StartUp Health NOW Podcast

From menopause pioneer to commercial leader at one of digital health's most watched companies, Jill Angelo joins Unity Stoakes for a wide-ranging conversation on women's health innovation, outcomes validation, and the discipline of focus – with live questions from the StartUp Health community. Jill Angelo has sat at nearly every seat at the table in health innovation – enterprise executive at Microsoft, founder of Gennev (one of the first menopause-focused digital health companies and a StartUp Health community member), and now VP of Women's Health and Commercial Partnerships at Oura, where she is building the women's health business from the ground up. This episode distills a one-hour StartUp Health Fireside Chat into 20 focused minutes. StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes sits down with Jill for a wide-ranging conversation on what has shifted in women's health investment and partnerships, why clinical outcomes validation remains the most important work any health company can do regardless of size, and how Oura is approaching detection and behavior change as its two biggest product frontiers. Jill also shares the hard-won founder lesson she wishes she had learned earlier – and is still applying today. The conversation includes a couple of the many live questions from StartUp Health community members working in longevity, post-discharge care, and behavior change. Members attend these StartUp Health Fireside Chats live, ask their own questions directly, and have access to full recordings of past sessions. Learn more and join the community at startuphealth.com.

What does it mean to build technology that serves human life rather than consuming it? In this episode, Esther Dyson, investor, thinker, and StartUp Health Impact Board member, joins co-founder Unity Stoakes and members of the StartUp Health community for a candid fireside conversation on her forthcoming book, Term Limits: Human Time and AI Scale. From the risk of "information diabetes" to the right ratio of AI to human in care delivery, Dyson challenges founders and investors to ask harder questions about what they're actually building, and for whom. She also makes the case for single-payer healthcare as public infrastructure, the value of dignity and agency in underserved communities, and why wisdom, not intelligence, is the variable that matters most in the age of AI. Listen in for a for a wide-ranging conversation on what we lose when we optimize everything, and what we have to gain by embracing limits. ✅ Don’t miss the opportunity to learn from the best! Join the StartUp Health community to be part of live events like this: https://www.startuphealth.com/

For decades, the noninvasive continuous glucose monitor has been the holy grail of diabetes technology. SynchNeuro believes the signal has been there all along -- hiding in the brain's electrical activity, readable from a small adhesive patch worn behind the ear. In this episode, StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes talks with StartUp Health community member Casey Halpern, MD, Founder & Chairman of SynchNeuro, about the neuroscience behind the platform, the working prototype now in internal testing, and a clinical study launching in weeks. They cover the daily glucose stability score -- a sleep-powered metabolic forecast that updates in real time throughout the day -- the partnership with January AI, and a commercial launch target of late 2027 to early 2028. Dr. Halpern also shares his vision for what it looks like when 50 million Americans with prediabetes finally have the tools to get ahead of the problem. --- Are you ready to tell YOUR story? Members of our Health Moonshot Communities are leading startups with breakthrough technology-driven solutions for the world’s biggest health challenges. Exposure in StartUp Health Media to our global audience of investors and partners – including our podcast, newsletters, journal, and YouTube channel – is a benefit of our Health Moonshot Membership. If you’re mission-driven, collaborative, and ready to contribute as much as you gain, you might be the perfect fit.» Learn more and join today. Want more content like this? Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

What does the senior CMS official focused on payment and delivery innovation actually want health tech founders to understand? In this episode, we listen in on highlights from a recent fireside chat as StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes talks with Abe Sutton, Deputy Administrator at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), about the strategic and practical realities of building a company in the Medicare space right now. Abe covers how CMS's new technology-focused payment models, including ACCESS and Geo AHEAD, are creating opportunities that did not previously exist for health tech innovators. He shares the founder-specific advice he wished he had when he was on the other side of the government-innovator divide: read the regulations, understand the intent behind the payment structures you are building on, and think twice before framing your CMS pitch as a small pilot. This conversation includes direct questions from StartUp Health community members representing companies across diagnostics, caregiving, digital therapeutics, rural health, and AI-powered clinical tools -- a small sample of the live Q&A from the original fireside chat. Getting a seat in that room, and direct access to the people shaping the future of healthcare, is one of the things StartUp Health community membership is built for. Learn more at startuphealth.com.

What if the most underused tool in health innovation communication was sitting right in your pocket? In this episode of StartUp Health NOW, recorded live at HLTH 2025 in Las Vegas, StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes sits down with Dan Kendall, founder of Mission Based Media and the Health Podcast Library, for a candid conversation about the power of audio storytelling in healthcare. Dan shares why he built a podcast network after searching for health innovation content and finding almost nothing, how organizations of any size can start podcasting, and why the rise of AI is actually making authentic human voices more important than ever. They also dig into the Health Podcast Summit, a free resource Dan launched to help health communicators raise their voices at a moment when it matters most. Whether you're a founder, clinician, or health system leader, this episode will change how you think about reaching the people who need to hear your story. 🎧 Listen now and visit Mission Based Media to learn more about Dan's work. 🚀 Are you ready to tell YOUR story? Exposure in StartUp Health Media to our global audience of investors and partners – including our podcast, newsletters, magazine, and YouTube channel – is a benefit of our Health Moonshot Community Membership. If you’re mission-driven, collaborative, and ready to contribute as much as you gain, you might be the perfect fit. Learn more and join today. 🎙️ Want to get started as a guest right here on StartUp Health NOW? Learn more about opportunities.