Richard Achée

“The thing I am most proud of is that because we built the entire tech stack that we own, from the member app, the company, the client dashboard, to electronic medical records systems and other internal tooling.   We enable providers to spend more time with the patient.” How much longer? 3x longer than the average primary care visit.   This week on the Digital Health Heavyweights Podcast I sit down with Joseph Kitonga, CEO and founder of Vitable Health. Joseph shares his journey from a family background in caregiving to creating a health plan that addresses the needs of underserved workers. He discusses the inspiration behind Vitable, his experience with the Thiel Fellowship, the prestigious Y Combinator,and the unique aspects of Vitable's direct primary care model.   “We are growing extremely quickly” The conversation also covers the challenges of hybrid care models, the importance of empathy in healthcare, and the company's growth trajectory. Joseph emphasizes the need for accessible healthcare and shares insights on building a successful startup in the healthcare space.   How is Vitable impacting clients? An average savings of about 12%   Takeaways ✨ Joseph's family background in caregiving inspired him to create Vitable Health. 💙 Vitable Health aims to provide affordable healthcare for underserved workers. 🎓 The Thiel Fellowship provided Joseph with the opportunity to focus on his startup. 🚪 Vitable's model reduces barriers to accessing primary care services. 📈 The company has about 100,000 members and is growing rapidly. 💻 Vitable's approach integrates in-home and virtual care effectively. 🤝 Building empathy through direct interaction with clients is crucial for Vitable. 🗣️ Joseph emphasizes the importance of talking to users to build a successful product. 🚀 The Y Combinator experience was pivotal for Vitable's growth. 🧘 Joseph practices mindfulness and reading to manage stress and maintain focus. Check out the episode and be sure to like comment and subsc https://lnkd.in/dVAzHMQZ

19

It takes a special kind of pragmatic optimism to build for consumers in healthcare. That's one takeaway from an interview with PillPack co-founder & former CTO Elliot Cohen with Jacob Effron and Nikhil Krishnan. Elliot founded a new consumer healthtech company, General Medicine, which makes it "delightfully simple to shop for the best healthcare in the world, with fast access and upfront pricing." A few other great lessons from the interview: - “The key to getting the best care is you have to make it really easy for [patients] to get access to the right next step.” Amen! - HIPAA is all fun and games until you integrate healthcare with non-healthcare applications. That's when the explosion of nuance begins (how do we handle recommendations in search? how do we modify sharing behavior? what about email notifications?) - "It’s very difficult to replace a human" - asking how AI can replace humans is the wrong question. Thinking about using AI to amplify, enhance, or streamline work so that humans can do what they're best at - that's a more fruitful framework. - Especially loved the bit about General Medicine's use of various data sources to "mash up" a personalized, "comprehensive" patient experience is awesome. Such a great example of the huge potential of increased data interoperability - combining price transparency, nuanced provider quality measures, patient insurance info, and claims data to make decisions easier for patients. This scratched my healthcare data nerd itch. All in all, I found Elliot's mission-driven orientation towards making healthcare more consumer-centric refreshing. Focus reform on getting the "middlemen" out of the way: rebates, employer-sponsored healthcare, etc. Because ultimately, "consumers know what they need in healthcare and we should just trust them." It's really cool to see someone dedicate their startup and life to that vision. Lots more nuggets for builders in the Vital Signs pod - highly recommend!

7

1 Comment

Too many teams treat PAS 2080 as a reporting burden. It’s not. It’s a competitive filter. What we’ve laid out here is a faster, cleaner path to compliance, aligned to how preconstruction processes already work. Required reading if your bids are heading into regulated territory 👇 https://lnkd.in/eQWZQVB8

18

2 Comments

Healthcare moves fast when the pain is obvious. EHRs took seven years with incentives while ambient scribes scaled in two years without subsidies. Providers and payers are building AI labs, which turns the buyer into a builder. Startups win by owning the workflow, delivering turnkey integration, proving ROI fast, and co developing with internal teams. Sell to the C suite, price on outcomes, and show repeatable production rather than pilots that never end. https://lnkd.in/gYxYDnBe

22

6 Comments

New on The HLTH Tech Glow Up: The Pleio approach to better results from healthcare marries AI, empathy, and behavioral science. By mapping “barrier blueprints”—fear, loneliness, stigma—they help patients and pharmacies get to what really matters. Empathy is preserved while the healthcare workforce focuses at the top of their license. The result? Better, more lasting engagement, and care that reflects real-life needs. Link to more episodes from HLTH USA in comments. #Empathy #AI #HealthTech #PersonalizedCare #PharmacyInnovation #BehavioralHealth #DigitalHealth #Wellbeing #CareTransformation

13

4 Comments

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 — 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗮 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴. I recently read an insightful article by Healthcare150 titled: “Telehealth’s Next Phase: Scale, Integration, and Value Creation” https://lnkd.in/enAKDMYm It captures something many of us in digital health are seeing firsthand: Telehealth is no longer about emergency adoption. It is about institutional integration. The next phase of growth will not be driven by novelty or convenience. It will be driven by:  • Deep EHR integration  • Workflow alignment  • Sustainable reimbursement models  • Measurable clinical and financial outcomes Providers and payers are embedding virtual care into core delivery models. The organizations that succeed will be those that treat telehealth not as an add-on, but as infrastructure. But I would add one more essential element to this conversation: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁. We often focus on technology, interoperability, and financial models — all critical pillars. Yet long-term success in telehealth depends on something more human: Engagement. If patients are not activated, educated, and consistently involved in their own care, even the most sophisticated systems will underperform. Integration into the EHR is important. Integration into the patient’s daily life is transformative. As healthcare systems face rising chronic disease prevalence, workforce shortages, and financial pressure, scalable and integrated remote care models are becoming essential — not optional. But they must also be designed around patient experience, accessibility, and sustained engagement. Credit to Healthcare150 for articulating this important industry shift. Worth the read for anyone building, investing in, or operating within digital health. The question now isn’t whether telehealth will remain. The question is whether we are building it around the systems — or around the people they serve. #DigitalHealth #Telehealth #PatientEngagement #ValueBasedCare #RemotePatientMonitoring #HealthcareTransformation

25

2 Comments

Doximity just released a free AI scribe for US clinicians, accelerating commoditization/the race to the bottom. Their product won’t integrate into the EHR like Abridge, but it’ll be interesting to see how much it impacts their ability to acquire customers, drive usage and maintain retention. This is the start of a trend that will continue across every vertical market. Counterpositioning with free products to undercut upstarts and incumbents alike. Buckle up. Your margin is someone else’s opportunity.

53

5 Comments