The same surgery. The same doctor. The same hospital. Same insurer, but a different insurance plan and a price that's three times higher. That's not a hypothetical. It's the daily reality of healthcare in 2026, and it's what Dr. Allison (Alli) Oakes, VP and Chief Research Officer at Trilliant Health, has spent her career trying to fix.

Alli sat down with Nathan C Bowser live at Vive 2026 to talk through what health plan price transparency data reveals about the American healthcare system.

Trilliant sits at an unusual vantage point: not a provider, payer, or employer, but an independent research engine that aggregates claims data, price transparency data, and provider directories to give stakeholders a picture of their full market — including where patients are leaking out and where money is leaving the system without explanation.

Her hot take closes the episode: be as bold about de-adopting technology that isn't performing as you are about adopting the new thing.

Key Moments:

• [00:03:12] What Trilliant Health Does: How claims data, price transparency data, and provider directories combine to show what no single stakeholder can see alone.
• [00:04:19] The Price Variation Problem: Same procedure, same market, three to ten times the cost depending on your payer — and why it's solvable.
• [00:08:25] Garbage In, Garbage Out — Multiplied: Why generative AI makes clean data more critical, and how Trilliant built a five-to-seven-year head start.
• [00:11:38] The Value Equation: Healthcare is 18% of US GDP with worse outcomes than comparable countries. Patients can't shop their way out of this problem.
• [00:16:49] The Hot Take: Rapid experimentation only works if you're equally bold about cutting what the data says isn't working.

Watch the full episode on YouTube, subscribe to The Tech Glow Up, and join the newsletter on Substack → https://substack.com/@mxnathanc

About Allison Oakes, Ph.D.
Dr. Allison (Alli) Oakes is a health services researcher dedicated to translating complex data into actionable insights. With a background spanning academia, government, health systems, and payers, she brings a comprehensive perspective to the complexities of the U.S. healthcare system.

As Chief Research Officer at Trilliant Health, Alli leverages extensive internal datasets to inform strategic decision

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Everyone says AI in healthcare needs a "human in the loop." Fewer people can tell you what that actually means. This live Vive 2026 episode of The Tech Glow Up features two health IT veterans who are done waiting for theory to catch up with practice.

Virginia Halsey, SVP of Product and Strategy at First Data Bank, has 35 years in health IT and a clear view of where medication workflows are failing. Pharmacists spend 30 to 40% of their day verifying prescription orders, while the clinical judgment they trained for goes unused. FDB is building tools to fix medication reconciliation and free pharmacists to round and participate in real patient care.

Her hot take: even big tech companies love the AI buzzwords but aren't ready for healthcare-specific protocols like MCP when you get into the details.

Dr. Jay Anders, CMO at Medicomp Systems, practiced internal medicine for 20 years and has spent 21 years since as the bridge between clinicians and tech. Clinicians haven't been asked what they need from AI, and when ambient listening tools produce text that nobody verifies, "human in the loop" is just a phrase. Medicomp converts ambient AI output into structured clinical data and gives clinicians a fast way to validate what the system produced.

Key Moments:

• [00:04:04] The Medication Workflow Problem: Why pharmacists spend 30–40% of their day on verification — and what FDB is building to change that.
• [00:07:23] Med Rec on Admission: The fragmented data problem that makes medication reconciliation risky when patients can't speak for themselves.
• [00:10:03] The AI Readiness Gap: Many organizations love AI buzzwords but aren't ready for the protocols that make it real in clinical settings.
• [00:20:45] "They Haven't Been Asked": Why clinician trust in AI is in turmoil — and why the fix starts with asking doctors what they need.
• [00:21:32] Beyond the Text: Medicomp converts ambient AI transcripts into structured data, then gives clinicians a fast way to verify the output.

Watch the full episode on YouTube, subscribe to The Tech Glow Up, and join the newsletter on Substack → https://substack.com/@mxnathanc

About Jay Anders:

Dr. Jay Anders serves as the Chief Medical Officer of Medicomp Systems, where he plays a pivotal role in product development and acts as a liaison to the healthcare community. He hosts the award-winning HealthcareNOW Radio podcast, “Tell Me Where IT Hurts,” discussing critical issues such as physician burnout, EHR usability, healthcare interoperability, and the impact of technology on healthcare with industry experts.

About Virginia Halsey:

Virginia Halsey serves as senior vice president of strategy and product management where she manages the team responsible for the development and success of all FDB solutions spanning a variety of healthcare markets across the US and Canada.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

The revenue cycle is one of healthcare's most expensive blind spots. Health systems pour everything into clinical excellence and then leave money on the table through billing leakage, under-coded claims, denied authorizations, and documentation gaps that erode reimbursement for genuinely complex care. Nitesh Shroff, co-founder and CEO of Arintra, has spent five years building the AI infrastructure to close that gap.

Nitesh came to healthcare from an unexpected place. He was an early AI engineer at Zoox, the autonomous vehicle company now owned by Amazon, where the work was perception models, real-time object detection, and safety-first architecture.

The throughline to Arintra is direct: just as a self-driving car cannot afford to misread a pedestrian, an AI coding system cannot afford to hallucinate a medical code. Every code Arintra generates is fully explainable, tied back to the source documentation, and auditable. Clients have started using that audit trail as evidence in denial appeal letters to payers — a use case Nitesh didn't design for but has now built into the workflow.

• [00:03:18] What Arintra Does: How a network of clinical and financial AI agents reads physician notes and converts them into accurate medical codes — the backbone of every insurance claim.
• [00:05:56] Why Hallucination is Not an Option: The case for explainable AI in revenue cycle, and how redundancy in the system exceeds human coding accuracy.
• [00:09:06] From Autonomous Vehicles to Healthcare AI: The perception model work at Zoox and why safety-first thinking translates directly to medical coding.
• [00:11:00] The Denial Letter No One Expected: How hospitals are using Arintra's code explainability as evidence in insurance denial appeals.
• [00:13:58] How Fast Arintra Scales: A new location turns on in five minutes. A new specialty is built from scratch in three to four weeks.

Health systems provide exceptional care. The billing infrastructure around that care should match. That's what Arintra is building.

Watch the full episode on YouTube, subscribe to The Tech Glow Up, and join the newsletter on Substack → https://substack.com/@mxnathanc

About Nitesh Shroff

Nitesh Shroff is the CEO and co-founder of Arintra, an autonomous coding platform that combines GenAI with deep clinical expertise to help health systems get paid accurately and efficiently for the care they deliver.

Nitesh holds a Ph.D. in Machine Learning from the University of Maryland and is an inventor with 30+ patents and publications. Throughout his career, Nitesh has applied AI and cutting-edge technologies to solve high-impact problems where precision and reliability are essential.

As an early engineer at Zoox and Light, he developed foundational technologies critical to the performance and safety of autonomous vehicles.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.