdge - American Cancer Society , Citi (Impact Fund), and a slew of hospital investment arms doubling down. The faith is justified—TailorMed’s already a key player for healthcare giants like Providence Health & Services, UnityPoint Health, and Yale New Haven Health. And let’s not miss the real story: TailorMed’s not just building tools—they’re driving a movement. They’ve been named to the 2024 New York Digital Health Innovation Lab 100, and they’re only heating up. The goal? Scale harder, expand partnerships, and keep sharpening the tech that’s making “unaffordable care” an outdated concept. When Srulik says, “We’re creating a healthcare system where affordability is the standard,” it’s not just words—it’s a battle cry. TailorMed’s smashing walls, rewriting the rules, and proving that the future of healthcare isn’t just hopeful—it’s inevitable. #Startups #HealthCare #HealthTech #Innovation #PatientFinancing #AffordableHealthCare #Technology #NYCTech #NYCTechEcosystem #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem #VentureCapital #StartupFunding

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Amandeep Singh, Ph.D., Hell no! Well, all of us do hear startups trying to 'disrupt', a good innovation is where the target customers come wanting to have the solution in their lives and not excusing themselves by saying that they are 'burnt out'. A genuine solutions with a good GTM will ease the customer's life inavriably. What most of the healthcare solutions suffer from is an premature urge to take an 'bare' engineering solution to the market - a 'bare' solution bereft of product and design inputs. System design is not adding more 'seamless' patches to the existing workflows. It is about overhauling them. If it the overhaul is being done after there has been a significant change in the technology, patients expectations, newer diseases, the overhaul becomes all the more challenging. That said, such an overhaul, and the consequent design might be so daunting that no healthcare system would ever want to implement it. That's where you would need help of product managers. The multiplicity of stakeholders (typically the trio of user-operator-payer) is quite prevalent in the enterprise software world. Not a new challenge.

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17 reasons I loved #GTM24! 17. Sonal Mane could be a standalone reason to love this event! Her future of GTM AI and automation session with John Hessinger identified things GTMers should be experimenting with and how to incorporate GenAI into existing workflows. 16. Peter Ward’s discourse on formalizing market readiness and ways to align cross-functional groups. 15. Macy Berg Mody’s example of eliminating repetitive x-team readouts and making meetings more productive with shared tech informing multiple groups on customer feedback. 14. Holly Holbrook's best practices for internal comms like creating a “front door” for cross-team conversations and ideation. 13. Emi Wayner’s practical guide to GTM launch metrics was great, but it was even better to hear how she evolves metrics while retaining focus on key impact areas. 12. I loved Candice Sparks and Lexie Knauer’s dialogue on building for parity vs. differentiation. Don’t let your product get in the way of a good story! 11. The most POV-altering moment of the conference (for me) was the fireside chat on unlocking brand growth with Maya Shah-Ceccotti, Karen Sage, and Nidhi D.. It changed my thinking re: CLG. Build it into growth motions intentionally upfront! 10. “If you build it with them, they are already there.” - Kasey Stinson. 9. 43% of buyers desire a “seller-free” sales experience, according to Gartner (and Filip Szymanski in his session on PLG vs. SLG). I appreciated his thoughts on scaling growth loops, whether collaboration growth loops or user content growth loops. 8. More people would remotely lead successful GTM teams if they followed Paige Lapen’s “make work rock” framework or James B. Stanton’s weekly meeting cadence: Commit - “CFC” - Complete. 7. Internal messaging gets diluted with multiple communication methods, as Somesh Chablani pointed out. Don’t drop it into Slack and assume everyone knows. Overcommunicate with remote teams. 6. Daniel Kuperman’s competitive intelligence matrix and launch blueprint could have been an entire session, and I still would have wanted more! 5. Nonya Collier is the collaboration queen! Co-creation in a brain trust, codifying insights, amplifying the collective intel. 4. “Beyond the Launch” by Ed Cho may have convinced me that math can be fun and definitely convinced me of the necessity of focusing on pipeline maturation and not just pipeline creation. 3. Ariel Cai walked through how AI is redefining the go-to-market playbook. 2. I was excited to share my session on accelerating sustainable growth with ideal customer profiles. Plus, in a shocking turn of events, I got to chair the second day! 1. The number one reason to attend any event from The Alliance/GTM Alliance is to connect with the most incredible people! I can’t list everyone, but I have to mention Chase Payne, Cinthia Silva, Jan, Amy 🐆, Rohit Angle, Alisha Johnson, Catherine Knoll, Samantha, Sasha, and I finally got to meet the mastermind behind it all: Jack Debono!

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𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲-𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲? 🌐 As healthcare transitions from fee-for-service to value-based care, the 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 of data becomes 𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹. Platforms like Arcadia.io 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗽𝗶𝘃𝗼𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗲 by leveraging 𝗙𝗛𝗜𝗥 (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) to enable real-time, 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘆𝗰𝗹𝗲-𝘄𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗳𝗹𝗼𝘄. This not only breaks down silos but provides actionable insights for predictive analytics and clinical decision support. 🔍 𝗟𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘀 (𝗟𝗟𝗠𝘀), integrated into healthcare data systems, are further transforming personalized care by offering tailored suggestions to clinicians and identifying high-risk patients long before conditions manifest. AI-powered clinical decision support can streamline workflows, all while reducing costs. ➡ Is your organization already harnessing the potential of FHIR and AI to elevate patient outcomes? If not, how do you foresee these technologies evolving your healthcare delivery? Learn more about 𝗔𝗶-powered solutions driving value-based care: [Arcadia.io](https://www.arcadia.io/) #HealthcareIT #Interoperability #ArtificalIntelligence #ValueBasedCare #AI #FHIR #PredictiveAnalytics

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Great insights from David Bell, Ph.D. on the challenges of #AI in #healthcare documentation. The complexity and nuance unique to each healthcare market and the fact healthcare typically has few rote tasks but a lot of paperwork, makes it critical that #AItools be developed by experts in the industry with deep understanding of the most appropriate problems for AI enhanced tools to solve.

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I had a great time joining this insightful discussion on Vertical AI and learning from brilliant minds like Aaron Lee and Amit Patankar, alongside Wayne Hu and the team at SignalFire! As we've seen at Peer AI, Vertical AI has tremendous potential to unlock efficiencies and create new opportunities across industries. I’m inspired by the unique approaches my fellow panelists were taking to refine products and keep humans in the loop where it matters most -- and particularly appreciate the similarities in our businesses across very different industries! Looking forward to continued collaboration in this space! #VerticalAI #PeerAI #startups #GenerativeAI

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K Health, a leading AI-driven primary care platform, has secured $50 million in funding. The round was led by GGV Capital with contributions from Valor Equity Partners, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, and 14W. Kudos to the co-Allon Bloch and Adam Singolda, along with their dedicated team, for reaching this impressive milestone. K Health is revolutionizing how primary care is delivered by utilizing advanced AI to provide affordable, on-demand medical advice and treatment. This platform leverages vast amounts of data to offer personalized healthcare solutions, ensuring users get accurate diagnoses and treatment recommendations. The app's ability to combine machine learning with clinical insights is setting a new standard in digital health. This funding round will fuel K Health's mission to make high-quality healthcare accessible to everyone, regardless of their location or financial status. With the new capital, K Health plans to expand its services, enhance its AI capabilities, and increase its reach to help more people get the care they need. Congratulations to the K Health team for their dedication to transforming primary care. Your work is paving the way for a future where healthcare is more efficient, affordable, and personalized. #HealthTech #AIinHealthcare #PrimaryCare #StartupFunding #Innovation #DigitalHealth #TechNews

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🚨 Google's Med-Gemini is shaking up healthcare AI! Forget GPT-4, this new model is crushing medical benchmarks. 🩺🧠 What got me excited... Beating Doctors (Respectfully): Med-Gemini outperforms human experts on tasks like summarizing medical information and simplifying complex diagnoses. This has huge potential for patient education and empowering healthcare providers. Tackling the USMLE: Setting a new high score (91.1%) on the MedQA-USMLE benchmark means this AI is packed with validated medical knowledge. It's Not Just Q&A: Med-Gemini is multi-modal, outperforming GPT-4 on tasks that involve images and various data types – just like the real world of medicine. The Big Picture: This is more than just cool tech. Med-Gemini could: Support Doctors: Help them process information faster and make more informed decisions, especially with complex cases. Empower Patients: Clear, reliable summaries of their conditions in easy-to-understand language is a gamechanger for patient empowerment. Transform Med Training: Imagine AI tools that help medical students grasp difficult concepts more easily. This is just the beginning. Google AI is consistently pushing boundaries in healthcare, as seen with AMIE earlier this year. The future of medicine is data-driven, with AI acting as a powerful assistant! Question for you: Where do you see the biggest potential for Med-Gemini to improve healthcare? #HealthcareInnovation #AIinMedicine #MedGemini #GoogleAI #FutureofHealth Research Paper: https://lnkd.in/dMEAnfXh Video Credit: TheAIGRID

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Question for my network: how do you evaluate your digital health and health tech initiatives? Do you use any frameworks or services, etc? I am not one of those "tech can solve everything" people, but I do think it is a primary enabler for the future of health, equity, and "doing more with less" since we can't seem to magically triple our workforce or funding for it. Digital Health initiatives have been a little willy nilly and certainly aren't a silver bullet. But—for that reason, more and more attention is now being given to both evaluating digital health/health tech initiatives (finally!), AND bringing the health equity lens into their development/implementation (heck yes!) For the latter, I was interested to read the development of this Digital Health Equity-Focused Implementation Research (DH-EquIR) model! This framework outlines how you might start to integrate considerations of health equity into the implementation of your digital health technologies. Key takeaways: 👏 Inclusive Design: Technologies must be accessible and culturally sensitive, designed with input from diverse communities. 👏 Equity-Focused Planning: Integrate health equity considerations at every stage to reduce disparities. 👏 Continuous Evaluation: Monitor and adapt interventions to meet the needs of underserved populations. 👏 Sustainability: Ensure financial sustainability and interoperability for long-term success. 👏 Collaboration: Engage stakeholders from all sectors to drive impactful health solutions. It is promising to see health equity being promoted through thoughtful and inclusive digital health solutions designed to meet people where their real challenge is at, and I recognize that tech, people, and workflows go ✋in ✋ Frameworks like this are helpful as directional guidance to start with. I am also seeing a lot of "Digital Determinants of Health" crop up, though still meaning different things by different groups. Source: Construction of the Digital Health Equity Focused Implementation Research Conceptual Model - Bridging the Divide Between Equity-focused Digital Health and Implementation Research (https://buff.ly/3RbWmDQ) ----------------------------- (AI was used to generate this strange and misshapen/spelled image, but I actually kind of liked it!!)

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About the discourse on United Healthcare, what surprises me most is that 90% error rate, especially one making determinations for a company like UnitedHealthcare, is alarmingly high and raises serious concerns. A rate like that suggests systemic flaws in the model’s development/data quality/maintenance. For an industry as critical as healthcare, where decisions can directly impact patient well-being and access to care, this level of inaccuracy is not just a technical issue but an ethical one. What’s surprising is that this hasn't sparked broader discussions about accountability in AI deployment, especially in regulated industries. It underscores the need for rigorous testing, human oversight, and transparency in AI systems. High error rates in healthcare AI can erode trust, expose companies to legal risks, and cause harm to vulnerable populations. It also raises questions about how such a flawed system got deployed at scale—was there enough validation, or were business pressures prioritized over accuracy and safety? "One lawsuit filed last year against UnitedHealth claims that 90% of the algorithm’s recommendation are reversed on appeal. The lawsuit states that UnitedHealthcare wrongfully denied elderly patients care by “overriding their treating physicians" determinations as to medically necessary care based on an AI model that Defendants know has a 90% error rate.” #ai #aisystems #artificialintelligence #airegulations #aiethics #machinelearning #datascience

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Tell Me Why I’m Wrong (TMWIW) Premise: Bundled payments are not a viable method to truly bend the cost curve. Although bundles (or case rates) may reduce the cost of specific episodic care events, they don’t attack the root of the issue: overuse. It may cost less per “unit” of service, but isn’t that just nibbling around the edge of the problem? The amount you save per bundle from improved efficiency is minuscule when compared to the potential savings of eliminating the inappropriate use in the first place. For example, the new CMS TEAM Model (https://lnkd.in/gt8FcKqi) includes spinal fusions as a target. The goal is to reduce the 30-day cost of such procedures while maintaining quality (hospital readmission, patient safety, and patient-reported outcomes). However, how often are spine surgeons opting for fusions (especially multi-level fusions) when a simple laminectomy performed in a surgery center would have been more appropriate? Perhaps, with the right conservative management, the patient would have had the same (or better) outcome without any surgery at all. That’s where the real savings could occur. TMWIW #CMS #VBC #ValueBasedCare #ACO #Medicare #waste

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You try your best to be "patient-centric." You gather patient input, and you work some of the feedback into your protocol. But how do you if it's enough or even appropriate? To help, Crohn's & Colitis Foundation's Carol Moss Chapman and Zachary Palazzotto provide helpful tips and the Foundation's Patient Centricity Program Review. #clinicaltrials #clinicalresearch

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📈 Change Healthcare Breach: Breaking Records and Waking Up an Industry 📆 Several weeks ago, I shared the alarming statistic that 1 in 3 Americans had their health records exposed in 2023. Just a few months into 2024, and with ONE BREACH, we've already surpassed that number. 😦The full impact of the Change Healthcare attacks continues to unfold, and each revelation is more concerning than the last: 💰$22 Million ransom paid (and it didn't even resolve the issue!) 💸Multi-BILLION dollar impact to healthcare providers 📰Processes HALF of all US medical claims impacting: 👨‍⚕️👩‍⚕️ 900,000 doctors 💊💊 33, 000 pharmacies 🏥🏥 5,500 hospitals 👩‍🔬👨‍🔬 600 labs 🤒😷 1 in 3 US Patients 1️⃣ All of these compromised by a single vendor 1️⃣ 🔍 While Change Healthcare deserves scrutiny, let's be clear: this is part of a larger trend of targeted attacks on an industry plagued by underfunding, inadequate protection, and extreme vulnerability. ❓❓❓ What can we do? ❓ ❓❓ 🚗💣🛌 Fund Healthcare Like Critical Infrastructure: We invest in bridges and bombs. Shouldn't healthcare beds be a priority too? 📚📚📚 Improve Guidance: HHS 405(d) – Aligning Health Care Industry Security Approaches and HPH Cybersecurity Performance Goals are a start, but we need more robust regulations. 👩‍💻👨‍💻👩‍💻 Invest in R&D: Programs like Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) DIGIHEALS offer tremendous potential for shoring up defenses. 🕸🕸🕸 Centralized Resources: 7,000 individual hospitals can't effectively secure themselves in isolation. 👨‍💼 As Russ Branzell aptly stated, "We're all vulnerable together," and the Change Healthcare breach is a stark reminder of that. Ready to extend your cyber protections? Reach out to the Cynerio team today! #healthcaresecurity #cybersecurity #ChangeHealthcare #dataprivacy #patientdata

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