Innovation Saves Lives

Dr. Robert Bilkovski, known as Dr. Bob, has spent more than three decades connecting clinical medicine, healthcare innovation, and business strategy. He joins Leonard Kim on Innovation Saves Lives to explain why promising medical technologies can fail despite significant investment and how overlooked clinical workflows, product risks, and regulatory requirements can derail development. Drawing on his work as founder of RB Ventures Consulting and his book Make Your Story Believable, Bilkovski shares why identifying risks early and building a credible strategy are essential to bringing healthcare innovations to market.

Helpster Charity founder Nikita Kuzmin believes donors should know exactly whose lives their contributions are helping to change. He joins Leonard Kim on Innovation Saves Lives to explain how Helpster connects donors with patients who cannot afford urgent medical treatment, verifies individual cases, and pays hospitals directly. Kuzmin also shares why he brought his entrepreneurial experience into philanthropy, what Helpster has achieved so far, and his ambition to build a charitable organization that lasts beyond his lifetime.

Dr. Dan Eduardo Gonzalez, clinical pharmacist and founder of ClarityRx Advisory, believes healthcare technology is too often developed without sufficient input from the people responsible for patient care. He joins Leonard Kim on *Innovation Saves Lives* to explain how his experience on the pharmacy front lines informs his approach to AI governance, clinical validation, and organizational decision-making. Gonzalez also discusses the importance of breaking down departmental silos, building trust through transparency, and making healthcare innovation more responsive to clinicians and patients.

Athena Oden believes many of the struggles showing up in classrooms begin long before a child is asked to read, write, or sit still. Drawing on more than 40 years as a pediatric physical therapist, she joins Leonard Kim to explain how movement, sensory development, play, and even risk-taking help build the foundations children need for learning. She also challenges schools and parents to reconsider whether some behavioral and academic problems belong entirely to the child or reflect environments that no longer match how children develop.

Dr. Masi Reynolds has treated elite athletes whose careers depend on getting their bodies healthy and performing again, but he believes the lessons from that world shouldn't be reserved for professionals. The orthopedic sports medicine physician joins Leonard Kim to explain why recovery involves far more than repairing an injured joint, from blood flow and nutrition to mental health, movement, and consistent daily habits. He also shares how that philosophy led to North Performance and a different approach to helping athletes and everyday people stay active for the long haul.

Entrepreneur, investor, and author Ari Rastegar explains why failure should be treated as feedback rather than defeat. He shares how pain, disciplined repetition, meditation, and the courage to ask for help shaped his journey from delivering pizzas to building companies and investing across multiple asset classes.

Diagnoptics Technologies CEO John Mulder explains how advanced glycation end products, or AGEs, can reveal long-term metabolic stress before symptoms appear. His work focuses on making invisible lifestyle-related risk measurable, understandable, and actionable.

Holley Proctor Miller, Founder and President of Grey Matter Marketing, explains why so many healthcare and life sciences launches fail despite strong technology and real clinical value. Drawing on decades of experience in medical marketing, robotics, devices, and patient adoption strategy, she breaks down why companies need to define the problem before selling the solution. The conversation explores healthcare innovation, product launches, patient behavior, robotics, data, and the emotional reasons people change.

Dustin Carlson, President of SRA 831(b) Admin, explains how AI is creating new liabilities that many traditional insurance policies may not cover. As businesses adopt generative AI for operations, marketing, customer service, and internal workflows, they may also be taking on risks tied to hallucinations, intellectual property, data exposure, and denied claims. The conversation explores AI exclusions, self-insurance, 831(b) plans, cyber risk, and why business owners need to review their coverage before a problem happens.

Katie Newman, CEO of High Point Healthcare Real Estate, joins Innovation Saves Lives to discuss how real estate strategy and creative capital can help rural hospitals stay open, modernize facilities, and keep care local. She explains why inaction is often the greatest risk facing underserved healthcare systems and how layered financing models can create new options for communities that traditional lenders overlook.