Pear Healthcare Playbook

Welcome back to the Pear Healthcare Playbook! Every week, we’ll be getting to know trailblazing healthcare leaders and dive into building a digital health business from 0 to 1. Today, we're so excited to get to know Wei-Li Shao, President of Omada, a virtual care program that blends human experiences technology and behavior science to help people with chronic conditions achieve their healthy goals. With over 25 years of global healthcare experience, Wei-Li has worked in digital care, biopharmaceuticals, imaging, and diagnostics spanning many therapeutic areas. Before joining Omada, Wei-Li held prominent executive roles at Eli Lilly and Company in the USA, China, Taiwan, and New Zealand. His educational background includes dual degrees in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Wisconsin Madison, complemented by an MBA in marketing from the Kellogg School of Business. In this episode, we discuss Omada Health's core operations, discuss the optimal timing for startups to bring in C-suite executives, explore Omada's journey to serving 1 million members, examine its pioneering work in the GLP-1 (Glucagon-Like Peptide-1) space, and uncover how Omada leverages AI to enhance its services.

Dr. Brian Anderson, Chief Digital Health Physician at MITRE and Co-founder of CHAI, discusses building trustworthy healthcare AI. Topics include CHAI's AI process standards, federated network of assurance labs, and advice for health AI innovation community.

In this discussion, Robin Shah, CEO and Co-Founder of Thyme Care, shares his journey in oncology care, inspired by personal experiences with cancer. He emphasizes the importance of care navigation and the innovative strategies Thyme Care employs to support patients. The talk highlights the integration of empathy and technology in cancer treatment, discusses the challenges of the healthcare system, and showcases how value-based care can enhance patient outcomes and reduce costs. Robin also reflects on lessons learned from sports that shaped his entrepreneurial spirit.

Today, we’re excited to get to know Ellen Dasilva and Matthew Woo, Co-Founders at Summer Health, the company bringing real-time pediatric care to your phone. Summer Health is a pediatric tele-health company focused on radically simplifying access in pediatrics. With Summer Health, you can text a pediatrician (just as you might a friend) for any concern you have about a child, whether urgent or innocuous. Founded in 2022, Summer Health has raised a total of $7.5M in seed funding co-led by Sequoia Capital and Lux Capital. The round also included participants such as Box Group, Chelsea Clinton’s Metrodora Ventures, and many others. Ellen began her career in investment banking at Barclays Capital before moving into tech at X (formerly known as Twitter). After graduating from business school, she joined as the 8th employee of the consumer telemedicine business hims&hers. Matthew started his career in consulting at Simon-Kucher & Partners. He then spent 9+ years in tech where he held various product roles at Meetup, Yo, Intercom, UJET and Meta/Whatsapp. Ellen holds a BA from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Matthew holds a BA in Business from Ivey Business School at Western University. In this episode, Ellen and Matthew chat with us about building a delightful consumer experience in healthcare, their co-founding journey, and developing a stellar team.

Welcome back to the Pear Healthcare Playbook! Every week, we’ll be getting to know trailblazing healthcare leaders and dive into building a digital health business from 0 to 1. Today, we're excited to get to know Christopher Molaro. Chris is a West Point graduate who served in the U.S. Army for five years, including a tour in Iraq as a platoon leader. Coming back home, he experienced firsthand the gaps in the behavioral health system and how veterans and civilians alike face too many barriers when it comes to receiving appropriate, timely care. While pursuing his MBA at Wharton, Chris met his future co-founder Adam Pardes, and the two agreed–even the most engaging digital mental health apps in the world wouldn’t truly change the problem until the care providers were a part of the solution in a meaningful way. And so they created NeuroFlow. In this episode, Chris and I discuss his journey from a military background to enrolling in Wharton's MBA program. We dive into the inception of NeuroFlow, its go-to-market strategy, partnerships, fundraising insights, the future of NeuroFlow, and the valuable advice he has for aspiring founders.

Today, we're excited to get to know Tina Beilinson Keshani. She's the co-founder and CEO of Seven Starling, a digital clinic making high quality mental health care more accessible for expecting and new mothers. Before Seven Starling, Tina spent six years at Warby Parker in strategy and helped them launch their first optometric telemedicine service in 2015. She worked alongside Warby Parker CEOs, Neil and Dave, learning firsthand how to build and scale a company that also does good in the world. Her experience lies not only in scaling, high growth startups, but also building patient centric digital care experiences. In this episode, we talked about Tina’s journey towards entrepreneurship, her time with Warby Parker, how she and her co-founders built Seven Starling, the success of her maternal mental healthcare company, and advice she has for founders. 

Today, we’re excited to get to know Bobby Guelich, Co-Founder and CEO at Elion, the Glassdoor for Healthcare Tech. Founded in 2022, Elion has raised $3.3 million in seed funding from NEA, Max Ventures, 8VC, AlleyCorp, Charge Ventures and Floating Point. Bobby has spent decades making build versus buy decisions at various companies and now is dedicated to the problem of improving that experience in healthcare. Bobby began his career in investment research at Bridgewater Associates and later worked as a VP of Customer Care Strategy and Head of Sales at Oscar Insurance. After that, he spent three years at Formation Bio (formerly TrialSpark), a technology company that specializes in clinical trial management, eventually transitioning into an Advisory Role. In May 2022, he founded Elion.  Bobby earned an AB in Economics and Finance from Princeton and briefly attended Stanford Graduate School of Business before he pursued an opportunity at Oscar Insurance. In this episode, we learn about the Elion marketplace and reviews platform, how Bobby advises founders on building versus buying and coming up with a taxonomy for the health tech software stack.

Today, we're excited to get to know Aaron Neiderhiser and Coco Zuloaga. Aaron and Coco are the CEO and CTO of Tuva Health, a healthcare data analytics company simplifying claims and EMR based analytics to supercharge and standardize data-driven innovation. Founded in 2021, Tuva has raised about $4m from YC, Virtue, BoxGroup, and some angel investors. Aaron and Coco are experts at using data science and data analytics to help providers understand how to coordinate care and reduce unnecessary healthcare costs. Prior to Tuva, Aaron served as the Senior VP of Technology at Health Catalyst, a top company providing data and analytics technology to healthcare groups, and worked as a statistical analyst at the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing. During his time there, he met Coco Zuloaga, who would later become his co-founder and CTO. Coco is an experienced data scientist and has held various roles such as senior director of data science at Big Squid Inc and VP of Data Science at Strive Health. Aaron earned a B.A. in Economics from Coe College and a M.A. in Economics from the University of Colorado Denver. Coco completed a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering and Physics from Technologico de Monterrey, an M.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, and a Ph.D. from Rice University. In this episode, we learn how Aaron and Coco are trying to democratize and standardize healthcare analytics, speculate on the costs of the lack of standardization in healthcare, and learn about how open-source projects can fix this.

Today, we're excited to get to know Yubin Park, PhD. Yubin is the Chief Data and Analytics Officer at ApolloMed, a leading physician-centric, technology-powered, risk-bearing healthcare company. Yubin leads Apollo’s data team in building data analytics tools to improve the efficacy of value-based care delivery.  Founded in 1992, ApolloMed (NASDAQ:AMEH) is a risk-bearing healthcare company of over 10k providers, using next-generation analytics technology to deliver high-quality value-based care to more than 1.3 million members. Yubin has decades of experience applying machine learning and data mining techniques to help providers understand how to coordinate care and reduce unnecessary healthcare costs. Prior to ApolloMed, Yubin served as Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Orma Health which was acquired by Apollo Medical Holdings. Prior, he was the CEO/CTO and Co-Founder of Accordion Health, a data-driven platform for value-based care (acquired by Evolent Health). He now serves as the Chief Data and Analytics Officer at ApolloMed.  Yubin is an Adjunct Professor at Emory University teaching a graduate level course in Machine Learning. He holds advanced degrees in Machine Learning and Data Mining from UT Austin, and a bachelor's in Electrical Engineering from KAIST. He regularly publishes research and analytics on LinkedIn, often breaking down complex healthcare papers from JAMA and NEJM to make them easier to understand for less technical audiences. In this episode, we cover Yubin’s founder journey pivoting into value-based care and building/selling his companies, approach to leadership, how ApolloMed differentiates itself in providing value-based care, and advice for technical founders.

Today, we’re excited to speak with Arvind Rajan, Co-founder and CEO/Executive Chairman of Cricket Health.  Arvind led Cricket Health which is a technology-enabled specialty care provider for patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end-stage renal disease (ESRD). In August 2022, Cricket Health merged with Interwell and Fresenius Health Partners to form the new Interwell Health, a leader in value-based kidney care. Before co-founding Cricket Health, Arvind served as Managing Director and Vice President of New Markets at LinkedIn, where he was responsible for the company’s growth and operations in Asia Pacific and Japan.   Arvind has spent most of his career building companies across a wide range of industries. Although the industries have been different, every one of these companies was trying to create transformative change that would have a positive impact on the world. In this insightful discussion, Arvind opens up about his career path, the challenges and successes in building Cricket Health from scratch, practical advice for fundraising, and valuable insights for aspiring startup founders such as strategies and tips for conducting productive board meetings.