For decades, the noninvasive continuous glucose monitor has been the holy grail of diabetes technology. SynchNeuro believes the signal has been there all along -- hiding in the brain's electrical activity, readable from a small adhesive patch worn behind the ear. In this episode, StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes talks with StartUp Health community member Casey Halpern, MD, Founder & Chairman of SynchNeuro, about the neuroscience behind the platform, the working prototype now in intern...
May 27, 2026•31 min
What does the senior CMS official focused on payment and delivery innovation actually want health tech founders to understand? In this episode, we listen in on highlights from a recent fireside chat as StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes talks with Abe Sutton, Deputy Administrator at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), about the strategic and practical realities of building a company in the Medicare space ri...
May 18, 2026•18 min
What if the most underused tool in health innovation communication was sitting right in your pocket? In this episode of StartUp Health NOW, recorded live at HLTH 2025 in Las Vegas, StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes sits down with Dan Kendall , founder of Mission Based Media and the Health Podcast Library, for a candid conversation about the power of audio storytelling in healthcare. Dan shares why he built a podcast network after searching for health innovation content and finding almost n...
May 05, 2026•24 min
What if the most important moment in Alzheimer's care happened not in a neurologist's office, but at a routine primary care visit? That is the premise behind Cx Precision Medicine 's NeuroFirst Memory, a blood-based triage test designed to help primary care physicians quickly determine whether a symptomatic patient's memory concerns warrant specialist referral or can be addressed right where care begins. In this Health Moonshot Update, StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes speaks with Danguole...
Apr 23, 2026•24 min
🔬 What does it actually take to get a health technology from the lab to the patient's hands? Gerald (Jerry) Wilmink, PhD, knows the journey firsthand. As a former startup founder, one-time Chief Business Officer at CarePredict (a StartUp Health community company), and now Director of Business Development and Licensing at Cleveland Clinic Innovations, Jerry has navigated nearly every stage of the health tech commercialization path. In this conversation with StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoake...
Apr 21, 2026•21 min
Julie Yoo has seen healthcare from nearly every angle, as a founder who scaled Kyruus to 20 million patients, as a board member, and now as a General Partner at a16z leading investments in some of the most consequential AI health companies being built today. In this conversation with StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes and an interactive audience of StartUp Health community members, she unpacks the ideas she’s been putting forward publicly and the thinking behind them. Why will healthcare be...
Apr 10, 2026•26 min
What does it mean to build something that has never existed before? In this episode of StartUp Health NOW, Unity Stoakes sits down with CEO & Co-founder Valerie Gharagouzloo and Chief Science Officer & Co-founder Codi Gharagouzloo, PhD, of Imaginostics, the health technology company reimagining what MRI can tell us about the human body. Their platform, built on a technology invented by Codi during his PhD research in 2012, creates a new quantitative data layer inside existing MRI scanner...
Apr 07, 2026•28 min
What does it actually take to transform the way the world thinks about food as a driver of health? Kim Fisher has spent years finding out — as an entrepreneur, a startup mentor, a UC Davis program director, and now as Chief Impact Officer of StartUp Health’s Food as Medicine Moonshot. In this episode, Unity Stoakes and Kim go deep on the science, the market dynamics, and the human stories behind one of health innovation’s most complex and consequential frontiers. They explore the molecular scien...
Mar 31, 2026•30 min
Most healthcare AI conversations start and end with documentation. StartUp Health community member Mehmet Kazgan , CEO & Founder of cliexa , thinks that is the wrong place to focus. In this episode of StartUp Health NOW, Kazgan joins Unity Stoakes for a deep dive into clinical reasoning, the intelligence layer that connects what a patient says, what a provider decides, and what a payer will cover, all in real time. Kazgan traces the evolution of healthcare technology from EMRs to interoperab...
Mar 27, 2026•31 min
Food as medicine is having a moment, but for leaders like Richard Bennett of Epicured and Victor Penev of Edamam, this is not a passing trend. It is the long-building future of healthcare. In this special highlight episode of StartUp Health NOW , Unity Stoakes brings together two conversations from members of the StartUp Health community on the growing role of nutrition in prevention, chronic disease management, and whole-person care. First, Richard Bennett, CEO & Co-founder of Epicured, joi...
Mar 13, 2026•24 min
Ian Madom, MD, orthopedic spine surgeon and co-founder of Mocingbird, joins us on StartUp Health NOW to discuss how administrative friction quietly limits healthcare access and clinician capacity. Drawing from his own experience in practice, Dr. Madom explains how state-by-state licensing, certification timelines, and compliance requirements create unnecessary drag for clinicians and administrators alike. He shares how Mocingbird helps organizations manage licensing end to end, why multistate pr...
Mar 05, 2026•28 min
In this Health Moonshot Update, StartUp Health community member Justin Ayars of EqualityMD explains how the company is redefining employer healthcare through a pre-insurance model designed to resolve health needs before insurance is triggered. EqualityMD delivers culturally competent virtual primary care, mental health support, urgent care, and prescription access without generating insurance claims. New research shows the platform can resolve up to 80 percent of employees’ diverse health needs ...
Feb 24, 2026•29 min
StartUp Health community member Richard Hanbury of Sana Health joined Unity Stoakes for a Health Moonshot Update just prior to achieving a major regulatory milestone: an FDA De Novo grant for neuropathic pain, establishing a new class of audio-visual neuromodulation. Hanbury reflects on decades of neuromodulation research, shares why credibility in healthcare is built “one rung at a time,” and explains how Sana’s pivotal data demonstrated a significant reduction in pharmacologic dependence. The ...
Feb 20, 2026•29 min
In this Apollo House 2026 fireside chat, StartUp Health community member Sami Inkinen, CEO & Founder of Virta Health, shares how a personal diagnosis of pre-diabetes led him to build one of the fastest-growing companies in metabolic health. Virta Health is proving that Type 2 diabetes and obesity can be reversed with nutrition, supported by technology and AI. Inkinen discusses how Virta has built one of the largest longitudinal biomarker datasets in metabolic disease reversal and is deployin...
Feb 13, 2026•21 min
Recorded live at Apollo House 2026, this fireside chat captures a candid, in-the-room conversation between StartUp Health’s Unity Stoakes and entrepreneur, investor, and technologist Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures on AI’s accelerating impact on healthcare. Khosla explains why he believes AI is a platform shift larger than the internet or mobile, and how that shift could unlock access to high-quality care for billions. The conversation explores his “AI intern” model for healthcare, why copilots ...
Feb 06, 2026•28 min
In this Health Moonshot Update, StartUp Health community member Christopher Jue of CAREgivers Insight joins Unity Stoakes to share how empowering caregivers can prevent crises and save the system money. Christopher draws on his own family experience and fresh pilot data to explain why caregivers should be treated as essential members of the care team. In this episode, they talk about: What four preventable hospitalizations taught him about the cost of underused caregiver insight How Caregiver Vi...
Jan 29, 2026•23 min
What does it really take to achieve Health Moonshots in the Age of Superintelligence? Recorded live at StartUp Health’s Apollo House during JPM Healthcare Week, this panel brings together leaders operating at the intersection of healthcare delivery, diagnostics, cloud infrastructure, and AI. Moderated by Angela Shippy, MD, of Amazon Web Services, the conversation explores how AI is moving from point solutions to foundational infrastructure across the modern health stack. Together, the panel exam...
Jan 27, 2026•23 min
Behavioral health conditions are rising, providers are burned out, and primary care is carrying the load. In this episode, Unity Stoakes sit down with StartUp Health community member Indira Paharia, PsyD , CEO & Co-founder of VIBEcare , to explore how virtual, integrated behavioral health can transform care delivery at scale. Drawing on her experience as a clinical psychologist, payer executive, and health tech founder, Indira explains why primary care is the most powerful entry point for be...
Jan 23, 2026•32 min
Digital health is moving at AI speed, but evidence generation is still stuck in the past. In this episode, StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes sits down with StartUp Health community member Robin Roberts , CEO & Founder of datosX Digital Health Labs , to explore how validation can become a catalyst for real-world adoption rather than a bottleneck. Drawing on his experience building the Novartis Biome and spinning datosX out of it, Robin explains why traditional CRO models no longer meet ...
Jan 20, 2026•37 min
Pelvic health conditions affect millions of women, yet most are told to simply cope. In this conversation, StartUp Health community member Wendy Powell shares how she built MUTU System into a clinically validated digital platform that improves pelvic floor function, core strength, and overall quality of life. She explains what clinical validation really required, how MUTU maintains accessibility and equity, and why employers are embracing pelvic health as a productivity issue. You will also hear...
Jan 13, 2026•27 min
In this special year-end episode, StartUp Health Co-founder Unity Stoakes has an intimate chat with Esther Dyson – investor, thinker, and StartUp Health Impact Board member – about her upcoming book on term limits, the dangers of abundance, and how to protect our humanity in a world of superintelligent tools. Esther draws on decades in tech, health, and philanthropy to ask uncomfortable questions about power, valuation, and why “too much” rarely serves us. Along the way, she shares stories from ...
Dec 24, 2025•39 min
Caregiving touches every family, yet caregivers often remain unseen. In this conversation from HLTH in Las Vegas, StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes sits down with Richard Lui , award-winning journalist, filmmaker, and Chief Impact Officer for StartUp Health’s Caregiving Moonshot. Richard shares the personal story that sparked his mission to transform the global care economy and explains why caregiving is one of the largest and most meaningful opportunities in health. Together, they explore...
Dec 19, 2025•25 min
In this episode of the StartUp Health NOW podcast, Unity Stoakes sits down with Mitul Desai , co-founder of The Care Hack , a member of StartUp Health’s Caregiving Moonshot Community . Desai opens up about the decades-long journey that began when his younger brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and his family became full-time caregivers – with no support, no training, and no roadmap. Drawing from this lived experience, Mitul partnered with psychiatrist Dr. Eli Shalenberg to launch The Care H...
Dec 16, 2025•26 min
StartUp Health community member Aarabi Balasubramanian, CEO & Founder of EmTech Care Labs, joins StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes to share the deeply personal story that inspired Care-Wallet™, her virtual care management platform for families navigating Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. In this conversation, Aarabi discusses: How her mother’s long diagnostic journey revealed the realities of caregiving across countries and health systems Why families face so much fragmentatio...
Dec 12, 2025•34 min
When a patient is diagnosed with a chronic condition, the real journey begins at home – not in the doctor’s office. In this episode, StartUp Health community member Nandan Rao , CEO & Founder of Starlight , shares how his company is filling one of the biggest gaps in modern healthcare: what happens after the visit. Learn: • Why follow-up care is broken—and how Starlight is fixing it • How behavioral science and human coaches can outperform even the best tech• What it takes to integrate with ...
Dec 09, 2025•29 min
In this episode of the StartUp Health NOW podcast, Unity Stoakes sits down with StartUp Health community member Andrew Lu , CEO & Co-founder of Cognimark , to explore how AI is reshaping dementia care from the ground up. How a personal family journey inspired Lu to build Cognimark The power of integrating AI directly into physician workflows What early pilots reveal about detecting dementia sooner Why collaboration through the StartUp Health Alzheimer’s Moonshot matters Listen in to hear how...
Dec 02, 2025•29 min
StartUp Health community member Victor Penev , CEO & Founder of Edamam , joins Unity Stoakes to talk about how AI is accelerating the Food as Medicine revolution. Penev shares how Edamam’s mission to organize the world’s food knowledge is leading to a new generation of personalized nutrition tools, including a virtual nutritionist designed to help billions eat better and live longer. Listen for insights on AI innovation, new reimbursement models for nutrition, and why optimism – grounded in ...
Nov 20, 2025•29 min
Transcarent CEO and 7wire Ventures co-founding Partner Glen Tullman joins StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes for a candid conversation on what it takes to lead, invest, and build during one of healthcare’s most volatile and opportunity-rich moments. Tullman shares why time is the most strategic asset a founder has, why simplicity always wins, and why commitment — not an exit strategy — drives enduring impact. This 30-minute highlight captures only part of the full Fireside Chat with StartUp...
Nov 14, 2025•32 min
StartUp Health community member Katharine Barnard-Kelly, PhD , CEO & Co-founder of Spotlight-AQ , joins StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes to share how her team is transforming diabetes care by giving providers a window into their patients’ real lives. In this inspiring conversation, Dr. Barnard-Kelly explains how Spotlight-AQ’s AI-driven clinical tool helps providers deliver holistic, biopsychosocial care that improves outcomes for patients, reduces burnout for clinicians, and saves co...
Nov 11, 2025•30 min
Perseverance. Proof. A Decade in the Making. Scaling Health Coaching with Heart and Intelligence. In this Health Moonshot Update, StartUp Health community members Aubrey Sawyer and Michelle Alencar, PhD , join Unity Stoakes to share the story behind CoachLinq powered by InHealth , the first certified AI health coach and delivery platform. They reflect on ten years of grit, lessons learned about partnership and perseverance, and why engagement – not access alone – is the missing link in healthcar...
Nov 07, 2025•24 min
