This week for our 2025 recap, we’re joined by VC Emily Melton, co-founder of Threshold Ventures. Melton highlights her reflection of 2025, which splits the market into "haves and have-nots" with nothing in between, noting the concentration of venture dollars on "high flyers" and the indifference shown to established companies with respectable revenue.

As millions of Americans hit the road to visit family for Thanksgiving, many will pass through, or return to, rural communities. Nearly 60 million Americans live in these areas, yet many struggle to access even basic healthcare as rural hospitals close at record rates.

On the heels of raising $210 million at a $3.5 billion valuation, OpenEvidence is the fastest-growing physician app in history, now reaching over 40% of U.S. physicians and powers 17 million monthly clinical queries.

A billion-dollar startup. A promise to change healthcare forever. And behind the scenes… a massive lie.

Over 3 million clinicians around the world depend on UpToDate to guide patient care, and now the gold standard in clinical decision support is integrating generative AI. But in a world where AI models often hallucinate, how do you build something that doctors can actually trust?

Most people spend over 30 hours a year dealing with customer service—on hold, repeating account numbers, and navigating endless phone trees. But what if AI could fix that without losing the human touch?

This milestone 200th!!! episode of The Heart of Healthcare Podcast features none other than Dr. Tom X. Lee, the serial physician-founder behind Epocrates (acquired for $293M), One Medical (acquired by Amazon for $3.9B), and now Galileo, a tech-enabled medical group aiming to rewire care delivery from the ground up.

Cancer drugs cost more than ever, yet survival benefits are often modest—and in some cases, patients can’t even access the care that already exists. 

Some founders win support because of their product, others because of their story. In healthcare, where trust is everything, the ability to tell a compelling and authentic narrative can make or break a company.

More than 2.5 million people now wear Oura Rings to track their sleep, readiness and daily activity. But behind the popularity of this sleek, ring-shaped device lies a bigger story about how wearables are changing our understanding of health.

AI companies are hitting growth milestones in record time—some reaching $100 million in revenue in just two years. But while this pace feels familiar in tech, healthcare has always been slower to adopt new tools. That may finally be changing.

Healthcare costs keep climbing, and yet patients and employers often feel powerless to change the system. What if outsiders—those not steeped in the traditions of healthcare—are actually the ones best positioned to fix it?

Hospitals are under immense pressure: burned-out clinicians, outdated systems, and rising costs have made delivering care harder than ever. 

One in four Americans is enrolled in Medicaid, yet the system designed to support them is constantly at risk—underfunded, politically vulnerable, and often overlooked.

Three simple questions plague every American seeking healthcare: Where should I go? When can I be seen? And how much will it cost me? Despite seeming basic, these questions have remained largely unanswerable—until now.

A new federal law is reshaping how healthcare is paid for and delivered in America.

Fresh off a $240 million fundraise from Oak HC/FT and A16Z, Ambience Healthcare is on a mission to kill medical billing — and build “Iron Man suits for doctors.”

Dexcom generates more than $4 billion in annual revenue and has a market cap north of $30 billion, making it one of the biggest digital health companies in the world. And it all started with a better way to measure blood sugar.

More than a thousand AI medical devices have FDA clearance, yet fewer than two percent of radiologists actually use them.

When Andrew Lacy launched Prenuvo, most of the medical establishment dismissed it as fringe. Now, some of those same skeptics are collaborating with him on research.