The Heart of Healthcare | A Digital Health Podcast

Medicaid reimbursements are shrinking, providers are pulling back, and vulnerable populations are losing access to care. Akido Labs is betting that AI can expand care capacity fast enough to reverse that trend.
This week, Halle sits down with Prashant Samant, co-founder and CEO of Akido Labs, to discuss what it actually takes to scale care with AI. They explore why Akido built a full-stack healthcare company, how its AI operates inside real clinical workflows, and why the hardest patients are the best place to test whether this model works.
We cover:
Why he chose to build a full-stack care model
How AI changes who can deliver care, and where
Why most healthcare AI tools fail once they hit real clinical workflows
Why the doctor shortage cannot be solved by training more doctors
How the bottleneck in healthcare AI is absorption, not innovation

About our guest:
Prashant S. Samant is CEO and co-founder of Akido, a healthcare technology company that builds clinical AI and operates a multi-state medical network serving hundreds of thousands of patients. He co-founded Akido in 2015 through USC’s Digital Health Lab. In 2023, he and his co-founders received the EY Entrepreneur of the Year–Greater Los Angeles Award. Samant is also a co-founder and board member of Grid110, a nonprofit accelerator supporting early-stage entrepreneurs. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis.
—
Show Notes:
Akido’s recently-published white paper on street medicine
—
🙏 Do you like this podcast? An easy and free way to help keep the show going is to leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you're listening.
—
📍 Connect with us:
Heart of Healthcare website
LinkedIn
YouTube

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

AI is everywhere in healthcare, and May's big question is whether it's actually delivering. The money is flowing, the promises are bold, but some cracks are starting to show.
Steve and Michael break down the month's biggest stories.
We cover:
Digital health hitting its strongest funding quarter since the pandemic peak, and why deal concentration tells the real story
How Medvi built a billion-dollar GLP-1 company on fake doctor profiles, fake reviews, and a drug with zero bioavailability
Why AI in prior authorization and billing may be inflating healthcare costs rather than cutting them
The peptide craze: what the science says, what regulators have banned, and why Michael is actually taking one
How AI could collapse today's narrow medical specialties into a "generalist specialist" model
New research showing Epic's out-of-the-box AI models fall short on real-world clinical benchmarks
—
Show notes:
Rock Health Q1 2026 Funding Report
NYT Profile of Medvi + Futurism Investigation
Peterson Health Technology Institute: Administrative AI Report
STAT News / Undark: BPC-157 and the Peptide Craze
Health Affairs Scholar: Kocher & Wachter on the Generalist-Specialist Model
Springer Nature / Journal of General Internal Medicine: Epic AI Model Meta-Analysis
—
🙏 Do you like this podcast? An easy and free way to help keep the show going is to leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you're listening.
—
📍 Connect with us:
Heart of Healthcare website
LinkedIn
YouTube

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Forty million people use ChatGPT for health-related questions every day, making it one of the most widely used tools for health information in the world. So what is their team doing to maximize impact and minimize harm? For one, they've brought in hundreds of physicians globally to continuously review outputs and shape how the models respond across different scenarios, literacy levels, and edge cases. Second, they've hired my Rock Health co-founder, Nate Gross, MD, as their VP of Health.
In this full-circle episode, I sit down with Nate, who also co-founded Doximity (DOCS) and knows a thing or two about building in digital health. We discuss the astonishing speed of AI progress, how models are trained for safety and accuracy, and what this technological evolution means for every part of the healthcare system.
Key topics:
How ChatGPT is becoming a 24/7 front door for health questions, and whether it is replacing Dr. Google or starting to compete with the healthcare system itself
How OpenAI is trying to reduce hallucinations, avoid sycophantic behavior, and build guardrails for sensitive use cases like mental health
OpenAI’s goals to “raise the floor, sweep the floor, and raise the ceiling” with new product launches like ChatGPT for Clinicians and GPT-Rosalind
How Nate thinks about the AI race and what winning in healthcare actually requires
Where startups should focus their efforts now that specialized products are launching for clinicians and life sciences
The single hardest problem in healthcare that AI, according to Nate, probably won't fix anytime soon
—
About our guest:
Dr. Nate Gross is the VP of Health at OpenAI. He previously co-founded Doximity and Rock Health. He graduated from the Emory University School of Medicine with an MD, Harvard Business School with an MBA, and Claremont McKenna College with a BA in Government. He serves as affiliated faculty for the Clinical Informatics Fellowship at Stanford.
—
Show notes:
ChatGPT for Clinicians
ChatGPT for Health (for patients)
OpenAI for Healthcare
GPT-Rosalind
—
🏆 Thank you for your votes! We're excited to share that the Heart of Healthcare is a Webby Award Winner for 2026!
—
📍 Connect with us:
Heart of Healthcare website
LinkedIn
YouTube

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nearly one billion prescriptions are abandoned at the pharmacy counter every year, often because patients are blindsided by the cost.
This week, co-host Halle Tecco is joined by Wendy Barnes, President and CEO of GoodRx, to discuss the chaos of prescription drug pricing, the murky world of Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), and how digital tools are changing patient affordability. They break down the layered system of manufacturers, payers, and pharmacies that creates inconsistent pricing, and explore the current push for greater transparency.
We cover:
The cascade of drug pricing: from initial manufacturer costs and rebates to payer and pharmacy contracts, which results in vast price variability for consumers
What it would take to get to price transparency in drug pricing
The current pressures on PBMs, including efforts to ban "spread" and the practice of offshoring rebate contracting for tax advantages
Why pharmacies haven’t gone online like other areas of consumer goods
The future of medication access, including the growth of pharma’s direct-to-patient programs and the low current adoption of home delivery despite widespread retail pharmacy closures
—
About our guest:
Wendy Barnes is the President and CEO of GoodRx. She has over 30 years of leadership experience across the pharmacy and medical benefit industry. Most recently, Wendy served as CEO of RxBenefits, where she led the company in providing pharmacy benefit support to more than 2,000 self-insured clients, representing over 3 million lives. Prior to that, she served as President of Express Scripts Pharmacy, overseeing operations for 100 million beneficiaries. Her leadership spans roles at Rite Aid, Premier Inc., and the U.S. Air Force, where she served as a Medical Service Corps Officer. She holds a B.S. degree in Biochemistry from the United States Air Force Academy and an M.B.A. degree from the University of Alaska Anchorage.
—
📍 Connect with us:
Heart of Healthcare website
LinkedIn
Youtube
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Pete McCanna, CEO of Baylor Scott & White Health, believes that health systems are built around the wrong objective… and he has an ambitious goal to change that.
This week, Halle sits down with McCanna to unpack how one of the largest and most successful health systems in the country is shifting from a supply-driven model to one built entirely around the customer. They discuss why legacy systems operate like “walled castles,” what it takes to redesign care around real conditions instead of departments, and how Baylor Scott & White is testing a model that prioritizes access, personalization, and long-term trust over short-term profit.
We cover:
Why most health systems are structured to fill capacity, not create value for patients
The reason why he uses the term "customer" instead of "patient" (and how his colleagues initially responded)
How loyalty and trust make it economically sound to offer services that lose money.
The strategy for deploying AI to create product differentiation for patients rather than just improving internal efficiency
The limits of the “payvider” model and why it’s harder than it looks
The three healthcare laws he thinks need to be rewritten
—
About our guest:
As CEO of Baylor Scott & White Health, Peter (Pete) McCanna is focused on empowering customers to live well by reimagining traditional healthcare—offering more convenient, personalized, and informed experiences. He is leading Baylor Scott & White’s customer-centric transformation by bringing together the system’s 59,000 team members around a common goal to keep people healthy and feeling connected and supported.
Before becoming CEO, Pete served as the health system’s president. In that role, he drove operational excellence, strengthened clinical alignment, scaled the system’s digital health platform, MyBSWHealth, and deepened academic partnerships to address the critical need for healthcare professionals.
Pete has nearly 40 years of industry experience. As executive vice president and chief operating officer at Northwestern Medicine, he exceeded targets for operating revenue, quality, patient experience, and employee engagement, making it one of the top 10 academic health centers in the country.
Known as a thoughtful and innovative leader, Pete formerly served as chief financial officer at New Mexico-based Presbyterian Healthcare Services and the University of Colorado Hospital.
Passionate about transforming healthcare, Pete was named one of Modern Healthcare’s “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare.” Driven by a deep sense of purpose, Pete currently serves as the inaugural board chair of Longitude Health, an innovative healthcare collaborative, and as a board member of University of Michigan Health, Texas Hospital Association, and Catholic Extension. He holds a master’s degree in Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Michigan.
Baylor Scott & White Health is the largest not-for-profit health system in the state of Texas. It includes 55 hospitals, more than 1,300 access points, a health plan, a research institute, and an accountable care organization, plus Levanto—a company offering digitally-enabled health solutions—and 3.5 million customers connected through MyBSWHealth.
—
Snow notes:
Visit BSWHealth.com to learn more.
Download the MyBSWHealth app.
Explore Levanto.Health to learn about employer solutions built on Baylor Scott & White's digital platform and care model.
—
📍 Connect with us:
Heart of Healthcare website
LinkedIn
Youtube
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.