AI Makes Healthcare More Human - How Vital.io & Pleio Drive Personalized Care from HLTH 2025

From translating medical jargon into human language to using AI to keep healthcare human—conversations with two founders solving opposite sides of the same problem live from HLTH 2025.

Aaron Patzer, CEO of Vital.io, is the founder of Mint.com and former head of product at Intuit. Seven years ago, he started Vital with his brother-in-law Dr. Justin Schrager to guide 7 million patients through urgent care, emergency room, and hospital journeys by translating medical language into terms patients actually understand. His "doctor-to-patient translator" converts medical jargon like "cerebral infarction of the left hemisphere" into "stroke" and transforms lab results into human terms based on each patient's reading level, language, and education. 

Growing to 15 million expected by end of 2026, Vital meets people exactly where they are—available in Spanish, Armenian, Somali, and Haitian Creole—with 80% adoption at children's hospitals and 65% average use in emergency departments.

Michael Oleksiw, founder of Pleio, spent a decade in fashion and tech before his wife's pancreatic cancer diagnosis at age 33 redirected his mission to healthcare. Pleio uses AI not to replace humans, but to inform them—analyzing patient conversations retrospectively to identify emotional peaks and valleys, fear, stigma, and loneliness that prevent medication adherence. 

With humans always in the loop, Pleio's approach focuses on behavioral change triggers and removing barriers that get in the way of patients actually following through with their care. His "tech glow up" is about finding where technology crosses with humanity, keeping the person at the center.

Highlights from Aaron Patzer at Vital.io:

• Founded Mint.com (25M users), sold for $175M; former head of product for Intuit; now growing Vital to guide 7 million patients through hospital experiences
• Built a "doctor-to-patient translator" that adapts medical language to each patient's reading level, education, and language preference in Spanish, Armenian, Somali, Haitian Creole and more
• Achieved 65% average use in emergency departments, 80% use at children's hospitals, and expects 15M patients by end of 2026—about 10% of all US hospital visits

Highlights from Michael Oleksiw at Pleio:

• Wife's pancreatic cancer diagnosis at 33 (3% five-year survival rate at the time) inspired shift from fashion innovation to healthcare; she's thriving 18 years later
• Uses AI retrospectively to analyze patient conversations, identifying emotional barriers like fear, stigma, and loneliness that prevent medication adherence—always with humans in the loop
• Building behavioral models to empower healthcare professionals to work at the clinical level they thrive on, removing the burden of translating complex information while patients stay centered and supported

The result: healthcare communication doesn't just need better tech—it needs tech that remembers why it exists—to kee

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Transcript

Aaron Patzer: 0:00

It was real. And I was so nervous. I like fat fingered. And I didn't get one out of the three accounts, even though I'd practiced it like 80 times and we came away and we were voted both by the judges and by the people top startup, and I was like, sh*t, I was in front of 2000 people. I literally, I practiced 80 times. I was so nervous. And now I feel, like I finally, I got that confidence as a human to actually speak your truth and to be like, you know what? I know. This field and forget about your financial outcomes. Just like to be confident in yourself as an engineer who's used to being introverted like that is worth more than any exit.'cause it opens up everything in your life, personal and professional, and the way you view yourself, which is probably more important than all of it

Nathan C: 0:47

1, 2, 3. Yes. Hello and welcome to the HLTH Tech Glow Up, live from Health 2025. Very special, guest. Today I get to talk with Aaron Patzer, CEO of Vital. Aaron, it's so great to meet you and talk with you about what you're doing. Thanks for joining me on the HLTH Tech Glow Up. Thanks for having me, Nathan. Amazing. So for those who might be getting to know you for the first time, can you introduce yourself and the work that you're doing at Vital?

Aaron Patzer: 1:25

Sure. So I'm an engineer by trade. I'm a nerd by training. I have 10 patents in algorithms. Math nerd. and I'm probably still to this day, best known as being the founder and CEO of mint.com. It was the largest personal finance tool in the US and Canada. Got up to 25 million people, and then I was the head of product for Intuit. So if you've used TurboTax or QuickBooks or Quicken or Mint, I've had a hand in that software. If you love it, great. If you hate it. Okay. you can spam me on all the social platforms. It's fine. and about seven years ago, I started Vital with my brother-in-law, Dr. Justin Schrager and Vital guides, 7 million patients through urgent care, emergency room and hospital journeys, because communication in health care is broken. No one knows what they're supposed to do next. doctors speak a completely different language. They'd be like, Nathan, I'm sorry, your mother has had a cerebral infarction of the left hemisphere. And you'd be like, what? She had a stroke or you broke your lateral and your medial malleolus and you're like, say what again? this software would translate that into, you have two broken bones in your foot. So instead of lab results that are like, Hey, your BUN is 46 micrograms per deciliter, and you're like, what's a deciliter and what's BUN? Our software translates that into human terms, like your kidneys appear to be straight. It might be because of your new medication, like a very human description, and then what do you do afterwards?'cause nobody knows. You can go to the hospital or the emergency room, you fall down, you have 45 stitches. Nobody even calls you the next day to be like, how are you doing? Have you burst any stitches? Did you get the medications that you were supposed to? How rude is that? Yeah, it's terrible. You wouldn't do that to a friend. No. That's not a friendly behavior. And we do this in healthcare all the time. fixing healthcare is what we want to do at Vital.

Nathan C: 3:26

I'm having my brain got so excited about this idea of a clinical translator. Yes. For like real people.

Aaron Patzer: 3:34

We call it our doctor to patient translator.

Nathan C: 3:36

I love this. So the doctor to patient translator, it seems like you're working to put like sandwich generation children. Out of a job. Yeah, because I show up to my parents' appointments, I read their labs, and often what my job is Is like I, the very recent I went to pick up my father after a test. Yeah. And while I'm waiting for him to wake up, I'm looking through the documentation and I said. It seems like they saw some things. They didn't seem to be too confused by them. Yes. And they took some things for tests. Yeah, that was my job. Yes. And I'm not a medical professional. Yes. I don't actually know if I'm right. But like their next. Best opportunity is maybe to go home and Google the things that they see a piece of paper you're gonna do. You're gonna paste

Aaron Patzer: 4:27

This is how you can tell there's a problem. so if you go into chat GPT and you say, what should I do for my lower back pain? It should say, I'm not gonna answer that until I know how old you are, whether you have osteoporosis. Instead, what it does is it says, you should try these exercises. These are the three most common drugs, right? But it's so powerful otherwise. So you have to figure out how do you do the Chat GPT's of experience, but how do you make it safe? And so what do you do about things like. Psych patients who might have things in their medical records where the doctor has written, Hey, they might be crazy. Maybe you don't want to do that. What do you do when somebody has dementia? What do you do if they have a new cancer finding or a loss of pregnancy or something that's deeply sensitive? How do you do that with human level sensitivity? But you can use AI to detect these things and figure out, okay, you know what? We should delay this four hours until a human gets a chance to talk to you. That's a good one for cancer or loss of pregnancy. Maybe don't tell you immediately. we should know what your education level is, so we should say, eighth grade level education, or do we want to give you the college level interpretation with a few medical terms that are at least more precise? Yeah. Oh, that typically, literally we will translate some things into, you were on this medication because your dialysis wasn't going well and you lost three big water bottles worth of fluid, whereas to someone else. We might say, you lost three and a half liters of fluid and another person would be like, what's a liter or what's a gallon? Or what's, so some people just don't have a good intuitive sense, so you have to change your language based on who you're communicating with.

Nathan C: 6:11

Uh, this is not, a lesson I was expecting to learn from an engineer.

Aaron Patzer: 6:16

No. I most of my friends are actually in the arts yep.

Nathan C: 6:19

I got a sense there's too many things that I wanna dive into

Aaron Patzer: 6:23

step by step. That's what, that's the one thing I learned from engineering.

Nathan C: 6:28

This idea of your communication style, like personalization, personalized care. Yes. in this frame. That personalized care doesn't just mean care that like matches that patient. Correct. But Pat matches what that patient can manage, what that patient understands or like Absolutely. They can start to work with them on their level and like I come from, Silicon Valley Deep Tech background. Yeah. And the idea. That you might wanna check. The reading level on your marketing materials is one of the easiest gotcha tests that I do with every company that I work with. I just give them a report at the reading level of what they're talking about, because when they tell me, oh, it's so easy. It's so simple, everybody's gonna obviously want to do it. It's like you're talking tech jargon at a 12th grade level. And like your users read at a fifth. That's right. Like you're just missing them completely

Aaron Patzer: 7:21

Literally the language. So absolutely Vital is available in Spanish. Obviously Armenian, you wouldn't suspect that Somali. Why Somali? Because Allina Health is a customer and a lot of Somalis move to Minnesota of all places. We had the app professionally translated into Haitian Creole.'cause there's a big population in Miami where we just launched with a major health system. The biggest out there. This is why we have 7 million people using this. And I expect, I'm hoping end of 2026, about 15 million. That's about 10% of all the hospital visits in the US And you have to meet people exactly where they are. Yeah, so language reading level. We also make sure that. It's a web app. You don't have to download anything. Don't make people download things. You'll lose 70% of your users there. This is a pet peeve of mine. So like same MyChart is I asked my customers, they're like, ha. Epic says they can do what you can do. And I was like, okay, let's take a look at this. And I was like, okay. So you're gonna download MyChart, you're gonna create a username and password with two capital letters and an exclamation point. A nurse has to be involved to approve it half the time you're gonna pick your security questions, then you're going to. And so we had a health system who was like 6% use in the emergency department. Our use is 65% on average. Do you know at children's hospitals we get 80% use from parents.'cause parents really care about their kids. often. Family sharing is one of the most important aspects of what Vital does. You can share it just like you were sharing a social media post, but securely and they can see what's going on with your visit. What are you doing in the hospital today? What tests are upcoming, and it's in their language as well. Yeah, your pneumonia has improved and your temperature is finally back to normal. So that what you're doing for your parents, we do. For literally millions of families a year. Amazing.

Nathan C: 9:15

Aaron, I could get geeky about Yeah. Personalization. Yeah. Forever. the last question that I'm gonna ask about it is you brought up these really interesting, right? This particular community has like a strong Somali Yeah. Need in community. This community has a strong Haitian community. As you're growing the platform, and there's gotta be this like constant sort of learning. Where do those insights from those communities for that need for Haitian, does that come to you from the platform side? Is that coming from the customers? Like how do you learn, right? There's a million things that you don't know. How do you learn those unknown unknowns? What's your channel for, listen to your customers. So they'll tell you, we have a lot of Haitian Creole speakers. Software engineers do not like to go into hospitals. I do overnights in the emergency room. I stay up late. I assumed that there were gonna be arterial blood spurts. I asked my co-founder, I was like, I like this shirt. This is my good shirt. Should I wear this shirt or should I wear something else? And he is I don't know what you think you're getting yourself into. It's mostly people who like have bad head colds and nausea and it's yeah, there's an occasional trauma. They come in through the ambulance. You're not gonna be in those. Just do the research, be in the hospitals. We send our engineers. Into hospitals. We sent our engineers to, Children's Los Angeles to sit in the waiting room and see what it's like to be coughed on by multiple children and be in there for, an X hour wait. And how do you keep people occupied? How do you keep them happy? How do you prepare them to talk to the doctor and the nurse? How do you meet them where they are? technical document and see how well you recall So you have to be literally interviewing. Customers. And then the last one is obviously this is the thing, tech people are already good at all the analytics. we look at heat maps, we do AB testing, we do funnel optimization. We use all of those tools. We look at rage clicks. What did people think that they could click on that they didn't? Where do you see the tap. Nothing's happening or it's not happening fast enough. If you're in the valley, I know you know how to do that, but you're not doing number one and two, if you're in healthcare, you know you're doing number two, but you're not doing number one and three. You gotta do all of'em. you're gonna sweeten me up with answers like that for sure. let's get out of the product mind. Sure. but go a little bit to origin story. One of the things that I absolutely love to do on The Tech Glow Up is talk with people who have seen it and done it right. And that's had a notable success in startup innovation and technology innovation. Because the journey is almost never just about the wins. Yes. And like the good idea is always the first and easiest part. Correct. and how I feel like we don't give enough airtime to, the hard decisions, the key moments. Really, the values that go into being a founder that gives you the grit and persistence to take that good idea until its time hits. Yeah. And so I'm curious, like what's the engineer to entrepreneur pipeline? Like what, what was the thing started your journey and then what's kept you focused and wanting to build and continue to solve problems in such a fraught and chaotic kind of space.

Aaron Patzer: 12:39

Alright, let's tackle this one by one. So I did start out as an engineer. And as an engineer I was not necessarily the best at communication. The most important professional six minutes of my career and probably personal life were, we won the very first Tech crunch event back in 2007. We launched Tech Crunch 40, and I got on stage, and this was the time when people did PowerPoint presentations primarily. And I got on stage and I did a live demo with my own finances. I typed my bank username and password on stage, pulling all my, like everything. I'm talking like In and Out Burger, yeah, like whatever credit card transactions happening. It was real. And I was so nervous. I like fat fingered. And I didn't get one out of the three accounts, even though I'd practiced it like 80 times and we came away and we were voted both by the judges and by the people top startup, and I was like, sh*t, I was in front of 2000 people. I literally, I practiced 80 times. I was so nervous. And now I feel, like I finally, I got that confidence as a human to actually speak your truth and to be like, you know what? I know. This field and forget about your financial outcomes. Just like to be confident in yourself as an engineer who's used to being introverted like that is worth more than any exit.'cause it opens up everything in your life, personal and professional, and the way you view yourself, which is probably more important than all of it

Nathan C: 14:07

because if you're only measuring yourself through the wind and the professionals yes.

Aaron Patzer: 14:12

I was in Silicon Valley back in a time where, and it's smaller than you think, right? So I had this, I thought it was a big win. Mint was sold for$175 million and so That's great. And I did well. I was the only founder. But everybody else around me was still chasing that high score and that external validation, right? I played Guitar Hero with Zuckerberg. I used to go camping every summer with Elon and there are these people who don't know when to quit and don't realize that it's hurting every other aspect of their life, and they have outsized performance in certain areas. And they're underdeveloped elsewhere. And so my big advocacy is absolutely go for the dollars, be successful, be a rounded person, 44, I can still do 20 pull-ups. Pay attention to your physical fitness as much as anything else. And so I wanted to get back in this, for my, this is my creative field, right? My best guy friend is a director and a writer. My best female friend, Moni, she is a fashion designer, My partner Michelle, she is a musician, PIANIKA on Spotify, very popular. Look at all the shout outs. I never do this in the podcast, but I feel very comfortable and, This is my creative outlet, this is what I do for fun. This is like business and product design and designing the great experiences, and there's so many things that are broken in. Healthcare communication is so broken in healthcare. The tech is fun, but it's like it serves this end design goal of one day. I wanna be able to guide a hundred million people through hospital experiences, through surgeries, through recovering from diseases. Why not a billion? This should be an experience that every single human has so that you have, I'm lucky enough to have a brother-in-law who's a doctor, and I can ask him, what does this lab result mean? Why doesn't everybody have that experience? And that's the glow up that I wanna see for Vital. That's the glow up I wanna see for. The industry to communicate properly to patients. Healthcare is misbranded. It's really sick care. It is not caring about your health, it's not caring about the patient. I've sat in these C-Suite meetings. Here's how we're gonna use AI for providers. Here's how we're gonna use AI for billing. I went for one hour, a full hour, and I raised my hand and I said, you have not talked about improving the patient or improving health. and it was shocking how little they thought about the patients, and that is the ethos of Vital patient first. The experience matters as much as the medicine. How you feel about your experience, how someone treated you, how they communicated with you. That's what matters. Your average emergency room is 2.3 stars. If you wait at a Mexican restaurant with 2.3 stars, you would a hundred percent get food poisoning and you're gonna treat your like blown kidney and your cancer to a place that has 2.3. That is something we need to fix.

Nathan C: 17:10

Oh my goodness, Aaron, that's amazing. That analogy just killed me. you did such a good job at talking through, my questions about glow ups for the industry as well as for Vital. we just have a few more moments. because the theme is Heroes and Legends. You called out a lot of people who have been influential in your life. But I'm curious, is there a mentor or a hero that's impacted your entrepreneurial or health tech entrepreneurial journey? Yeah. I'm lucky enough to have a board member, Dr. Bridget Duffy. She was the first chief experience officer in the world at Cleveland Clinic. She helps, She's amazing. She was then went on to found startups, at Vocera, she was the chief medical officer that was acquired. She's been very successful. She sits on my board and helps the team, not just me, but everybody on the team. She has a wealth of experience clinically and otherwise, and her goal is to fix patient, the patient communication across healthcare Honestly, I feel so much more energized to have her in my corner on my side. Just a big thank you, Bridget. If you ever see this. Oh my goodness. that was so sweet and sincere. I've, I've so appreciated. Me too. the pace and just presence that you've brought here that you're saying, I'm gonna think through this one by one, Will probably help me in future podcasts. Aaron, it's been a total delight to get to talk with you on the tech, Vital.io. Yes, former, founder of Mint, but now founder of Vital. Yeah. thank you so much for joining us on the HLTH Tech Glow Up. Amazing.

Aaron Patzer: 18:49

Thanks for listening.

Nathan C: 18:50

We're gonna do one more thing we're gonna do Oh yes. In 1, 2, 3. Perfect. Great. Love it. Perfect. so 1, 2, 3. Hello and welcome to the HLTH Tech Glow Up. I'm Nathan c and today I'm talking with Michael Oleksiw. Lesi. Yeah. Ole of Pleio. Michael, thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah, thanks. Thank you for having me. Fantastic. Can you, just to get started, can you introduce yourself and the work that you do at Pleio?

Michael Oleksiw: 19:20

Sure. So Michael Oleksiw, I am the, token Canadian here at the conference. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I am pretty much a tech entrepreneur, corporate entrepreneur who has meandered through building bicycles, working in the fashion industry, and naturally progressed into medication adherence, obviously. our focus at Plao, my work over the last decade has really been dedicated to bettering patient experiences and. Making people's lives better with the help of technology, but with humans at the forefront.

Nathan C: 19:55

Amazing. Michael, you described a lot of the keywords that get my attention. I'm also curious if you're a plant, because I love bicycles and a number of the things that you're talking about. can you dive in a little bit to the specifics about how you are able to deliver these things at Pleio?

Michael Oleksiw: 20:13

Yeah. So we're really, again, about using technology to better human journeys. So with the human at the forefront, we know that humans are great at connecting. They're great at being people because we are people, and technology is really good at making things efficient. So we bring the two worlds together, and I've used. a lot of the buzzwords, but I didn't use the big buzzword, which was AI. I had to look at ai, we use AI to make humans better at what they do, but not to replace humans. Alright. So that's gives you a good sense. So what are we where, the classic sense tech enabled services. But our core purpose is to keep healthcare human.

Nathan C: 20:49

Yeah. Amazing. there's been a lot of, I've heard a lot of conversations about AI at the show and one of the themes that I've really noticed, and it seems like you might be in this space, is. A trust but verify version of trust but verify, which is ai, but human assisted. is there a human checkpoint or how does, AI better the humans? are there checkpoints? How. Who gets to control truth in these scenario?

Michael Oleksiw: 21:18

Yeah, so the interesting thing is our use of AI is quite different than most of what we see here, because again, we're using it not to replace the human, but to inform the human. So as we speak to patients, we wanna remind them that they're people. But AI allows us to listen at scale and listen more intelligently to look at those emotional peaks and valleys and determine what the best triggers are and how to better connect with humans. So our AI looks at conversations retrospectively. We're not letting AI loose out in the wild. Sure. As we look at understanding the conversations better, we always have a human in the loop that will look at what the AI is producing and say, does this make sense? Does this correlate with what we know and what we believe? So we're a little bit different in that respect. We're not using it to be transactional. We're using it to be, informative and to drive efficiencies.

Nathan C: 22:11

Are there, the metric of how somebody's feeling, whether or not they're elevated, how, like that tone element that you described Yep. is so frequently what, gets glossed over or missed? In healthcare interactions when we're like focused on our screens or like in a task kind of mindset, like that time to sit and listen and be like, why is Mary telling me about her, pool at the farm, back home? how did you discover, like how is sentiment? It feels like one of the harder parts of ai. I'm curious, can you talk more about how you approach sentiment and Yeah.

Michael Oleksiw: 22:47

it is definitely one of the more complicated components. it is also one of the more established components where tone and sentiment analysis is one of the more set sciences. But we, what we do is we build these barrier blueprints. We look at fear, stigma, loneliness, et cetera. And then we use the AI to listen to word phrases.

Nathan C: 23:07

Yep.

Michael Oleksiw: 23:07

Essentially, and determine. What is, what, what is the patient trying to tell us? Yeah. When they're talking about, their farm or they're expressing something about their life that seems extraneous to the patient journey, they may be telling us I'm lonely. They may be telling us I'm afraid. So these are the types of cues that we look for. And, where we're particularly strong is picking up on those cues, even just as humans, because we they're the humans go in and form. But our awkward giggles, our awkward pauses. so much is focused on the healthcare professionals. they're busy. Our community pharmacy, across the US is struggling. They're under so much pressures. So one of the things that we do, by being a good neighbor to patients, we allow the pharmacies and the healthcare professionals to work to top of license. Work at the clinical level that they want. They don't lack empathy. That's what they thrive on, but they have a job to do beyond that. So we remove that burden.

Nathan C: 24:03

Doctors don't have to be translators. Doctors can think like doctors. Patients can ask questions like patients, and everybody gets the info that they need.

Michael Oleksiw: 24:11

Judgment free zone.

Nathan C: 24:13

And that's so much like what personalized care is about is no, just answer my question. So I love it. my, Michael, this is fantastic. Thank you. Great. for diving in with me. Let's look at the show a little bit and take it way back. High level sort of industry side. Yep. The Tech Glow Up, likes to talk about, this notable RS transformations. So what are you looking to see change and be elevated within the healthcare industry in the next six months or a year?

Michael Oleksiw: 24:42

Yeah. Things are progressing so rapidly that today's glow up is not tomorrow's glow up. Very true. We can't ignore ai. particularly what we see happening in health in the pharma space, we have, direct to patient. we basically probably are gonna see a lowering of the cost of drugs. drugs that are wonder drugs. Like GLP1 are going to become commodity drugs, although they carry, a specialty price. So the question is, how can we use technology to support those patients? Who are, there'll be more patients on drugs at a lower cost, but yet they still require that support. So are we gonna be compromising support because the price came down? So technology, from a technology standpoint, more users isn't always

Nathan C: 25:22

better.

Michael Oleksiw: 25:23

Correct. So yeah, there's definitely a great interest around, a lot of the AI and a lot of the efficiencies that can come. But my particular interest is, from a tech loup perspective, really watching that pendulum shift heavily towards digital, heavily towards tech. And, are we bypassing the human in the process? So my tech loup is really focused on finding where tech crosses with the human, keeps the person behind the patient at the center of it all. We're focused on the person, the behavior, not the transaction. So that's our tech blow up space.

Nathan C: 25:55

I love this. it's a very unique perspective to be bringing, to this space. Do you use design thinking and a lot of, the principles and approach to problem solving that you described, cue in a lot of my design thinking radar? Is that part of how you build products and services? Yeah. absolutely.

Michael Oleksiw: 26:16

We are like the perfect, right brain left brain company. Where we are all, artists and scientists at the exact same time. because human behavior is complex medication adherence is complex. So it will be, a question of art and science that come into Pleio. And what is design? it's using science to make art reproducible.

Nathan C: 26:36

Okay. Oh, I love it. I, there was like, the words covered out are sending a signal. very personalized to my interests. I love it. So let's get back to, the glow ups. We have the industry level glow up Pleio as a CEO. You've gotta have some bold goals for the next six months or a year. what are you gonna be transforming in your own work?

Michael Oleksiw: 26:59

Yep. so we're again, really focused on supercharging, the human, continuing to build the human interaction at scale, understanding that it's very easy to bypass. Mentioned it earlier. Very easy to bypass the human. So we're spending a lot of time using our AI to further empower. those human interactions. So it goes to something simple as retrospectively, understanding those conversations. We spoke about the emotional peaks and valleys and those human connections, but it'll get to a level of, prompting human interactions and interleaving, human and digital understanding. Bill that human behavioral change, trigger it, and then extend it and maintain it. With a digital, with some level of digital buy-in. So we're spending a lot of time in that particular behavioral space, really understanding, a lot really around barrier blueprint. So we call them the underminers. Oh, so we're looking at, yeah we built, they're superhero sat. They don't sound like superheroes. They sound like counter heroes. You look at mistrust, you look at worry. You look at depression, these are all the things that actually get in the way of patients using these great technologies. So we're using technology to enable techno humans to enable technology.

Nathan C: 28:11

I love it, but it keeps us glowing. It keeps us glowing. Michael, the theme of the show at Health this year is Heroes and Legends, and I've been using it to talk to innovators. about the heroes, mentors and legends that inspired their journey. who's inspired you to take this heroic effort?

Michael Oleksiw: 28:30

Yeah. There, there are many along the way. There are collections of heroes. And then, one of the greatest heroes tends to be luck at times. So I've had, the folks that have given me a chance, but. I think one of my greatest heroes, really is, a patient. my wife, shortly after my daughter was born, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. at the time she was, 33, survival rates were at 3% at five years. 18 years later, she's still with us. at the time I was working in the fashion industry, innovating in the fashion industry, being a nasty enabler of a fa fast fashion space, and then got to see really how healthcare. needs to be human. Although I didn't know it at the time. I lived a patient journey. An incredibly difficult patient journey, and that was really my glove to basically say, okay, you've always been enabling, humans through technology, What's happening in this space? Get back into healthcare. So that was, it was just very personal. and I think that's what makes it so real.

Nathan C: 29:25

most founders that I ask this question to have a similarly, personal, just incredibly Close to home kind of inspiration. So really thank you for sharing.

Michael Oleksiw: 29:39

thanks. And it becomes easier to share over the years. I would be breaking down in tears if I was sharing this just a few years ago.

Nathan C: 29:45

and also really speaks right that there are many voices within that healthcare journey. And while your wife was the patient. As a support, as family, as the person who's not undergoing chemo and other toxic drugs, you have a role in this communication chain and you're a translator for the sentiment for the whole chain that we're talking about. it's almost like you built tools also for your own role in the journey.

Michael Oleksiw: 30:16

Yeah. And that's where, intuition became science and became design.

Nathan C: 30:20

Yeah,

Michael Oleksiw: 30:20

We lived the journey and there's all this knowledge and all these tools and information that's being thrown at you from the healthcare community. It's not that information that's really gonna help with the journey, it's just knowing that there's someone that cares about you, that facilitates the journey and makes all of those tools accessible. So that's what we're really strive to reproduce in the work that we do. Although we didn't know it at first, we have several behavioral models that have kicked in over time that explain what we do. We really started out doing it intuitively.

Nathan C: 30:52

That's cool. And, usually on the glow up if somebody tells me, there's this follow up about, were you always able to trust that intuition? Sometimes when you start with an idea, it feels like the only idea How do you balance that intuition and that curiosity about maybe we don't have the whole answer, you have to be resolute on one hand, but you also have to be open. how do you balance that?

Michael Oleksiw: 31:21

and the funny thing is we only realize, our intuition was right or wrong, often. As an afterthought. I like to think of it as like subconscious intuition, where we're actually doing something and not realizing it, and then after the fact calling it in, intuition, I, and then you put a label on it, and it's the way we backed into what we do at Pleio right? We were doing it, we were connecting with patients, and we were hitting these emotional barriers and we realized wait a minute. there's a model for that. And that, we realized. These people seem lonely. And then we realized, through our work in the last year, there's a loneliness epidemic that's surfaced as a result of, the paradox of, technology doom scrolling, social media.

Nathan C: 32:01

Michael, we have blown through most of the questions. I'm offering the opportunity to share a spicy, hot take. Do you have one at HLTH this year? Huh?

Michael Oleksiw: 32:13

I think a lot of folks were talking about, mark Cuban's, talk. And we were counting the F-bombs. Same to that. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty spicy. We can count F-bombs. They were really good for applause. Yeah. they drew the, they draw the applause engagement. I do think a little bit of disruptive talk, what we'd like to see the changes to, versus just to talk. But, I did the fact that we were drawing attention to this problem because, we struggle to provide support to patients and, in our world it's always about cost. Yeah, we would like to spice up the human relative to the cost.

Nathan C: 32:42

I will take. Yeah. But we'd like to see the outcomes mark as a spicy hot ticket. Yeah.

Michael Oleksiw: 32:49

Correct, correct. Because it's, the money is, money's pretty powerful. It's very easy

Nathan C: 32:53

to say from that position.

Michael Oleksiw: 32:55

And as I said early on, my concern is as we drive down the cost of drugs. Let's not lose track of the support because we can put the treadmill into the home. But if the motivation isn't there, it's a closed rack and we don't want those drugs to sit in the medicine cabinet. If the doctor believes that they're important, the patient needs to take them. So we need to be sure that we maintain that connectivity with the patient, and that's well beyond just what we do. Yes.

Nathan C: 33:19

Michael, it has been such a pleasure to learn about Pleio and the really human focused work that you do, in innovation and health tech innovation in general. to have that much of a customer focus in the work that you do is very notable from this side. Bravo.

Michael Oleksiw: 33:39

Great. Thank you so much. Look, we're surrounded with great people. We talk to great people like yourself, so that's, community is cure, right? So community is cure.

Nathan C: 33:47

Let's clap it out.

Michael Oleksiw: 33:48

There

Nathan C: 33:49

Great. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks. No, it was a lot of fun.