A Dose of Optimism

Two innovators, and two very different corners of pediatric healthcare. One shared truth: building for children requires thinking differently.

Shruti Kothari has sat inside a health plan, sold to health plans as a startup operator, and worked at a venture fund. She brings that rare cross-sector perspective to a question that trips up even experienced founders: how do health plans actually think, and what does it really take to get something adopted and scaled? She covers what makes a solution a genuine priority inside a health plan, why clinical outcomes alone are not enough, how to find the right internal front door, and why getting that wrong can cost more than the pitch itself.

Werner Vorster is the co-founder and CEO of Vitls, a wearable patch that continuously monitors all five vital signs, body temperature, respiration, pulse rate, SpO2, and now blood pressure, designed specifically for pediatric patients. His origin story is personal: his son had febrile seizures as a baby, and the wearable technology he needed simply didn't exist. A decade later, Vitls is FDA-cleared and expanding its capabilities. He shares what it takes to build a medical device for children: the adhesive challenges, the FDA clearance process, the multi-site clinical trials, and the reimbursement hurdles that make pediatric innovation uniquely demanding.

Episode Resources:

California Covered - Health for California

Medicaid

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Werner Vorster LinkedIn

Vitls Website

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Two founders, and two very different corners of pediatric healthcare. One shared conviction: the current system is failing kids and families, and technology can do something about it.

Lindsay Watson, physical therapist and co-founder and CEO of Augment Therapy, spent 25 years watching children with chronic diagnoses cycle through decades of therapy appointments, paper handout homework no one does, and sky-high cancellation rates. Her solution is to put the child on the screen, immerse them in a mixed-reality world powered by their own body movements, and make therapeutic exercises feel like a video game. With Sesame Street characters, peer-reviewed research, and stories of kids climbing out of bed in the middle of a sickle cell pain crisis to play as Cookie Monster, the evidence is building.

Damayanti Dipayana, CEO and founder of Manatee, is solving a different but related problem: 93% of pediatric mental health therapy excludes parents, and outcomes are poor because of it. Manatee wraps structured care around the entire family, through 12-week care plans, parent sessions every four weeks, and family sessions every six weeks. The results: families complete four times as many sessions as in traditional care, and 87% of children show improved symptoms at discharge.

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Augment Therapy Website

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Manatee Website

Manatee LinkedIn

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Children's Hospital L.A. Website

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Two nurses. Two very different paths. One shared conviction: the best ideas in healthcare often come from the people closest to the patient.

Courtnay Caufield, the new Chief Nursing Officer at Miller Children's and Women's Hospital in Long Beach, brings a career across women's and children's services to a hospital that sits at the intersection of maternal and pediatric care. She talks about what integrated care under one roof actually means for families navigating a complex healthcare system, and why technology's job is to create the "easy button" for patients, families, and the nurses who serve them.

Michele Davey, a registered nurse with 26 years of experience, invested her own savings, and built Murphy Cares, a digital pet therapy app that lets patients, families, and clinicians interact with real dogs on demand, 24/7. From a bedside pain point to her first IV-cover prototype, to a hospital-wide rollout at Penn Presbyterian, her journey is a case study in what nurse-driven innovation looks like when it is fully committed and fully real.

Episode Resources:

Penn Presbyterian Medical Center

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Courtnay Caufield LinkedIn

MemorialCare Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital Long Beach Website

MemorialCare Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital Long Beach LinkedIn

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Murphy Cares Website

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Murphy Cares Facebook

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For episode 50, the microphone gets turned around. Omkar Kulkarni, host, KidsX founder, and pediatric healthcare innovator, takes the guest seat as A Dose of Optimism celebrates its 50th episode milestone.

Omkar reflects on why he built this show, what drew him to children's healthcare, and where he believes technology and AI are taking us next. He shares his views on mental health support for kids, the importance of humility in healthcare innovation, what startups get right (and wrong), and why confidence might be the most underrated superpower we could give a child.

A milestone episode that's equal parts retrospective and forward-looking, and a reminder of why optimism still matters.

Episode Resources:

Akili Interactive

Navigating The Uncharted Risks Of AI Scribes In Clinical Practice

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KidsX Website

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Children's Hospital L.A. Website

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Female athletes face risks that the science has historically been too slow to address, in part because much of what we know about sports injury and performance was derived from research on male athletes. In this second episode of the youth sports series, two experts share what they're doing about it.

Maya Hayes, associate head coach of the University of Minnesota women's soccer program and former World Cup champion, shares what she has observed across a career as both an elite athlete and a coach of elite young women: the pressure to specialize too early, the role of adults in pushing kids out of sports, the mental health support structures that are working at the collegiate level, and her vision for what female athletes need most: balance and better science designed for them.

Dr. Gregory Myer, Director of the Emory Sports Performance and Research Center (SPARC) at the Atlanta Falcons' headquarters, describes three decades of research into why female athletes sustain ACL injuries at two to ten times the rate of their male counterparts, and how technology, from 3D motion analysis to VR to computer vision on a smartphone, is making movement correction accessible at scale for the first time.

Episode Resources:

The Wu Sai Human Performance Alliance

Georgia Initiative for Virtuality and Education in Sport (GIVES)

Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation | Atlanta, Georgia

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Maya Hayes LinkedIn

Maya Hayes University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota Website

University of Minnesota LinkedIn

University of Minnesota Instagram

University of Minnesota Athletics Website

Golden Gopher soccer Instagram

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Dr. Gregory D. Myer SPARC

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Sports Performance And Research Center (SPARC) Website

Sports Performance And Research Center (SPARC) Instagram

Sports Performance And Research Center (SPARC) LinkedIn

Emory University Website

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Autism affects nearly 1 in 31 children in the United States, and yet in many ways, we are still in the early stages of understanding what it actually is, and what it takes to support the children and families living with it.

In this episode, two innovators share how they are advancing the science and the care of autism from very different angles.

Dr. Shafali Jeste, Professor and Mattel Executive Endowed Chair of Pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, describes the emerging science of autism's genetic causes, how approximately 20% of autism cases now have an identifiable genetic cause, how that number is growing, and what it means for the possibility of precision treatments. She also discusses early detection, the power of parental instinct, and how brain differences can be observed in research settings as early as three months of age.

Pooja Shah, founder of Mindly, describes how she built a digital health platform to address fragmentation in autism care, connecting providers, educators, and parents on a single shared platform through AI-powered video analysis and automated documentation, so observations made in one setting don't stay trapped there.

Episode Resources:

Dr. Lorna Wing - the psychiatrist and autism researcher

Baby Sibs Research Consortium

Remote Infant Studies of Early Learning (RISE) Battery & Consortium

Research Studies | Stanford Autism Center

Simons Foundation

Learn more from the previous episodes:

Autism: Tools to help doctors and parents 

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Dr. Shafali Jeste LinkedIn

Dr. Shafali Jeste - UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Website

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA LinkedIn

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Instagram

UCLA Children's Discovery and Innovation Institute (CDI)

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Mindly Website

Mindly LinkedIn

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Youth sports are one of the most powerful forces for development in a child's life. They're also, when done wrong, one of the most reliable ways to injure a child, physically and mentally. In this first episode of a two-part series on youth sports, two experts share what they're seeing at the frontlines of pediatric sports medicine and concussion management.

Dr. Bianca Edison, sports medicine and orthopedic physician at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, makes the case for movement, variety, and play, and describes what happens when kids specialize too early, train too hard, and sacrifice sleep, mental health, and other sources of joy in pursuit of a scholarship or a starting spot. She also shares her vision for a preventive sports medicine clinic where kids come to learn how they move, not just to fix what's broken.

Harrison Brown, CEO and co-founder of HEADCHECK Health, explains why the concussion problem in youth sports isn't primarily a test problem, but a compliance problem. His platform serves 6,000 organizations and 150,000 athletes by digitizing concussion protocols end-to-end, making it possible for administrators, coaches, and medical staff to actually follow the policies they're legally required to have.

Episode Resources:

Positive Coaching Alliance

Jackie and Gene Autry Orthopedic Center at CHLA

Sport-Specific Injury Mechanisms and Situational Patterns of ACL Injuries: A Comprehensive Systematic Review

Where Does Research Happen? Behind the Scenes of the Motion and Sports Analysis Lab

What Are the Barriers to Access to Pediatric Gait Analysis?

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Dr. Bianca Edison CHLA

Dr. Bianca Edison LinkedIn

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Harrison Brown LinkedIn

HEADCHECK Health Website

HEADCHECK Health LinkedIn

HEADCHECK Health Instagram

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Children's Hospital L.A. Website

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What does it cost when a patient can't understand their discharge instructions? What does it cost when a healthcare system hasn't adapted its business models to the tools now available?

In this episode, two very different conversations shed light on where healthcare is losing people, and what's being done about it.

Julie Wilner and Joe Corkery of Jaide Health, recently acquired by AMN Healthcare, share how their AI-driven medical interpretation and translation platform is closing one of the most consequential and underaddressed gaps in healthcare equity: the failure to communicate with patients in their own language. A discharge summary that used to take 90 minutes for a language services team member to produce at CHLA now takes five minutes to review and finalize. And as regulatory requirements under the ACA push hospitals toward translated written materials, AI is becoming not just valuable, but necessary.

Nikhil Krishnan, founder of Out-Of-Pocket and one of healthcare's most distinctive voices for making the business of healthcare understandable, shares his perspective on pediatric healthcare as a business, the next wave of AI in clinical workflows, the emerging tension between patients who trust AI more than their providers, and why prevention remains the most underfunded opportunity in the entire system.

Episode Resources:

AMN Healthcare

Affordable Care Act (ACA)

Tribeca Pediatrics: We Care for Your Kids in NYC

ACA Section 1557: Ensuring Meaningful Access for Individuals with Limited English Proficiency

Connect with Julie Wilner & Joe Corkery:

Julie Wilner LinkedIn

Joe Corkery LinkedIn

Jaide Health Website

Jaide Health LinkedIn

Jaide Health Instagram

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Nikhil Krishnan LinkedIn

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Out-Of-Pocket Website

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Before a child can learn, they need to be able to see. And before a nurse can care for a complex pediatric patient, they need to have experienced something close to it. In this episode, two leaders at the intersection of innovation and workforce development share how they are closing two very different but equally foundational gaps.

Dr. James Dickhoner, Chief Medical Officer of Vision to Learn and Associate Director of Digital Health at CHLA, describes how a mobile clinic model is providing free eye exams and glasses to between two and four million children across the United States who need vision correction and can't get it, and the surprisingly apolitical case for why every school district should want this.

Dr. Jennifer Baird, Associate Chief Nursing Officer for Professional Practice at CHLA, shares how the Pediatric Pathway Program is transforming how nursing students experience pediatric care, tripling and quadrupling clinical hours in pediatric settings, integrating simulation, and sending nurses into the workforce with a depth of preparation that the traditional generalist model simply doesn't provide.

Episode Resources:

Pediatric Pathway Program CHLA

RN Residency in Pediatrics CHLA

Las Madrinas Simulation Center CHLA

Eyeglasses for School Kids Boost Academic Performance, Study Finds

Dr. Megan Collins - Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Gifts You Can Give That Save Lives

Effect of a Randomized Interventional School-Based Vision Program on Academic Performance of Students in Grades 3 to 7 - A Cluster Randomized Clinical Trial

Vision To Learn DONATE

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James Dickhoner LinkedIn

James Dickhoner CHLA

Vision To Learn Website

Vision To Learn LinkedIn

Vision To Learn Instagram

Vision To Learn DONATE

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Dr. Jennifer Baird LinkedIn

Dr. Jennifer Baird CHLA

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Healthcare treats the diagnosis, but what about everything else a family carries alongside it? In this episode, two innovators share their work on the parts of the care experience that clinical medicine often misses.

Dr. Megan Visser, hospital chaplain, sociologist, and postdoctoral research fellow at The Saban Research Institute at CHLA, describes what spiritual care looks like across the spectrum of pediatric illness, from the acute crisis of a terminal diagnosis to the long, quiet grief of learning to live with a chronic condition like diabetes. She shares what surprises her about families' resilience, what parental guilt looks like across conditions and cultures, and why naming grief is often the first step to processing it.

Aashish Mehta, CEO of TacnIQ, describes Backy™, a wearable device that uses tactile sensors to detect high-risk postures and movement patterns in real time, delivering vibrational feedback to the wearer. Currently deployed in hospital settings to support nurses, Backy™ is also being piloted in pregnancy-related back pain support and post-surgical recovery programs.

Episode Resources:

Diabetes Care & Education

SingHealth: Singapore Health Services

Connect with Dr. Megan Visser:

Dr. Megan Visser

Design with Adolescents and Young Adults for Self-Management and Health (DASH) Lab

Children's Hospital Los Angeles: The Saban Research Institute

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Aashish Mehta LinkedIn

TacnIQ.ai Website

TacnIQ.ai LinkedIn

Backy™ - a wearable developed by TacnIQ

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