Healthcare Tech Entrepreneur Career Transition

Host of AI Amplified, Dr. Heather Bassett, interviewed Dr. Justin Schrager, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer at Vital. They discussed his career transition from emergency medicine physician to tech entrepreneur, explaining how he co-founded Vital, a healthcare technology company focused on improving patient communication and care through AI. He described his background as a non-traditional medical student who worked as a high school chemistry teacher before pursuing medicine and shared how his research interests in health services and epidemiology led him to explore AI applications in healthcare. Dr. Schrager explained how he and co-founder Aaron Patzer developed their initial concept for operational AI in emergency departments, which later evolved into patient-facing technology during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Patient Communication in Healthcare Systems

Justin and Heather discussed the need for better patient communication and information transparency in healthcare, particularly during hospital visits. Justin explained that his company, Vital, aims to address this gap by providing patients with information about wait times, procedures, and expected outcomes, similar to what customers might expect of service industries. He noted that while many AI tools focus on financial returns for healthcare systems, Vital takes a patient-centered approach, which has proven successful over 10 years of operation. The conversation touched on how improved patient experience can benefit healthcare systems, including potential reductions in readmissions.

Generative AI Solutions in Radiology Patient Communication

Justin discussed his company’s early adoption of Generative AI solutions, with ChatGPT, to help patients understand radiology reports, which was part of a pilot program before the technology’s market release. He explained how they published research measuring safety and quality of the AI-generated explanations, using a panel of board-certified physicians to evaluate the outputs. The conversation touched on the broader challenge of translating medical information into patient-friendly language, with both participants acknowledging the gap between medical professionals’ communication and patients’ understanding.

AI in Healthcare Implementation Standards

Justin discussed how Vital provides timely, context-specific information to patients during healthcare visits to improve understanding and reduce overwhelming patients with too much information at once. He highlighted a growing trend where patients are using AI tools like ChatGPT to interpret clinical data and medical conversations, which raises concerns about unregulated and potentially unsafe information consumption. Justin emphasized the need for physicians to have a voice in guiding AI implementation in healthcare settings, leading to the creation of the AI Care Standard™ initiative to address these challenges and ensure patient safety.

Agentic Systems in Healthcare Discussion

Justin and Heather discussed the role of agentic systems in healthcare, emphasizing their potential to address access gaps and democratize medical information while maintaining the essential human elements of physician-patient relationships. They highlighted the importance of balancing technological advancements with the personal touch required in medical care. The conversation also touched on personal experiences with healthcare systems and the challenges of balancing efficiency with quality care.

Justin Schrager, MD, on LinkedIn

Vital on LinkedIn

Vital website

Host
Heather Bassett, MD
Chief Medical Officer
Xsolis

Dr. Heather Bassett continues to drive AI innovation in healthcare to address operational challenges for health systems and plans, guiding them toward positive operational and patient outcomes. Rare among Chief Medical Officers at healthcare technology companies, she leads both the clinical services and data science teams. She architected Xsolis’ Care Level Score™, which integrates clinical expertise and data science to provide a numerical representation of the appropriate care status for each patient. This score and Xsolis’ AI-driven platform, Dragonfly, are uniting payers and providers during concurrent authorization processes to improve utilization management, patient outcomes, and reduce costs. Dragonfly is in use at hundreds of hospitals, health systems and health plans across America.

Dr. Bassett is passionate about advancing responsible AI in healthcare and is actively leading Xsolis’ involvement with the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI), an organization advancing the responsible development, deployment, and oversight of AI in healthcare, which Xsolis joined as an Early Member. Dr. Bassett was recognized by Nashville Business Journal’s Health Care Innovation Awards as Chief Medical Officer of the Year 2021 and by Becker’s Hospital Review’s Women in Health IT to Know 2023-2025. She has contributed articles or been featured in Newsweek, Forbes, AARP Magazine, InformationWeek, Becker’s, Fierce Healthcare, Medical Economics, MedCity News, Physicians Practice, and Patient Safety Quality Healthcare.

She earned a B.S. in biological sciences from Carnegie Mellon University and her Doctor of Medicine from the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, where she worked as a research associate in the field of DNA repair. She undertook her residency in internal medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and worked as a hospitalist at Centennial Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., for eight years. She is board-certified in internal medicine.

Guest
Justin Schrager, MD, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer
Vital

Justin Schrager is an Emergency Medicine physician and the co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Vital. He actively practices medicine while leading the development of innovative solutions to improve patient care through technology, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Dr. Schrager is the author of 20+ papers with a focus on responsibly advancing the use of AI in healthcare. His mission is to use technology to improve the acute care experience for patients, their families, and the people who take care of them in the hospital.

At Vital, Dr. Schrager has been instrumental in creating user-friendly software that provides personalized guidance to patients in hospitals and emergency departments. The platform aims to modernize patient communication systems to enhance clinical understanding, patient experience, and care ownership.

Through his dual roles as a practicing physician and health tech innovator, Dr. Schrager continues to bridge the gap between clinical care and technological advancement, striving to make healthcare more compassionate, connected, and efficient.