Healthcare runs on people who keep showing up. This episode asks a simple question: who is taking care of them?

On this episode of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, host Michael Stamatinos sits down with Brian Ferguson, CEO of Arena Labs and former Navy SEAL officer, for a grounded and personal conversation about service, pressure, and what it takes to last in healthcare.

Brian has spent over two decades inside elite teams across national security, special operations, and professional sports. In this conversation, he draws clear parallels between those worlds and the frontlines of healthcare—emergency rooms, ICUs, and operating rooms—where there is no offseason and little room to recover.

Together, they explore what Brian calls the Service Archetype. The small group of people in any society who raise their hand to serve others. In healthcare, that calling is constant. And without the right tools, it comes at a cost.

This episode covers:

* Why healthcare has normalized exhaustion

* The difference between endurance and real strength

* How performance science from the military and sports can help clinicians recover

* What Predictive Performance means in real life

* The meaning behind Teddy Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena

* Why standards only matter if they protect people when no one is watching

This is a quiet, honest conversation about leadership, burnout, recovery, and responsibility. It speaks directly to clinicians and healthcare leaders who carry the work and rarely talk about the toll.

If this episode resonates, consider subscribing, sharing it with someone you care about, or taking a moment to reflect on how you protect the people who serve.

🔗 Follow Arena Labs:

🌐 https://arenalabs.co/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/arena-labs/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-ferguson-arena-labs/

https://www.instagram.com/arenalabs/?hl=en

https://x.com/arena_labs

👥 Who This Episode Is For

* Clinicians who feel tired but stay committed

* Healthcare leaders responsible for teams under pressure

* Operators trying to balance outcomes with human cost

* Founders and investors focused on long-term impact

* Anyone who believes service deserves protection

📣 LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE

If this conversation moved you, challenged your thinking, or sparked an idea, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more episodes with healthcare leaders who are not just thinking differently, they’re building differently.

About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/

In this episode of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, host Michael Stamatinos sits down with Aber Whitcomb, CEO of Salt AI and co-founder of MySpace, for an in-depth conversation on building at massive scale, navigating pressure, and applying real AI engineering to healthcare and life sciences.

Aber Whitcomb has been at the center of multiple technology inflection points. From helping architect MySpace during its explosive, nonlinear growth to now leading Salt AI as an enterprise-grade AI operating system, his perspective is thoughtful, calm, and grounded in experience earned the hard way.

This episode explores what it truly feels like to build when there is no playbook. The conversation moves from behind-the-scenes stories of early internet infrastructure and data-center failures, to modern challenges around enterprise AI, proprietary data, security, and trust inside healthcare and pharma.

Rather than focusing on hype, this discussion centers on substance: product velocity, leadership under pressure, and where AI can genuinely create lift for organizations operating in highly regulated environments.

Topics covered in this episode include:

• Aber Whitcomb’s early journey into computing and systems thinking

• Lessons from scaling MySpace before modern cloud infrastructure existed

• What pressure looks like when uptime determines survival

• Why healthcare and life sciences drew Aber into the industry

• Enterprise AI, proprietary data, and security inside pharma

• Product velocity vs. trust in regulated environments

• What should — and should not — be automated in healthcare

• AI skepticism, scientific rigor, and drug discovery

• Building teams of true 10x engineers

• Defining success beyond investor decks and valuations

📣 LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE

If this conversation moved you, challenged your thinking, or sparked an idea, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more episodes with healthcare leaders who are not just thinking differently, they’re building differently.

About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/

What really happens when a health system finally sees the truth behind its payer contracts?

In this episode of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, host Michael Stamatinos sits down with Jacob Little, Co-Founder of Payerset, and Jerry DiMaso, CEO and Co-Founder, for an unfiltered conversation about healthcare price transparency, payer negotiations, margin pressure, and the real dynamics shaping hospital contracting today.

Together, Jacob and Jerry are tackling one of the most complex and overlooked problems in healthcare: making machine-readable payer data usable by tying it directly to real claims. Their work helps health systems move beyond fragmented spreadsheets and guesswork and into data-driven contract strategy.

This conversation explores:

* Why healthcare price transparency is finally starting to matter

* What health systems experience when they see their true payer rates

* How contract intelligence is becoming a critical lever for margin protection

* The real, often tense relationship between payers and providers

* Why transparency can improve negotiations instead of escalating conflict

* What high-performing health systems do differently

* How Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu mirrors leadership, pressure, and decision-making in startups

*The mindset required to navigate complexity without losing clarity

This episode goes beyond dashboards and compliance. It’s about clarity, trust, strategy, and survival in a healthcare system under increasing strain.

Healthcare leaders across finance, managed care, operations, and innovation will gain a clearer understanding of where payer strategy is headed and how to prepare for what’s coming next.

Connect with Payerset

Website: https://www.payerset.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/payerset

Jacob’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clintonjlittle/

Jerry's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdimaso/

📣 LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE

If this conversation moved you, challenged your thinking, or sparked an idea, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more episodes with healthcare leaders who are not just thinking differently, they’re building differently.

About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/