
Pete Shalek, founder of Valerie Health, is a multi-time healthcare entrepreneur who previously founded Joyable in 2013 (one of the earliest digital mental health platforms) and served as Chief Product Officer at AbleTo and Stellar Health. Pete discusses why AI in healthcare needs to move beyond selling software tools to actually doing the work for providers. He shares hard-won lessons from a decade in digital health, including why the shift to quality-based care in behavioral health has been surprisingly slow and why Joyable's therapist-free model was ahead of its time relative to payment models. The conversation covers Valerie's approach of building an AI front office that handles referrals, scheduling, and intake for independent medical practices without requiring them to learn new software, achieving 3-4 week implementations and 5-7% conversion lifts. Pete explains the technical challenges of structuring unstructured healthcare data with 100% accuracy, the strategic choice to ow...
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