Transforming Hospital Isolation with Alex Laskey of CareCubes

Summary

Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Episode: Transforming Hospital Isolation with Alex Laskey of CareCubes
Date: March 23, 2026
Host: Scott Becker
Guest: Alex Laskey, CEO of CareCubes

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Scott Becker interviews Alex Laskey, CEO of CareCubes, about how his company is revolutionizing infection control in hospitals. They discuss the origin and impact of CareCubes' deployable negative pressure isolation units, current deployment in hospitals, the parallels to broader trends in healthcare safety, and Alex’s advice for emerging leaders.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Alex Laskey’s Background and Motivation (00:31–01:52)

• Alex describes his transition from energy software (Opower) to healthcare, motivated by the pandemic's exposure of hospital-acquired infection problems.
• The fundamental question: “The notion that we send people to the hospital to get treated for one thing and they come home sick with something else seemed to me to be something that we should make a problem of the past rather than a problem of the present.” (B, 01:15)
• CareCubes was founded to address hospital-acquired infections by improving isolation practices and increasing treatment capacity without overburdening nurses and doctors.

What is a CareCube? (02:00–03:27)

• The initial product is a portable, FDA-cleared negative pressure tent for containing infectious patients.
• Simplicity and speed: “You can put it together in 15 minutes, having never seen it before.” (B, 02:10)
• Key principle: Instead of layering PPE on providers, wrap the patient in a negative pressure environment, “liberating the nurse, liberating the doctor to take care of multiple patients without having to don and doff PPE.” (B, 02:52)
• Dramatically reduces risk for healthcare workers while maintaining high safety standards.

Deployment and Impact in Hospitals (03:27–05:41)

• CareCubes are used across a range of hospital types, including rural, urban, networked, and academic centers in 10 states.
• Notable use cases:
  • Hospitals with a high percentage of semi-private rooms use CareCubes to maintain full occupancy even when one patient is infectious, addressing both safety and financial pressures.
  • In emergency departments facing capacity issues, CareCubes are being used to safely add surge beds: “they're using our product to extend and expand the number of beds they can comfortably and safely treat patients in because they just don't have enough surge capacity to meet the current demand.” (B, 05:21)

The Vision: Redefining Hospital Isolation (06:14–09:09)

• Alex draws a striking parallel to airport security post-9/11 and AED defibrillators: what once seemed extreme is now standard and expected.
• Memorable metaphor: “It will… look back and say, wait a second, dad. It used to be the case that somebody with a hacking cough and a fever would just walk into the emergency room and you would sit them down next to grandma. What were you thinking?” (B, 06:40)
• Future-focused: Deployable isolation should be ubiquitous, easy, and affordable, much like automated defibrillators are today.
• Personal angle: “I think about my own parents ... if my mom got sick today with something, I wouldn't want her to go to the hospital. I'd be worried about her… getting sick with something else.” (B, 08:17)
• Objective: Make hospitals a place only for healing, not a source of new infections.

Advice for Emerging Leaders (09:09–12:09)

• Alex’s main advice: “Surround yourself with people who have different experience than you, who have different expertise, different temperaments… is a critical part of being an effective leader and having success.” (B, 09:39)
• Building teams with complementary strengths—experts in medical devices, hospital sales, and healthcare operations—has been critical for CareCubes' progress.
• Cites benefits from prominent board members and investors (e.g., Mark Bertolini of Oscar Health, former Aetna CEO; Bill Hawkins, former Medtronic CEO).
• “A critical part of being a great leader is recognizing all the things you're not good at… The most important thing is … surrounding myself with people who are good at those things and who I can trust and over time maybe learn from.” (B, 11:41)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The notion that we send people to the hospital to get treated for one thing and they come home sick with something else seemed to me to be something that we should make a problem of the past rather than a problem of the present.” (B, 01:15)
• “You put a patient in it, you zip the canopy closed, you plug it into the fan and manometer, and all of a sudden you have a negative pressure room, the type that hospitals build for a million dollars.” (B, 02:18)
• “We're inverting the paradigm and instead of wrapping PPE around the provider, we're wrapping the patient in PPE and therefore liberating the nurse, liberating the doctor…” (B, 02:44)
• “Hospitals are reaching capacity right now… if you have a flu patient… you have only two patient rooms available… they have to kill one of the beds… So… they're going to be using the product to maintain occupancy rates in the hospital.” (B, 04:15)
• “Every institution responsible for housing and caring for people should have deployable isolation care available where they need it, when they need it.” (B, 07:32)
• “A critical part of being a great leader is recognizing all the things you're not good at… the most important thing is recognizing what I'm not good at and surrounding myself with people who are good at those things and who I can trust…” (B, 11:41)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:31 – Alex Laskey introduces himself and outlines his journey from software to healthcare.
• 02:00 – Description of CareCube, its function, and benefits.
• 03:50 – Real-world deployment examples and impact in hospitals.
• 06:14 – Vision for the future of infection isolation; societal analogies.
• 09:23 – Advice for emerging healthcare leaders.
• 11:41 – Importance of team composition and leadership humility.

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Tone and Language

• Conversational, forward-thinking, and purpose-driven.
• Alex is practical, visionary, and candid about leadership challenges.
• The episode balances big-picture innovation with concrete, relatable stories from the field.

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In summary:
This episode provides an insightful look into how CareCubes is challenging the status quo of hospital infection control, bringing practical technology and new paradigms to frontline healthcare. Alex Laskey’s perspective bridges past public health failures, present solutions, and a safer future for patients and clinicians—punctuated by actionable leadership wisdom.

Transcript

[A]

This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare podcast. We're joined today by a fascinating and brilliant leader. We're joined today by Alex Lasky. And Alex has the fascinating position of being CEO of a company that's not so new anymore called CureCubes. And he's going to talk to say about what problem Curcubes solves, how it came to be, trends he's watching, and a lot more. Alex, can you take a moment and introduce yourself and tell us about Curcubes?

[B]

Hey, Scott, thanks so much for having me on the program. I really appreciate it. I'm Alex. I'm in Northern Virginia. I have spent my career, I guess, focusing on thorny problems. Started a software company called Opower, worked with utilities, electric and gas utilities all over the world to help people save energy in their homes. We took that company public and it now is a large part of the Oracle business. I've been focused for the last six years on infectious disease. As we all saw what happened to our country and to healthcare in this country with the pandemic, I figured there's got to be a better way to solve the problem of infectious disease. And the notion that we send people to the hospital to get treated for one thing and they come home sick with something else seemed to me to be something that we should make a problem of the past rather than a problem of the present. We develop care cubes to directly go at that problem, to increase throughput for hospitals, to increase their ability to effectively treat patients and to, at the end of the day, make sure that if somebody is sick in a hospital, they're able to be treated in such a way that allows nurses and doctors to do their jobs and reduces the likelihood of spread inside the hospital.

[A]

Thank you. And talk to us about the core of what a Curcube is and how this developed during COVID and sort of where you're at in the company now.

[B]

Thanks. Yeah. So Care Cube, the initial product we've put into the market that was being acquired by hospitals today has 510 clearance. Is a negative pressure tent that Scott, you have. And having never seen it in person, I don't think yet, you, you and anybody else, any one of your listeners, could put it together in 15 minutes, having never seen it before. Put it together in 15 minutes. You create a negative pressure environment that meets FDA standards. You put a highly infectious patient in there, whether that patient has, heaven forbid, some emerging pathogen like Ebola or more run of the mill thing like the flu, you put a patient in it you zip the canopy closed, you plug it into the fan and manometer, and all of a sudden you have a negative pressure room, the type that hospitals build for a million dollars. Here is a deployable negative pressure unit that you can put together in 15 minutes and put it up anywhere you need it. Once you have it up and the patient inside, nurse or doctor can take care of the patient without having to wear ppe. So the basic idea here is we're inverting the paradigm and instead of wrapping PPE around the provider, we're wrapping the patient in PPE and therefore liberating the nurse, liberating the doctor to take care of multiple patients without having to don and doff PPE and without having to worry about their own health and just do what they're trained to do and passionate about doing, which is worrying about and taking care of the health of each and every one of us.

[A]

Alex, let me ask this question. You've built this great technology with some of the leading infectious disease people in the entire world. Incredibly important. Covid proves sort of the use case for this and so important going forward. How is it being deployed so far? Are you in the pilot stage with some hospitals and health systems? What does this look like in any examples of where you're, you know, where you're focused?

[B]

Yeah, it's been really encouraging. We have some of the leading hospitals in the country who are purchasing from us rural centers, urban centers, large networks, standalone academic institutions. We're in a dozen hospitals across 10 states and they're very different kinds of hospitals and they have different use cases for it. We've got a hospital system, Scott, that 40% of their beds across the country are in semi private rooms. And what does that mean? It means, you know, you got a two bed room and you know, we have. Hospitals are reaching capacity right now, but it. But if you have a flu patient, even forget about a TB patient or a measles patient, even have a flu patient come into the hospital and you have only two patient rooms available. You know what that means for the hospital is they have to kill one of the beds in order and they turn a two patient room into a one patient room. So from a financial perspective, it's devastating for them for their ability to care for people. It's really bad. So in this hospital system, they're going to be using the product to maintain occupancy rates in the hospital. So that's just as a single example of this. So there are lots of different examples of another place we have. And I was in a hospital on Tuesday morning in a small size city and we walk through the emergency department and there are patients boarding in the emergency department. Patients who have been admitted don't yet have a bed. And so in this hospital and there are other hospitals like it, they're using our product to extend and expand the number of beds they can comfortably and safely treat patients in because they just don't have enough surge capacity to meet the current demand across their emergency departments.

[A]

Alex, as you look at sort of the evolution of what Kirk Cubes is doing, let me really ask you two questions. How do you look at this in terms of where it's going and what it's doing and different metaphors or how you think about it? And then second, anything else that you think? We'll get to a bunch of questions on trends and where you're focused and emerging leaders. But before we do that, any thoughts on what you see as a potential growth case scenario for what you're doing and also any other thoughts, key thoughts you wanted to share with the audience?

[B]

Sure. Scott, you and I are both, I appreciate that question. You and I are both old enough to remember, you know, pre 911 world where we used to go to the airport and sometimes wouldn't even need to go through security and certainly get to the gate without having anybody looked at our boarding passes. And you tell that to a young person today, or they don't even have to be that young, but a person in their 20s today and they look at you like, what are you talking about? That couldn't have been the way it used to be. And of course it was. And I kind of think for us as I think about what does care Cubes look like in the future and what does the world of medical healthcare look like in the future? It will for my young kids when they grow up and they look back and say, wait a second, dad. It used to be the case that somebody with a hacking cough and a fever would just walk into the emergency room and you would sit them down next to grandma. What were you thinking? Why, when somebody gets sick in a nursing home, do we just expose everybody in the nursing home and everybody gets sick? Why don't you isolate the person who is sick, give them the treatment they need, but do it in a way that allows everybody else to remain healthy? Why do we allow thousands of people, tens of thousands of people to come home from the hospitals with infections they didn't have when they went to the hospital? A hospital should be a place where you're getting healthy, not a place where you're getting sick. And so I think healthcare has done this kind of stuff before. Scott, you think about defibrillators also. When we were earlier in our careers, defibrillators were only in hospitals. Today there's a defibrillator, you know, in our office, there's a defibrillator at the, behind the front desk at my kids elementary school. And defibrillators, these AEDs are easy to use, they're inexpensive to use, and they're responsible for saving the lives of thousands of people every year. We believe deployable isolation should be like that. Easy to use, inexpensive to use, delightful to use. And do it in a way that expands health care, allows nurses and doctors to do their jobs without burning out. To me that's like, that's the model. That's where we're headed. Every place, every institution responsible for housing and caring for people should have deployable isolation care available where they need it, when they need it. And so I'm super excited about that. And I look with, you know, I think about my own parents who are not old. I don't want to get that, get myself in trouble. But you know, if my mom got sick today with something, I wouldn't want her to go to the hospital. I'd be worried about her getting, getting there and getting sick with something else. And so, you know, for, for your mom, for my mom, for everybody who's listening's mom, and for our future selves, like, you know, we're all going to get sick at some point. Let's make sure that when we get treated for, for what we're sick for, we don't, we don't get somebody else sick and we don't come home sick with something else.

[A]

No. Absolutely fantastic what you're doing. Take one moment on advice that you would give to emerging leaders, whether health system leaders or business leaders. Any advice that you think about when you, when you talk to emerging leaders?

[B]

Oh, it's a good question. And I feel funny giving advice. I still feel like I'm seeking advice all the time, which is a great

[A]

place to be in a great way to be. So we appreciate that.

[B]

It's the only way to be. You know, for me, I guess I built a pretty successful business in the energy space selling to large utilities. And people ask me, well, what, you know, what business do you have going into health care and selling to hospitals? And look, we're in early stages still. We just raised our series A. We've got great investors on board. But, but at the end of the day and we have great customers. But the, the advice that I've taken to heart that I would recommend to others is when you're exploring a new space or even if you're just expl. An old space that you know quite well or think you know quite well, surrounding yourself with people who have different experience than you, who have different expertise, different temperaments, I think is a critical, is a critical part of being an effective leader and, and, and having success. So in my case here at Care Cubes, I've built a team. We've built a team that has people who have spent their careers selling to hospitals, building medical devices, working at some of the best companies in this space. I have a board and investors who have spent their entire careers investing in companies and building and operating companies. Mark Bernalini is an investor. He runs Oscar Health. He ran Aetna before into the merger with cvs. I mean, the amount of information that guy knows about hospitals, about payers, about how healthcare is delivered in this country, I could never hope to learn it. But I get to surround myself with people like him, with Bill Hawkins, who ran Medtronic as the CEO, you know, I call them for advice. It's. They, they, you know, they're ready to give it, they're eager to give it, they're thrilled to be a part of what we're doing. And that to me is, is a, is a huge gift to me. And I couldn't do it, we couldn't be doing any of it without people like them, without the Dan Grano who runs Quality Engineering for me. I didn't even know what Quality Engineering was when we started this company. So I think a critical part of being a great leader is recognizing all the things you're not good at. And it's one thing to try and work at getting better at the things you're not good at. That has limited my experience. I'm not going to get that good at the things I'm not good at. I can get a little bit better, but the most important thing is recognizing what I'm not good at and surrounding myself with people who are good at those things and who I can trust and over time maybe learn from, but most importantly, lean on to do their jobs.

[A]

No, just absolutely fantastic. Alex, I want to thank you for joining us today on the Becker's Healthcare podcast. Just remarkable what you're doing. Remarkable team you established around yourself to do this and we're looking forward to continued success and growth. Alex Lasky, thank you so much for joining us today on the Beckers Healthcare podcast.

[B]

Thank you so much, Scott. I really appreciate it.