Pear Healthcare Playbook

Today, we're excited to get to know Dr. Michael Howell. He's the Chief Clinical Officer at Google where he leads the team of clinical experts providing guidance for Google Health products, research and services. He has dedicated his career to improving the quality, safety and science of how care is delivered and helping people get the best information across their health journey. He previously served as the Chief Quality Officer at the University of Chicago and was an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. He's published more than 100 research articles, editorials, and book chapters and is a nationally recognized expert on patient safety and quality. In this episode, we talked about why Google got into healthcare, Google’s 3Cs for health, how to create a clinical team within a tech company, the implications of artificial intelligence, and advice for founders in the AI/LLM space. 

We're excited to get to know Dr. Patrick Carroll, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Hims & Hers, an American telehealth company that provides access to prescription and nonprescription solutions online and through a variety of retailers nationwide (and in the UK)! Dr. Carroll is a physician and executive who leads clinical quality and the expansion of Hims & Hers into all 50 states. Previously, Dr. Carroll served as the Group Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Walgreens, overseeing retail clinic business units, as well as clinical programs and health system alliances. He is also the former CMO and VP at Integrated Care Partners at Hartford HealthCare. In this episode, we dive into Dr. Carroll’s experience in Primary Care, his work with Walgreens and the retail model of healthcare, Hims & Hers' focus on the consumer and why it has been successful, along with challenges in the DTC space for healthcare.

Dr. Karen Murphy, EVP, Chief Innovation Officer, and founding director of the Steele Institute for Health Innovation of Geisinger, discusses her career journey, Geisinger's exciting merger with Kaiser, and the future of AI in healthcare. She also explores the challenges startups face in the healthcare industry and offers valuable advice for pursuing a career in healthcare.

Frank Cheung, CEO of Accorded, discusses the incentives in value-based care, pitching to investors unfamiliar with healthcare, and his pathway to fixing frustrations in his career. The podcast also explores starting a company in the healthcare industry, accelerating the movement towards value-based care, challenges in educating investors, and advice for healthcare founders.

Today, we’re excited to get to know Vivek, AI researcher at Google and one of the lead researchers for Med-PaLM2, and Viswesh, CTO and Founder of Valar Labs! Vivek is a Research Scientist at Google Health AI advancing biomedical AI to help scale world class healthcare to everyone. Vivek is particularly interested in building large language models and multimodal foundation models for biomedical applications and leads the Google Brain moonshot behind Med-PaLM, Google's flagship medical large language model. Med-PaLM has been featured in publications such as The Scientific American and Forbes. Vivek graduated with his masters from UT Austin in Computer Science and Bachelors at National Institute of Technology in India. Viswesh is the CTO and Co-Founder of Valar Labs. Valar Labs is building clinical grade deep learning to analyze each patient's characteristics and provide clarity to oncologists during decision making. Their AI is built with oncologists at the center and provides interpretable and actionable insights. Prior to founding Valar Labs, Viswesh was a Research Assistant in Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) leveraging cutting edge artificial intelligence to solve healthcare problems. He was also the founder of Kanna, a patented and clinically-validated method to detect Amblyopia in children in India. Viswesh graduated with a bachelors in Computer Science at Stanford. In this episode, Vivek and Viswesh shares how they got into Healthcare AI research and how they fell into different career paths, one leading Research at Google Health AI and the other as the CTO and Co-Founder of Valar Labs. We talk about the future of LLMs in healthcare, and also how to build defensibility in AI healthcare startups.

Today, we're thrilled to introduce you to Kevin Mahoney, an exceptional individual with an extensive background in healthcare leadership. Kevin has been an integral part of Penn Medicine since 1996, holding various leadership positions within the health system and the Perelman School of Medicine. His transformative projects have elevated Penn Medicine's clinical care, teaching, and research missions. Before joining Penn Medicine, Kevin displayed exceptional leadership as the vice president for Johnson and Higgins, focusing on risk transfer and alternative risk management strategies. He also held administrative roles at Bryn Mawr Hospital and Episcopal Hospital. Kevin's insights on health equity, access to quality care, and social justice have been featured in prestigious publications like the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Modern Healthcare recognized his influence by including him in its list of the 100 most influential people in healthcare in 2022. In this episode we talk about Kevin’s journey to healthcare leadership, the increasing costs of care, how founders can partner with Penn Medicine, and insights on the consolidation in healthcare.

Today, we're excited to get to know Dr. Andrew Schutzbank. Andrew spent almost a decade at Iora health, where he held the esteemed positions of Medical Director and Senior Vice President, overseeing clinical operations and product development. He was also the Chief Product Officer at Cricket Health, an organization dedicated to value-based kidney care. He was the Corporate Development Operating Partner at SCAN and now contributes as a board member, advisor, and investor for multiple startups. He is also a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Schutzbank completed his residency at Beth Israel and holds an MD and MPH from Tulane University, along with a BA in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania.  In this episode we talk about his journey to medicine, experience with Iora and Cricket Health, what he looks for in a healthcare pitch, tips/tricks for founders, and insights on the high burnout rate among clinicians.

Today, we're excited to get to know Dr. Marketa Wills, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Johns Hopkins Health Plans, who focuses on optimizing clinical and quality outcomes for approximately 700,000 Johns Hopkins health plan members while efficiently managing costs of care.  Marketa previously worked at several national health plans, including United Healthcare, WellCare Health Plans and Centene Corporation. She's also a McKinsey & Company alum (Cleveland Office) where she served a broad range of payer and provider clients on a variety of strategic and operational engagements. She holds an MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and an MBA in Finance and Healthcare Management from the Wharton School of Business. She also trained in adult psychiatry at Harvard's MGH/McLean Adult Psychiatry Residency Program. In this episode we talk about Marketa’s path in medicine, what her role as Chief Medical Officer entails, how she thinks about partnerships with payors, advice she has for founders, and what she is excited about for the future of medicine.  Note: since the recording of the podcast, Johns Hopkins HealthCare has changed its name to Johns Hopkins Health Plans.

Today, we’re excited to get to know Alexandre Lebrun, CEO and Cofounder of Nabla, a personalized AI assistant for doctors. Before founding Nabla, Alex was the Head of Engineering at Facebook AI research for almost four years, and is a seasoned entrepreneur, having sold his previous companies Wit.ai, an AI platform that makes it easy to build apps that understand natural human language, to Facebook in 2015 and VirtuOz, a customer service chatbot, to Nuance Communications in 2012. In this episode, Alexandre shares his experiences after 22 years and founding 3 startups, why proprietary data is more important than ever for defensibility, tactics on GTM and customer focus specific to healthcare buyers, and opportunities and safety for generative AI in healthcare.

Founded in 2014, Aledade works with over 11,000 physicians across 40 States accounting for 1.7 million patients under management in Medicare, Medicare Advantage, commercial and Medicaid contracts. Farzad Mostashari has spent his career in health care policy and Health Information Technology.  Farzad previously served as the National Coordinator for Health IT in the Department of Health and Human Services. Prior to his work at the Office of the National Coordinator, he founded the NYC Primary Care Information project, which equipped physicians and underserved communities with electronic health records. He completed medical school at the Yale School of Medicine and a Master’s degree in Population Health from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In this episode we talk about Farzad’s journey to healthcare, how he started Aledade, the importance of independent physicians in value-based care, how Aledade scaled as a profitable health tech company, and advice he has for founders.