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.

The NIH issued a policy encouraging the inclusion of women in clinical research in 1986. It took until 2016 — 30 years — for sex to be formally accepted as a biological variable. Camille McWhirter, VP of Clinical Trials, Real World Data, and Cancer Registry at Omega Healthcare, has been in and around clinical research for over 20 years and considers that gap one of the most consequential data problems in healthcare.

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

Her team's job now is to clean it up — taking the explosion of unstructured wearable and clinical data and turning it into something usable enough to get more women, and more patients from rural and community settings, into clinical trials that currently over-represent academic medical center populations.

Camille started as a lab rat in a cancer research lab, crossed into SaaS and digital transformation, and returned to clinical research with a conviction that the tools conversation in healthcare is backwards. Her hot take: she is not a fan of plug-and-play. Point solutions create fragmented, frustrating tech stacks. Nathan put it as "death by a thousand clicks."

Her answer is interoperability — not just technical, but cultural too. If the industry is serious about making data talk, it needs to make its people talk first.

• [00:05:17] The customer satisfaction secret: how Omega's clinical division maintains nearly 100% satisfaction and what that reveals about trust in healthcare services.
• [00:07:03] From lab rat to VP: Camille's 22-year arc from cancer research through SaaS back to clinical trials — and what the full loop clarified.
• [00:11:05] Women's health Glow Up: why the wearable data explosion is an opportunity — and a mess that needs cleaning before more women can access clinical trials.
• [00:13:44] Human in the loop: AI works operationally, but complex clinical data still needs humans to maintain FDA-grade quality.
• [00:15:09] Squash your imposter syndrome: the mentorship conviction that shaped her career and why the last word in her LinkedIn profile is "how can I help?"

Watch the full conversation on YouTube → https://youtu.be/qWgA3pn16CU

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

About Camille McWhirter

Camille McWhirter is Vice President at Omega Healthcare, where she leads strategic partnerships for intelligent health data curation and cancer registry services that deliver high-quality, research-grade real-world and clinical trial data.

She works with health systems, life sciences, and health-tech organizations to capture, abstract, and standardize data from disparate sources, enabling registry management, and AI/ML support at scale.

She has deep experience in EHR integration, automation, and advisory services to streamline healthcare operatio

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.

We're almost 60 episodes in and I haven't really introduced myself.

Oops.

Hi. I'm Nathan C (they/them), and I started The Tech Glow Up as my love letter to the founders and innovators I've had the privilege of meeting throughout my career. The people who are building things that matter, quietly, with everything they have, often without nearly enough support or recognition.

I saw a disconnect early on that I couldn't stop thinking about. There were so many teams putting so much passionate work into the world — and only a fraction of them were ever really breaking through.

Not because the ideas were wrong. But because there was this gap between how they wanted to show up and how they were actually landing with the enterprise leaders they were trying to reach. I saw giant enterprise organizations trying to work with startups in ways that were totally disruptive and dysfunctional for everyone involved. I saw the ROI on enterprise innovation quietly bleeding out.

I wanted to put my arms around all of them and say: hey. There's a better way. You don't have to do this blind.

So I started asking questions. Publicly. On a podcast.

The conversations I was hungry for weren't the ones I was finding. I wanted the real ones — the ones about the hard choices, the lonely stretches, the small curious questions that ended up unlocking enormous things. The human side of innovation that gets edited out of most polished founder narratives.

There aren't enough conversations about what it actually costs to lead transformational technology. The grit, the integrity, the decisions you make at 2am that nobody ever hears about.

There aren't enough stories about what it looks like when leading with heart turns out to be a really good business strategy.

And there aren't enough honest accounts of the small steps that compound into something remarkable — because those stories don't go viral, even when they're the ones most worth telling.

That's the gap I set out to fill.

From deep tech and spatial computing to healthcare, climate tech, and resilient local networks — I talk with the leaders of growth-stage companies who have been there, seen it all, and made it through the hardest parts of the journey. We look for the real stories that drive actual impact in tech innovation. Not future-state hypotheticals. What's working now, for real people, like you and me.

60 episodes in, I've spoken with over 300 leaders in tech innovation. From Sony and Meta to Cisco, Lenovo, Blockbuster, and 7-Eleven — and just as importantly, from the early-stage founders who are still figuring it out and doing extraordinary work anyway.

Every one of those conversations feeds my strategic consulting work and makes me a sharper thinker about what it takes to build something that lasts.

I want to share all of it with you.

Not a highlight reel. Not a hype machine. Just honest, grounded conversations with people who have earned their perspective.

I'm so glad you're here.

— Nathan C

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.

For 25 years, Dr. David Buchanan called quality his hobby. In healthcare, you get paid for volume — not for keeping people healthy. Every hospital admission he prevented, every chronic condition he managed well, was essentially unpaid work. He did it anyway. Then he discovered global capitation, and everything changed.

At Town Square Health, the company David co-founded after eight years as Chief Clinical Officer at Oak Street Health, the business model is built on outcomes. Town Square contracts with insurers to take full financial responsibility for a patient population — so every dollar invested in prevention and primary care comes back as profit instead of overhead.

Quality stopped being a hobby. It became the job.

Key Moments:

• [00:04:48] From hobby to livelihood: how global capitation turned David's 25-year commitment to quality into a viable business model.
• [00:07:32] The data advantage: why capitation contracts plug Town Square into insurance data feeds — so they know when a patient hits the ER before the patient's own PCP does.
• [00:13:10] Give the agents the red tape: how AI reduces a patient's care team to two trusted people by offloading referrals, authorizations, and scheduling to agents in the background.
• [00:15:44] The missing field: there is no standard place in electronic health records for a patient's health goals. Town Square makes it one of the first things they ask.
• [00:17:08] Doctors talking to each other: how telehealth lets Town Square bring a specialist into the room with the PCP and patient together — something fee-for-service has made nearly impossible.

David's philosophy is simple but radical: patients and primary care providers want the same thing. It's the business models sitting in between that have made it hard.

By removing those blockers; through capitation, AI, and a care model built around the patient's stated goals, Town Square is building what David believes will be the most trusting PCP-patient relationships in decades.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube → https://youtu.be/5QqET4VnkVM

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

About Dr. David Buchanan

Dr. David Buchanan guides Town Square Health’s mission to deliver patient-centered, value-based primary and specialty care for Medicare-eligible populations.

A board-certified internist and seasoned healthcare leader, he previously served as Chief Innovation Officer for CVS Healthcare Delivery, Chief Clinical Officer at Oak Street Health, and held senior roles across community health systems and Medicaid initiatives.

Dr. Buchanan earned degrees from MIT and the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and completed residency training at UCSF.

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 same surgery. The same doctor. The same hospital. Same insurer, but a different insurance plan and a price that's three times higher. That's not a hypothetical. It's the daily reality of healthcare in 2026, and it's what Dr. Allison (Alli) Oakes, VP and Chief Research Officer at Trilliant Health, has spent her career trying to fix.

Alli sat down with Nathan C Bowser live at Vive 2026 to talk through what health plan price transparency data reveals about the American healthcare system.

Trilliant sits at an unusual vantage point: not a provider, payer, or employer, but an independent research engine that aggregates claims data, price transparency data, and provider directories to give stakeholders a picture of their full market — including where patients are leaking out and where money is leaving the system without explanation.

Her hot take closes the episode: be as bold about de-adopting technology that isn't performing as you are about adopting the new thing.

Key Moments:

• [00:03:12] What Trilliant Health Does: How claims data, price transparency data, and provider directories combine to show what no single stakeholder can see alone.
• [00:04:19] The Price Variation Problem: Same procedure, same market, three to ten times the cost depending on your payer — and why it's solvable.
• [00:08:25] Garbage In, Garbage Out — Multiplied: Why generative AI makes clean data more critical, and how Trilliant built a five-to-seven-year head start.
• [00:11:38] The Value Equation: Healthcare is 18% of US GDP with worse outcomes than comparable countries. Patients can't shop their way out of this problem.
• [00:16:49] The Hot Take: Rapid experimentation only works if you're equally bold about cutting what the data says isn't working.

Watch the full episode on YouTube, subscribe to The Tech Glow Up, and join the newsletter on Substack → https://substack.com/@mxnathanc

About Allison Oakes, Ph.D.
Dr. Allison (Alli) Oakes is a health services researcher dedicated to translating complex data into actionable insights. With a background spanning academia, government, health systems, and payers, she brings a comprehensive perspective to the complexities of the U.S. healthcare system.

As Chief Research Officer at Trilliant Health, Alli leverages extensive internal datasets to inform strategic decision

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.

Everyone says AI in healthcare needs a "human in the loop." Fewer people can tell you what that actually means. This live Vive 2026 episode of The Tech Glow Up features two health IT veterans who are done waiting for theory to catch up with practice.

Virginia Halsey, SVP of Product and Strategy at First Data Bank, has 35 years in health IT and a clear view of where medication workflows are failing. Pharmacists spend 30 to 40% of their day verifying prescription orders, while the clinical judgment they trained for goes unused. FDB is building tools to fix medication reconciliation and free pharmacists to round and participate in real patient care.

Her hot take: even big tech companies love the AI buzzwords but aren't ready for healthcare-specific protocols like MCP when you get into the details.

Dr. Jay Anders, CMO at Medicomp Systems, practiced internal medicine for 20 years and has spent 21 years since as the bridge between clinicians and tech. Clinicians haven't been asked what they need from AI, and when ambient listening tools produce text that nobody verifies, "human in the loop" is just a phrase. Medicomp converts ambient AI output into structured clinical data and gives clinicians a fast way to validate what the system produced.

Key Moments:

• [00:04:04] The Medication Workflow Problem: Why pharmacists spend 30–40% of their day on verification — and what FDB is building to change that.
• [00:07:23] Med Rec on Admission: The fragmented data problem that makes medication reconciliation risky when patients can't speak for themselves.
• [00:10:03] The AI Readiness Gap: Many organizations love AI buzzwords but aren't ready for the protocols that make it real in clinical settings.
• [00:20:45] "They Haven't Been Asked": Why clinician trust in AI is in turmoil — and why the fix starts with asking doctors what they need.
• [00:21:32] Beyond the Text: Medicomp converts ambient AI transcripts into structured data, then gives clinicians a fast way to verify the output.

Watch the full episode on YouTube, subscribe to The Tech Glow Up, and join the newsletter on Substack → https://substack.com/@mxnathanc

About Jay Anders:

Dr. Jay Anders serves as the Chief Medical Officer of Medicomp Systems, where he plays a pivotal role in product development and acts as a liaison to the healthcare community. He hosts the award-winning HealthcareNOW Radio podcast, “Tell Me Where IT Hurts,” discussing critical issues such as physician burnout, EHR usability, healthcare interoperability, and the impact of technology on healthcare with industry experts.

About Virginia Halsey:

Virginia Halsey serves as senior vice president of strategy and product management where she manages the team responsible for the development and success of all FDB solutions spanning a variety of healthcare markets across the US and Canada.

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.