The IDAAHub Podcast: AI Healthcare & Finance

What frontier could be bigger than Mars? According to Dr. Rick Zollinger, it's the human body. We still can't cure a stroke, repair a broken spine, or stop Alzheimer's. In Part 2 of our conversation, Dr. Zollinger, a cardiothoracic surgeon, wound care pioneer, author, and physician coach, shares his vision for how AI could speed up our understanding of the body's complexity and bring cures that once seemed decades away.

He predicts that 50 years from now, we may look back on chemotherapy the way we now look at bloodletting: as the best we had before AI, immunology, and gene therapy changed everything. He explains why the 20th century belonged to surgeons and the 21st may belong to immunologists. He also points out that AI can now review the world's medical literature in an afternoon, work that once took months, and he believes neurological diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and multiple sclerosis could see major breakthroughs within the next decade.

He also argues that the greatest challenge ahead will be ethics, not technology, and that medicine can never lose the human touch.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why the human body, not Mars, is the real great frontier
• How AI could speed up research, drug discovery, and cures for complex diseases
• Why chemotherapy may one day look like bloodletting
• The shift from treating the results of disease to preventing and curing it
• Nutrition, GLP-1 drugs, and prevention as the future of healthcare
• Bioethics: do we really want to live to 130?
• The "doorknob doctor" and why two minutes at the bedside beats ten at the door
• His books Messages From the Heart and Flight of a Surgeon
• Coaching young physicians through burnout
• How medical education is changing
• What he wishes he'd known at the start of his career, and a Ted Lasso lesson: look through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror

Missed Part 1? Watch "When Hospitals Became Car Dealerships: Dr. Rick Zollinger on How Medicine Changed."

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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-idaa-hub-podcast-ai-in-finance-healthcare/id1848710327

📧 Connect with Host
 Host Deepti Kalghatgi : https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepti-kalghatgi/
🌐 Visit: https://idaahub.com

#IDAAHubPodcast #AIinHealthcare #FutureOfMedicine #Bioethics #Neuroscience #HealthcareInnovation #PhysicianCoaching

What happens when medicine stops being a calling and starts running like a business? In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Dr. Rick Zollinger, a cardiothoracic surgeon with three decades of experience, looks back on how medicine changed when physicians became employees and hospitals became mega-operations.

Rick grew up in a family of surgeons and trained at Ohio State and the Ochsner Clinic. He built a cardiac surgery practice in Charlotte before burnout pushed him out of the OR in 2005. A hospital administrator then offered him a new challenge: build a wound care and hyperbaric medicine center from scratch. That second career brought medicine back to life for him and taught him one of his most important lessons as a physician.

In this episode, we cover:

• Growing up in a family of surgeons and the path from UNC golf to cardiothoracic surgery
• What medicine was like before corporate healthcare took over, and what changed in the late '90s and 2000s
• Why Rick would choose academic medicine if he started over today
• Why nurses are the real linchpin of medicine
• The hidden scale of chronic wounds, diabetes, and limb loss in the U.S.
• Building a wound care and hyperbaric program from the ground up at 56
• The "aha moment" that taught him to meet patients in the middle
• Why every physician should consider a sabbatical
• Medical billing as a "shell game" and the push for price transparency
• A brief (and final) Hollywood detour as a film producer
• How COVID, AI, and wearables are compressing clinical trials from decades to months

Don't miss Part 2, where Dr. Zollinger shares his vision for AI, empathy, and the future of medicine.

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https://open.spotify.com/show/3V8Vuhqkibej5fUwtwkUMx
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-idaa-hub-podcast-ai-in-finance-healthcare/id1848710327

📧 Connect with Host
 Host Deepti Kalghatgi : https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepti-kalghatgi/
🌐 Visit: https://idaahub.com

In this episode of the IDAAHub Podcast on Startup & Innovation series, we break down how Hippocratic AI became one of the most-watched names in healthcare AI by doing something counterintuitive: deciding what its AI would refuse to do. No diagnosing. No prescribing. Just safe, patient-facing, non-diagnostic care built on a single principle — first, do no harm.

We cover:

• The founder story: a serial entrepreneur with 25 years at the intersection of AI and healthcare
• The growth: a $50M pre-product seed round to a $3.5B valuation in about two and a half years, and 115M+ patient interactions with no reported safety issues
• What fresh 2026 patient-trust data now confirms about the bet they made two years early
• 3 transferable lessons: constraints as a moat, building with your customer, and solving for abundance instead of efficiency

Whether you're building in healthcare, fintech, or anywhere AI meets a high-stakes decision, these lessons hold up.

Sources: ZS Impact Institute 2026 Future of Health Report; PatientPoint 2026 Patient Confidence Index.

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IDAAHUB
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3V8Vuhqkibej5fUwtwkUMx
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-idaa-hub-podcast-ai-ihealthcare/id1848710327

📧 Connect with Host
 Host Deepti Kalghatgi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepti-kalghatgi/

A patient can look completely fine — while the crash is already coming. AI might catch it hours before a human can.

In Part 2 of this episode of The IDAAHub Podcast, host Deepti Kalghatgi and Dr. John Green — trauma & acute care surgeon, Professor of Surgery at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and Medical Director at Atrium Health — move from the problem to the possibilities: how and where AI is already advancing trauma and critical care, and where it's headed next.

From the ICU to the operating room, this half explores the places AI can do the most good — and the human moments it should never replace.

In this episode:

• Critical care monitoring as the "low-hanging fruit" — turning endless ICU data into early warnings
• Beating alarm fatigue and predicting patient deterioration hours before it shows
• Robotic surgery, economy of motion, and AI-driven performance feedback for surgeons
• The human elements AI must not replace — ethical decisions and delivering hard news to families
• The future: wearables that alert EMS, smarter regional trauma systems, and chest-wall/rib-fracture modeling
• The stat most people don't know: trauma is the #1 killer from ages 1–44 — and it's dramatically underfunded

🎧 New here? Start with Part 1 for the full story on why trauma is AI's toughest frontier.

📧 Connect with IDAAHub Follow us on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idaahub/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IDAAHUB Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3V8Vuhqkibej5fUwtwkUMx Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-idaa-hub-podcast-ai-in-finance-healthcare/id1848710327

📧 Connect with Host Host Deepti Kalghatgi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepti-kalghatgi/ 🌐 Visit: https://idaahub.com

AI is everywhere in medicine — except the one place where seconds decide who lives.

In Part 1 of this episode of The IDAAHub Podcast, host Deepti Kalghatgi sits down with Dr. John Green — trauma & acute care surgeon, Professor of Surgery at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and Medical Director at Atrium Health — to explore the last frontier AI hasn't reached: acute trauma care.

When a critically injured patient arrives, doctors often have half the information they need and no time to wait for the rest. Dr. Green calls it "putting a puzzle together without the box." In this first half, Deepti and Dr. Green dig into why the technology transforming so much of medicine still can't help in the moments that matter most.

In this episode:

• Why AI has reshaped the EMR and the clinic — but not the first critical minutes of trauma
• The "golden hour" and making life-or-death calls on incomplete data
• Human intuition vs. algorithms — and what Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" teaches trauma surgeons
• Dr. Green's vision for bridging the data gap between EMS in the field and the trauma bay
• How robotics and real-time monitoring are beginning to open the door for AI in surgery

🎧 Listen to Part 2 to hear how and where AI is already making trauma care better.

📧 Connect with IDAAHub Follow us on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idaahub/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IDAAHUB Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3V8Vuhqkibej5fUwtwkUMx Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-idaa-hub-podcast-ai-in-finance-healthcare/id1848710327

📧 Connect with Host Host Deepti Kalghatgi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepti-kalghatgi/ 🌐 Visit: https://idaahub.com

 In this episode, I trace Aidoc's full story to find the real answer: the mission-driven (not tech-driven) reason they picked radiology and what turned them into a $500 million category leader.

📧 Connect with Host Host Deepti Kalghatgi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepti-kalghatgi/

 the COVID-era crisis that made their work urgent, the platform pivot that came straight from a customer complaint, the specific investor moment that unlocked their biggest funding rounds, and why they've pulled so far ahead of that same-year competitor.

What we cover:

• Why Elad Walach says there was no single "aha moment" — and what actually drove the founding
• The real, independently studied impact of AI on COVID-era imaging backlogs (a 30% cut in report turnaround time)
• aiOS: the platform decision that turned Aidoc from a vendor into infrastructure
• Why four health systems investing their own capital mattered more than any VC check
• Aidoc vs. Viz.ai — same founding year, two very different bets
• Three lessons for anyone building or buying clinical AI today

Sources:

• Authority Magazine, BackTable Industry Podcast, Alantra Podcast (Elad Walach interviews)
• Fierce Healthcare, Radiology Business, MedCity News, Healthcare Dive, Ctech/Calcalist, Tech Funding News
• Axis Imaging News (Moscow Center for Diagnostics & Telemedicine, ECR 2021)
• Philips 2025 Future Health Index
• CB Insights, Docus.ai, MytheAi

Got a startup you think belongs in this series? Reach out — I read every message.

📧 Connect with IDAAHub Follow us on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idaahub/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IDAAHUB Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3V8Vuhqkibej5fUwtwkUMx Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-idaa-hub-podcast-ai-in-finance-healthcare/id1848710327

For years, healthcare AI had one pitch: it saves you money. That story is changing — for buyers, investors, and the startups selling into this space.

In this episode, I dig into two developments happening right now: health systems are getting far more disciplined about how they evaluate AI (shifting from responding to vendor pitches to running data-driven projects), and healthcare investors are arguing AI is the first tech wave in the industry that's actually generating new revenue, not just cutting costs.

What we cover:

• Why Arcadia CEO Michael Meucci says health systems should find their own inefficiencies before taking a single vendor meeting
• Why replacing a physician costs roughly $1M — and why that number belongs in your ROI math
• The investor panel (Kaiser Permanente Ventures, CVS Health Ventures, Invidia Capital Management, Hippocratic AI) behind the widely-cited "100x return" claim
• Four real, sourced lessons for anyone trying to pitch AI ROI credibly right now

Sources:

• MedCity News: "How Are Health Systems Assessing ROI for AI Tools?" (Mar 2026) — medcitynews.com/2026/03/health-system-hospital-ai-roi
• MedCity News: "Healthcare Investors Are Rewriting the ROI Playbook from Cost-Cutting to Cash Flow" (Jul 2026) — medcitynews.com/2026/07/healthcare-investors-medcity-ai
• Becker's Hospital Review: "700 Lives, $100M Saved: Healthcare AI ROI in '25" (Jan 2026)
• Premier Inc.: "Redefining AI ROI in Healthcare" (May 2026)
• Healthcare IT News: "AI with human support reduces no-shows at Graybill" (Jul 2026)

Got thoughts on how your organization measures AI ROI? Reach out — I read every message.

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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-idaa-hub-podcast-ai-in-finance-healthcare/id1848710327

📧 Connect with Host Host Deepti Kalghatgi : https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepti-kalghatgi/

🌐 Visit: https://idaahub.com

Two companies chasing the same mission — getting the right cancer treatment to the right patient — with two completely opposite playbooks. One raised $1.3 billion to build an empire. The other ships FDA-recognized diagnostics with a seven-person engineering team. So which way should a startup go: broad or niche? And who actually wins?

📧 Connect with Host 

Host Deepti Kalghatgi : https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepti-kalghatgi/

🌐 Visit: https://idaahub.com

In this episode of the Innovation & Startup Series, we unpack Tempus AI and Valar Labs — how each was built, how each grew, and three lessons any founder can borrow.

Tempus, founded by Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkofsky after his wife's cancer diagnosis, went all-in on owning the whole stack — genomics, clinical data, labs, and AI — and now does over $1.27B in annual revenue. Valar Labs went the opposite way: one sharply focused question — will this treatment work for this patient? — answered by running AI over routine pathology slides that already exist, built by seven engineers who optimized everything for one thing: speed of iteration.

We dig into why capital intensity drives the broad-vs-niche decision, why data is the real moat (and the two ways to win it), and why fast iteration toward validated evidence beats a perfect initial design.

What you'll learn:

• How Tempus and Valar chose broad vs. niche — and the role capital played
• Why proprietary data is the moat, whether you generate it or unlock it
• Why speed of iteration is the quiet engine behind both companies
• How a seven-person team out-ships rivals many times its size

Sources & further reading:

• Valar Labs — "5 Years, 7 Engineers, No Cloud": https://www.valarlabs.com/engineering/7-engineers
• Valar Labs — $22M Series A: https://www.valarlabs.com/news/series-a
• Tempus AI: https://www.tempus.com

If you enjoyed this, follow the show and share it with someone building in healthcare or AI.

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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-idaa-hub-podcast-ai-in-finance-healthcare/id1848710327

A team of doctors saved Atul Gawande's infant son. In that moment, he says, every one of them deserved a million dollars. The actual bill was $250,000. He paid $5.
📧 Connect with Host
Host Deepti Kalghatgi : https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepti-kalghatgi/
🌐 Visit: https://idaahub.com
That single moment opens up one of healthcare's biggest unanswered questions: how do we actually decide what medical care is worth?
In this episode, I trace how physician pricing evolved — from ancient piecework fee schedules, to the 1980s Harvard formula that tried to put a number on "how much work" a surgery takes, to the 1929 Dallas hospital plan that quietly became the blueprint for American health insurance. I also pull in ideas from Atul Gawande's writing on performance and diligence in medicine, and close with a few open questions I'm still sitting with — including whether AI can actually be the innovation that brings costs down.
In this episode:
00:00 – Why we're asking this question
00:45 – The piecework problem
02:30 – Trying to make pricing "rational"
04:15 – Where insurance came from
05:45 – It's not just pricing — it's performance
07:30 – The war nobody wins
08:15 – Closing thoughts and open questions
If you work in healthcare, health tech, or health finance, I'd love to hear your take on the questions raised in the episode — drop a comment.
🎙️ Part of the IDAAHub Podcast — Innovation & Startups series
#Healthcare #HealthTech #MedicalCosts #HealthInsurance #AtulGawande #HealthcareInnovation #AIinHealthcare #IDAAHub

In this new Innovation & Startups series, we break down Abridge — one of the fastest-growing AI startups in healthcare today.

📧 Connect with Host
 Host Deepti Kalghatgi : https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepti-kalghatgi/
🌐 Visit: https://idaahub.com

We cover the real founding story (it started with a cardiologist, a patient, and one sentence about dignity), how Abridge grew faster than long-standing incumbents like Nuance, what just happened with Abridge's Nvidia and Eli Lilly partnerships, and why this isn't really a scribe company anymore — it's trying to become the operating system for how care gets delivered and paid for.

We close with three takeaways every startup founder can learn from Abridge's playbook: why being first to market matters less than being first to solve the real problem, why credible partners can matter more than features, and why trust has to come before product in healthcare AI.

🎙️ Topics covered:

• The real Abridge origin story
• Why Abridge grew faster than Nuance
• Abridge's Nvidia + Eli Lilly partnership news
• 3 startup lessons every founder should know

📧 Connect with IDAAHub
 Follow us on:
 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idaahub/
https://www.youtube.com/@IDAAHUB
https://open.spotify.com/show/3V8Vuhqkibej5fUwtwkUMx
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-idaa-hub-podcast-ai-in-finance-healthcare/id1848710327