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/

In this episode of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, host Michael Stamatinos sits down with Michelle Zimmerman, CEO and cofounder of Previvor Edge, for a rare look at the future of cancer prevention, early detection, and personalized risk management.

Michelle brings a uniquely human and deeply informed perspective. With a strong family history of cancer and years of experience building the cancer genetics program at Sema4, she has seen both sides of the problem: the emotional weight families carry and the structural gaps that prevent people from taking action early.

Michelle shares two powerful truths in this episode:

“All we do is talk about cancer. We never talk about what happens before cancer.”

“We should do for cancer what we did for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.”

This conversation explores why most high-risk individuals never know they are at risk, why the prevention system remains fragmented, and why clarity before diagnosis matters more than most people realize. Michelle explains how family history, genetics, lifestyle, and environmental factors all shape cancer risk—and why the current healthcare model has no specialist or coordinated pathway to address them.

Previvor Edge is changing that by creating an integrated, clinically rigorous approach that brings internal medicine, genetics, oncology, and lifestyle medicine together in one place. The goal is simple: help people understand their risk, make informed decisions, and take action long before cancer develops.

Key themes in this episode include:

* The origin story behind Previvor Edge

* The gaps in the current early detection landscape

* How genetics, oncology, internal medicine, and lifestyle medicine can work together

* The emotional and psychological side of cancer risk

* What proactive prevention truly looks like

* The human stories that shaped Michelle’s mission

* Leadership lessons from building a prevention-focused movement

Learn more about Previvor Edge:

https://www.previvoredge.com/

Connect with Michelle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zimmey/

📣 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, Michael Stamatinos sits down with Zaw Thet, CEO of Exer Labs. Exer is one of the most interesting companies in the AI and healthtech space today. They use computer vision and AI to turn any camera into a motion coach. With a simple phone or tablet, clinicians can evaluate gait, tremors, balance, strength, mobility, and recovery in a way that is fast, accurate, and deeply human.

Zaw brings a rare blend of experience to this conversation. He started his first company at 19 during the early days of Silicon Valley. He later helped build 4INFO, one of the pioneering companies in mobile advertising. He was recognized by Business Week as one of the mobile barons, invited to join the United Nations Foundation Global Entrepreneurs Council, and eventually made his way back to health and movement through a desire to create technology that supports dignity and care.

Michael and Zaw explore the full arc of his journey. They talk about his childhood as the son of Burmese immigrants, what it was like to drop out of Stanford to start a company, and how a short season as a monk taught him more about stillness than any leadership course ever could. They walk through the early days of Exer Labs, the challenges of bringing AI into clinical environments, the long road of research and validation, and the breakthrough moments when clinicians began using Exer as part of their daily workflow.

This episode covers the big themes shaping the future of healthcare. Motion intelligence. AI at the edge. Clinical workflow. Patient outcomes. Human centered design. And the purpose behind building tools that make care more personal and more precise.

If you care about innovation in digital health, the future of physical therapy, the role of AI in clinical settings, or what it takes to build a long term healthcare company, you will get a lot out of this conversation.

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome to the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show

01:40 Zaw’s early life and the influence of his immigrant parents

07:00 What becoming a monk taught him about stillness and discipline

13:00 The origin story of Exer Labs

17:45 How on device AI using any camera actually works

22:30 Turning skeptics into believers inside health systems

27:00 Why long term research became Exer’s competitive engine

31:20 What a future clinic might look like with motion intelligence

35:30 Rapid fire questions and closing thoughts

Learn more about Exer Labs:

https://www.exer.ai

Connect with Zaw: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zawthet/

📣 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 if access to money was access to health?

In this powerful episode of The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, host Michael Stamatinos sits down with Sabrina Lamb, Founder and CEO of Wekeza and World of Money, for a deep conversation about how financial inclusion is the next frontier of public health.

Sabrina is a force for access and equity. As the first Black woman to launch a global investing app for the African diaspora, she’s breaking centuries-old barriers that have kept entire communities locked out of the financial system. Through Wekeza, users can invest in U.S. markets starting with just one dollar, while learning in their native language, from English and Swahili to French, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Wolof, and Zulu.

But Sabrina’s work goes far beyond money. It’s about dignity. It’s about agency. It’s about giving people the tools to reclaim their power, build generational wealth, and improve their overall health.

This episode explores how financial health is inseparable from physical, emotional, and community health — and why access to education, housing, food, and opportunity all shape the future of care.

Together, Michael and Sabrina unpack the psychology of money, cultural narratives that shape financial behavior, and how language and storytelling can dismantle fear and build trust. You’ll hear about Sabrina’s journey from comedy stages to congressional recognition, from teaching in Nairobi to launching a global fintech company — and how humor, purpose, and resilience are her secret weapons for impact.

In This Episode:

* The link between financial access and health outcomes

* How Wekeza is redefining financial inclusion for the African diaspora

* Why financial literacy is a public health intervention

* How trauma and cultural conditioning shape our relationship with money

* The role of language, humor, and culture in teaching financial empowerment

* Why access to capital, food, and education are as critical as access to care

* What the future of financial health innovation looks like

About Sabrina Lamb:

Sabrina Lamb is a celebrated founder, speaker, and advocate for financial inclusion and cultural empowerment. She is the CEO of Wekeza, a multilingual investing platform designed for the African diaspora, and the Founder of World of Money, a nonprofit that has educated over 15,000 youth across the U.S. and Africa.

A Techstars and Y Combinator alumna, Sabrina has been honored by Congress and recognized by NBC News, Essence, and The Grio for her impact. Her award-winning work has earned her the Silicon Harlem C-Better Grand Prize, and her bestselling book Do I Look Like an ATM? continues to inspire families worldwide.

🌐 Learn more: https://www.wekeza.com/

🔗 Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrina-lambceo/

📣 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/