DGTL Voices with Ed Marx

Isobel Handler is VP and head of advisory at Kontakt.io, where she leads a team of former health system operators and technical experts. Before that, she spent nearly a decade at UCHealth, starting in operations and growing into vice president of outcomes and operational intelligence.

She grew up in Pittsburgh in a family of clinicians, doing homework at the nurses’ station of whatever hospital her mom worked at. She never felt called to be clinical, but she never left healthcare either.

In this episode of DGTL Voices, Isobel tells Ed Marx about the feedback that steered her out of operations and into analytics, why she made the jump from a health system to industry, and why she wants more people talking about the exam room of the future, not just the hospital room of the future. She also explains the thinking behind KIO Clinics, Kontakt.io’s new set of tools for ambulatory care.

Connect with Marx Advisory at https://bio.marxadvisory.com/

Matthew Le Merle is the managing partner and CEO of Fifth Era Partners, which has invested in more than 1,500 companies and projects, including more than 80 unicorns. Before investing full time, he spent years as a strategy consultant to some of the world’s largest banks, technology companies and healthcare organizations.

Fifth Era’s 13th biannual Unicorns report tracks more than 750 private companies valued at $1 billion or more that are building what Matthew calls the autonomous digital economy, where the internet, AI and blockchain converge.

In this episode of DGTL Voices, Matthew tells Ed Marx why large established companies struggle to innovate, what a hospital leader should do when a disruptor shows up, why averages lie in healthcare, and why he thinks health systems are wrong to stop doctors from looking at what patients bring in from ChatGPT.

Download Fifth Era’s Unicorns report: https://www.fifthera.com/unicorns

Corporate Innovation in the Fifth Era, by Matthew Le Merle and Alison Davis: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072PTC756

Connect with Marx Advisory at https://bio.marxadvisory.com/

Umar Ansari leads clinical AI solutions globally for a major healthcare company, a role he pitched to leadership himself during COVID. He has worked in more than 60 countries and has lived in Dubai for 21 years, after moving there with Cerner for what was supposed to be two.

He almost became a doctor. His sister, a physician, told him that if even 1% of him doubted medical school, he shouldn’t go. He took the MCAT and got in anyway, then chose computer science instead.

In this episode of DGTL Voices, Umar tells Edward Marx why he believes character outlasts achievement, why he stopped trying to be the smartest person in the room, why humans will never be fully out of the loop in clinical AI, and what his father taught him about leaving things better than you found them.

Connect with Marx Advisory at https://bio.marxadvisory.com/

Dr. Patrick McGill is the CEO of Community Health Network in Indianapolis, a $4 billion system with 17,000 employees and five hospitals. He is the fifth CEO in its 70-year history, and four months into the job when this was recorded. He still sees patients on Mondays.

His path there is unusual. Family medicine, then informatics after Epic went in, then transformation, then the corner office.

In this episode of DGTL Voices, Patrick tells Edward Marx why he wants people to stop asking about AI strategy, what he asks them instead, and what he thinks everyone gets wrong when they chase patient experience scores. Plus: the practice he took over after its physician was killed in a plane crash, and what he tells emerging leaders about titles.

Connect with Marx Advisory at https://bio.marxadvisory.com/

Xinan Rahman founded a company that matches incoming payments against payer contracts, catching underpayments as they happen rather than months later.

His father named him with an X instead of the usual Z, because his kids were going to be different. He did the same with Xinan's sister.

In this episode of DGTL Voices, Xinan tells Edward Marx about growing up in Bangladesh, why he studied computer science as a practical decision rather than a passion, and how reading his own hospital bill in college made him curious about what health systems actually get paid. He also explains why revenue cycle staff are not the problem and what he thinks comes after underpayments.

Connect with Marx Advisory at https://bio.marxadvisory.com/