Value-based care has a transparency problem. Payers have their number. Providers have their number. Nobody can agree on what truth is — and that disagreement is quietly costing providers money they should be reinvesting in their communities, their staff, and their patients.

Rachael Jones, CEO of Syntax Health, a Lightbeam Health Company, spent 25 years in healthcare — starting in a hospital in Paterson, New Jersey, moving through Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, Anthem, and multiple software companies — before building Syntax specifically to solve the friction in value-based care contracting.

Her platform and services do three things: help organizations understand a contract before they sign it, negotiate with leverage and clarity, and track performance while they're in it so they're not flying blind. Now as part of Lightbeam, Syntax connects that actuarial intelligence layer to Lightbeam's AI-enabled risk analytics, care management, and population health tools.

Her metaphor for the Syntax Glow Up: helping clinicians and quality teams understand if the juice is worth the squeeze. Providers work hard. The question is whether the contract is structured to reward that work — or whether you can climb the hill and still not find the pot of gold.

Key Moments:

• [00:02:14] Three things Syntax does better: understand, negotiate, and perform inside a value-based care contract.
• [00:04:59] Origin story: from Jamaican immigrant to hospital administrator to "the dark side" at Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield.
• [00:08:12] The abscess tooth in healthcare: change management. "If we don't figure out what change management looks like, nothing you do is going to matter."
• [00:09:03] The 2026 Glow Up: payer-provider alignment on a shared source of truth for cost, quality, and risk.
• [00:22:04] Spicy hot take: "AI will not fix healthcare contracting. The math has to math."

Recorded live from the Vive 2026 event.

Catch the full conversation on YouTube → https://youtu.be/99lwANl1RbU

Join the Tech Glow Up newsletter on Substack → https://substack.com/@mxnathanc

About Rachael Jones:

Rachael Jones is an award-winning healthcare executive, thought leader in advancing Value-Based Care, and self-proclaimed “healthcare analytics nerd” adept in telling stories with data.

As a deep Value-Based Care expert, her distinguished career spans over 25 years in senior leadership roles for some of the largest health insurers and healthcare IT solutions providers in the U.S including Cotiviti, Anthem, HealthFirst, and the TriZetto Group.

A champion of transformational change, Rachael is passionate about improving the healthcare landscape, with a longstanding history of success in delivering innovative products, performance-enhancing analytics, growth-enabling operational and investment strategies, and cost-of-care controls.

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.

America's healthcare system has been claiming to put patients first for decades. Miriam Paramore, founder and CEO of RX Utility, has spent 42 years in health IT watching that claim go unmet — and she built her company to fix the part where patients get hurt most: what they pay out of pocket at the pharmacy.

The math is stark. Employers pay the negotiated net price on medications after rebates. Consumers with high-deductible health plans pay the full list price. Eliquis: $600 at the counter for a consumer with a $10,000 deductible. The employer's net price after rebates: $300.

That cost-shifting has happened quietly for years while payers have kicked the can on price transparency requirements they were legally required to meet in 2022.

RX Utility's answer is two APIs: one covering 100% of pharma copay coupons (about $30 billion in annual consumer savings that only 10% of eligible patients ever access), and one with real-time cash prices for every drug at every pharmacy in the country. Not another consumer app, a utility layer that flows through EHRs, pharmacy tools, and telehealth platforms so prices show up wherever patients and clinicians already are.

Key Moments:

• [00:01:36] The mission in one line: "We help people save money on medicine."
• [00:05:44] $30 billion in pharma copay coupons go unclaimed every year — 90% of patients never access savings they're entitled to.
• [00:07:12] Real-time cash prices for every drug at every pharmacy, updated throughout the day — now in an API.
• [00:08:50] The deductible math: $25K family premium plus $10K deductible has broken the insurance model.
• [00:12:13] Price transparency as the healthcare Glow Up of 2026 — and why payers have been ignoring a 2022 mandate.

Recorded live from the Vive 2026 event.

Miriam's frame is blunt: if people can't afford the drugs they need, outcomes will be worse. That's not a policy argument. It's arithmetic.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube → https://youtu.be/6UNGeWm9KvU

About Miriam Paramore

Miriam Paramore is Founder and CEO of RxUtility, a real-time medication affordability toolkit. RxUtility is the only company to connect providers, pharmacists, employers, payers and digital health partners with access to all medication prices through its AI-powered platform.

By embedding prescription affordability and transparency in these tech workflows, RxUtility reduces patient payment confusion, drives medication adherence and ensures equitable access to prescription drugs.

She has been influencing the direction of the healthcare technology industry for more than 35 years. Her contributions have had significant impact on the major healthcare business sectors – providers, payers, pharmacy, life sciences and, most importantly, patients. It has been Miriam’s life’s work to improve the U.S. healthcare system through the power of information.

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.

In December 2024, a Guidehealth customer needed blood pressure readings from thousands of seniors — fast. Over 200 people making calls for 20 straight days was the traditional answer. Guidehealth deployed an AI voice concierge instead. It collected over 2,000 readings in days, and about 15% came back elevated — undiagnosed hypertension cases that needed escalation. That was the proof of concept. Now it's the operating model.

The Tech Glow Up from Vive continues with another experienced leader in Health IT sharing their journey in innovation.

Sanjay Doddamani, founder and CEO of Guidehealth, is a physician who spent two decades running population health at Geisinger and UT Southwestern before building the company he wished existed. Guidehealth works across benefits administration and value-based care with one stated mission: make great healthcare affordable for all. Since 2023, the company has grown from 200,000 patients to over 800,000, while headcount grew from 200 to just 262 people.

[00:00:54] Making healthcare affordable for all: why dramatically lower operating costs are the only path to sustainable patient care.
[00:05:07] Brain, voice, and touch: the three-layer model that balances AI efficiency with human escalation across every patient interaction.
[00:08:07] The blood pressure call: one AI campaign, 2,000-plus home readings, 15% elevated cases caught — and the proof of concept for agentic AI in healthcare.
[00:11:24] Garbage in, garbage out: why rich, accurate data context is the prerequisite for responsible AI deployment.
[00:23:04] The hot take: every routine administrative task is sitting on top of a clinical signal most companies never look for.

Sanjay's frame is the tortoise and the hare applied to healthcare AI: moving fast but responsibly — building in human escalation, earning URAC accreditation, and starting with the lowest-risk use cases. The 30-plus strategic advisors and a C-suite he calls a "council of ministers" are the infrastructure that lets a physician founder scale without losing sight of the patient.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube → https://youtu.be/kQdmpeuxxl8
Join the Tech Glow Up newsletter on Substack → https://substack.com/@mxnathanc

About Sanya Doddamani:

Dr. Sanjay Doddamani is a practicing cardiologist and founder and CEO of Guidehealth. He handpicked a team of nationally recognized technology, operational and clinical leaders who are elevating performance for leading health systems, payers, and self-funded employers.

He previously served as a Senior Advisor at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), helping develop alternative payment models focused on quality and cost across the U.S. healthcare system.

He clinically led two large health system–led accountable care organizations and pioneered innovative delivery models including Geisinger at Home.

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.