StartUp Health NOW Podcast

UnaliWear founder Jean Anne Booth talks with Logan Plaster about building the Kanega Watch, a wearable medical alert designed around a simple but overlooked truth: a device only protects you if you're willing to wear it. Jean Anne walks through her mother’s response to wearing a “garage door opener around her neck,” the patented battery system that enables full-time wear, the technical challenge of detecting falls on the wrist, and what it took to become a repeat Wirecutter pick in a direct-to-consumer market built on trust.

🌐 Learn more: https://www.startuphealth.com/unaliwear

✅ Join Jean Anne in the community: https://www.startuphealth.com

In this Fireside Chat, Venrock partner Bob Kocher sits down with StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes to unpack why AI will drive more healthcare activity rather than lower prices, where he sees real opportunity for founders (from geriatric behavioral health to medication titration), and what actually makes an AI-native healthcare company defensible versus disposable. Bob also shares the one question he asks every founder in the first ten minutes of a pitch, and why "effect size" matters more to him than any competitive moat. Venrock has backed StartUp Health community members Devoted Health and Virta Health since their earliest days, both companies Bob holds up as examples of the effect size and durable distribution he looks for in a founder. 

This excerpt covers the conversation with Unity. StartUp Health members have access to the full audience Q&A and had the chance to ask Bob their own questions live. Join the community for a seat at the next one.

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After 11 years building Journey and recently named to TIME's World's Top HealthTech Companies 2026 list, founder Stephen Sokoler joins Logan Plaster to unpack why the employee mental health category is shifting from reactive to proactive. They cover the real business case behind the shift, how Journey localizes care across dozens of countries, founder burnout, and what's next with Journey Signal. 

Interested in learning more, sharing your own founder story, or connecting with builders across the Mental Health Moonshot? 👉 startuphealth.com

In this Health Moonshot Update, long-time community member Brant Herman, CEO & Founder of MouthWatch and Dentistry.One, joins StartUp Health's Logan Plaster to talk about building a virtual-first teledentistry network that meets patients at the moments they're already engaging with the healthcare system. They cover the shift from cosmetic to preventive framing in oral health, how care coordination is closing the referral gap for rural and Medicaid populations, and what's next for Dentistry.One as it expands into AI-powered screening and retail partnerships.

Health Transformers like Brant Herman are building the future of health. Join us to connect and collaborate with founders advancing the Oral Health Moonshot.

🌐 Learn more: https://www.startuphealth.com/mouthwatch

✅ Join StartUp Health to tell your story: https://www.startuphealth.com

Cristian Pascual, CEO & Co-founder of Mediktor, talks with StartUp Health’s Logan Plaster about the evolution of AI-powered triage, why healthcare delivery demands professional-grade tools rather than general-purpose AI, and what it's taking to close Mediktor's first government-wide agreement.

In this episode, Pascual breaks down:
🩺 How Mediktor has used AI since day one, long before the LLM boom
🤖 The tradeoffs of adding a conversational LLM layer to a clinically validated system
🏛️ Why governments have become Mediktor's biggest opportunity for scale
📊 What it really takes to build trust with enterprise and government buyers
⚡ How Mediktor uses Claude internally to speed up client offerings and ROI prep

A StartUp Health community member since 2016, Pascual offers a grounded look at what it means to build durable trust in health AI, one clinical validation, reference client, and in-person relationship at a time.

🌐 Learn more: https://www.startuphealth.com/mediktor

✅ Join StartUp Health to tell your story: https://www.startuphealth.com

What does it take to build a health AI company that actually gets funded right now? Greg Yap, Partner at Menlo Ventures, sits down with StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes to unpack how a 50-year-old venture firm is investing across the health AI landscape, why product is no longer the moat it once was, and how founders should approach fundraising as expectations shift. Yap draws on decades as an operator, having led diagnostics work at Roche/Ventana and built businesses at Affymetrix, PyrAmes, and BlueLight Therapeutics, to explain what he's really evaluating in a founding team. 

This preview covers the top of the conversation; StartUp Health community members get the full session, including live Q&A.

What if the richest data about your health wasn't on your wrist, but in your breath? Sathya Elumalai, CEO & Co-founder of Aidar Health, joins Logan Plaster for a Health Moonshot Update on MouthLab – a handheld device that reads roughly 10 vital signs from a single breath and turns them into a predictive health index.

Sathya explains why he built past the wearable model, how Aidar Health is helping skilled nursing facilities catch chronic kidney disease and COPD earlier, and what CMS's new outcomes-based ACCESS program means for the company's path to billing Medicare directly. He also opens up about the family experience with kidney disease that shaped why he's building this in the first place.

A StartUp Health community member since 2016, Sathya is open to collaborating with others in the ecosystem. Join StartUp Health to connect with him and share your own story.

Fresh off a Series A, Yair Saperstein, MD, MPH, CEO & Co-founder of Avo, sits down with Logan Plaster to talk about the inflection point his company is at. Dr. Saperstein built Avo from his own experience as a hospitalist overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data, guidelines, and tasks standing between him and the best possible care decision. He walks through how Avo works as an AI intelligence layer inside the EHR, why physician-first design also happens to solve health systems' revenue and compliance problems, and how his thinking on leadership has evolved as Avo grows from a founder-led team to a fifty-person enterprise company. He also shares two analogies – a jazz band and a river of logs – for how he's learned to lead through change.

Yair has been a StartUp Health community member since 2020. If you're building in health innovation, join the community to collaborate with members like Dr. Saperstein and tell your own story.

Long-time StartUp Health community member Yusuf Sherwani, MD, didn't set out to build an AI mental health specialist. Nine years ago, he co-founded Pelago as a virtual clinic for substance use disorder – called Quit Genius – well before telehealth was widely trusted. Today, Pelago works with employers and health plans across the country and has cut the cost of addiction treatment by 10x.

In this episode, Dr. Sherwani talks with Logan Plaster about the failed experiments that came before Pelago found its model, what it means to "refound" a scaled company, and why he built Sona – an AI-powered first line of behavioral health support designed to know when to bring in a human clinician. He also makes the case for why founders in this space need to stay close to clinical literature and outcomes data, not just engagement metrics.

🌐 Learn more: startuphealth.com/pelago

✅ Join StartUp Health to tell your story: startuphealth.com

What if the sensor in your wearable is the limiting factor in what it can tell you about your health? StartUp Health member Louis Ross, CEO & Founder of MEI Micro, joins Logan Plaster to unpack the science behind digital biomarkers – and why he believes most wearables are trying to make up for cheap sensors with software.

Ross traces MEI Micro's path from military-grade motion sensing to a five-and-a-half-year effort to manufacture navigation-grade sensors at commercial scale, and explains the real-world stakes: better data means better predictive analytics, whether that's flagging an athlete's injury risk or catching early signs of dementia years before symptoms appear.

Listen for a candid look at where sensor technology is headed – and how MEI Micro is investing in the founders building on top of it.

Want to collaborate with innovative founders like Ross? Join the StartUp Health community to connect directly with Health Transformers building the future of health.