Most people spend over 30 hours a year dealing with customer service—on hold, repeating account numbers, and navigating endless phone trees. But what if AI could fix that without losing the human touch?

Clay Bavor, co-founder of Sierra (now valued at $10B) and former VP at Google, joins us to explore how AI agents are reshaping how companies interact with customers and what that means for the most complex service industry in the world: healthcare.

We cover:

🧠 The difference between horizontal and. vertical AI solutions

⚙️ If systems of action will take over systems of record (like Epic) in enterprise AI

🫀 How empathy, tone, and even “voice sommeliers” help AI sound more human

📉 The risks of AI job displacement (and the new roles emerging in its wake)

🚀 Clay’s take on staying grounded as a unicorn entrepreneur when hype runs high in Silicon Valley

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About our guest: 

Clay Bavor is a co-founder of Sierra, which helps businesses build better, more human customer experiences with AI. A visionary product leader and technologist, Clay spent 18 years at Google, where he spearheaded some of the company’s most innovative efforts. As head of Google Labs, he led teams working on forward-looking projects, including augmented and virtual reality, Project Starline, and Google Lens. Earlier, Clay oversaw the product and design teams for Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, and Google Apps for Enterprise (now Workspace), shaping tools used by billions worldwide. He also contributed to foundational Google products, including Search and advertising technologies.

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This milestone 200th(!!!) episode of The Heart of Healthcare Podcast features none other than Dr. Tom X. Lee, the serial physician-founder behind Epocrates (acquired for $293M), One Medical (acquired by Amazon for $3.9B), and now Galileo, a tech-enabled medical group aiming to rewire care delivery from the ground up.

We cover:

🧠 Why most doctors aren’t wired for management (and what traits he thinks translate to startup success)

📉 How medical education is falling behind the pace of change in care delivery

💸 Why healthcare’s biggest barrier is economics, not culture

🏥 What Galileo is doing differently to re-engineer care on the backend

📈 What founders need to understand about building for exit vs. impact

About our guest: 

Tom is the CEO and visionary behind Galileo. Prior to Galileo, Tom helped build One Medical into the leading independent primary care system in the country, and previously helped launch Epocrates, the #1 mobile app used by clinicians at the point of care. Tom is a board-certified internist who completed training at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He received his BS from Yale University, his MD from the University of Washington School of Medicine, and his MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

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Happy Q4 Heart of Healthcare Listeners! We’re back with your monthly Digital Health Download, where we discuss the biggest industry headlines of the month. 

We cover: 

💊 Pharm tariffs, D2C drug ads, and TrumpRx? 

📉 The ACA tax credit standoff and how it could double premiums for millions 

🛒 UnitedHealthcare’s new storefront and what it signals about point solution fatigue

📈 The GLP-1 gold rush: Remedy’s $450M revenue, Virta’s $160M, and FDA’s warning shot 

⚖️ The Doximity vs. Open Evidence lawsuit that could define AI IP 

🤰 The acetaminophen-autism debate and why pregnant women deserve better data

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Show notes:

• Virtual GLP-1 startups: Pill mills or the future of obesity care? (Halle Tecco)
• TrumpRx: A Prescription for Political Theater (Drugstore Cowboy)
• The future of metabolic health and weight loss drugs: Projecting mortality reductions in the US and UK populations (Swiss Re)
• The Latest in Maternal Health Fear Mongering? Tylenol (Vogue)

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🙏 Thank you to our show sponsor, LookDeep. LookDeep pioneers AI that can see, hear, and respond with care to help hospitals be Ever Present for Every Patient. Learn more at lookdeep.ai/aimee. 

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Cancer drugs cost more than ever, yet survival benefits are often modest—and in some cases, patients can’t even access the care that already exists. 

After losing his father, Steve Jobs, to pancreatic cancer, Reed Jobs committed himself to making this the last generation that loses parents to the disease.

Reed now leads Yosemite, a venture fund spun out of Emerson Collective in 2023, alongside Investor Matt Bettonville. Yosemite pairs life sciences and digital health investments with a grantmaking model to accelerate cancer research and ensure breakthroughs actually reach patients.

We cover:

📉 The tension between drug pricing, patient access, and real-world value

🩺 Digital interventions that have outperformed cancer drugs in survival outcomes

🧪 Why phase 3 clinical trials are so costly, and how synthetic control arms could change that

🧬 The promise and limits of early detection—from liquid biopsies to at-home pap smears

🌍 The global race for healthcare innovation and why the U.S. can’t afford to fall behind

About our guests:

Reed Jobs is an Investor at Yosemite and manages Yosemite. Yosemite works exclusively in the oncology space, using flexible capital to advance science with the goal of making cancer non-lethal in our lifetime. Over the years, Reed has supported hundreds of researchers and invested in dozens of therapeutic, diagnostic and digital health companies across the U.S. and Europe. Before the launch of Yosemite, Reed served as the Managing Director of Health at Emerson Collective. He serves on the board of directors at Conservation International, Harvard Medical School, PICI, Stanford Medicine and Waverley Street Foundation. 

Matt Bettonville is an Investor at Yosemite where he leads the team’s investment efforts in digital health and healthcare delivery. He previously worked on Emerson Collective’s Count Me In non-profit partnership with the Broad Institute. Matt started his career working on user interface software engineering at Apple, where he was on the Mac team and a part of the AirPods product team. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University with a focus in Human-Computer Interaction. Matt serves on the board of directors at Atropos, Maia Oncology, Turquoise Health, Count Me In and Getlabs. He serves as a board observer at Proximie. 

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Some founders win support because of their product, others because of their story. In healthcare, where trust is everything, the ability to tell a compelling and authentic narrative can make or break a company.

On this episode, Halle talks with longtime friend and colleague Christina Farr—reporter turned investor and now author of The Storyteller’s Advantage. Chrissy has spent thousands of hours hearing startup pitches, advising founders, and studying what makes certain stories resonate while others fall flat. She shares insights from her years as a journalist and investor, and lessons from her new book on how narrative power shapes companies and industries.

We cover:

📝 The three types of founder stories and why “personal experience” dominates in healthcare

📉 Why failure stories are scarce in healthcare—and how that holds founders back

🏆 The psychology of the underdog and how startups can use it to their advantage

📰 The double-edged sword of media attention, especially for women leaders

🎤 Why founder-led communications matter more than ever in an era of spammy PR pitches

About our guest:

Christina Farr is an editor-in-chief of the health-tech newsletter Second Opinion, which has 40,000 subscribers. She advises startups as a national advisor with Manatt, and she's a GP with the fund Scrub Capital. Prior to that, she worked as an investor at OMERS Ventures and a journalist with CNBC, Fast Company, and Reuters News. Her debut book "The Storyteller's Advantage" is now available. She was born and raised in London, U.K., and resides in New York with her husband and two children. 

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Thanks to improved accuracy and new form factors, wearables have evolved from novelty step counters to tools that can predict illness, nudge healthier behaviors, and even influence alcohol consumption. But can they really bridge the gap between consumer wellness and enterprise healthcare?

In this episode, ŌURA CEO Tom Hale discusses the lessons his team has learned from developing one of the most widely used health-tracking devices. We explore what draws people to wearables, what sustains their engagement, and how these tools may be shaping behavior and healthcare itself. 

We cover:

🕰️ The past, present, and future of wearables

🩺 What it takes to build trust with users, clinicians, and payers

🍷 The number one thing people do differently after wearing an Oura ring

🔑 Unlocking behavior change, and which habits are most malleable

🏥 Why payers and health systems are beginning to integrate wearables into care models

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About our guest:

Tom Hale is the Chief Executive Officer at ŌURA and a member of its board. As the CEO he sets the company’s business strategy and vision to make health a daily practice for members all over the world. He has over 30 years of experience across the technology and consumer product industry.

Before joining ŌURA, Hale was president of Momentive where he drove B2B strategy and led product growth. During his time there he was instrumental in taking the company public in 2018, leading the team in key acquisitions, and driving the evolution and rebranding of the company into a multiple SAAS business. Previously, he held leadership roles at HomeAway and Linden Lab as the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Officer, respectively, and held executive roles at Macromedia and Adobe.

Hale has a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University and sits on the boards of Cars.com, RocketReach, and NoiseAware.

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AI companies are hitting growth milestones in record time—some reaching $100 million in revenue in just two years. But while this pace feels familiar in tech, healthcare has always been slower to adopt new tools. That may finally be changing.

Kent Bennett and Sofia Guerra of Bessemer Venture Partners join Steve Kraus to unpack findings from Bessemer’s State of AI 2025 report and what they mean for healthcare. From “supernovas” and “shooting stars” to the rise of systems of action, they explore how AI is reshaping not only software businesses but also the way doctors, health systems, and patients interact with technology.

We cover:

🚀 Why some AI companies are growing faster than the best SaaS businesses of the past decade

🏥 How healthcare AI adoption is starting to catch up with other industries

📊 The difference between systems of record and systems of action—and why it matters for doctors and patients

🔎 Whether general-purpose models like ChatGPT will dominate healthcare search, or if specialized tools will win out

⚖️ Why evals and data lineage may become make-or-break for safe AI deployment in healthcare

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About our guests:

Sofia Guerra is a vice president at Bessemer Venture Partners, where she invests in seed to growth healthcare and life sciences companies. She is the co-author of State of Health Tech report, Benchmarks for Growing Health Tech Business, and how to scale health tech businesses to $100M and beyond, a study of 100+ best-in-class companies to understand key metrics relevant for scalability in healthcare software and tech-enabled services.

Sofia began her career as a consultant at Bain and Company, where she worked on strategy, operations, and due diligence projects across healthcare and technology.

Prior to joining Bessemer, she was an investor at BoxGroup Ventures and the co-founder and co-president of Nucleate, a national life sciences entrepreneurship program helping PhDs, Post-docs, and students commercialize scientific projects.

Sofia earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA with high honors in Chemistry from Harvard University. While in school, she conducted research alongside Bob Langer, a serial entrepreneur and one of 12 Institute professors at MIT widely recognized for his contributions to drug delivery and tissue engineering fields.

She was born and raised in Guatemala, went to boarding school in Singapore for the last few years of high school, and has traveled to over 35 countries. In her free time, she enjoys listening and dancing to reguetón and traveling to new places with her fiancé Alex.

Kent Bennett is a partner in Bessemer’s Cambridge office focusing on B2B application software and consumer “earthquakes.”

Before his career in venture capital, Kent was a creative executive for an entertainment production company, where he developed and sold original material including a network television pilot and a feature film. He began his career with Bain & Co., where he worked on projects in industries spanning IT, retail, consumer products, healthcare, and biotech.

Kent earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar, and graduated summa cum laude in systems engineering from the University of Virginia, where he was a Jefferson Scholar.

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Healthcare’s “back-to-school” season delivered no shortage of big headlines! From Epic’s big leap into AI to a looming insurance “blood bath,” Steve and Michael break down the stories that shaped digital health this month.

We cover:

🖥 Epic’s 200 new AI “colleagues” and what it means for the battle between systems of record vs. systems of action

💼 Why healthcare CEOs are cashing record paychecks despite shaky stock performance

📉 The warning signs of soaring insurance premiums and their political fallout heading into 2026

🤖 Hospitals turning to robots to fill critical workforce gaps

⚖ The wild policy divide on how AI should (or shouldn’t) be allowed to practice medicine

🎧 How an AI-powered stethoscope could change the way GPs catch heart disease

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🙏Thank you to our show sponsor, LookDeep. LookDeep pioneers AI that can see, hear, and respond with care to help hospitals be Ever Present for Every Patient. Learn more at lookdeep.ai/aimee. 

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Healthcare costs keep climbing, and yet patients and employers often feel powerless to change the system. What if outsiders—those not steeped in the traditions of healthcare—are actually the ones best positioned to fix it?

This special episode is a reshare from The Benefits Playbook podcast, where Halle joins Collective Health CEO Ali Diab. Together, they unpack what it takes to make health benefits simpler, more transparent, and more consumer-focused.

We cover:

🏥 The growing “consumer awakening” in healthcare and what it means for employers

🧾 How Ali’s personal fight with insurance denials led to building a new kind of health company

💡 Why outsiders can sometimes see solutions insiders overlook

🤖 Where AI can actually improve care—and where human advocates are still indispensable

💊 The GLP-1 dilemma for employers balancing access, equity, and cost

About our guest:

Ali Diab is the CEO and Co-Founder of Collective Health, the World’s leading independent third-party health benefit plan administrator (TPA), integrating AI-powered health plan administration, health benefit plan member navigation and advocacy, and digital benefits hub.

Ali has more than 25 years of experience leading high-growth technology organizations, and prior to co-founding Collective Health, was Vice President of Product Management and Business Operations at AdMob by Google. Previously, Ali held executive and management positions at Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and Yahoo!. Ali is a graduate of Stanford and Oxford Universities and is a Member of the Board of Advisors of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).

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Hospitals are under immense pressure: burned-out clinicians, outdated systems, and rising costs have made delivering care harder than ever. 

Tanay Tandon, founder and CEO of Commure, shares how his team is rethinking hospital infrastructure by combining AI, forward-deployed engineering, and a provider-first mindset. Backed by over $750M in funding, Commure is using strategic M&A and next-gen tools like ambient AI to reduce administrative burden, improve revenue cycle operations, and protect clinical staff.

We cover:

📉 How Commure grew claims volume 5x without hiring more staff

🧠 Why the “copilot” era of AI may give way to true automation in back-office tasks

🏥 Tanay’s prediction for a simpler, decentralized hospital system—powered by software

💰 What it means to take capital from General Catalyst’s Health Assurance Fund and build for its customer network

📰 How Commure navigated negative press around its business model and acquisitions

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About our guest:

Tanay Tandon is CEO at Commure, a $6B healthcare software company. The business uses LLMs to help supercharge the productivity of clinicians, healthcare administrators, and finance teams. Commure has raised over $500 million, is backed by Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Initialized, YCombinator, and NVIDIA. The company’s technology powers daily workflows for 250,000 providers at over 100 major health systems.

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