Too often, the operators actually building, evaluating, and implementing new care models and technologies don’t have a community to compare notes and share what’s really working across their organizations.
That’s why we created 25m Health's Strategic Partner Coalition (SPC): a community for health system operators and innovators to exchange insights, surface best practices, and highlight the impact of their work.
Last month in Nashville, our inaugural SPC brought together 50 leaders across 21 payers, provider organizations, and health systems, along with 12 of our portfolio companies and co-investors to do exactly that. The conversations among attendees, centered around practical lessons on AI adoption, were full of insights for builders -- a few of the key themes that emerged from those discussions are below.
[If you are a health system, provider, or payer executive driving innovation, please sign up for our next SPC event here!]
#1 AI can help provider organizations reduce variance at scale
Health systems operate on single-digit margins because they’re high-opex, people-intensive businesses. When thousands of staff members are executing operations and delivering care across dozens of facilities, even small inconsistencies compound quickly. The cost of variance is enormous financially and operationally with the monitoring of variance bringing its own second order costs. AI has the potential to serve as a copilot to every type of staff member at provider organizations to enable standardization, helping teams consistently adhere to standards of care and ideal SOP workflows. For “bottom-of-license” tasks, moreover, AI can fully automate processes to deliver the same high-quality workflow, time and time again.
#2 Startups must focus on top health systems problems
Even in a moment filled with excitement around AI, the fundamentals haven’t changed: startups still need to focus on solving the most critical problems for health systems. The best venture-backed companies zero in on issues so important and core to operations, that a health system wouldn’t try to configure one of its large existing technology vendors to solve them. In reality, an AI startup's biggest competitors aren’t each other, they’re Microsoft, Google, Palantir, and the EHRs.
Many organizations have already invested deeply with their cloud, ambient scribe, and EHR partners. To stand out, startups must build for the problems that truly matter: areas where health systems want a partner who is focused on high priority pain points and is excellent at solving them, not just a configurable add-on.
#3 Innovation inside health systems can come from anyone, anywhere
Some of the most meaningful innovation inside health systems isn't coming from leadership, IT, or physicians: it’s coming from the front lines. For example, Gratia began as a workflow a Scion LTAC staffing manager built in Excel to incentivize W2 nurses to pick up extra shifts. With AI, operators can now “vibe code” and prototype their own solutions, turning real-world challenges into testable products that can be scaled after being quickly validated.
[SPC members will have the opportunity to go deeper on this topic during our January Vibe Coding session - you can express your interest in attending here.
This shift is also why more organizations are exploring venture studio strategies: Anyone at a health system can be a builder. AI has expanded the opportunity for commercializing health system innovation beyond tech transfer -- differentiated insight, institutional IP, and even standard operating procedures can now be commercialized into software tools and turned into standalone companies.
#4 AI is expanding who technology is built for across health systems
There’s a long tail of individuals within health systems who have never had technology purpose-built for their daily work. Most software has historically focused on physicians and mid-levels in the EHR, with recent innovation centered on point-of-care decision support, ambient scribes, and revenue cycle tools for coders. But AI is changing that. It allows every staff member, from medical assistants to care managers, to have a copilot.
Take Kouper, whose AI care manager agents ensure every acute patient receives consistent and prompt post-discharge support: from follow-up appointments to social needs screenings to transitional case management. Or Basalt, which automates ambulatory SOPs and has delivered a 6x ROI on time and staffing at Lifepoint by assisting medical assistants with pre-visit preparation. These examples point to a broader shift: AI is finally extending meaningful technology to health system employees beyond clinical or revenue cycle staff.
A huge thank you to our sponsors, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, Assured, and Clearwater for making this gathering possible as well as our speakers Patrick Saale, Lynn Simon, Rob Jay, and Aaron Lewis.
We look forward to future SPC programming and continued dialogue, collaboration, and community across the 25madison and broader healthcare ecosystem. If you are an operator at a health system, payer, provider, or pharma company interested in joining the SPC, please express your interest here.
