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Risk Never Sleeps Podcast
Episode #194. ER Visits, Burnout, and the Bot That Changes Everything, with Dan Nardi, CEO of Reimagine Care
00:38:19
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Foreign.
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Welcome to Risk Never Sleeps, where we meet and get to know the people delivering patient care and protecting patient safety. I'm your host, Ed Gaudet.
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Welcome to the Risk Never Sleeps podcast in which we learn about the people that are on the front lines protecting patient safety and delivering patient care. Ed Gaudet, the host. And today I have a return visitor, my good friend Dan Nardi, CEO of Reimagine Care. Dan, welcome.
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C
Thanks, Ed. It's great to be back. I appreciate it.
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A
Good to see you, man. And Go Pats, huh? What a game.
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C
Oh, man, it's. Football is fun again. It's nice to watch football.
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A
It's nice to be a Pats fan. Nice to be a Boston fan again, too.
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C
Right.
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A
They had pretty much counted us out this year. It's amazing what variable's been able to do.
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C
Great bounce back. It highlights the impact of good coaching, which in our world, good leadership. It makes all the difference.
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A
Yeah, it really does. It does. It. It puts a spotlight on. Is it the play I remember the whole debate about. Is it. Was it Brady? Right. Was it Belichick? Who was it really? It's both, but you gotta have. You gotta have both.
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C
Right?
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A
You need a great quarterback, but you also need a great coach as well.
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C
Absolutely. Yeah. Moving parts and there's just so much to keep track of and. But it's. Yeah, it's been a great season. Great to bounce back no matter how it plays out from. It's been fun.
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A
Yeah, that's right. All gravy at this point for the. For us fans in. Yeah. So what do you. What's your prediction? What do you think?
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C
I think if I'm pulling on my crystal ball here, I think we could probably take the Texans or the Steelers. I think the. The championship round would be tough, no matter if it's the Bills or the Broncos. And so I think we're ahead of schedule on a rebuild. And that's. As a fan, that's exciting and good place to be.
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Our defense looks like 10x though.
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C
What.
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A
What an amazing. Yesterday was epic.
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C
If they can keep that up, that would be the difference maker. So we'll see. What do you. What's your prediction?
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A
Patriots, Rams, Super Bowl a repeat.
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C
We're going for another one of the Patriots, Rams. Okay.
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Yeah.
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C
I'm here for it.
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And I think. Wasn't that Brady's first Super Bowl?
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C
It was his first and his. His last with the Patriots too.
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Right. So there you go. Right. Wouldn't that be. I like kismet, as they like to say.
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C
It would be the universe. It's all scripted, right?
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It's all scripted. It's all scripted. Speaking of the script you were on at the end of 2024. A lot's happened in 2025. A lot's already happened in 2026. We're 12 days into the year. What were some of the big changes on your end from your organizational perspective, from your customer perspective? What did you see over 2025 and what do you think's going to happen in the next year?
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C
It's a great question. We saw a lot of, a lot of growth in 25 and I don't just mean from the sales and a top line perspective. Markets start to shift into AI based virtual cancer care platform. That's really what we've built at Reimagine Care. But what we saw start to shift is prospects and providers that we had talked to even a couple of years ago that said, hey, we love what you do, but we're good, are now starting to come around and be like actually remember that conversation, we should talk again. And so that's been a nice shift where it's not only the adoption, it's starting to be the expectation of AI helping healthcare delivery. And we saw it just, just last week with the announcement ChatGPT's health and then Claude Anthropic had their one that was just announced over the weekend. So the broad AI and healthcare movement is here. So I feel a little pride that we were ahead of the curve in that. But, but that's what we saw I think change a lot is that a lot of groups are now starting to look for ways to more efficiently enable their care delivery because we just can't keep throwing bodies at this problem like healthcare has done for decades. So that was one of the biggest shifts and I think 26 to follow up on the question there, I think we're going to see more of it. I think we're just going to keep seeing this become standard of care in the next 12, 24 months. And health systems were are starting to stand up their AI governance and review boards. Things that the beginning of last year, 24, 23 even we were going through these sales process, we didn't have that. We never had to go through the AI governance and review process. And so now we do. And so I think we're seeing more of that. There's going to be more educated buyers on what AI is and the impact it has. So that, so that's how we're seeing the market change.
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A
The name of your agent Remy, think of that.
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C
Right, Remy? That's exactly right.
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A
All right, so does Remy become a household name? Hopefully not. But for those that are dealing with cancer, for those families that are dealing with cancer, does it become a household name?
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C
I don't know if we're there yet. And so to your point of hopefully not, but I do think we are becoming a lot more commonplace. We've supported over 10,000 patients so far to date in the history at over a quarter million patient interactions with Remy and with our virtual care team, our remote oncologist, trained nurses and MAs. So we are certainly building a ton of momentum here. I think we're still probably a little ways off from becoming a household name. Like we're not doing super bowl ads, we're not doing any of that. We actually pride ourselves on being a white labeled solution for practices. That's one of the things that if you think about you're going through your cancer journey, it's already so challenging as it is. And so introducing a new name to a patient when they're going through that, it just, it's increasing hurdles. So actually our preferred method for implementing with health systems, with oncology practice practices is to just be fully white labeled and support as a true extension of the CARE team.
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A
Interesting. Where do you see some of the advancements coming from an AI perspective? A lot's happened over the last couple of years, but as you look at your strategy, look at your roadmap, how are we going to look back in 2027 at this differently?
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C
I think we're going to have AI that is more autonomous and bear with me while like what that means because right now AI is still doing a lot of the lower level, easier stuff, just understanding intent and some of like the basic of connections. But AI itself is not actually at the care delivery component. Even the chatgpt and the anthropic solutions, they're just more around like answering basic questions. But we're not actually using the AI right now to provide care, which we shouldn't be. Right. Because there's, that's where you start to worry a little bit about the hallucinations and everything else. And so even at Reimagine care, the AI component is there for intent recognition and helping to determine the right pathway. But once we get into the actual clinical care delivery, you're in a guided pathway that is based on NCC CN standards and industry standards. And so that's where we really then are providing the back and forth and, but it's all rules based. And so I think what we're going to see now moving forward is the reins are going to be taken off slowly at first, but I think we're going to get to a state where the AI is going to be more and more autonomous and more supportive. Also. More memory. Right. It's kind of like right now the early days of, of Remy, the early days of a lot of these virtual assistants and chatbots. It was like every single version of the conversation was the exact same one. Like Groundhog Day. Right. If you respond the same way, you're going to get the same answers right now I think as we move forward, we're also going to see more memory, more context, more awareness that's going to lead to like, richer conversations, richer interactions and I think even higher adoption from patients because it'll be more helpful to them.
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So that's better reasoning, better reasoning capabilities. Yeah, no, absolutely. As an entrepreneur, obviously it's important to balance the right resources, the right investments. How are you leveraging AI internally for your operations? Is it being used across the team in pockets? Could you talk to that?
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C
Yeah. Being a startup, being a growth stage company, like we're, we are really embracing this, we're encouraging our team to use it. Some teams are more excited to use it than others.
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Yeah.
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Some dove in a long time ago and. But now what we're doing is we're working on standardizing it so that we can really help build the right guardrails and guidelines for internal usage as well. And so we've got so AI usage policies and procedures and really training people on how to use the tools we have. Right. Because the other thing is I don't want to, I don't want people to feel like they have to go buy an annual subscription to ChatGPT or Claude or whatever your favorite AI tool is. But each one of them is used a little bit differently. Like our sales and marketing team might be more drawn to Claude, for instance, just because of the, the outputs are more tailored towards that type of creative and thoughtful writing product might be more inclined to use a different one. So really helping the teams understand how it can benefit them and augment the work they're doing. And so I think that's one of the things we've been, we've been doing. We did stand up a little committee internally of people all volunteer of like, who had a passion for bringing AI to the workforce. And it's been really great to see some of the things we've been moving forward.
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A
I think that's a great idea. We also embraced it early on. And we began to share stories about. Each group would come up and say, okay, here's how I'm using it. Here's what's working, here's what's not working. And that collective knowledge and experience really helps. I think some of the early concerns people had. I'd love to unpack that with you too. We don't have to name any functions or people. But what, generally speaking, are you seeing when people resist AI?
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C
Yeah, I think it's fear, right. And people that have always felt, oh, maybe I'm not the most technical. And so therefore, oh, I don't know. And. Or some people could be different age brackets, could be different experience levels. With technology, there's a lot of different kind of reasons that, that people might fall into various, various camps on this. But I think just the other thing is demystifying it, right? Just being like, hey, here's what it is, here's how we use it. Like, we have an AI and healthcare channel in Slack where it's just like, you read a really interesting article about the adoption of AI in healthcare or just AI in general. Pop it in the Slack channel. Some people may not read it, most people will, but all is totally dependent. But it's, again, trying to demystify it and help people learn. We really, we try and strive to have a learning culture here too. So we never want anyone to feel bad that they don't know something or don't know how to use something. So really building that as part of our culture of like, hey, let's all learn together. And I think that's what's allowed us to overcome some of the initial hesitations in some of these groups.
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A
When you look out across your industry and you look out in terms of oncology in general, what do you think the three biggest important moves this year will be like, if we could predict or even forecast where we end up in 2026. From. From an oncology perspective, from a cancer industry perspective, what's your wish list of like, if we solve for these three things?
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C
Yeah. All right. Well, I love that question. It's like a shopping list. I think one of the big ones, one of the big buckets is just more general adoption. And we talk about this a lot in our conversations is there's such a, like, growing divide in supply and demand when it comes to healthcare delivery in this country. But it's even more exacerbated when it comes to cancer care. We have more patients being diagnosed. We just eclipsed a 2 million patients newly diagnosed in 25 for the first time last year. Treatments are improving so much that patients are living longer on treatment, which is. That's a good thing. But these combined factors means we have a demand that's growing for cancer care. On the supply side, we know we're already 2,300 oncologists short of where we need to be. Supporting the number of patients currently in treatment right now, it's only projected to get worse. We have burnout across the broader care teams as well. So the nurses and the apps and others in the care team, they're burnt out, they're leaving the clinic. So you have this growing divide, right, of supply and demand. So we have to be able to apply technology, and in our case specifically AI driven technology to bridge that gap. Otherwise we're never going to be able to support these patients. And that's where I would like to see this next step of like, not only is this accepted and implemented at handful of these practices, this should be standard of care moving forward because it has proven to be extremely effective. We have a huge decrease in avoidable ED visits for programs like ours. Much higher patient satisfaction, extremely high provider satisfaction too, because we're cutting down on pajama time. There's a lot of factors that I'd like to see this just become standard of care. So that's number one in like kind of the big bucket that's just for the more basic cancer care delivery. Right. How do we help bridge that? I think the next big bucket, which we're really excited for, is this move for a lot of these more advanced therapies, the bispecific therapies, into the outpatient setting. So that's a very oncology specific kind of trend right now. But there was some REMS changes in June of last year that had really propelled a large movement towards car t therapies to be brought into the. Into the outpatient setting. Predominantly these were inpatient only. You're talking like two months of inpatient care before then you're transitioned home because they're very advanced therapies. But now we're seeing this big push to having these be outpatient. Well, that requires an extremely tight connection with that patient the minute they leave the clinic. And so how do we help use technology to enable that type of care? So moving from that bucket number one, which is like care support, how do we do that better now using AI and technology into like care enablement? That's a really interesting dynamic and shift to be able to do this as your just like core, we have to be able to do this now let's start enabling more which is going to allow community practices and the, the independence to now start doing more of these in the outpatient that's going to provide, drive more volume, increase revenue and hopefully help lead to better sustainability for some of these practices.
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A
Got it. And those are all obviously optimistic views, which are great. What's the silent risk in oncology that no one's talking about? Like, if we look back on a, on this in a year from now, what's going to be self, what's going to be evident, do you think? What are you worried about? What keeps you up at night?
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C
I actually, normally I sleep pretty well. But like when the proverbial what keeps me up at night is the speed at which healthcare in this country works. It is so stinking slow. And I feel like we've built this over decades of just a big system, this big giant machine that just moves at like a cumbersome rate. So that's what keeps me up at night is like, how can we help? Really bring the innovators, the entrepreneurs, like the people that are excited about making change. How can we get them and enable them to start making that change? Because I think we end up being a little bit more stodgy as a system, like a healthcare delivery system just because of what we've built. And so we need to start to break some of that traditional like shackles that, that the healthcare delivery system has put on itself over the last handful of decades. And how do we start to innovate more? Like, we don't need everyone to do a pilot. Like, first of all, I hate that word. So like it's phase one, let's go. Phase two, like move on. Like everyone gets so caught up in like, well, okay, so you've proven it as City of Hope and Moffat and Memorial of Harmon and now Tampa General. But we still want to do a pilot too.
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A
We're different.
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C
Yeah, exactly. I promise you, you're not that different. Like that's the thing we try to tell them, but everyone, it just comes back to that, like risk averse to tie into the right different type of risk. But that's where I lose sleep is because I feel like those of us as entrepreneurs, yourself and myself and like a lot of these groups, we're trying to enable and break the mold and sometimes it feels like you just keep running to the same old wall. And so how do we break that?
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A
So yeah, no, that's sage. And I think, I think everyone's trying to figure that out. How do we move as fast as other industries especially? This is one of the largest industries, if you look at it from a GDP perspective as a percentage overall, it's a massive set of sub segments that often are interconnected and people lose sight of.
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C
Right.
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And so is there a way that we can truly start to take technology and get leverage from these different segments in a way that just really moves the needle? And I don't know, I think that there's plenty of tech out there that certainly could solve a lot of problems. But to your point, so many people are worried about change and they're worried about change for the wrong reasons, not the right reasons. Everything people get concerned about regarding change tends to be overblown.
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C
Yeah. And that's where I tell people a lot like, this is a change management challenge. Right. Because to your point, there's a billion dollar industry built on change management consulting, everything, you name it. So that's where it really comes down to a lot. It's like, how do we help enable that change management? How do we help really understand and bring that to the forefront at the beginning of some of these conversations? Be like, here's exactly the pushback you're going to get from this group and this group and here's how we help you through that. So we really, we try to do that. But. But being impatient as I am, I always want to be doing it faster.
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A
No pun intended. All right, so you're a hobbyist as it relates to woodworking, Correct?
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C
I remember that is one of the hobbies when I have spare time. I love projects like that. Yes.
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A
And in woodworking, the strongest joint tends to be the one we don't see often.
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C
Right.
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A
As a leader, what's the hidden habit or invisible practice that provides the most strength to your day that never will make it to a podcast or your LinkedIn page?
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C
I love that question. I think a lot of us, especially in early stage companies, we focus so much on like sales and product and new releases and everything else and we don't maybe spend as much time on team and culture and that type of stuff. And especially for those of us in remote first culture, which reimagine care, we're a fully remote company started in the in Covid so it how it's always been. But we don't have those serendipitous moments, the bumping in at the water cooler or talking about the pats or whatever movie we saw or the Stranger Things finale or we don't have those as much. And so what we do at Reimagine care is we try to manufacture those. We try to set up every Tuesday morning at 9am Central. We have, I think it was actually 9am Mountain. We do a virtual coffee. So come join chat and you want to come for five minutes, great. You don't want to come too busy or whatever. You want to stay the whole time, great. So we have people trying to manufacture that. We do monthly, like, like happy half hours, same thing 30 minutes later in the week. And people join some of those. But we really try to go out of our way to manufacture some of those connections because we don't have it. And that is an important part, I think, of building a culture and building a like, understanding of the people you're working with. And I think we've lost a lot of that with our rapid adoption of a remote culture. And so it just takes extra work and so little things like checking in one on ones. And also, sure, it's really easy just to go back and forth on slack and toss it over the fence and someone else's problem, but instilling the right habits of like, all right, if it's gone back and forth on slack a couple times, just pick up the phone.
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A
Pick up the phone. Amen.
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C
So those are some. But it's by no means are we perfect. There's a lot of the coffee.
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A
Is that weekly or daily or what's that's weekly?
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C
Every Tuesday.
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A
Oh, every Tuesday.
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C
Okay, every Tuesday, Yeah.
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A
And any lessons learned from that? Like, you started off doing it one way and then you learned actually, yeah, I'd love to understand that.
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C
So originally we did it on Monday thinking, like, oh, beginning of the week, let's do that on Monday. And after some just kind of general polling, we realized that our clinical team, Mondays is one of the busiest because they've got a, like a backlog of things that lower acuity, things that might have come in for patients questions and everything else that might have come in over the weekend. And so Monday morning they were scrambling. And so we weren't able to have our VCC or virtual care center team join as frequently, if at all, on Mondays. And so we adopted and moved it to Tuesdays. We'd wanted to make sure we are as inclusive as possible with that. And I think that's helped. But also just trying to keep it as like, hey, let's. We're not really going to talk about work, right? We're going to talk about like the connection points and what do we. Not just the general, like, oh, what did you learn over the weekend? But trying to encourage like thoughtful questions. And it's almost like the decks of cards, table talks or other things that families have around, like pull out a random question and then go around and answer it. It's more trying to be thoughtful with things like that.
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A
Oh, that's really cool. All right. Another, keep in keeping with the woodworking theme. So you obviously know about working with the grain of wood, but sometimes you might be dealing with a project or a plan or something within the context of, I don't want to say politics, but personalities probably is a better way to think about it that forces you to go against the grain. Talk to me about a time where that's happened for you and lessons learned.
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C
Yeah, I would say there's a lot of opportunities. And again, it goes back to my point about remote cultures and not like, how do we build those relationships so we have this trust in people that when certain things come up, people are willing to give the benefit of the doubt and not just jump on. Like I read your comment on this and made me think of that and jump into conclusions and everything else. And so I would say early on, this is actually not here reimagine care, but my previous company, similar thing. Because we had moved remote during COVID there was a lot going on, politically charged environment, a lot. When things come up in that broader, whether it be political or international spectrum, like there's a lot of opportunity for people to jump, jump in and share their thoughts and feelings. And what we decided as a company was that we're not going to broadly make statements on our LinkedIn page or whatever social media we had as a company. We said internally we would love to have conversations. So I remember the George Floyd murder happened and there was a lot of like charged energy around that. And we had a lot of people that wanted to not debate it, but just wanted to talk about it because we're fully home at that time. Right. And so we just did a town hall and we just had conversation and allowed people a free space with no judgment. And there was no, like, we're not trying to.
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A
Yeah.
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C
No type of agenda or anything else. But as a team we were able to talk through it and just share feelings and what it meant to us. And what did that, like, how did that make each of us feel? And it's not like we all took turns. It was just of free flowing conversation. And at the end of that, it felt really like energizing that as a company, as people, we're able to have open and free conversations. There was no hidden Agenda. We're not trying to drive anyone to feel any certain way. We're just talking. And then we wrapped it up and that allowed us to have that moment. And then no one felt like they had to go put a post out there. Especially like no one's forcing the company to put a post out there because we talked about it.
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A
Yeah.
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C
I think that was an important like, like opportunity and lesson for us all to learn is like, we can do this in a thoughtful way and it doesn't have to be a company making a statement on a belief because maybe that's what the founder or CEO thinks. So.
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A
Yeah, I love that. No, it's really interesting. Definitely against the grain, for sure. I think I asked you this question last time. If you go back in time and you'd see your 20 year old self, what would you tell them? So I modified it a little bit. Okay. Yeah. Employee number 13 at Livongo, is that right?
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C
As employee 13, yeah.
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A
Okay. Okay. So took it from that to an IPO at some point, right?
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C
Yes. All right, Five years.
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A
Yeah. If you go back to the Dan Nardi, who was employee number 13 and give him one piece of advice, I like that. Not about business strategy, although that's fine if you want to give me that answer, but more about preserving your own piece, what would it be? I love that because that's an interesting time for folks. Having done it twice, it's like it's.
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C
It is. And now two startups later, I. Having that perspective is invaluable. And so what I would probably say is it's not about the hours you work, it's about how present you are in the hours you're working. And similarly, if you're trying to think about it from a work life balance. And Glenn was really good at this. Glenn Tolman, he would always say, how do you think about work life balance? And his advice was always like, well, you can't think about it as like a balance because it's never going to be 50, 50 to begin. And so if you're trying to like fit it into that category, you're never going to be pleased. But what we would always say was like, when you're at work, be present, be 110% at work. But then when you're home, be 100% at home. And even in this remote world, like find ways, find your habits. Like I've heard of people that they change clothes after they're done working, even though they're in their home anyways, and that's like their kind of Trigger of like hey, now I'm home and I'm going to be present.
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A
Oh, interesting.
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C
I've actually, I've talked to some people because we talk about this a lot. Is a remote. Some people actually get in their car, drive around the block and come back. People walk around their house. I. Everyone has their own thing to delineate that. Okay, now I'm transitioning to the home. Right. There's studies done that like the ideal commute is 14 minutes or something like that. There's. I forget exactly the science behind it, but whatever it is, when you're at work, just be present and when you're at home, be present. Don't be trying to answer slack at the dinner table or take phone calls when you're supposed to be family game night or whatever. So I think that's probably one of the biggest things. I was not great at that really. We had a young son and. And it was. I was trying to do everything and at the end of the day burned the candle too much at both ends and didn't really take care of myself. And so I think that's also part of it. And something I've learned over the years since then is like find ways to recharge. Whether it's working out or reading books or going on trips or whatever it is your passions, your hobbies, like embrace those. Don't lose sight of that when you're in a startup because it's really easy to get sucked into the 60, 70, 80 hour work pretty quick.
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A
I love that as you reflect on last year, one or two learnings that you've. You're adding to your inventory of knowledge and wisdom.
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C
Yeah. Well, one of the things I want to get back into is triathlons.
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A
Oh.
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C
I trained and completed a couple when I was in Chicago and then we moved. I think you knew this. We moved to Colorado a year and a half ago as a family and with the move got lost track of that and then last year it band issues and everything else. I fell off. I'd still work out, but I never really got into like having an actual training routine. Well, I have signed up for the Boulder Triathlon in June.
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A
Nice.
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C
So you can keep me accountable here. I have to get back into the swimming, but that's one having something out there as your like goal for your physical like health but then also from the mental health too. Like man have your outlets. Some people are really great at meditation. That's. I've never been able to be good at it. I've tried. It's Never been something I've been able to embrace, but, like, finding those outlets, it's for you to really like.
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A
What's your outlet?
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C
Crossword puzzles. It's like a Zen moment.
- [26:38]
A
I love how you said that. I absolutely hate crossword. I'm just not. I don't know. I'm sure it's the ADHD that, like, I give. I would much rather write and have to finish someone else's, like, question about a word or something. I don't know. I just get. I get.
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C
That's fair.
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A
There's such power in it. I just haven't been. And I. You would expect a writer to like, like, be drawn to doing crosswords. And I actually think it's a defect. Nothing. Like. Like, why don't I take to doing crossword puzzles like everyone else?
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C
Patterns in them. That's what I think is too, like, when you first pick, if you haven't. If you've never done a crossword puzzle or you've only done, like, one.
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A
Oh, no, I've done them before. I just get like. Yeah, I just get distracted and I end up not finishing them.
- [27:25]
C
Yeah. I still. Honestly, this is part of the reason I can justify still having a print edition of the paper. One reason is I actually still do the crossword puzzle. Like, having to. I don't do it on my phone or the computer. That would drive me nuts. So I like having the tactile paper in front of me. But then also, I'll leave. We get the Wall Street Journal. So I'll leave the Journal, like, on the island. And my son now will come down and over breakfast. So we'll just kind of like, start to cruise through the front page. And it's also a way to learn that a lot of the news is not great news. That's unfortunate. Side effect. But it leads to some really great conversations.
- [27:58]
A
So how old.
- [28:00]
C
How old is he? He's almost 14, so. Oh.
- [28:02]
A
Yeah. I started to teach my youngest daughter how to trade when she was 16. Oh, I like that. Yeah. And she ended up opening an account as soon as she turned 18 and she made enough money to support herself to do a gap year.
- [28:18]
C
I love that.
- [28:19]
A
Yeah.
- [28:22]
C
That'S like one of those, like, life skills. It's fine. So we're both in healthcare, right, Ed? So I've thought about this for a while. While. Don't we think that either high school curriculum or. Because I think that's where it would be ideally. Right. At the very least, college. Shouldn't there be, like, a Healthcare 101 built into the curriculum that's all about like how to consume healthcare. Because at the end of the day we're healthcare consumers. Right? Yeah, we do have like powers. We have the power of research and choice and who we go to and decisions we make and everything else. Wouldn't it be really thoughtful as an education system to build in like how to use healthcare and how to pay for health care and what the difference is in between a high deductible plan and a PPO plan? Like wouldn't that be thoughtful like as a just. Yeah. Education.
- [29:12]
A
Such a geek, Dan. I love it. No, I think, I think, yes. The problem I think with again with high schoolers is interest. Right. Like you might have. Do you really have a demand for it? And because I think at that age they think they, they're invincible. Right. And the thought of healthcare, unless they've gone through some personal issue challenge or they have someone close to them. Right. Healthcare for me, I didn't really get into until then. I did my first healthcare company in 20. 2010. 2010. Yeah, yeah. I was, yeah. So I, and I was no spring chicken. So I don't know. I don't know if I would have. Now there, there is an interest on I think, think to your point, like woodworking. Right. Some high schools have woodworking. Right. Some high schools have certain tech skills, if you will. And I wonder if that would be putting that on the curriculum.
- [30:04]
C
It's like a healthcare literacy and there's all sorts of ways you could do it, but I think just helping people because what one of the things we do as a society is we do a really good job. Okay. We're going to teach how to do some math, some of which you probably won't use the rest of your life, but some of it might be helpful. And then there's like the, the English component. I'm dating myself and using specific terms now I think high schools and don't use anymore but like social studies and others. Right. So you learn some of these core skills but then we introduce you into the working world and now all of a sudden, okay, you got your first job, you have to enroll in benefits. How am I supposed to really understand as like, yeah, 18, 21 year old, whatever, I am getting my first job. What am I supposed to know about benefits and how to enroll and how to pay for it and what's the difference in a deductible? So anyway, yeah, it's a little bit.
- [30:49]
A
Yeah.
- [30:50]
C
But just.
- [30:50]
A
Yeah, no, I think when again there's, I think you have the Ability to be a candy striper, quote unquote, when you're young and volunteer and get experience that way. And we have biology courses, right. We're in high school, so that's another introduction into the space. But I actually think financials and money management would be a better. Because people just don't know. They don't understand finances. They have no idea how to manage their money, they have no idea how to think about. About money. And a lot of kids generate a lot of money early on and they spend it quickly.
- [31:21]
C
Right.
- [31:22]
A
And so if you teach them early on how to save and the power of saving, that's priceless, that's invaluable. I wish someone had taught me that, quite frankly. And they didn't. I didn't learn it until later in life.
- [31:35]
C
Well, I'll tell you what, after we fix this whole healthcare system, we'll go tackle education next as that sound I like.
- [31:40]
A
Oh geez, that scary. Oh man, I kidding. I'm actually doing the University of Texas at Austin on the cyber program, teaching one of the courses on third party risk management and. But it's just, man, that's a. There's so many things broken with education. There's so many things I would love. I've always thought I'd be a professor. I'd go back, I taught. I was asked to come back to my, the school. I went to Bentley University and talked to an entrepreneur class and, and it was only supposed to be like an hour and a half, half. And I think I went like six hours. Like kids left. You'll love this. Kids left to go to class and came back and we were still going. Somebody went out and grabbed pizza. One of the kids went out and grabbed pizza and brought it in. I just kept talking like they kept asking questions. I'm like, I'll stay here for as long as you keep asking me questions. And it was incredible. Like I didn't even realize and somebody said they called me afterwards, like that was like the longest, most entrepreneurial class we've ever given.
- [32:45]
C
I love that.
- [32:46]
A
Well, they stayed and they must have enjoyed it. I don't know.
- [32:49]
C
I love that. Well, and I know we've kind of made our comments about healthcare system fundamentally having challenges in the education system too. But like, yeah, I think that's why we do what we do right, Both of us and plenty of other entrepreneurs out there. And that's why I just want to like continue to encourage and support like all the groups that are, you know, putting in a lot of hard work to make innovations and make changes. It's not easy. And so it's. I just want to say, like, recognize that we see that and want to encourage it. Because what I don't want to do is I don't want people to get disenfranchised. I don't want people to, like, say, hey, that system is so broken. We're not going to make change because we can't have that. We have to keep iterating and making change and improving for the future.
- [33:31]
A
That's right. Keep transforming. Because, yeah, we can make a difference if we put our. That's the thing about humans. Right? If we all get together and put our differences aside, we can change the world, which is really powerful. One last question. Okay. You've done dozens of these interviews, I'm sure. What is the one deeply important part of your identity or your story that interviewers always seem to overlook? Like, what's the question you wish someone would ask you? This is a new question, by the way. So.
- [34:03]
C
Yeah, yeah, I know, but which is good, though.
- [34:05]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [34:06]
C
I get the standard question about, like, the why. Like, why do you do what you do? Okay, where'd you come from? What's your history? Like, all that stuff. Like, what's important? I think one of the things that I wish people would ask more is why? Why am I doing this again? Because I think that's different than just the general one. Right. And part of it, honestly, Ed, is because I fundamentally want to make a change and I want to. Like, if I want to make a boatload of money, I sort certainly wouldn't be doing it in healthcare startups necessarily. Like, that's not right.
- [34:36]
A
It doesn't pay. People think it pays. There's other ways to make more money.
- [34:40]
C
Yeah, for sure. You create an app.
- [34:42]
A
I think if you took all the hours and the minutes, I think we're getting like A$87 an hour or something. I don't know what it works out to be, but it's. I think it's better to be in the military than it is. Yeah, Startup.
- [34:52]
C
So it's like, that's like, it's. We're not doing it because of that. Like, that's why I got into it. That's why I stayed into it. But, like, I think really the reason I would want to answer that question is because I realized in my career that I love the building phase of a business. I love the early stage. I love taking a great idea and operationalizing it and building a foundation and doing it with a core group of Great people and setting it up for success. So I love this stage of business. I'm not like the amazing idea person, the mad scientist. I'm not the one that's going to be out there doing 0 to 1 1. I'm gonna do like, all right, I'll help you get like 1 to 100. But then I also realized that it gets to a certain stage, and that's where I don't have enjoyment anymore. The IPO stage, the stage Karen was at, well on their way too. Like, you get to a point in a company where some people are fits and some people aren't. And I use the analogy, the bus analogy, which we've all heard, right? And. And I think being able to recognize what stage of a business is really your jam and really excites you and brings you fulfillment. I think that's so important. And if learn that earlier in their career, the better off they are. It took me probably 15 years to really figure out that I love this stage of a business, and that's why I'm now on my third one. But I think that's why I tell young people, especially in college, I think you should intern, because everyone's getting internships now, right? You should intern at a startup and you should intern at, like, a massive company, and you're going to get to see some of the differences and you'll start to realize not only what you do like, but most importantly, what you don't like. And so I think really, like, that's the question is like the why have I done this now? Several times. And that would be the answer is because you really want to fundamentally understand what brings you joy in your work and really focus on doing that.
- [36:36]
A
I love that. That's terrific. I'm gonna have to ask that question more often, though. Yeah, I was expecting that answer, but that's right.
- [36:43]
C
Yeah.
- [36:44]
A
No, it's. It is a different question.
- [36:46]
C
That's great, Great question.
- [36:47]
A
Yeah, it's a great question. Good job, Dan.
- [36:49]
C
Thanks.
- [36:50]
A
Well, anything. Any last parting thoughts of wisdom for listeners?
- [36:56]
C
We'll keep the football stuff to the side, but I think, Jay, just what some of the things we talked about right there. The healthcare delivery landscape is changing so much underneath our feet. Sometimes it feels fast, but the vast majority of time it feels slow. So don't get disenfranchised. Like, keep showing up, keep making a difference, because every one of you are making a difference. If you're listening to podcasts like this, if you're working at startups or growth stage companies, you're making a difference. And so keep doing that, I think, is just, just it's the important part. That's how we're going to make change. And the snowball, especially in the AI space of healthcare, is it's gaining steam, it's starting to roll downhill and, and I'm excited for what the year ahead has ahead for us.
- [37:33]
A
Thank you, Dan, for joining the program. This is Ed Gaudette from the Risk Never Sleeps podcast. And if you're on the front lines protecting patient safety and delivering patient care, remember to stay vigilant because risk never sleeps.
- [37:50]
B
Thanks for listening to Risk Never Sleeps. For the show, notes, resources and more information and how to transform the protection of patient safety, Visit us@SenseInet.com that's C E N S I N E T dot com. I'm your host, Ed Gaudet. And until next time, stay vigilant because Risk never sleeps.
- [38:15]
C
Me.