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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Transforming Healthcare Hiring with AI featuring Dr. Iman Abuzeid
00:09:46
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- [00:00]
A
Hello and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. My name is Chanel Bunger and today I'm excited to speak with Dr. Iman Abuzet, the CEO at Incredible Health, who joins the podcast today to share insights into her background trend she's watching in healthcare. And a bit more. Dr. Abuzed. Thank you so much for joining me today.
- [00:18]
B
Thank you so much for having me.
- [00:19]
A
Perfect. Well, to get us started, could you tell us a bit about your background and organization?
- [00:24]
B
Sure. I'm a medical doctor by background, but I've been in software for the last 10 years of my career. I started out as an MD, then I transitioned to management consulting and then did my mba, then moved out to the Bay Area, which is where I got into startups. I was a product manager at healthcare technology software companies and then left to start my own company. I co founded Incredible Health with Rome Portlock back in 2017 and we have this vision and mission of helping healthcare professionals live better lives and helping them find and do their best work. Fast forward till today. Incredible Health is now the largest AI powered career marketplace in healthcare in the country, with over 1 million U.S. nurses. So 1 in 3 nurses in the country and over 1,500 hospitals and health systems using the platform. And we've raised about $100 million in venture capital for the business as well. And the business is valued at over a billion dollars.
- [01:27]
A
Perfect. Thank you so much for that introduction. And now moving into the meat of the podcast a bit, can you talk about what trends you're watching either in healthcare as a whole or in your exact sector?
- [01:38]
B
Yeah, so I think one trend I've. Okay. A trend we've been watching from the beginning is just the demographic changes that are happening in the US Specifically. What I mean is the US Population is growing and it's also aging, which is putting more and more demand on the US Healthcare system. And we as a country have not done an amazing job of increasing the number of healthcare workers to keep up with that demand. So as a result, the largest labor shortages in the country are in healthcare. We are millions of workers short. We don't have enough nurses in the country, we don't have enough physicians in the country. We don't have enough allied health professionals to keep up with this demand. The other trend I've been following is AI. We've seen AI eliminate roles in industries like software, like finance, like retail. There's one Stanford study that shows that there's been a 13% decline in entry level jobs since ChatGPT has been launched. But I think Healthcare is really unique in that it's that one area where we're not seeing as much disruption or replacement of jobs with AI. I think healthcare is one of those sectors that has human connection and empathy and where not everything's going to be handled with AI. But we believe that AI is going to play a really important role in how healthcare workers do their job.
- [02:59]
A
Absolutely. And now looking into the future a bit as we close out the year, what are you most focused on and excited about going into the 2026?
- [03:08]
B
So I'm honestly really excited about what we're working out on at Incredible Health. What we launched last week is AI agents. So just to back up for a moment, at Incredible Health, we've adding AI features to our two sided marketplace that employers use to hire permanent workers. We've been adding it since ChatGPT came out and we were actually the very first career marketplace to add AI. And we're now the largest career marketplace in healthcare that uses AI as well. And so last week we actually announced two AI voice agents, Gail and Lynn. And so Gail is a AI named after Florence Nightingale is a. Gail is an voice career partner for healthcare workers. What Gail does is that she does interview preparation and mock interviews with candidates on our platform. With a 1.4 million nurses, she also helps them generate high quality resumes using AI. Because we uncovered in our research that 30% of nurses start their job search without a high quality resume. Gail also sets up their Incredible Health profile. You can think of Gale as a lifelong career partner which helps every single healthcare worker approach their career and their next dream job with more confidence and more competence. We also launched Lynn, which is an AI voice agent and is a co pilot for hiring teams and for talent acquisition teams at the hospitals and organizations that use us. We built Lynn in collaboration with five of our health system partners, including Johns Hopkins, Baylor, Scott and White Health in Texas, Sutter Health in California, New York Presbyterian as well as Tennant Health. And what Lynn does is that she interviews candidates, she verifies her qualifications, she discusses multiple jobs with them and then also sells the employer to the candidate. The reason that's important is that that drives just faster speed in hiring because Lynn operates 24 7, drives more quality because that means more candidates can get hired and get to the next stages, and then also drives costs down as well because we save every single hiring team hundreds of hours per year. Because now, you know, phone interviews can be done with an AI voice agent like Lynn instead of having humans do it, which really frees up Their time, the hiring team's time, so they can spend it with hiring managers or spend it building long term pipelines instead of doing 10 to 15 phone screens per.
- [05:48]
A
Wow, that's amazing to hear. And now kind of looking back in the past a bit, I know you mentioned Gail and Lynn, that's definitely something to be proud of. But is there any other initiatives or projects that either you individually or Incredible Health have achieved in the last six to 18 months?
- [06:03]
B
Yes. So we have grown to over 1500 employers now. So we work with very large health systems like Tennant, like Trinity Health. We work with many academic organizations like New York Presbyterian and Johns Hopkins and NYU and so on. And then we also work with many, many community hospitals. We've been able to really expand the marketplace over the last few years to most of the country. Then we've also been able to expand from nurses to allied health professions as well. We really just see AI as an opportunity to, to really help healthcare workers and healthcare employers to make the hiring experience better and to help set up healthcare workers for more success. And so I guess we're part of a group of companies working with, working in AI in healthcare and just really excited for how this technology can impact experiences.
- [07:03]
A
I love that. And now I could tell that you're very passionate about what you do in this short conversation. And as somebody that's worked on both the clinical side and, and starting your own startup, I'm curious to hear what advice you would share to evolving leaders maybe looking to have that same passion and drive in their careers as you have.
- [07:19]
B
I think setting a clear mission and vision is probably my number one piece of advice. You know, at Incredible Health, our mission and vision is to help healthcare professionals live better lives and help them find and do their best work. And so that if that is the North Star, then your strategy, your tactics, your team members, everything can be modified in order to make sure that you achieve that vision and mission. The second thing is just to really have a thick skin like there's building businesses is not easy. Any type of business is not easy. And then certainly a high growth venture backed business is not easy either. And so just have a really thick skin for no. Right. I think as a CEO and co founder a lot of your work is selling, you know, you've got to work with customers, you've got to encourage the star machine learning engineer to join your team, you've got to talk with press, you have to speak with investors. So you know, along during all of those experiences, you know, not everyone's going to be totally on board. And so you have to have a really thick skin and just have a lot of resist resilience. And then the third thing, the last thing I'll mention is just the importance of having an amazing team. There's just no way I'd be sitting here chatting with you today if I didn't have the amazing team at Incredible Health. It's a very well curated team. I'm a big believer in talent density. And if you just need to really maximize the number of amazing people that you're working with and that you have inside your organization. Because at the end of the day, especially as a software company, I mean what we have is a code base and we have people, we don't have widgets, we don't have properties. And so the people is what really sets the tone and sets your trajectory and driving your success.
- [08:59]
A
Absolutely excellent advice. Well, Dr. Abizaid, I want to thank you for your time today. But before I let you go, is there anything else that listeners should know? And if listeners do want to reach out and find you, where can they find you?
- [09:11]
B
Sure, you can find out more about us@incredible health.com it's where you can sign up for Incredible Health for free. We are also very active on LinkedIn and Twitter. I personally am imanawuzaid on LinkedIn and then on Twitter I'm manabuzaid. And then for the company handles on Twitter we're at join Incredible. And then we're also incredible health on LinkedIn.
- [09:35]
A
I want to thank you once again for your time today and for sharing your insights on the Becker's Healthcare podcast. Thank you so much.
- [09:41]
B
Thank you so much as well. Appreciate it.