From Innovation to Adoption: What It Really Takes to Win in Medtech with Ken Nelson, Partner and Founder at Nelson Jennings Ventures

What if the biggest barrier to better healthcare outcomes is… the blood draw itself? In this episode, Web Golinkin, President at Babson Diagnostics, discusses how his company is reinventing blood testing with a patient-friendly, fingertip-based system. He explains why traditional venipuncture drives anxiety and non-adherence, and how BetterWay improves both experience and outcomes. He also shares how automation and simplified workflows reduce operational burden and expand access points for care. Finally, he explores why patient experience is becoming the key competitive differentiator in ambulatory healthcare. Tune in to learn how rethinking a decades-old process could unlock better care, better business, and better patient engagement. Resources: Connect with and follow Web Golinkin on LinkedIn, visit his website, or reach out via email! Follow Babson Diagnostics on LinkedIn and explore their website! Learn more about BetterWay here!

Great medtech innovations win because patients actually use them. In this episode, Ken Nelson, Partner and Founder at Nelson Jennings Ventures, shares his journey from cardiac device sales at Boston Scientific to helping commercialize major players in cardiac monitoring, including iRhythm, BioTelemetry, and Bardy Diagnostics. He highlights how innovations such as wearable cardiac patches have transformed patient adoption and reshaped the monitoring market. Ken reflects on Medtech Innovator's impact in accelerating commercialization, partnerships, and investor readiness. He advises early-stage companies to leverage accelerators and industry events like Life Science Intelligence to strengthen their path to market and fundraising success. Tune in to hear how decades of experience in cardiac monitoring and startup scaling translate into practical advice for founders navigating commercialization and growth! Resources: Connect with and follow Ken Nelson on LinkedIn.

Simplifying the complex world of healthcare reimbursement. In this episode, Jason Considine, President of Experian Health, discusses shifting the industry's focus from denial management to denial prevention by leveraging AI at the point of registration. He discusses the implementation of the Patient Access Curator, a tool that automates insurance discovery and validation to reduce human error and administrative costs. He also explains how Experian leverages rich data assets, such as employment data, to help providers navigate new regulatory requirements, such as the OBBA. This episode explores the mission of leveraging advanced technology to eliminate administrative waste, enabling resources to be redeployed into direct patient care. Tune in to start from the start with denial prevention! Resources Connect with and follow Jason Considine on LinkedIn. Follow Experian Health on LinkedIn and explore their website.

AI is advancing rapidly in healthcare, but speed without governance can create serious clinical, legal, and enterprise-level risks. In this episode, Peter Bonis, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Wolters Kluwer Health, explores how his team is developing reliable, evidence-based AI tools to support frontline clinicians without compromising trust or safety. He explains why clinicians are adopting AI faster than health systems can govern it, creating risks like the rise of “shadow AI.” Peter highlights the importance of transparency, human oversight, and trusted source material in ensuring safe clinical decision support. He also discusses how even experts can be influenced by faulty AI output and why governance models must evolve with frontline input to keep pace. Tune in and learn how healthcare leaders can approach AI governance more responsibly while still supporting innovation at the point of care! Resources: Connect with and follow Dr. Peter Bonis on LinkedIn! Follow Walters Kluwer Health on LinkedIn and visit their website!

Most medtech startups fail before market. The ones that succeed? They plan for it from day one. In this episode, Amanda Helgeson, Business Development Manager at Forj Medical, discusses her work at the CDMO, which helps medtech startups navigate the critical transition from development to manufacturing. She notes that standout companies at Medtech Innovator pair meaningful clinical innovation with the passion and persistence needed to reach the market. Forj differentiates itself by integrating design and manufacturing early, helping companies avoid costly downstream issues. Her core message is to take a holistic, long-term approach, aligning product design, regulatory pathways, and reimbursement strategies from the outset while staying flexible to adapt. Tune in to learn how a holistic, future-focused approach can turn promising ideas into scalable medical devices! Resources: Connect with and follow Amanda Helgeson on LinkedIn. Follow Forj Medical on LinkedIn and explore their website!

Healthcare payments are often discussed as a transparency problem, but the deeper issue is structural fragmentation across contracts, claims, remittances, and workflows. In this episode, Ted Ferrin, Senior Vice President of Payments Innovation at Zelis, explains how the acquisition of Rivet is bringing provider-facing payment intelligence into Zelis’s broader infrastructure. He discusses why achieving financial clarity between payers and providers has been so difficult due to fragmented systems and legacy technology. Ted highlights that true transparency goes beyond simply displaying data and requires meaningful, actionable insights. He also shares how tools like Claims Insights and Zap Edge embed intelligence into payment workflows to reduce rework, improve visibility, and create a smoother experience for providers, payers, and patients. Tune in and learn how better payment intelligence could help turn transparency from a buzzword into real operational trust! Resources: Connect with and follow Ted Ferrin on LinkedIn. Follow Zelis on LinkedIn and visit their website!

Healthcare is drowning in documentation and fragmented data, but what if the system worked for clinicians rather than against them? In this episode, Dr. Richa Gupta, Vice President of Care Transformation at Ambience Healthcare, explains how Ambience provides a layer of intelligence on top of electronic medical records to optimize clinician workflow and patient interactions. Ambience’s ambient listening system captures physician-patient interactions, supports documentation, and ensures accurate coding and billing, boosting clinician satisfaction and reducing revenue leakage. ROI is driven by high clinician utilization, validated outcomes, and measurable improvements in documentation burden, coding accuracy, and physician retention. In 2026, Ambience is expanding across the full care continuum, including ambulatory, emergency, and inpatient settings, offering a platform that surfaces real-time insights and enhances patient care. Tune in to hear how Ambience is transforming physician workflows and delivering real ROI across the care continuum! Resources: Connect with and follow Dr. Richa Gupta on LinkedIn. Follow Ambience Healthcare on LinkedIn and visit their website!

Transformational medtech innovation needs more than a great idea. It needs the right engineering, clinical evidence, reimbursement strategy, and commercialization support to reach patients. In this episode, Peter Lewis, Executive Vice President of Business Development at Hydrix, joins Saul Marquez at the MedTech Innovator Radar Forum to discuss what it takes to bring complex, safety-critical medical devices to market. Peter shares Hydrix’s evolution from its origins in Australia to becoming a global medical product development company supporting cardiac, surgical robotics, imaging, neurostimulation, and other advanced technologies. He highlights why clinician-led innovation is especially powerful, what distinguishes today’s most promising medtech startups, and why AI, reimbursement, and human clinical evidence are now essential pillars for growth. Tune in to learn what medtech innovators need to consider early if they want to build solutions that truly change care. Resources: Connect with and follow Peter Lewis on LinkedIn or reach out via email. Explore the Hydrix website here!

Healthcare technology should quietly remove friction and reduce burden so clinicians can focus on what matters most: caring for patients in a more human way. In this episode, Lisa Gulker, Chief Nursing Officer at Oracle Health and Life Sciences, discusses how Oracle is rethinking healthcare technology by building AI directly into the foundation of its systems rather than layering it on as an afterthought. She explains how this approach can help clinicians spend less time in the chart, reduce workflow fragmentation, and make technology feel more seamless in the care experience. Lisa also shares how Oracle is applying these capabilities across providers, life sciences, and payers, creating opportunities to accelerate research, improve clinical trial matching, streamline prior authorization, and reduce administrative burden across the ecosystem. Throughout the conversation, she brings a nurse leader’s perspective to a central question in healthcare innovation: how do we use technology to make care feel more human, not less? Tune in and learn how embedded AI could reshape the healthcare experience for clinicians, staff, researchers, payers, and patients alike! Resources: Connect with and follow Lisa Gulker on LinkedIn. Follow Oracle Health on LinkedIn and visit their website!

What happens when some of healthcare’s most trusted workers are still operating outside the systems that document, reimburse, and scale care? In this episode, Colby Takeda, Co-Founder & CEO of Pear Suite, joins Saul Marquez live at ViVE to explore why community health workers are becoming a more essential part of the healthcare ecosystem. Drawing from his background in senior living and public health, Colby explains how Pear Suite helps community-based providers move beyond paper and spreadsheets with tools to document care, navigate credentialing and contracting, submit claims, and get paid for the value they deliver. The conversation also looks at Pear Suite’s broader vision for connecting community-based organizations, health plans, and providers in a more coordinated system of care. Colby shares why AI should reduce administrative burden instead of replacing trusted relationships, how co-design with frontline workers has shaped the platform, and where he sees the biggest opportunity to make community-based care more sustainable and accessible at scale. Tune in to hear how community health workers are becoming more essential to the healthcare ecosystem, and how better infrastructure and smarter technology can make community-based care more sustainable and scalable. Resources: Connect with Colby Takeda on LinkedIn Learn more about Pear Suite Explore Pear Suite for Providers Follow Pear Suite on LinkedIn