Latest / Becker’s Healthcare Podcast / Agentic Healthcare and Building AI Advocates to Navigate Healthcare with Eric Marton

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Agentic Healthcare and Building AI Advocates to Navigate Healthcare with Eric Marton · Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

0:00
This is Scott Becker
0:02
with the Beckers Healthcare Podcast.
0:04
I'm thrilled today to be joined by a
0:06
brilliant healthcare founder.
0:08
We're joined today by Eric Martin, and Eric's
0:12
the founder and the CEO of AgenTic Healthcare.
0:15
He's gonna talk to say about what they're
0:16
doing, what they're trying to solve,
0:18
the trends he's watching, and a lot more.
0:21
Eric, I know you've had a a a
0:22
spectacular
0:23
career. Can you tell us a little bit
0:25
about yourself, your background,
0:27
as well as AgenTic Healthcare?
0:30
Yeah. Thank you so much, Scott. Really appreciate
0:32
you having me on,
0:34
and I appreciate all of the, folks that
0:36
are, are tuning in. So,
0:39
I am a lifetime,
0:41
health care guy spanning large academic health systems,
0:45
large physician organization,
0:48
private equity backed health care companies,
0:50
and I've been a part of two different,
0:52
health tech venture capital funds.
0:55
I will tell you that I was a
0:58
very happy, health tech venture capitalist, and I
1:01
thought I would be doing that for the
1:02
rest of my professional life. But this opportunity
1:06
emerged,
1:07
and I think, you know, there are these
1:08
moments in time where
1:10
we kind of get the chills professionally.
1:12
And this was one of those times, and
1:14
I couldn't not
1:16
step in and,
1:18
and take advantage of the, of the opportunity.
1:21
So,
1:22
I'll give you a little bit of that
1:24
background. But first, I will say that during
1:26
the course of my professional career,
1:28
I would say the most important work that
1:30
I've done
1:31
is being kind of the unofficial
1:34
health care navigator
1:35
concierge
1:36
for thousands and thousands of patients
1:39
and families.
1:40
Whether I was doing that on behalf of
1:43
some provider organization
1:45
or simply as a private resource for people
1:47
that have had access to me,
1:50
yeah, I really came to appreciate
1:52
the unbelievable
1:54
complexity and
1:55
fragmentation and and often frustration of dealing with
1:58
The US health care system.
2:00
And that's very much kind of the backdrop
2:02
for what we are doing at, AgenTic Health
2:05
Care. So
2:07
a little bit about us. Let's just say
2:09
we're a very unusual
2:10
start up company.
2:12
We have been
2:14
quietly
2:15
building
2:16
some pretty serious deep tech,
2:19
and acquiring
2:21
the assets of other companies over the course
2:23
of the last eighteen months.
2:25
It all started,
2:27
back, with a meeting
2:29
I was having up at NVIDIA
2:31
headquarters,
2:32
and I had the pleasure,
2:34
and I will tell you this is close
2:35
to eighteen months ago.
2:37
I hardly knew what the word agentic
2:39
meant at that time.
2:42
NVIDIA
2:43
gave me a little bit of a behind
2:45
the scenes of what they were investing in
2:48
and what was possible
2:50
in the realm of building
2:52
AI agents
2:53
that would support
2:54
enterprise players in health care, health systems,
2:58
physician organizations,
3:00
health insurance companies, and the like, driving efficiency,
3:03
dealing with labor gaps,
3:05
and I do believe truly hoping to improve
3:08
the patient experience.
3:10
And in that session we had together,
3:13
we asked a question, what would it take
3:16
to bring that same level of AI
3:18
power
3:20
and put that into the hands of patients
3:22
and families.
3:23
Let them optimize the system
3:25
to their benefit, kind of put a wrapper
3:28
around all the component parts that make up
3:30
The US health care system
3:33
and create an army of agents
3:35
that could represent those patients,
3:37
get work done on their behalf, not just
3:40
provide recommendations, but actually do the work,
3:43
wait on hold for that representative at the
3:45
health plan, help navigate to the appropriate specialist
3:49
and the like.
3:51
And let's just say that the group was
3:53
excited about that vision,
3:55
understood the complexity, the challenges, and the like,
3:59
over the course of time.
4:01
The group of people and organizations,
4:04
that we were engaging in this conversation grew
4:07
to include people from government,
4:09
people from deep tech, and, of course, across
4:11
the health care ecosystem.
4:13
And,
4:14
last year, we decided to incorporate Adjentic health
4:17
care. We brought a very large engineering team
4:20
together.
4:21
And, again, we made, we made some some
4:23
acquisitions that,
4:25
make us
4:26
quickly a vertically integrated
4:28
organization.
4:30
So that's amazing. And and just so the
4:32
audience understands,
4:33
yes, you've been a health care investor,
4:36
but more than that, you've also worked at
4:38
UCLA
4:39
and several other health care institutions
4:42
in direct
4:43
in in in surgery
4:45
partners as well. Talk a bit about your
4:47
health care background too that weaves into what
4:49
you're doing too.
4:51
Absolutely. Happy to do that. So it goes
4:53
back, quite a long way. I cut my
4:55
teeth up at UC San Francisco, actually, in
4:58
the managed care department
5:00
and, really came to appreciate
5:02
the good and the bad of, managed care
5:04
and value based care initiatives, here in California
5:07
where I'm based.
5:09
Learned an incredible amount
5:11
and, then spent a lot of time on
5:12
the UCLA health campus.
5:15
Again, more work in managed care, international
5:18
medicine,
5:19
and the like, and then eventually moved over
5:21
to the cardiovascular
5:22
program
5:23
and had the great pleasure of working with
5:26
what we referred to as the advanced heart
5:28
team. So we ran the heart transplant, heart
5:30
failure, mechanical circulatory support program, and we had
5:34
a vision
5:36
for building what would be the greatest heart
5:39
institute in the Western United States. Not to
5:41
offend any of my friends at at UCLA,
5:44
and I still have many friends there.
5:47
For whatever reason, that that vision was not
5:49
able to be realized on that campus,
5:53
but I was able to
5:55
partner with my friends at Cedars Sinai
5:57
and build the Heart Institute there. I was
6:00
the inaugural
6:01
executive director of the Heart Institute at Cedars
6:04
Sinai,
6:05
and they are now among the top two
6:06
or three,
6:07
in the nation and and very proud of
6:09
the work that's done there clinically,
6:12
in the research realm and and, of course,
6:14
the teaching
6:15
mission being supported as well and really jumped
6:18
from there,
6:19
into the private equity world to help turn
6:22
around other health care systems, including the daughters
6:24
of charity,
6:25
and others and saw kind of the other
6:28
side of medicine. I had been in the
6:29
ivory tower academic institution,
6:32
and now I was seeing what it was
6:33
like out in community hospitals,
6:35
safety net hospitals,
6:37
FQHCs,
6:39
you know, a very different type of of,
6:41
care delivery,
6:43
incredibly important work.
6:45
But I think it gave me a really
6:47
deep appreciation
6:48
for the very different journeys
6:51
that our patients and their families
6:54
go on across
6:56
systems, across geographies, across the socioeconomic
7:00
spectrum.
7:01
And when we started building agentic health care,
7:05
a guiding principle for the team has been
7:08
that this
7:09
must work just as well for the rich
7:12
folks that have access to enormous resources
7:15
as much as it does for that single
7:17
mom living in a poor neighborhood
7:20
facing
7:21
more complexity and more challenge
7:24
than than, you know, most of us having
7:26
this conversation have ever had to tackle.
7:29
And,
7:31
we're incredibly
7:33
proud of the work we've done so far,
7:35
and I will say
7:36
publicly,
7:38
long term, we are committed to making sure
7:40
this is available to every
7:42
single American, and it's something that we're working
7:45
on with our our friends connected to government,
7:48
as well.
7:50
Thank you. Take a moment, Eric. What are
7:53
you most focused on and excited about this
7:55
year?
7:56
A year or so or eighteen months after
7:58
launch, were you most focused and excited this
8:00
year?
8:02
Yeah. You know,
8:04
I will tell you that,
8:06
you were just so proud of the team
8:08
of of people and organizations that have come
8:11
together
8:12
around
8:13
this, our ability to accelerate the development of
8:17
this platform. We've been
8:19
we were in this kind of euphoric bubble
8:21
of stealth mode where most people didn't know
8:24
what was going on. And and, Scott, I
8:26
will tell you, this is the first time
8:28
we're really speaking to a broad public audience
8:31
about what we're doing. And the timing is
8:33
perfect
8:34
because we are, in fact, about to kick
8:37
off
8:38
with a large publicly traded
8:41
company who will be giving this platform
8:44
to their employees
8:46
as a benefit.
8:48
And not only is it a benefit to
8:50
those individuals and their families,
8:52
but you can imagine the, and I will
8:55
say,
8:56
appropriate insights that we can provide back to
8:59
the organization
9:00
to help them with plan design, benefit design,
9:03
really drive efficiency,
9:06
and
9:08
create a workforce that's more engaged, healthier,
9:13
and, and I think cared for in a
9:16
way that they haven't been,
9:18
before. So incredibly
9:20
excited about that. I think we're very fortunate
9:22
that the stars are aligning
9:24
from a policy standpoint, from what we're seeing
9:27
from other kind of big tech companies
9:30
in putting a spotlight on consumer
9:33
driven health care.
9:35
We've talked about it for many, many, many,
9:37
many years. I think there have been small
9:40
examples
9:41
of success here and there,
9:43
but it's never come together. We've never had
9:45
the technology
9:46
at our disposal
9:48
to really do this at scale, and I
9:50
think we're finally there.
9:52
Thank you. Take a second, Eric. You've been
9:55
both an investor, but you've also been an
9:57
operator in health care and a leader in
9:58
health care.
10:00
What what advice would you give to emerging
10:02
leaders in health care as to how to
10:03
deal with artificial intelligence
10:05
and how to embrace it?
10:08
Fantastic question and,
10:10
something I've been spending my time speaking about
10:14
really across the country with health system leaders,
10:17
health plan leaders,
10:18
and the like.
10:20
First and foremost,
10:22
you gotta keep the patient experience at the
10:25
center of strategic decision.
10:27
I think some of us, me included, have
10:30
the luxury
10:31
of
10:33
having that be somewhat secondary as we tried
10:35
to make sure that we, you know, improved
10:38
margin and kept the doors open and made
10:41
sure that our programs could continue to build
10:43
and whatnot. And we counted on the frontline
10:46
teams, the physicians, the nurses, the administrative folks
10:50
to really deliver great
10:52
patient care down at the front lines. I
10:54
think now we really have to think about,
10:56
from an infrastructure standpoint,
10:58
how we change what we do. And a
11:00
part of that requires
11:03
leaders,
11:03
again, provider and payer,
11:06
to challenge some legacy assumptions
11:09
that were developed during this pre AI era.
11:13
I have been,
11:14
I guess, not surprised,
11:16
but I'm a little fearful
11:18
of what I'm seeing around the country, folks
11:21
not fully appreciating
11:24
what's coming.
11:26
The power of these AI technologies,
11:30
is so transformational.
11:31
I I just don't think that many organizations
11:35
are fully prepared.
11:37
And I, you know, I I beg these
11:40
these folks to make the investment, bring the
11:42
right people and organizations
11:45
together as partners, embrace those partnerships. And some
11:48
of those partners are gonna seem maybe a
11:50
little bit out of the box based on
11:51
what we used to do historically
11:54
operating these health systems.
11:57
But you you gotta become educated, and you
12:00
have to bring people and organizations
12:02
in who are focused
12:04
on delivering the kinds of outcomes
12:06
that are going to set up your health
12:08
system or your health plan for long term
12:11
success. I think those that don't,
12:13
are gonna be in some trouble.
12:16
Thank you. And and and what does that
12:19
look like? Would where do you see the
12:21
cascading use cases in AI?
12:24
Like, obviously, we're seeing it on the ambient
12:26
listening side. We're seeing it on particular analytics.
12:29
We're seeing it in revenue cycle.
12:31
We're seeing it in a lot of places.
12:33
Are there places where you see it transforming
12:37
clinical
12:38
care, and and where might be some of
12:39
those use cases that you expect to see?
12:43
Absolutely. And and you've highlighted, you know, the
12:46
the first
12:48
and
12:48
maybe most obvious use cases that have been
12:51
embraced.
12:53
We already have some good feedback from the
12:55
industry on ambient listening and what that means.
12:57
Certainly, RCM
12:59
always the first department
13:01
to take advantage of of new tech because
13:03
it's the lifeblood of these organizations.
13:07
There is going to be a a growing,
13:10
I think, recognition
13:12
of what happens
13:14
kind of in between the enterprise
13:17
representing AI
13:18
and the consumer
13:19
representing AI.
13:21
And there is a certain amount of magic
13:24
that can happen when those two
13:27
platforms
13:29
interact with each other in a coordinated,
13:32
in a fine tuned fashion.
13:35
I'll give you an example. I I can't
13:36
provide too many details, but we were speaking
13:38
with a particular,
13:40
you know, government
13:43
health program,
13:45
and we talked about what it meant
13:48
for a patient representing
13:50
AI agent
13:51
to reach out with a request, whether that
13:54
was to schedule an appointment, a question about
13:56
benefits,
13:57
to find out how they can get their
13:59
prescribed medication approved or whatnot.
14:02
And if the enterprise, that program had
14:06
appropriate kind of AI on the other side,
14:09
not only can the task
14:11
get taken care of
14:13
very, very quickly, I think there's a lot
14:15
of talk about in the tech world what
14:17
we refer to as AI agent to AI
14:20
agent protocol.
14:22
That when these AI agents meet in the
14:24
cloud,
14:25
they will understand each other and and be
14:27
very, very efficient.
14:29
In health care, we're taking it a step
14:31
further, and this is a part of what
14:33
we're building our platform around. And that is
14:36
when, let's say, miss Jones reaches out
14:39
to her health system,
14:41
And the health system says, oh, we understand
14:43
in the moment that miss Jones needs to
14:45
have something taken care of.
14:47
But that's the same miss Jones who we've
14:49
been reaching out to
14:51
to talk about her medication adherence, the fact
14:53
that she's got an overdue colonoscopy,
14:56
the fact that maybe she's got an outstanding
14:58
claim.
14:59
And there is an opportunity in this moment
15:02
when you have these AI representatives, what we
15:04
refer to, by the way, as AI advocates,
15:08
representing that patient.
15:10
That information can be passed from the enterprise
15:14
to the patient
15:15
in a way that can be translated,
15:17
organized, presented at the right time at a
15:20
time when we know that patient is engaged,
15:23
and the value that can be driven through
15:26
that kind of interaction
15:28
is incredibly powerful. We've been testing this, again,
15:31
somewhat quietly behind the scenes
15:33
with small cohorts,
15:35
and the
15:37
feedback has just been remarkable on both sides
15:40
of the house.
15:41
So to answer your question more directly,
15:44
these institutions
15:45
need to move beyond
15:47
kind of the individual
15:49
functions of ambient listening and some RCM solutions
15:53
and really start looking about being a participant
15:56
in this, what I refer to as this
15:58
action layer
16:00
that is now going to kind of wrap
16:02
the legacy systems that we've historically been interacting
16:05
with as health system leaders, as health plan
16:08
leaders, as employers,
16:10
and the like.
16:12
Fantastic.
16:13
Eric, again, AgenTic Healthcare.
16:16
Tell me the exact name of the company.
16:17
Do I have that right, AgenTic Healthcare?
16:19
You have said it, perfectly. And, again, we're
16:22
a little bit of an unusual
16:24
young company. AgenTic Healthcare
16:26
is the parent organization we created.
16:30
The patient representing
16:32
AI agent platform is actually called Teleport Health,
16:36
and that is what we are initially launching
16:38
with a series of large employers.
16:42
And, ultimately, we'll get this out to all
16:44
consumers.
16:45
And then we've made acquisitions
16:47
of two other companies,
16:49
one called Cellfy,
16:51
one called TripleBlind.
16:53
Cellfy
16:54
actually has technology
16:56
that lives behind the firewalls of many of
16:58
the health information exchanges
17:00
in The United States and is the creator
17:03
of the Cures Gateway,
17:05
named after the twenty first century Cures Act,
17:08
giving patients the right to claim
17:11
their longitudinal health record. And you can imagine
17:14
if we have the ability to bring in
17:16
the longitudinal health record for every one of
17:19
our members, for every one of our patients,
17:22
the ability for the AI
17:25
advocate
17:26
to be proactive to optimize things on behalf
17:29
of the patient,
17:30
is supercharged.
17:32
So we were really excited to be able
17:34
to make that acquisition.
17:35
And then triple blind, I won't spend too
17:38
much time on. It's a deep tech encryption
17:40
technology that provides privacy
17:43
beyond HIPAA. We it allows for multiparty compute
17:47
without the need for traditional de identification
17:50
with greater privacy, greater security,
17:54
than seen before. And some very large institutions
17:57
and the US government had been involved in,
17:59
in its development. So, again, we were just
18:01
incredibly fortunate to be in a position to
18:04
bring
18:05
those assets into Agenstic Healthcare, creating this vertical
18:08
integration
18:09
and getting us ready to do what we
18:11
do at scale and do it in a
18:13
safe fashion.
18:15
Yeah. Absolutely fascinating. Eric, I wanna thank you
18:18
for joining us today in the Becker's Healthcare
18:20
podcast.
18:21
Congratulations
18:22
on what you're doing and continue good luck,
18:24
and we're all sort of watching
18:26
the cascading transformation of health care through AI,
18:30
so it'll be fascinating to watch and keep
18:31
an eye on. Thank you so much for
18:33
joining us.
18:34
Thank you so much, Scott, and really looking
18:37
forward to interacting more with you and all
18:39
of the folks that I know listen to
18:41
your podcast. Those are the partners that are
18:43
gonna make this happen.
18:45
Thank you so much.