Hemant Taneja

What drew us to Arya Health wasn’t just the technology, but the clarity of purpose behind it. Kunal and Arunram are solving one of the hardest and least glamorous problems in healthcare: the broken labor operations that keep post-acute care running. This is a $500B+ market, nearly 10% of U.S. healthcare spend, yet most of it still depends on manual coordination. Every day, agencies are juggling thousands of nurses, last-minute shift cancellations, credential expirations, and payroll calculations across dozens of systems. The administrative burden is crushing, and it’s only getting worse as the population ages and demand for home-based care accelerates. Arya has built AI agents that act as a true digital workforce for healthcare operations - autonomously handling scheduling, onboarding, compliance tracking, and payroll. Their scheduling agent alone manages complex variables like patient needs, clinical fit, distance, and bonus pay, continuously rebalancing assignments in real time. The early traction has been remarkable. Customers whom we talked to consistently describe Arya as transformational - “what they’ve always dreamed of” and a product that will “forever change the industry.” Agencies are already seeing utilization rise from roughly 60% to over 80%, driving significant improvements in coverage, patient outcomes, and operating margins. What stands out most about Kunal and Arun is how deeply they care about the people behind these operations. They spend time in the field with schedulers, caregivers, and agency leaders - the unsung heroes who hold the healthcare system together - and they build with empathy and urgency. That care shows up in the product and in every customer relationship. At ACME Capital, we believe the most impactful AI companies will rebuild critical industries from the inside out. Nurses, home health aides, and post-acute caregivers are the backbone of our healthcare system, and often the backbone of their communities. Arya Health is giving them the modern infrastructure they deserve. Congratulations to Kunal, Arun, and the entire Arya team on your oversubscribed $18.2M Series A. We’re proud to lead this round and partner with you as you reimagine how care gets delivered across homes and communities.

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HealthVC x Lusha: Unlocking Smarter Fundraising and Sales Workflows We’re thrilled to announce our newest partnership: HealthVC has teamed up with Lusha to bring next-gen data and prospecting tools to founders, fund managers, and operators across our community. Lusha recently launched a powerful suite of AI-powered features that redefine how go-to-market teams research, prospect, and convert. Now those capabilities are coming to HealthVC Pro subscribers. ✨ With this partnership, you’ll be able to: Surface real-time, accurate, and compliant B2B contact data Use AI Prospecting Chat to instantly uncover new investor or customer leads Tap into CRM-triggered recommendations to stay one step ahead Turn insight into action with Sales Streaming, Lusha’s smarter, connected selling framework. But Lusha’s superpower isn’t just the AI; it’s that the AI sits on top of best-in-class data. That means every signal, every recommendation, and every lead is not just fast, it’s trustworthy. At HealthVC, we’re building more than a newsletter; we’re building the operating system for venture, and this partnership helps our members move faster, pitch smarter, and close better. Available now to all HealthVC subscribers, link in comments.

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Andreessen Horowitz is one of the world’s most influential venture capital firms Partners David Haber, Julie Yoo, and Daisy Wolf describe companies operating at the intersection of fintech and healthtech as "payvidors"—businesses that not only deliver care but also solve the question of how patients and providers pay for it.This thinking sits at the very center of HealthCap Africa’s investment thesis. We focus on healthtech and fintech because we see, every day, that healthcare delivery is meaningless without the ability to pay for it. A diagnostic lab, a hospital, or a telehealth platform can only scale sustainably when patients have access to financial tools—insurance, credit, payments, or savings—that make care affordable and accessible. That is why our team combines deep subject-matter expertise across both sectors. We back the entrepreneurs building at this frontier: health innovators who improve quality of care, and fintech disruptors who unlock access to it. Together, these companies create the infrastructure for healthier, longer lives across Africa and beyond. 📖 Read David Haber and his team’s excellent piece on payvidors here: https://lnkd.in/dvMJ_KtZ

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🚀𝐇𝐮𝐠𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐍𝐢𝐭𝐫𝐚 𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 $𝟏𝟖𝟕𝐌 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠. I first met Jonathan in 2021, and SparkLabs Taiwan became a seed investor in Nitra in 2022. From the beginning, the team had a bold vision to build an operating system for healthcare. Along the way, we’ve been supporting Nitra in building its engineering footprint in Taiwan, and we also had the chance to introduce new investors who later joined this round. Proud to have supported this journey from the early days. Excited for what’s ahead! 🚀 [Tim Hwang Hsufeng Lee Bernard Moon SparkLabs Group Eugene Kim Mallory Chien Regina Lo Kenny Chen]

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New blog out for Pave Health Ventures! If you’re a startup tackling health-related challenges, take a closer look at the intersection of two massive, fast-growing industries: Consumer Health & Wellness and Traditional Healthcare. You might be pleasantly surprised. The opportunity is bigger (and closer) than you think. Read the full blog + subscribe to our Substack for more insights at the intersection of wellness and healthcare: https://lnkd.in/gJ2T6WBK

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If you’re building a health tech startup, here’s a useful perspective from the accelerator side. At ViVE, I spoke with Keith Camhi, Managing Director of the Techstars Healthcare Accelerator powered by Permanente Medicine Mid-Atlantic States. The program invests in early-stage startups and helps founders run pilots with physicians in the Kaiser Permanente ecosystem. Some interesting takeaways: • Techstars still prioritizes “Team, team, team” above everything else; • Founders in the program are interviewed by physicians before acceptance; • The goal isn’t just mentorship — it’s getting real pilots with providers; • AI startups dominate applications, but the focus remains on real clinical problems. Applications for the next cohort open soon, so founders may want to keep an eye on it. Short interview from #ViVE 👇 🎥 Watch here: https://lnkd.in/gNN_5628 #Vive2026 #digitalhealthinsideout #health2tech #digitalhealth

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“The thing I am most proud of is that because we built the entire tech stack that we own, from the member app, the company, the client dashboard, to electronic medical records systems and other internal tooling.   We enable providers to spend more time with the patient.” How much longer? 3x longer than the average primary care visit.   This week on the Digital Health Heavyweights Podcast I sit down with Joseph Kitonga, CEO and founder of Vitable Health. Joseph shares his journey from a family background in caregiving to creating a health plan that addresses the needs of underserved workers. He discusses the inspiration behind Vitable, his experience with the Thiel Fellowship, the prestigious Y Combinator,and the unique aspects of Vitable's direct primary care model.   “We are growing extremely quickly” The conversation also covers the challenges of hybrid care models, the importance of empathy in healthcare, and the company's growth trajectory. Joseph emphasizes the need for accessible healthcare and shares insights on building a successful startup in the healthcare space.   How is Vitable impacting clients? An average savings of about 12%   Takeaways ✨ Joseph's family background in caregiving inspired him to create Vitable Health. 💙 Vitable Health aims to provide affordable healthcare for underserved workers. 🎓 The Thiel Fellowship provided Joseph with the opportunity to focus on his startup. 🚪 Vitable's model reduces barriers to accessing primary care services. 📈 The company has about 100,000 members and is growing rapidly. 💻 Vitable's approach integrates in-home and virtual care effectively. 🤝 Building empathy through direct interaction with clients is crucial for Vitable. 🗣️ Joseph emphasizes the importance of talking to users to build a successful product. 🚀 The Y Combinator experience was pivotal for Vitable's growth. 🧘 Joseph practices mindfulness and reading to manage stress and maintain focus. Check out the episode and be sure to like comment and subsc https://lnkd.in/dVAzHMQZ

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Enjoyed a lively discussion hosted by Maya Dharampal-Hornby Sifted Summit with Kalle Conneryd Lundgren Sana Alajmovic around: 🥗 🎽 🫧 The age of prevention: Living longer with healthtech 🥗 🎽 🫧 Key Takeaways: 1️⃣ 90%+ of healthcare spend goes on treatment. According to World Health Organization up to 80% of health conditions could be prevented 2️⃣ 🥦 🤼‍♀️🌿 Prevention is significantly less expensive than treatment - much of preventative healthcare is focused on changing daily habits - eat well 🥗, sleep well 😴 and move 🤸 🥦 🤼‍♀️🌿 3️⃣ 🏦 💸 🏦Who pays is an open questions: Most healthcare systems and insurers recognize the need but are struggling to implement and make the transition with incentives still not fully aligned. 🏦 💸 🏦 4️⃣ 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 UK has the potential to be a preventative health leader and was heavily featured in the NHS Ten Year Plan 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 5️⃣ 💰💹💰 The landscape is shifting, COVID catalyzed people to take more control over their own health outcomes. Out of pocket spend on health & wellness continues to rise 💰 💹 💰 6️⃣ ⌚ 💻⌚ Digital tools and wearables have been the catalyst, changing the way whole generations approach health⌚ 💻⌚ 🩸 For example Flo Health Inc. 50% of 16-19 yo women in the UK are monthly active users of Flo 🩸 7️⃣ 🦾 🧬🦾 Advances in AI, robotics and sensors provides even greater opportunity to tackle some of healthcares hardest problems - moving into more advanced diagnostics and treatments delivered in a cost effective and accessible way 🦾 🧬🦾 🤸 For example Flok Health who announced their new Class IIa medical device clearance under EU MDR. This appears to be the first time in Europe (and potentially more broadly) that an AI system is being used to successfully deliver full end-to-end care pathways autonomously to patients 🤸 💅 For example Neko Health making healthcare a pleasurable experience, more akin to going to a spa than a traditional GP practice 💅 🤩 There are lots of reasons to be opportunistic around the Future of Health 🤩 Great to see Eka LP's and Founders on stage sharing their perspectives: Timo Boldt Gousto ( 🥗Food as a medicine 🥗) Dr Sonia Szamocki (🦷Enabling healthcare professionals to deliver specialist care with confidence 🦷 ) Murvah Iqbal HIVED (🚚Green logistics, making cities healthier through lowering air pollution 🚚)

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What happened to Babylon Health after reaching $1bn+ revenue? And how Ali Parsa is continuing his mission to fix healthcare for all with AI startup Quadrivia AI. Today's Riding Unicorns release is with Ali Parsa, Founder of Quadrivia and previously Babylon Health ($4.2bn valuation at peak). Ali first joined us on the show in January 2022, when Babylon Health had just gone public via a SPAC and was renowned as one of the largest and most ambitious healthtech companies in the world. That, like all SPAC's, didn't turn out as Ali would have wanted and today, he returns with a new mission, building Quadrivia AI and its clinical AI assistant, 'Qu'. Qu is designed to automate millions of repetitive healthcare workflows and rebalance the global shortage of clinical labour. Ali reflects candidly on the rise and fall of Babylon, the structural challenges behind its collapse, and the lessons he’s applying to his new venture. He also explains why he believes AI finally offers the chance to create abundance in healthcare, and how Quadrivia’s technology can deliver trusted, autonomous support for doctors, nurses, and patients alike. - The structural imbalance between global healthcare supply and demand and how AI can finally fix it - Babylon’s story: what went right, what went wrong, and what Ali learned from the SPAC era - Introducing Quadrivia’s “Qu”: a clinical AI that can handle patient calls, follow-ups, and real‑time triage - Building trust in AI: safety, guardrails, and how to design human‑in‑the‑loop autonomy - Live demo — a real patient conversation handled entirely by AI - Why the future of healthcare lies in clinical process outsourcing powered by intelligent agents - Building small, fast, focused team, and why scale isn’t the goal (yet) - Lessons on leadership, luck, and surviving the infinite game of entrepreneurship A fascinating, raw, and inspiring conversation with one of the most visionary founders in global healthtech and a glimpse into how AI could redefine the future of care. Listen here: https://lnkd.in/ewhzFm6X

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Say you know me without saying it ... "Hey, let's improve healthcare purchasing!" Durable goods, every day disposables, every part of purchasing in healthcare products continues to be broken. Natan Wise and team Conduit Health are improving the spend process for consumers, healthcare providers. This moves $100b in annual spend, but also improves people's lives. You can read our deeper take at XYZ here: https://lnkd.in/gEhfACtB Thrilled to have more money to run with the Drive Capital partnership! And Maybe you want to improve people's everyday lives? Live in NYC? You probably want to work here: https://lnkd.in/gtGEB8Ku

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Super impressive from Ross Harper and the Limbic team - Do check it out - A UK AI startup making massive societal impact 👇 👇 👇

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Why Now Is the Best Time Ever to Invest in Healthcare AI Startups By Andy Reid, Managing Partner, M3A Healthcare Ventures We are entering a once-in-a-generation window for investing in Healthcare AI—one where timing, technology, and major shifts in care are aligning to create outsized opportunities for early-stage venture capital. At M3A Healthcare Ventures, we believe this is the moment to invest boldly. 1. Healthcare Is Ripe for Disruption—And It Has To Be U.S. healthcare costs are projected to hit $7.2 trillion by 2031, yet outcomes lag behind every other developed nation. Workforce shortages, and fractured data systems create inefficiencies that AI is uniquely positioned to solve. • 25% of U.S. healthcare spending is administrative waste. • 90% of hospitals face staffing shortages in key roles. • Doctors spend 2 hours on documentation for every 1 hour with patients. AI isn’t a “nice to have” anymore. It’s becoming a critical tool for cost control, productivity, and quality improvement. 2. We’ve Entered the Platform Shift Era Apple Intelligence, OpenAI, and other foundation models have catalyzed a new generation of startups. In healthcare, this means real-time ambient documentation, predictive care, smart inventory management, and even AI-generated clinical trial design—all happening today. This is akin to investing in SaaS in 2006 or mobile apps in 2011. Except this time, the TAM is $4 trillion larger. 3. Buyers Are Ready—and They’re Buying Just five years ago, hospitals were wary of AI. Today, they’re budgeting for it. Health systems, ASCs, pharma, and insurers are deploying capital to integrate AI that: • Shortens revenue cycles • Boosts clinician efficiency • Reduces preventable readmissions • Enhances training and education with immersive tools In short: the demand isn’t theoretical—it’s contractually real. 4. Healthcare AI Has Multiple High-Value Exit Paths M&A activity is accelerating, and healthcare AI companies are being acquired by: • Strategics like Stryker (e.g., $130M for care.ai) • PE-backed rollups seeking operational efficiency • Big Tech, which is aggressively moving into healthcare These aren’t just tech exits. They’re life sciences, SaaS, and data infrastructure exits rolled into one—often with 3–5x higher revenue multiples. 5. We Have the Talent, Data, and Infrastructure The convergence of: • Open health data regulations (ONC Cures Act) • AI-native medical founders trained in both tech and care delivery • Decreasing costs and better modeling We finally have a clear runway to build and scale. The Next MedTech Unicorns Will Be AI-First The next wave will be built on data, AI, and automation. Investors who move now will back the next Teladoc, Intuitive, or Epic—except leaner, faster, and born in the AI-native era. #HealthcareAI #HealthTech #VentureCapital #DigitalHealth #AIinHealthcare #MedTech #ArtificialIntelligence #StartupInvestment #HealthTechStartups #VCFunding #AIStartup

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“After 15+ years in OB-GYN, board-certified, private practice in NYC, I couldn't fix my own perimenopause. That's when I realized something was missing.” Last week's webinar with Shahnoz Rustamova MD surfaced something powerful: a growing community of clinicians who refuse to adopt "trial and error" as a strategy. If you missed it, here are 7 key takeaways from the webinar that are changing how clinicians approach complex hormonal cases: 1. Hormones don't act in isolation When you adjust estrogen for example, you're also affecting how the body handles insulin, produces thyroid hormones, and recovers at night. With an MTNR1B variant (melatonin receptor), estrogen shifts can further impact → irritability, cortisol swings, sleep. 2. Five metabolic steps explain why identical drugs produce different outcomes Every hormone goes through: absorption → binding → conversion → metabolism → elimination. Genetic variation at any step changes treatment response entirely. 3. Fix the foundation first You can't optimize hormones in metabolic chaos. Low vitamin D or subclinical hypothyroidism will sabotage HRT. Address thyroid, inflammation, and nutrient deficiencies before adjusting hormone doses. 4. ChatGPT isn't built for clinical reasoning 66% of clinicians use AI, but most tools weren't designed for medicine. ChatGPT hallucinates and lacks clinical guardrails. Patients are uploading DNA to open platforms without understanding privacy or accuracy risks. 5. Clinical AI must show its work Diadia Health's AI reasons like clinicians do - using direct evidence, chain logic, and pathway analysis. Every recommendation is backed by 50-100 papers. Every claim is traceable. It surfaces conflicts you might miss under cognitive load, without replacing your judgment. 6. Genetics determine which delivery methods are safe Patients with GSTT mutations shouldn't use pellets or oral hormones. High androgen conversion activity means choosing transdermal over pellets. 7. Environmental complexity is outpacing our tools Environmental exposures, chronic stress, and metabolic complexity absent even twenty years ago are driving health changes with extreme individual variation - variation that traditional training and standardized tools weren't designed to address. This is why we launched our clinical pilot for functional, integrative, and hormone practitioners managing complex or non-responsive patients. Select one difficult case. Apply genetic and systems-level insights. Observe what changes over two months - at no cost and with no strings attached. Visit https://lnkd.in/efRd3YRt for more details and how to join.

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For most of modern medical history, the “default human” in research was a 160 pound white man. Women were routinely excluded from clinical trials until the early 1990s. Even after policy changes, much of medicine — from cardiovascular research to sleep science — continued to rely on male-dominant data sets. The downstream effect? Gaps in understanding women’s physiology and health needs that we’re still working to close today. That’s why this announcement from Tom Hale and ŌURA matters so much. Today, ŌURA introduced its first proprietary large language model — purpose-built for health, and designed specifically to advance and empower women’s health insights. This isn’t a generic AI layer. It’s grounded in peer-reviewed clinical research and powered by the longitudinal biometric data Oura has been building for nearly a decade. Women’s bodies are dynamic — hormonal cycles influence temperature, sleep, recovery, cardiovascular strain. Personalized health requires context and pattern recognition over time, not one-size-fits-all advice. And just as important: privacy. As AI becomes a first stop for health questions, we Forerunner believe trust IS the product. Building a private, secure model reflects a commitment to responsible AI and long-term stewardship of deeply personal data. I’m especially proud that Oura is partnering with webAI — another Forerunner portfolio company I’m fortunate to be involved with — on this ground breaking initiative. Bringing together biometric intelligence, secure AI infrastructure, and a mission to advance women’s health is exactly the kind of ecosystem thinking that moves markets forward. As an investor and board member at Oura, I couldn’t be more inspired about this meaningful step forward towards what the future of healthcare can and should look be for us all. Congratulations to Tom Hale, Dorothy Kilroy, Ricky Bloomfield, Holly Shelton, Shyamal Patel and the entire ŌURA team. Onward and upwards!

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Cohere Health’s Series C: Case Study… McKinsey estimates that there is nearly $1 trillion of healthcare administrative expenses each year, of which $200 billion is just on financial transactions. There are a staggering nine billion medical claims processed each year. A hornet’s nest of policies and procedures have evolved to manage these expenses from complex formularies, deductibles, co-pays, and prior authorizations (PA). Just in 2023, there were over 50 million PAs, 99% of which were for procedures for Medicare Advantage members. It was this market opportunity that Cohere Health was created to address. The vision of the company has always been to drive deeper payer/provider collaboration and in so doing create a “touchless authorization” business model. The company has successfully commercialized a suite of next-generation PA products that significantly rearchitect the way care pathways are delivered. Recent advances in AI have further catalyzed a drive to meaningfully improve clinical and administrative efficiencies for payers. In order to continue its rapid scaling and development of additional products, Cohere Health today announced a $90 million Series C financing, led by Temasek, a close partner of Flare Capital. Other thoughts/observations... https://lnkd.in/eAB-JvUp Flare Capital Partners

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So energized by the conversation and company at Mayo Clinic PlatforMed 2025 - a gathering of 300 leaders from 7 countries from academia, government, and industry who are innovating in healthcare and technology. It was a highlight to join the panel discussion Digital Health Capital: Where Investors are Placing Their Bets, with: Jun Jeon, MD of Khosla Ventures Kelly Krajnik of Mayo Clinic Andy Walter of Granger Management Moderated by Andy Danielsen, Chief Business Development Officer at Mayo Clinic Some nuggets from our discussion that stood out to me: 1 -- Investors remain focused on team, tech differentiation, promising distribution/GTM strategies when looking on where to place bets. 2 -- We discussed thoughts on why we have not yet seen a platform company in healthcare with the success we have seen in the consumer realm (Apple, Uber, Amazon, etc). When we do, will that be a B2B or B2C company? The economics of healthcare and the flow of funds is where some of these challenges sit. (I posit that for innovation at scale, we need both top-down and bottoms-up innovation and to work within the existing infrastructure of healthcare and thus B2B is critical to that solution) 3 - Consumer voice and spend is critical to the conversation, with consumer demand driving a lot of the innovation and early work (willingness to pay drives utilization and engagement; could this lead to ROI to new reimbursements?) 4 - Healthcare has complex requirements for compliance and from a regulatory perspective - what new emerging technologies can help with this? I believe that the applications of AI will be the most impactful use case for AI in our lifetime. Building with extreme care and thought is required - and it's a very exciting frontier ahead. Thanks for including Bread and Butter Ventures and me! #healthcare #digitalhealth #venturecapital #AI #investing

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Arintra's CTO Preeti Bhargava, PhD on stage at #ViVEvent discussing the future of AI in healthcare. Autonomous medical coding is a massive opportunity — proud to back this team as they automate and accelerate growth for health systems. #HealthTech #AIinHealthcare #FoundersX #MedicalCoding #DigitalHealth #DeepTech Nitesh Shroff Helen H. Liang, PhD Tom Kosnik Sizi Chen Tristan Staschik Tor Parawell Yicong Li Irene Tsen

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Much of the money and time in healthcare happens past the point of diagnosis. The money: $200B of spend on specialty drugs. The time: putting patients on therapies requires clinical judgment, and navigating a labyrinth of paperwork and people. The result is a byzantine status quo where patients get life saving therapies denied or delayed, and hospital systems capture only $80B of the $200B of drug spend that they originate. Latent’s groundbreaking clinical AI is a portal into the future. Patients get therapies quickly with personalized care, and hospitals transform their bottom line. As a result, Latent has seen extraordinary traction, working with over 50% of the top 20 U.S. health systems in under a year. Latent is one of the biggest and most strategic opportunities in healthcare, sitting in between providers, payors, patients, and pharma. Spark Capital is delighted to support Rishabh Jain and Sriram Somasundaram and this consequential company and to work with Sarah Guo and Michael Dixon.

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