No fan of traditional PBMs, Steve Krupa talks with Jake Frenz, founder and CEO of SmithRx, creator of a new tech-based PBM player.

Breaking Health Host Steve Krupa catches up with Peter Foley, founder and CEO of LetsGetChecked, a company that’s empowering patients to monitor their own health through diagnostic tests. Hear how Foley and his team built patient convenience into a powerful business. 

Chris Molaro calls his six years in the US Army leading a Field Artillery platoon his biggest honor. But he says his “biggest leadership failure” came after his platoon redeployed back home. In this episode of the Breaking Health podcast, Host Steve Krupa connects with a young veteran who is using inspiration from a tragic loss of one of his soldiers to depression to improve mental healthcare for everyone. “We could have intervened if we had a better system in place,” Molaro says.    

Our Host Steve Krupa has a visitor. Aetion CEO Carolyn Magill pops by Steve’s office at HealthEdge to explain how Aetion raised a round of capital it wasn’t seeking. She also delves deeply into how Aetion’s analysis of different types of data – genomic, socioeconomic, EHR’s – can change how healthcare is delivered and how are costs covered.

You can WATCH this Breaking Health podcast interview here. 

In this podcast, Ardy Arianpour, CEO of Seqster (pronounced Seekster), shares the origin story for creating what he calls, “the Mint.com of health care. Seqster is creating a clear, direct, one-password-only channel between patients and ALL their healthcare data – EHR, genetic and fitness, etc. The start-up is marking its offering to payers and providers and already has secured access to data from 3,000 hospitals and 45,000 physician offices as well as DNA Labs and data-collecting Medtechs like ResMed and DexCom. Hear Arianpour vision for the future of healthcare data.

Vital Connect CEO Nersi Nazari talks data with Host Steve Krupa in this episode of the Breaking Health podcast. VitalConnect has developed a line of sensors capable of tracking conditions of patients at home and in the hospital. According to the company, its VitalPatch wearable biosensor is a lightweight, wireless, and records eight patient vital signs. The VitalConnect Platform integrates the VitalPatch biosensor with mobile and cloud-based software and analytics. The company closed on $33 million in a Series C last year, drawing capital from Baxter Ventures and MVM Life Sciences. 

A few years ago, technology veteran Doug Hirsch was given a prescription that he wasn’t 100% sure he needed, especially after the first pharmacy he brought it to told him the drug would cost over $400. Hirsch walked out with the unfilled prescription and decided to shop around. What he discovered was a prescription marketplace that seemed to offer little rhyme or reason. This mystery led to the creation of GoodRx and an app that allows patients to shop around more easily. Six years later, GoodRx users have saved over $10 billion and one-third of prescribing physicians recommend it to their patients. In this podcast, host Steve Krupa talks with Hirsch about the value of PBMs and the future of GoodRx.

Punit Soni’s LinkedIn profile includes Intel, Google, and Motorola. But Soni tells the Breaking Health podcast that he believes the “largest, most interesting” tech company will be in health care. Can Suki be that company? Soni sees an enormous opportunity to help physicians be physicians by replacing keyboards with AI-enabled digital assistants that can record electronic health record (HER) documentation. Can this digital assistant improve patient care and reduce physician burnout by getting docs away from data entry and back to doctoring? “We want the doctors to be the bosses of their own lives,” Soni says. “They need to rediscover the joy of practicing medicine.” Suki already is an interesting company to watch. 

Lark CEO and Founder Julia Hu had launched two cleantech start-ups early in her career, but a childhood managing a chronic disease predestined her to start Lark Health, developer of an AI-empowered “coach” that can help people with chronic disease manage their own health. 

Arvind Rajan left his managing director post at LinkedIn intent upon two things – taking some time off with his family and finding a new venture that would be hard, important, and transformative to the world. Rajan and his co-founders, James Chaukos and Vince Kim – saw an imbalance in how patients with late-stage kidney disease were being treated. Cricket Health – identified as one of the Fierce 15 Companies in healthcare – is working to balance the scales in favor of patients by building teams of nephrologists, dieticians, even experienced patient mentors to help people before they reach kidney failure.