Fresh off a $243 million fundraise from Oak HC/FT and A16Z, Ambience Healthcare is on a mission to kill medical billing — and build “Iron Man suits for doctors.”

Today we sit down with co-founder and CEO Mike Ng to talk about how Ambience is tackling one of healthcare’s most painful problems: the administrative burden that eats up 73% of a clinician’s day. 

We cover: 

🏥 How Ambience tackles both clinical documentation and medical coding simultaneously (and why this dual approach was initially controversial with investors) 

📊 The metrics he obsesses over to know if they’re succeeding

🎯 Why specialty-specific AI models outperform general-purpose solutions in complex medical subspecialties 

📈 Real-world results from Cleveland Clinic's five-way ambient listening comparison study

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About our guest: 

Mike Ng is the co-founder and CEO of Ambience Healthcare, developing AI-powered clinical documentation platforms for healthcare providers. Before starting Ambience, Mike ran a care delivery organization, giving him firsthand insights into the challenges of healthcare operations, physician management, and the gap between software demos and real-world implementation. His experience spans both the operational and technological sides of healthcare, informing Ambience's approach to building AI solutions that work seamlessly within existing clinical workflows.

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Dexcom generates more than $4 billion in annual revenue and has a market cap north of $30 billion, making it one of the biggest digital health companies in the world. And it all started with a better way to measure blood sugar.

In this episode, Halle is joined by Kevin Sayer, CEO of Dexcom, the company that pioneered continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). Under Kevin’s leadership, Dexcom scaled from $40 million to $4 billion in revenue, became the standard of care for people with diabetes, and is now expanding into consumer wellness with its direct-to-consumer product, Stelo.

We cover:

📈 How Dexcom scaled 100x without relying on acquisitions

📱 Why real-time glucose data is so powerful—and who needs it beyond diabetes

🤝 Building trust with both doctors and patients

⚖️ What GLP-1s mean for Dexcom’s business

📦 The shift from regulated med device to consumer tech

📊 The future of metabolic health (and what else their sensors might measure next)

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About our guest:

Kevin Sayer is the Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of Dexcom.

Kevin assumed the role of CEO in January 2015 and became Chairman of the Board in July 2018. Kevin has also served as our President since 2011. He held the role of Chief Operating Officer from January 2013 until January 2015. Kevin has served as a member of Dexcom’s Board of Directors beginning in November 2007, prior to his role as Chairman and CEO.

Prior to leading Dexcom, Kevin held various management positions in his prior roles. He served as Chief Financial Officer of Biosensors International Group, Ltd., Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Specialty Laboratories, Inc., Chief Financial Officer of MiniMed, Inc., and Vice President and General Manager of Medtronic MiniMed after the acquisition of MiniMed by Medtronic.

Kevin is a Certified Public Accountant (inactive) and received a Bachelor’s degree and a Master's degree in Accounting and Information Systems from Brigham Young University.

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More than a thousand AI medical devices have FDA clearance, yet fewer than two percent of radiologists actually use them.

In this episode, Steve sits down with Dr. Brian Anderson—CEO and co‑founder of the Coalition for Health AI—to unpack why trust, transparency, and regulation could make or break the next wave of AI‑powered medicine.

We cover:

🤖 Why only 2% of radiologists use AI tools despite 1,000+ FDA‑cleared devices

🔍 What transparency really means and how model cards act like AI “nutrition labels”

🏛️ How federal vs. state regulators could speed up—or stall—AI‑driven care

💊 The imminent arrival of autonomous AI doctors that prescribe meds—and who’s liable when things go wrong

🚑 Brian’s bullish vs. bearish scenarios for health AI over the next three years

About our guest:

Dr. Brian Anderson is President and CEO of the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI), leading the development of technical standards and best practices for MLOps in healthcare, including governance, evaluation, and monitoring in Health AI Assurance Labs. Previously, he was Chief Digital Health Physician at MITRE, where he led initiatives like Advancing Clinical Trials at the Point of Care (ACT@POC) and co-led MITRE’s largest oncology R&D effort supporting the Cancer Moonshot.

A recognized expert in digital health and Health AI, Dr. Anderson has led work in clinical decision support, interoperability, and health IT standards. He formerly led the Informatics and Network Medicine Division at Athenahealth and has served on national health IT committees with the ONC. He earned his MD with honors from Harvard Medical School, a BA in Social Anthropology from Harvard College, trained at Massachusetts General Hospital, and practiced at Greater Lawrence Family Health Center. He lives in the Boston area with his wife and three children.

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When Andrew Lacy launched Prenuvo, the medical establishment largely dismissed it as fringe. Now, some of those same skeptics are collaborating with him on research.

In this episode, Halle and Michael sit down with Andrew, founder and CEO of Prenuvo, to unpack what it takes to build trust in an unconventional idea. He opens up about how a moment of personal reckoning led him to pivot from tech to healthcare—and why he believes early detection should be a fundamental right.

We cover:

📊 How they’ve built the world’s largest dataset of whole-body MRI imaging, and what they’re doing with that data

✨ What happens when Kim Kardashian shares about your company on social media, unprompted

💡 Going from being dismissed by the medical establishment to forming major research partnerships

🧠 What Prenuvo’s dataset is revealing about early disease markers, brain perfusion, and aging

📈 The economics of prevention vs. treatment—and why large employers are on their minds

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About our guest:

Andrew Lacy is the CEO and founder of Prenuvo, the leading proactive whole-body MRI. With a mission to redefine healthcare through proactive screening, Prenuvo has become the forefront of preventive medicine. Since its inception, the company has conducted over 100,000 scans, alerting 2.5-5% of patients to life-threatening conditions, from aneurysms to lesions to tumors. This achievement solidifies Prenuvo as the largest private provider of whole-body MRI, pioneering a new standard in proactive healthcare.

A seasoned entrepreneur, Lacy has a proven track record of transforming bold ideas into industry-defining ventures. He played a pivotal role in developing the iPhone apps ecosystem as co-founder of Tapulous, a mobile app company later acquired by the Walt Disney Company. Beyond his entrepreneurial pursuits, Lacy’s career spans high-impact roles in strategy, finance, and product development at global institutions, including McKinsey & Company and Disney.

In addition to leading Prenuvo, Lacy is an active advisor and investor in a diverse range of startups, applying his entrepreneurial expertise to help the next generation of innovators. With a passion for leveraging technology to improve lives, Lacy is shaping a healthcare future that prioritizes early detection, prevention, and patient empowerment.

Show Notes:

This is not a sponsored show, but our guest has generously provided a discount code for listeners. Take $300 off your Prenuvo scan with our listener code: Prenuvo.com/HOH 

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🙏 Thanks to Flexpa for sponsoring this episode. Flexpa is refactoring healthcare. Connect to 300+ health plans through a single, secure integration to access patient-consented, identified claims data instantly.

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In their first podcast since going public, Omada Health CEO Sean Duffy joins us to reflect on the journey to bend the curve of chronic disease.

From walking away from the traditional PMPM model to staying grounded in clinical outcomes, Sean shares hard-earned lessons from over a decade of building Omada—from a startup in Rock Health’s Chinatown office to IPO. 

We cover:

🔧 Killing PMPM before it killed them (and the business model shift that made Omada viable)

🎯 Designing digital experiences around actual outcomes and not just engagement

💡 What sets Digital Health 2.0 apart, and why the next wave of companies needs to focus on care delivery, not just navigation or access 

📈 What going public taught Sean about readiness, discipline, and running a mission-driven business at scale

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About our guest:

Sean co-founded Omada in 2011 with the aim of merging medical trends and cutting edge technology to revolutionize health care of chronic disease as we know it. Today, he proudly serves as CEO and has been instrumental in steering Omada toward global recognition, such as being hailed a potential “medical triumph” by The New York Times, and one of Fast Company’s 50 most innovative companies in the world.  

A longtime devotee of healthcare and technology, Sean also founded a largely automated lifestyle business around Excel Everest, the interactive Microsoft Excel training tool he created. He formerly covered healthcare innovation as writer and editor for Medgadget, a popular medical technology blog.

As CEO of Omada, Sean cares deeply about honing the organization’s exceptional products, values-driven approach to healthcare, and the innovative ways in which primary care can continue to better humanity.

More recently, Sean has been spending more and more of his free time learning how to build and fly first-person view drones.

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Dare we say digital health is back? The IPOs are IPOing, and startups (at least the AI ones) are back raising mega rounds. 

In this month’s Digital Health Download, Halle and Steve break down the recent headlines, including a blockbuster funding cycle for AI tools, a dramatic breakup between Novo Nordisk and Hims, and why Oregon’s new law could shake up how startups structure clinical care.

We cover:

📈 What the return of IPOs signals for the second half of 2025

🦄 New ways of building and funding healthcare unicorns

💔 The fallout from Novo Nordisk's split with Hims over compounded GLP-1s

⚖️ Are we trading faster innovation for a lower standard of evidence in cancer treatment?

⚠️ Why Oregon’s new anti-private-equity law could be a warning sign for startups

📚 Rethinking med school as AI reshapes the future of the profession

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Show Notes:

• Rock Health Unicorn Analysis
• Bloomberg’s cancer drug pricing investigation
• NEJM on changes to medical education
• Oregon Senate Bill 951 Summary
• Novo Nordisk terminates partnership with Hims over compounding concerns

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What does one do after selling their company to Amazon for $1 billion? Start a new one, of course.

In this episode, Halle sits down with TJ Parker, pharmacist, entrepreneur, and advocate for consumer-centric digital health. After co-founding PillPack and selling it to Amazon, TJ stayed on for four years helping build Amazon Pharmacy. Now, he’s back at it with General Medicine, a new company focused on making care as seamless as any other online transaction.

We cover:

🧾 Why pricing opacity and short-term incentives make care so frustrating

📦 What TJ learned from building PillPack—and how the Amazon acquisition actually played out

🏥 His vision for General Medicine, and why his second time around feels more like sport than survival

📉 The wild ride of taking on PBMs (and winning)

🪄 The one change he’d make to fix healthcare’s misaligned incentives

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About our guest:

TJ Parker is a general partner with Matrix and is the co-founder and former CEO of PillPack. As CEO of PillPack, in just five years, TJ raised over $100M in financing, grew the company to more than a thousand employees, and successfully sold the business to Amazon for $1 billion in 2018. Today, TJ is focused on starting, investing in, and advising other healthcare and consumer focused businesses. Most recently, he founded and is the lead investor in General Medicine.

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Most medical care is backed by varying types of evidence, yet we apply higher standards to digital health tools before they’re trusted, adopted, or reimbursed.

In this special episode, guest host Lucia Savage is joined by Dr. Vindell Washington of Verily and Dr. Aaron Carroll of AcademyHealth for a candid conversation about the uneven standards we apply to digital versus traditional care. Together, they explore how we define evidence, whose voices shape that definition, and what it takes to build trust in an AI-powered healthcare future.

We cover:

🧪 Why much of traditional care isn’t based on randomized controlled trials

🔍 What types of validation make digital tools trustworthy to patients, payers, and regulators

👩‍⚕️ Whether generative AI should be evaluated like other medical devices

📣 How to integrate patient perspectives into evaluating health tech

📉 The risks of requiring more proof from digital tools than from “standard” care

📊 Why transparency—not perfection—is key to building trust in innovation

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About our guests:

Lucia Savage is a nationally recognized expert in healthcare regulation, digital health, privacy, and AI. She is the Chief Privacy and Regulatory Officer at Omada Health, a virtual-first care provider that has served over one million people with evidence-based cardio-metabolic and physical therapy programs. Lucia also serves on the boards of AcademyHealth and Tidepool, and advises ClaimsHero, which uses AI to simplify healthcare claims appeals. She was previously Chief Privacy Officer at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT under the Obama Administration, and has testified before Congress on health data and digital care. Lucia was named one of Rock Health’s Top 50 in Digital Health in 2021 and is a contributing author to two bestselling books on digital medicine and health technology.

Vindell Washington, MD, MS, is the Chief Clinical Officer and Head of Health Equity at Verily. Dr. Washington provides clinical leadership across Verily’s research and care solutions and currently leads the company’s Center of Excellence for Health Equity. Dr. Washington previously served as the CEO of Onduo, Verily’s care solution for chronic condition management. Prior to Verily, he was Chief Medical Officer and EVP at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana where he oversaw network operations and contracting, medical policy and quality, disease management, and pharmacy benefits. Dr. Washington also served as National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), where he provided high-level executive direction and leadership for ONC programs, operations, and policies. Dr. Washington also served in several capacities at Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System including, President of the Health System Medical Group, Chief Medical Information Officer, and as the leader of health system quality and information technology. He received his medical degree from the University of Virginia and his MS in healthcare management from the Harvard University School of Public Health.

Dr. Aaron E. Carroll is President and CEO of AcademyHealth and a nationally recognized pediatrician, health services researcher, and science communicator. Formerly Chief Health Officer and Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at Indiana University, his work has focused on pediatric health IT, decision analysis, and healthcare policy. He is the author of The Bad Food Bible, co-author of three books on medical myths, and a former contributor to The New York Times and The Atlantic. He also co-edits the health policy blog The Incidental Economist and hosts the YouTube channel and podcast Healthcare Triage, where he explains health research and policy to broad audiences. 

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Most AI in healthcare promises superintelligence—but what if that’s the wrong goal entirely?

In this episode, Michael and Halle speak with Othman Laraki, co-founder and CEO of Color Health, to talk about why real-world care doesn’t need a perfect model—it needs a better system. Othman breaks down how Color evolved from a consumer genetics startup into a nationwide virtual cancer clinic, why most diagnostics businesses fail, and how AI can actually support clinicians without trying to replace them.

We cover:

🤖 Why chasing “healthcare superintelligence” misses the point

🧠 How Color uses AI to speed up care and not take over decision-making

🏥 Their pivot from genetic testing to full-scale clinical delivery

📉 How they cut time to treatment in half and boosted screening by 70%

🤝 Partnering with OpenAI, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and major employers

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About our guest:

Othman Laraki is CEO and co-founder of Color Health, a platform for healthcare delivery, providing the technology, infrastructure, and logistics required to distribute large-scale health initiatives to diverse populations. Color is changing the way patients access cancer care through a first-of-its-kind, vertically integrated, and fully owned Virtual Cancer Clinic. Powered by a 50-state oncologist-led team of cancer-focused clinical experts, Color provides proactive, evidence-based care that is accessible to anyone, anytime, and at every step of the cancer journey. Prior to Color, Othman was an early Product leader at Google, where he worked on performance infrastructure and client-side software, including the Google Chrome browser. After leaving Google, he co-founded MixerLabs, which was one of Twitter's first acquisitions. Othman holds degrees in computer science and management from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a long-time investor and advisor to leading companies such as Pinterest, AngelList, Coinbase, Slack, Instacart, Gitlab, and others.

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🙏 Thanks to Flexpa for sponsoring this episode. Flexpa is refactoring healthcare. Connect to 300+ health plans through a single, secure integration to access patient-consented, identified claims data instantly.

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Over half of Americans now live with at least one chronic condition, yet our healthcare system still revolves around episodic, reactionary care instead of continuous, coordinated support.

We talk with Dr. Jaewon Ryu—former CEO of Geisinger and now CEO of Risant Health—about how integrated delivery systems are reshaping the way care is paid for and delivered. With decades of experience spanning medicine, law, government, and leadership at some of the most respected healthcare institutions, Dr. Ryu offers a rare inside look at what it takes to scale value-based care in a fragmented system.

We cover:

🏥 What an integrated delivery system actually looks like—from both the patient and provider perspective

📉 Why two patients with the same condition often face very different outcomes based on their insurance

💡 How value-based care can ease workforce shortages and improve access without cutting corners

📈 What Risant Health is doing to help more systems scale value-based care without sacrificing local autonomy

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About our guests:

Dr. Jaewon Ryu, MD, JD, is the CEO of Risant Health, a nonprofit created by Kaiser Permanente to expand and scale value-based care across diverse, multi-payer, multi-provider health systems. Previously, he served as President and CEO of Geisinger, Risant Health’s inaugural member. With a mission to improve community health outcomes and healthcare affordability, Risant Health aims to bring the benefits of coordinated, value-based care to a broader national landscape.

Dr. Ryu brings deep cross-sector experience, having held leadership roles at Humana, University of Illinois Hospital, Kaiser Permanente, and in federal government at CMS and the Department of Veterans Affairs. He began his career as a practicing corporate healthcare attorney. From 2018 to 2024, he served two terms on MedPAC, advising Congress on Medicare policy, and currently sits on the boards of NCQA, The Commonwealth Fund, and the KP Medical Foundation. Dr. Ryu earned his B.A. from Yale, and both his M.D. and J.D. from the University of Chicago, completing his emergency medicine residency at Harbor-UCLA.

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