Podcast profile
By Massively Better Healthcare
🏆 2026 Webby Award-winning podcast. Join us every Monday for conversations with the biggest names in healthcare. Hosted by health tech veterans Halle Tecco, Michael Esquivel, and Steve Kraus. Learn more and submit your ideas for the show at the Heart of Healthcare website.
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This month is about the gap between what a system offers and what people actually get from it: drugs that work better with support nobody's paying for, AI that's already answering more medical questions than most doctors ever will, and a labor market where staying healthy can mean staying stuck. Halle and Michael break
Every day, roughly 100 Americans die in crashes caused by human drivers. Yet when a self-driving car hesitates at an intersection or makes the news for an unusual mistake, public trust can evaporate. In this special episode, Dr. Jonathan Slotkin reads his latest Noema essay exploring why we demand perfection from machi
Healthcare companies are built to improve patients' lives. So why do so many prioritize shareholders over the people they're meant to serve? This week, Halle sits down with Eric Ries, author of Incorruptible, to unpack the rise of shareholder primacy, what it is, and why he believes it's at the root of many of society’
Over the last decade, the number of drug candidates entering development has doubled, yet the number of successful drug approvals remains flat at ~50 per year. This week, we sit down with Formation Bio founder and CEO Ben Liu. His company has raised more than $600 million to build what he hopes will become the first ne
They built a $1.2 billion healthcare AI company in under three years, but they say the hardest part of healthcare AI isn't the AI. This week, Halle sits down with Assort Health co-founders and co-CEOs Jeffery Liu and Jon Wang, whose company reached a $1.2 billion valuation in under three years. They discuss why buildin
July marks five years of The Heart of Healthcare, and we're grateful for every listener who's tuned in. If you've enjoyed the show, please show your love by leaving us a review! This month, Steve and Halle take stock of an industry where capital is concentrating, incumbents are making big bets, AI is moving from promis
Back by popular demand, 3x Heart of Healthcare guest Eric Larsen joins Steve to answer listener questions on healthcare's AI revolution. Drawing on the ideas behind his latest essay, Healthcare's Oppenheimer Moment, Eric argues that healthcare may be approaching a once-in-a-generation inflection point, and discusses wh
Healthcare AI funding is booming, but the money is flowing to fewer companies than ever before. As investors pour capital into a small group of breakout winners, founders are navigating a fundraising environment where expectations seem to change every quarter. Based on interviews with 24 healthcare founders and a dozen
Autonomous vehicles may be the closest real-world example of AI operating in life-and-death situations at scale. Justin Norden believes healthcare has a lot to learn from how that industry approached safety, testing, adoption, and trust. This week, Michael and Halle sit down with the founder and CEO of Qualified Health
Healthcare is simultaneously propping up the US economy and facing one of its most uncertain moments in years. This month, Halle and Steve unpack the growing contradictions shaping digital health right now: healthcare jobs are driving nearly half of US job growth while provider bankruptcies surge, AI is flooding into h
Most careers don’t follow a straight line. But few require starting over in full view of the public. This week, Halle sits down with Lance Armstrong to discuss how he rebuilt his life and career after multiple turning points, including surviving advanced cancer, and how those experiences shaped his perspective on healt
AI in healthcare may be entering a new chapter, one where the biggest question is no longer whether the technology works, but who is willing to deploy it, measure it, and take responsibility for the risk. This week, Steve sits down again with Eric Larsen to revisit his predictions from last year’s Webby-winning episode
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 actuall
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,
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
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 (PB
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 mo
We’re back with our monthly rundown of the top headlines in health tech! Today, Halle flies solo to share the biggest stories that shaped Q1, from the rising pressures on PBMs to how consumers are using AI. Stories covered: What's happening to PBMs (it's not pretty)New data from Rock Health on consumer use of AISocial
Last year, his independent pharmacy spent $13 million on brand-name drugs for patients processed by the three biggest Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) which earned a profit margin of 0.01%. In this episode, Halle speaks with Alec Ginsberg, owner and fourth-generation pharmacist at C.O. Bigelow, the oldest surviving apo
Chris Klomp, Director of Medicare and Deputy Administrator of CMS, and Senior Advisor to HHS Secretary RFK Jr., has big ambitions to reshape how healthcare works in the United States. This week, Steve sits down with Klomp to discuss how his experience as a digital health entrepreneur is guiding his current role overs
This week, Halle and Michael sit down for a special in-person listener Q&A to answer a range of founder questions you submitted. Topics include: What investors are prioritizing right now and how first-time founders can stand outHow to think about board seatsWhat to do if your growth has plateauedThings to keep in mind
Breakthrough blood tests that can flag dozens of cancers before symptoms appear are gaining momentum, yet questions remain about accuracy, equity, and how these tools will fit into routine care. In this episode, Steve talks with Helmy Eltoukhy, co-founder and co-CEO of Guardant Health, a $14 billion publicly-traded pre
Pharma ads, biotech IPOs, $1M longevity programs, oh my! This month's Digital Health Download skews towards biotech, which is having a moment. Tune in to hear Halle and Michael cover the latest headlines. We cover: Why pharma ads are surging and the growing push for restrictions on D2C drug advertisingHims & Hers’ $1.1
When Eric Lefkofsky’s wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, it exposed how little technology and data were shaping cancer care, pushing the serial entrepreneur to build a different model. Lefkofsky is the founder and CEO of Tempus, now a $10B publicy traded health tech company, and previously founded Groupon. At Tempu
In this episode (recorded live), Halle Tecco speaks with Dr. Robert Wachter, Chair of Medicine at UCSF, about their concurrently released books on healthcare innovation and AI. They share thoughts on the dual challenge of innovation in healthcare and the role of AI, covering: Why past waves of tech failed to change hea