“Revenue cycle is really about solving two problems: generating an accurate receipt and then jumping through the fifty hoops to get paid.” says Dr. Michael Gao, CEO of Smarter Technologies. In this episode of Vanguards of Health Care, Gao joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jonathan Palmer to explain how AI is transforming hospital revenue cycle management (RCM). He walks through Smarter’s approach to clinical intelligence and automation, why AI works best as a first pass with human supervision, and how smarter workflows can lift margins for hospitals operating on razor-thin economics. The conversation also explores Smarter’s formation with New Mountain Capital and Gao’s mission to reduce the trillion-dollar burden of health care administration.

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“Our mission is to create both strategic and financial returns by backing scalable technologies that can transform how biopharma operates.” Bill Taranto, president and general partner of the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jonathan Palmer to break down how Merck’s $600 million evergreen venture arm invests at the intersection of biotech and health tech. Taranto explains why GHI focuses on pharma services across drug development, supply chain, patient access and real-world evidence, how ecosystem investing and private equity drive scale, and why AI and data are reshaping the future of pharma operations.

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“We were a very valuable deep-science company that had the wrong business strategy,” Zymeworks CEO Ken Galbraith tells Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Sam Fazeli on this episode of the Vanguards of Health Care podcast. In discussing the company’s strategic reset, Galbraith explains how Zymeworks shifted from a platform-heavy biotech to a partnership-driven model that balances innovation with capital discipline. The conversation covers zanidatamab’s path to market, lessons from partnering with Jazz and BeOne, the value of asymmetric antibody design and why retaining upside through milestones and royalties could reshape long-term value creation.

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Vanguards of Health Care: Penumbra Expands CAVT Awareness “With pulmonary embolism, just like with stroke and some other things, where there’s an acute moment usually happening — the patient’s not doing well, decompressing on the table — time matters a lot. And because of the STORM-PE trial, we have the data on what that device time is in a pretty rigorous randomized study. And it just doesn’t compare to anything else out there. It’s dramatically less”, Penumbra CEO Adam Elsesser explains to Bloomberg Intelligence.

In this Vanguards of Health Care episode, Elsesser sits down with BI medical technology analyst Matt Henriksson for an in-depth interview on Penumbra and how computer-assisted vacuum thrombectomy (CAVT) technology continues to improve, cutting the time to remove the clot while limiting blood loss. He also dives deep into the clinical results of the STORM-PE randomized clinical study, highlighting how CAVT demonstrated superiority over the standard of care to treat pulmonary-embolism patients, and its partnership with the PERT Consortium to drive public awareness of the need to treat this devastating disease.

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“Drug development has become slower and more expensive despite all the new technology,” says Eric Hughes, executive vice president of Global R&D and chief medical officer of Teva Pharmaceutical. “That’s caused by increased regulatory scrutiny, more needs for quality, more needs for real treatment effects. But we’re in a unique position where we can stay really hyper-focused on what we’re doing. I’m on calls every week driving teams on enrollment studies, looking at data as quickly as possible, being able to pivot on things that I see that they’re bringing to me and being able to make decisions very rapidly and drive programs forward. I think that that ability to be like a biotech in a very large company is part of the secret sauce of what Teva’s doing right.” In this episode of the Vanguards of Health Care podcast, Hughes sits down with Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ann-Hunter van Kirk for an in-depth interview about how the legacy generic manufacturer has built an R&D engine by replacing silos with a matrix structure, building partnerships and capitalizing on speed with AI.

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“AI agents are at the knee of the curve in terms of where things are headed,” says John Beadle, Aegis Ventures co-founder and managing partner. In this episode of the Vanguards of Health Care podcast, Beadle joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jonathan Palmer to unpack Aegis’s thesis-driven approach to founding AI-native health-care companies. He details how its 14-system consortium sources problems directly from operators, why automation is the biggest near-term value driver and how ventures like Ascertain have emerged from that model. Beadle also discusses the evolving venture market, the rise of agentic AI and why his personal experiences, shaped by his mother’s medical journey, fuel his mission to make the system more accessible and equitable.

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“In the case of iLet, we're going to say, this is how much insulin they're getting for what they consider to be a usual meal. And we learn that and we can set it that way. So we just take the responsibility of learning carb counting, which is really tough, off the user's plate. That's an extra level of automation that traditional pumps don't provide,” Beta Bionics CEO Sean Saint explains to Bloomberg Intelligence. In this episode of Vanguards of Health Care, Saint sits down with BI analyst Matt Henriksson for an in-depth interview about Beta’s iLet pump, designed to eliminate the human stress of making insulin dosing decisions. The conversation also touches on the company’s pay as you go strategy through the pharmacy channel and future product development, including the Mint patch pump.

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“If you’re not going overseas, you’re going out,” says Dr. Xingli Wang, Co-President of Fosun Pharma. He tells Bloomberg Intelligence’s Sam Fazeli how Fosun is transitioning from generics to novel medicines and positioning itself as a global innovator. With 90% of R&D now focused on oncology, autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases, Wang details Fosun’s ambition to move from a China-based manufacturer to a multinational developer with true blockbuster potential. He also reflects on how disciplined capital investment, scientific partnerships and cultural persistence could make Fosun the “Takeda of China.”
Listen to this episode of Vanguards of Health Care on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

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