Health2Tech

The startup playbook is broken. AI is changing how companies are built, how founders raise capital, and what it takes to create a lasting competitive advantage. But if software is no longer a moat, what actually makes a startup successful?In this episode of Digital Health Interviews, Alex Koshykov sits down with Bret Waters, Stanford University entrepreneurship instructor, three-time startup founder, and Silicon Valley veteran, for a fascinating conversation about the future of entrepreneurship in the AI era.Recorded on the Stanford University campus, this interview explores why the traditional startup playbook is changing, how artificial intelligence is transforming the economics of building a company, and what founders need to do differently to succeed in 2026 and beyond.Bret shares his perspective on why a three-person team can now build what once required 30 employees, why raising the most venture capital doesn't guarantee success, and why the founder — rather than the technology — is increasingly becoming a startup's most important competitive advantage.We also explore the concept of the "Adjacent Possible," the history and evolution of Silicon Valley, the rise of global startup ecosystems, and why the current AI revolution is fundamentally different from previous technology hype cycles.For healthcare and digital health founders, we discuss the unique challenges of building in an industry with long sales cycles, complex purchasing decisions, and the difficult question of when to persevere and when to pivot.

Why do healthcare innovations that save millions of dollars still fail? And why are so many doctors thinking about leaving medicine?In this episode of Digital Health Interviews, we sit down with Dr. Alison Curfman, MD, MBA, pediatric emergency physician, co-founder of Imagine Pediatrics, and founder of Startup Physicians, to discuss the broken economics of American healthcare, physician entrepreneurship, telehealth, value-based care, and the future of AI in medicine.Alison shares how she developed a virtual pediatric care program that reduced hospitalizations by 35% and emergency department visits by nearly 50%. Despite these impressive results and millions saved for insurers, the program lost funding. The problem wasn't the clinical outcomes. It was the business model.That experience eventually led her to co-found Imagine Pediatrics, a virtual-first, value-based care company serving more than 100,000 children covered by Medicaid.We explore why traditional healthcare systems struggle to innovate, whether direct primary care offers a better alternative, and how healthcare startups can build financially sustainable businesses without compromising patient care.We also discuss AI's potential to transform medicine, the risks of deploying it without appropriate clinical oversight, and why so many physicians are burned out and looking for new career opportunities.Through Startup Physicians, Alison now helps doctors become entrepreneurs, startup advisors, and founders. She shares practical advice on validating healthcare startup ideas, finding the right business model, generating clinical evidence, and building companies that can scale.

What does it actually take to deploy AI inside a healthcare organization — beyond chatbots and proof-of-concept demos?In this episode of Digital Health Interviews, Alex Koshykov sits down with Ashley (Odom) Cairns, Founder & CEO of Keywell.ai, to discuss the next phase of healthcare AI: automating complex workflows, building HIPAA-compliant AI infrastructure, choosing between rapidly evolving foundation models, and giving healthcare organizations long-term control over their AI strategy.Ashley brings nearly 17 years of experience in healthcare data science and analytics, including work across Medicaid, UnitedHealth Group, Optum, and the Advisory Board Company. Today, Keywell.ai is building what Ashley calls “AI scaffolding” — an operational layer designed to help health plans deploy, govern, and evolve AI across use cases without becoming locked into individual SaaS point solutions.We discuss why health plans may be falling behind providers in the AI-powered coding arms race, how AI could change prior authorization and appeals, why Keywell.ai is betting on multiple foundation models instead of one, and what HIPAA compliance really means when LLMs are working with patient data.Ashley also explains why healthcare organizations need to test AI models against their own real-world data rather than relying solely on public benchmarks — and why founders should be thinking about whether the products they build today will still be relevant six months from now.

DescriptionWhat is the future of virtual care—and how will AI agents, interoperability, GLP-1 medications, blockchain, and government policy reshape healthcare delivery?In this episode of Digital Health Interviews, Alex Koshykov speaks with Chris Moose, Vice President of Life Sciences at Wheel, about the technologies and market forces transforming healthcare.https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismoose/Chris brings more than 25 years of healthcare and pharmaceutical industry experience, including 23 years at IBM, where he worked on global supply chains, pharmaceutical traceability, medication security, blockchain, and the provenance of medicines. Today, at Wheel, he helps support the infrastructure behind virtual care delivery at scale.The conversation explores why IBM Watson’s legacy may be more important than its commercial results, why blockchain has struggled to achieve mainstream adoption, and how Web3 technologies could eventually return as invisible infrastructure rather than consumer-facing products.Chris also discusses the evolution from “Doctor Google” to AI-powered healthcare agents that can build a longitudinal understanding of a patient, analyze health information, and eventually coordinate appointments, insurance coverage, and care delivery.Other topics include healthcare interoperability, CMS initiatives, the future of telehealth after COVID-19, Wheel’s white-label virtual care model, the rapid growth of GLP-1 therapies, AI’s impact on healthcare jobs, and why digital health founders must understand government policy and funding opportunities.

Why US Healthcare Is Broken — and Why AI Alone Won’t Save It | Dr. David LevyIn this episode of Digital Health Interviews, Alex Koshykov speaks with Dr. David Levy, physician, entrepreneur, former PwC global healthcare leader, and founder of Franklin Health.Dr. Levy explains why the U.S. healthcare system is in worse shape today than when he started 40 years ago, why employer-based health insurance is one of the root causes of the problem, and why AI alone will not fix healthcare unless we use it to redesign care around patients.We discuss complex care management, home-based care, Medicare Advantage, value-based care, healthcare costs, risk pools, AI in healthcare, prevention, longevity, and what digital health founders often get wrong.Topics covered:

• Why U.S. healthcare is so expensive
• Employer-based health insurance and fragmented risk pools
• Complex care management and home-based care
• Why value-based care has not solved the problem
• How AI may help or hurt the healthcare system
• The difference between disease and illness
• Longevity, prevention, and biohacking
• Advice for digital health founders

Jason Scharf is one of the loudest voices in Austin’s growing health tech and biotech ecosystem — and in this episode of Digital Health Interviews, we go deep into why Austin is rapidly becoming one of the most important innovation hubs in healthcare.We discuss the future of healthcare innovation, GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Zepbound, CRISPR cures, AI in healthcare, the broken healthcare business model, and why Jason believes there is “no business model for a cure.”Jason is an investor, ecosystem builder, podcast host of Austin Next, and one of the strongest advocates for Austin’s rise in biotech, digital health, defense tech, robotics, and frontier innovation.If you’re a startup founder, healthcare operator, investor, biotech entrepreneur, or simply curious about where healthcare is heading next, this episode is packed with insights.

In this episode of Digital Health Interviews, we sit down with David Jabotovsky — a soon-to-be pain medicine fellow with an MD/MBA background — to unpack the reality of modern medicine from the front lines.From physician burnout and broken incentives to AI scribes, clinical decision support, and the growing power of payers, this conversation goes deep into what doctors actually experience—and where healthcare innovation is heading next.

We also explore why more physicians are stepping into startups, how hackathons are shaping the future of care, and what digital health founders often miss when building solutions.If you’re building, investing, or working in digital health, this is a great watch.

In this episode of Digital Health Interviews, we sit down with Sean Day, early-stage investor at Rock Health Capital, to break down what actually matters when building and funding digital health startups in 2026.

A conversation with Rami Ajjuri, a healthcare product leader, on why healthcare UI/UX still fails clinicians, what founders consistently get wrong, and how AI is reshaping digital health.

We also explore system-level questions around competition, patient outcomes, and practical advice for founders building healthcare technology today.

Phase Capital founder Kavya Sharman explains the difference between techbio and biotech and where GenAI is already changing lab work. We discuss autonomous labs, realistic disease “cure” timelines, and her thesis as an investor.