One pattern keeps showing up in the hundreds of conversations I have with CEOs and clinical innovation leaders: the companies that last are the ones that stay in service of the human relationship. Dr. Louise Chang, Global VP of Clinical Strategy at Elsevier and practicing internal medicine physician, is one of the clearest examples of that principle in action.

"What if AI could actually take the jargon and confusion out of healthcare — so patients and clinicians could finally talk like real people?"

Louise has spent 20+ years asking that exact question. She's building toward AI that bridges the gap between the clinician's workflow and the patient's journey, making care feel more human, not less.

She's moved through startups and scale-ups, nonprofit and for-profit, consumer to provider to payer. And she's watched wave after wave of hype roll through the industry. What she's learned: staying grounded matters more than staying ahead.

Episode Key Moment Highlights:

• [00:05:26] Healthcare AI today: why we're seeing a wide range of outcomes, from "working fast and failing fast" to genuine clinical value at the point of care.
• [00:06:37] ClinicalKey AI in action: how physicians are using it to access patient-specific insights instantly, enabling quick decisions and deeper learning at the same time.
• [00:08:22] The Glow Up for 2026: Louise's vision for AI that doesn't flash — it smooths, bridging the patient and clinician workflow so care actually feels more connected.
• [00:10:18] Closing the care loop: Louise and Nathan align on the big idea — patient AI research and clinician AI tools eventually speaking the same language.
• [00:13:39] Contact lenses, not glasses: Embedding AI so naturally into clinical workflows that it stops feeling like a tool and starts feeling like part of you.

Louise is the clinician who became the strategist — the translator between how medical minds work and how product teams build. Her personal mission is making sure someone is on the clinician's side, and that drives everything she does.

Like and subscribe to The Tech Glow Up, and watch the full episodes on YouTube.

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About Our Guest:

Louise Chang, MD, FACP is a physician executive and internal medicine physician with over 20 years of experience at the intersection of clinical care, digital health, and healthcare innovation. She currently serves as Global Vice President of Clinical Strategy & Partnerships at Elsevier, where she leads clinical strategy for a global portfolio of evidence-based clinical decision support and workflow solutions, including the development of responsible, AI-enabled tools used by clinicians.

Dr. Chang has held senior clinical and product leadership roles across startups, scale-ups, and established organizations, including Babylon Health, WebMD, and the American Cancer Society.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Rural communities often face a grim choice: drive three hours for a specialist or wait nine months. This massive barrier to specialty care is one of the biggest drivers of health inequity.

What if a primary care provider could get a specialist consult and a clear next step for their patient in a matter of seconds, right there in the exam room? Reza Sanai, a cardiologist and founder of Picasso MD, is on The Tech Glow Up to detail the curbside consult platform that’s transforming specialty access.

Picasso MD’s three-pronged approach is designed to reinforce the primary care office, the most critical space in the world, by eliminating a significant percentage of unnecessary referrals and optimizing care. Reza explains that the technology is designed for physician adoption: three clicks, and a provider is live-chatting with a specialist in an average of 17 seconds.

This ensures a patient walks out with an answer, not a phone number and a nine-month wait. The philosophy driving the company is simple: connect with your community and practice value-based care.

By making specialists more accessible, Picasso MD is not only improving patient outcomes but is also optimizing the patient before their in-person visit, which is a key value proposition for the entire healthcare system.

Episode Highlights

• Techquity Definition: Tech equity in healthcare means technology that drives better access, personalized care, and inclusion of marginalized populations.
• Specialty Access Gap: The Picasso MD platform was created to bridge the 9- to 12-month wait times often seen for specialty care in rural and underserved communities.
• Physician-Designed Workflow: The platform is engineered for speed, allowing a PCP to connect with a specialist in under 20 seconds for real-time clinical decision support during a normal 15-minute patient visit.
• Referral Optimization: A sophisticated algorithm prioritizes provider favorites and local networks for referrals before relying on the platform's network, ensuring local care is always first.
• Patient Navigation: The company believes the next major wave of health innovation is helping patients navigate their path from an initial AI/LLM inquiry to thoughtful, value-oriented specialist throughputs.

Reza’s origin story, rooted in giving out his mobile number to colleagues to build trust and cut down on unnecessary ER visits, proves that scaling impact begins with prioritizing the provider and patient experience.

Watch the full video on YouTube, and please like and subscribe to The Tech Glow Up!

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

The healthcare industry is hungry for AI standards, governance, and certification, making the need for genuinely trustworthy tech more urgent than ever. CEOs Dr. Tim O’Connell of emtelligent and Oren Nissim of Brook Health return to the show to cut through the hype and share where the industry is actually going and what applications are delivering real results today.

We dive deep into the next big applications for AI—from saving a doctor half their time on consult chart review to tackling the isolation and loneliness epidemic of chronic illness—and how to ensure this technology remains effective and responsible for everyone in the care loop.

Episode Key Moment Highlights:

• AI-Assisted Chart Review: AI-powered chart review software is already cutting a clinician's patient review times by half, dramatically speeding up decision-making for solo practices reviewing 40-page consult requests [00:01:03].
• Data Extraction Accuracy: After 10 years in business, emtelligent is seeing spectacular, state-of-the-art results for the accuracy of coding complex, unstructured medical data into clear, organized information [00:05:00].
• Loneliness Gap: For older patients with chronic conditions, having a reliable AI conversation partner 24/7 genuinely helps bridge the isolation and loneliness gap caused by their illness [00:10:05].
• Regulatory Confidence: Policy and government intervention, including increased reimbursement and new access models, are currently pushing the industry toward safe digital health in a positive direction, which Tim and Oren are encouraged by [00:14:04].

This conversation is a bold, enthusiastic look at how we build the next generation of safe digital health—one that uses effective, governed technology to genuinely support caregivers and empower patients to confidently manage their chronic conditions and navigate complex lifestyle changes at home.

Watch the full episode on YouTube and please like and subscribe to The Tech Glow Up!

About Oren Nissim:

Oren Nissim is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Brook Health, a pioneering healthcare technology company dedicated to transforming chronic disease management through AI-driven, always-on remote care.

Brook’s platform blends advanced artificial intelligence with compassionate human clinical support to help individuals better manage chronic conditions, improve health outcomes, and extend access to personalized care beyond traditional clinical settings.

About Tim O'Connell:

Dr. Tim O’Connell is a practicing radiologist in Vancouver and cofounded emtelligent in 2016. He has served as vice chair of medical informatics in the University of British Columbia’s Department of Radiology since 2017.

Prior to his clinical and entrepreneurial careers, Dr. O’Connell worked as an IT professional for Nortel Networks and Bell, where he was director of engineering for the Bank of Montreal account.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Live from The VIVE Event, powered by HLTH and CHIME: The average cancer patient makes 500 decisions during their treatment journey, often in rushed, 10-minute appointments, feeling lost without a map. Samira Daswani, CEO of Manta Cares, turned her own frustration with a broken system into a mission to build a platform that puts the patient first, full stop.

On this episode of The Tech Glow Up, live from the Vive Event, Samira shares how she's redefining the healthcare industry by creating an "objective fourth pillar" that drives patient incentives, starting with breast and lung cancer.

Samira's unique approach blends human-centered design with rigorous research, starting with a paper planner based on over a hundred peer-reviewed papers to help patients manage their 63 appointments in the first year.

Now, her AI partner, Hope, provides contextually relevant, personalized support, mapping out the 500 decisions so patients have confidence they are getting the right care. For Samira, if you lose sight of the patient story, there's no point in building the product, even while acknowledging the need for business growth and scale.

Episode Key Highlights:

• [00:06:06] Paper Planner Success: How a paper product based on clinical research still serves a population of patients aged 70+ who find digital tools difficult
• [00:07:24] AI Partner Hope: The use of Hope AI to detect and help grade symptoms like pain or nausea using the P-R-O-C-D-C-A standard to ensure patients know when to call their doctor.
• [00:11:54] Patient-Driven Gravity: Samira's goal is to create a place for patients so powerful that the economic gravity of the system (payers, providers) is forced to realign to patient needs.
• [00:12:40] Financial Toxicity: Why removing the high likelihood of cancer patients going bankrupt is the one blocker Samira would erase with a magic wand.
• [00:19:39] The Patient from Hell: The philosophy behind the name of Samira's other podcast, arguing that a patient must go against the system's "cohort" structure as an imperative for survival.

By prioritizing the patient's needs and leveraging purpose-built, narrow AI tools—like Hope, which handles 90% of its use cases around treatment decision-making—Manta Cares is forcing a necessary Glow Up in healthcare. It's a fundamental shift away from simply being "patient-centered" to being truly "patient-first," creating a better system for everyone.

Watch and subscribe to the full episode on YouTube and hit that like button to help other people find these essential conversations.

Samira Daswani is the founder and CEO of Manta Cares, the most comprehensive platform for cancer patients, care partners, and clinicians. A stage 2B breast
cancer survivor diagnosed at 30, Samira transformed her firsthand experience of the fragmented and chaotic cancer experience into a mission to revolutionize cancer care.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

The spatial computing world is buzzing, but not everything is growing: while virtual reality (VR) hype might be flattening for consumers, augmented reality (AR) in the enterprise is exploding.

The key to this growth? Moving beyond bulky headsets and figuring out how to make AR glasses lightweight and wearable for long periods of time. Global Head of Enterprise at XREAL, Amir Khorram, has had a front row seat to the entire XR journey and shares why lightweight AR is finally delivering massive value for industries like healthcare, aerospace, and education.

Amir's philosophy on innovation is deeply rooted in experience: the most successful technologies don't go it alone. He details how XREAL, a company that initially focused on building a global consumer brand, found its unexpected enterprise success by observing how doctors and teachers were already using their glasses.

This insight led to a focus on partnership ecosystems—identifying XREAL's core strength (hardware) and supporting developers and distribution partners (like Manage XR, Arbor XR, Pixo VR) who excel at content and deployment.

Episode Highlights

• Enterprise Adoption Signal: Organizations in finance, hospitals, and music schools started deploying AR hardware on their own, proving the technology's real-world value outside of consumer gaming.
• The Form Factor Challenge: Legacy VR deployments validated immersive tech for saving money and improving training, but the clunky form factor made long-term, widespread use challenging.
• Immersive Health Applications: Lightweight AR glasses are making a difference across healthcare, from mental health breaks and distraction therapy for dialysis patients to physical rehabilitation and remote consultations with medical professionals.
• Strategic Planning in Enterprise XR: XREAL's 2026 plan balances short-term tactical goals (3-6 months for distribution) with longer-term developer and innovation support (6-12 months for Project Aura).
• Entrepreneurial Advice: Founders should seek knowledge and actively leverage tools, technology (including AI), and partnerships to move faster, drawing on a lifetime of experience from a family of successful entrepreneurs.

Amir’s ultimate mission for XREAL’s enterprise business is to establish a core foundation by actively amplifying the impressive, real-world stories of their developer and partner community.

He argues that seeing AR technology proven as a genuine solution for industries—where it saves money and boosts efficiency—is the most effective way to inspire widespread investment and accelerate the market.

Hear the full conversation and see the future of enterprise AR on YouTube now. https://youtu.be/ygvu8KQLuHU

About Amir:

Over a 20 year career Amir Khorram continues to build and lead winning teams in cutting edge industries. From 5G to XR, Amir’s business units drive record setting results around the globe.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

14 years ago, before the AI boom, marketers were stuck in "batch and blast" and data-overwhelmed. I talk with Colin Nederkoorn, CEO and co-founder of Customer IO, about his company’s journey from convincing people to use behavioral data for deterministic paths to becoming critical infrastructure for the new era of AI-driven, real-time customer communication that has fueled the company to over $100 million in ARR.

Colin shares a profound philosophy for early-stage founders: not every company needs to "blitz scale." His methodical approach was about building the machine for compound growth, raising "a little bit of money" only to buy time to reach the next milestone, rather than a big venture round that forces speed.

This patience allowed Customer IO to build a powerful platform that could "complete the loop" by measuring if a user's behavior changed inside their product.

Episode Highlights

• Behavioral Data: The critical shift from list-based "batch and blast" to using real-time behavioral data to influence user actions and complete the feedback loop.
• Compound Growth: The mathematical insight that a steady 20% month-over-month growth, consistently applied, creates an outsize business over the long run because of the power of compounding.
• AI's Role: Customer IO's six-month "Glow Up" is a commitment to use AI to remove all the "drudgery" for marketers in setting up complex, sophisticated campaigns.
• Leadership Fuel: A blunt piece of feedback from an investor—that Colin "wasn't a good enough CEO"—became the motivation to hire a coach and accelerate the company’s trajectory.
• Incumbent Advantage: Colin’s spicy hot take is that traditional SaaS businesses positioned as "critical infrastructure" will figure out AI and thrive, avoiding massive displacement.

Colin’s story is a masterclass in strategic product-led innovation: learning from customers, making a crucial pivot, and maintaining a level-headed, long-term approach to business growth.

His focus on unlocking the power of a robust, data-rich platform for the new age of LLMs is a clear roadmap for any founder in the B2B space.

Watch the full episode on YouTube and make sure to like and subscribe to The Tech Glow Up.

About Colin Nederkoorn

Colin Nederkoorn is the founder and CEO of Customer.io. Since starting the company in 2012, he has focused on creating products that help brands connect meaningfully with their users.

Drawing from his passion for entrepreneurship and experience in product leadership, including his time as Head of Product at ChallengePost, he leads the executive team, drives innovation, and manages the company’s growth.

Based in Portland, Oregon, when he's not building Customer.io, he enjoys sailing, coaching youth soccer, and cooking.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Most teams ship “good” products that quietly fail because they never tested them with the people they were supposedly built for. This Techquity Awards special is a four-part episode on how to fix that. I’m joined by Janna Guinen, Executive Director of the HLTH Foundation, plus three Techquity Award winners—Reza Sanai of PicassoMD; Colby Takeda of Pear Suite; and David and Robert Bosnack of Attune Media Labs—who use Techquity as a practical blueprint for building products that actually work in the real world.

Techquity, as Janna defines it, is innovating with everybody in mind—from how you validate the problem to who can realistically use your product on the other side. The HLTH Techquity Awards are case-study based, not feel-good trophies.
Applicants document how they involved the communities they serve, which population they’re designing for, and which metrics prove they’re closing gaps for both patients and the teams who care for them.

This year’s winners show three different ways to put Techquity into practice: PicassoMD’s curbside specialist consults at the point of primary care, Pear Suite’s tech and billing rails for community health workers and local organizations, and Attune Media Labs’ AI emotional intelligence companion for burned-out clinicians.

Episode Highlights:

• Techquity Awards use a rigorous case-study process that forces teams to show their problem validation, design choices, and metrics—not just outcomes slides.
• PicassoMD tested its curbside consult platform head-to-head in an affluent urban clinic and a rural clinic with many uninsured patients, proving the model can work in very different settings.
• Pear Suite onboarded more than 600 community health workers and doulas across 80+ organizations serving Medi-Cal members, closing 80% of identified social needs gaps.​
• Attune Media Labs deployed an AI-based emotional intelligence companion with over 1,000 clinicians in rural Cameroon, where about 65% reported burnout, and designed against benchmarks for retention and engagement.

Janna makes the case that Techquity should be the default lens for digital health because inclusive design improves ROI, stickiness, and long-term system sustainability.

And we close with Janna’s announcement that the Techquity Awards are moving from ViVE to the main HLTH event, with applications opening in early spring so these case studies get a bigger stage.

Watch the full HLTH Techquity Awards Special on YouTube to learn how Techquity turns “health equity” from a buzzword into a build process.

Then like and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Medical students get one, maybe two chances a year to practice diagnosing real patients. One to two shots before they're the ones making the call. Oli Siska, co-founder and CEO of Kaleidoscope XR, builds VR and AI tools that blow that limitation wide open.

Caregiver VR puts up to 20 students in a virtual classroom where they role-play dementia care scenarios—and the person playing the resident actually experiences simulated auditory and visual hallucinations. OSCI AI Pro lets medical students practice patient conversations 24/7 on any device with an AI avatar that talks back.

Episode Highlights:

• Caregiver VR triggers real symptoms of dementia—auditory and visual hallucinations—so trainees feel what residents experience, building empathy you cannot get from a lecture or textbook.
• OSCI AI Pro replaces expensive standardized patient exams that require doctors behind one-way mirrors and hired actors, giving medical students unlimited practice on any device, anytime, anywhere.
• VR training produces seven times more information retention than traditional instruction, while standardizing content so every trainee gets the same quality regardless of location.
• New legislation regulating healthcare aides in February 2026 opens a massive opportunity for frontline workers in long-term care to get certified through accessible, on-demand training tools.
• Subject matter experts drive every build at Kaleidoscope XR—the number one mistake any company can make is thinking they know what the customer needs without asking first.

Oli's next move is expanding OSCI AI Pro beyond doctors and nurses into long-term care, where healthcare aides deal with dementia responsive behaviors every day without enough training. 60% of the mission is better patient care. The other 40% is worker satisfaction—the more control frontline workers have over their day, the better it is for everyone.

Watch the full episode on YouTube - https://youtu.be/UXNH9l9_BG4

Like and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

About Oli Siska

Oli Siska works with a talented team on technology development that enhances human dignity—particularly in healthcare and aging.

As CEO of Kaleidoscope XR, I lead a team that creates immersive training solutions solving real problems: medical students who can't access enough clinical practice, caregivers who need to truly understand what dementia feels like, frontline workers who deserve better preparation before high-stakes patient interactions.

Our work spans VR empathy training, AI-powered clinical simulations, and custom solutions designed for social good. We specialize in making complex technology accessible and ensuring it serves humans—not the other way around.

I believe technology should make the world more compassionate, more equitable, and more accessible. That's what drives everything I do.

Beyond tech, I'm an artist—poetry, music, visual art—because creativity and innovation are inseparable.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.