Health2Tech

Alex Koshykov

Everything digital health

  1. 4h ago

    #77 Digital Health Interviews: Why Healthcare Needs More Physician Entrepreneurs | Dr. Alison Curfman

    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.

    #77 Digital Health Interviews: Why Healthcare Needs More Physician Entrepreneurs | Dr. Alison Curfman
  2. Sep 17

    #76 Digital Health Interviews: Beyond AI Chatbots: Building the Infrastructure Healthcare Actually Needs with Ashley Cairns

    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.

    #76 Digital Health Interviews: Beyond AI Chatbots: Building the Infrastructure Healthcare Actually Needs with Ashley Cairns
  3. Jul 29

    #75 The Future of Virtual Care, AI Agents, and Healthcare Access | Chris Moose (Wheel)

    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.

    #75 The Future of Virtual Care, AI Agents, and Healthcare Access | Chris Moose (Wheel)

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Everything digital health