How We Chose
We looked at news from September 15 to October 27, 2026 about healthcare companies led by their founders, and we kept founders whose companies showed momentum in that window: growth in customers and usage, national partnerships, regulatory clearances, and acquisitions. We ranked them by our editors' judgment of each company's momentum and of what the founder built to get there. Funding appears only as context.
Healthcare Founders to Watch (November 2026)
| # | Name | Company | Why now |
|---|
| 1 | Josiah Meyer | Healthleap | Healthleap grew from 3 to 50+ hospitals in a year |
| 2 | Jung Park | Parakeet Health | Parakeet's recurring revenue grew 10x in a year |
| 3 | Malinka Walaliyadde | AKASA | AKASA launched autonomous inpatient coding; volume up almost 6x |
| 4 | Derek Lo | Medallion | Medallion acquired Andros; credentialing files up 8x |
| 5 | Havi Nguyen | Abby Care | Abby Care's patient census grew more than 5x |
| 6 | Anshul Rathi | CertifyOS | Shared credentialing program with UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, and Centene |
| 7 | Connie Lehman | Clairity | Everlywell rolled out Clairity Breast nationwide |
| 8 | Connor Landgraf | Eko Health | FDA clearance and launch of Eko's CORE 300, Oct 22 |
| 9 | Ben Hackett | Basalt Health | Basalt cut referral processing time 86% at Lifepoint |
| 10 | Cheryl Sew Hoy | Tiny Health | Tiny Health's revenue more than doubling each year |
50+Hospitals using Healthleap, up from three a year earlier
1. Josiah Meyer
Co-founder and CEO, Healthleap
- Company
- Healthleap
- Why now
- Told TechCrunch on October 7, 2026 that Healthleap's revenue grew more than 10 times in a year.
Meyer grew up in South Africa, ran his first businesses as a teenager, and studied actuarial science and machine learning. He built Healthleap with his sister, Jemima Meyer, starting with AI that spots hospital patients who may be malnourished.
Why now
Healthleap reads every adult inpatient's record overnight and writes a risk score into the care team's workflow each morning. Meyer told TechCrunch that it grew from three hospitals to more than 50 in a year, with customers including Penn Medicine, Cedars-Sinai, Intermountain, Houston Methodist, and Emory Healthcare, and that every customer has seen a return of at least five times its contract price.
Josiah Meyer profileHealthleap review
10xGrowth in Parakeet's annual recurring revenue over the past year
2. Jung Park
Co-founder and CEO, Parakeet Health
- Company
- Parakeet Health
- Why now
- Parakeet reported 10x growth in annual recurring revenue on October 1, 2026.
Park spent more than 25 years running operations, data, and technology inside healthcare companies, including Epocrates and One Medical, both of which went public. He later served as chief information officer of a dermatology group, the specialty Parakeet sold to first.
Why now
Parakeet now works with six of the 10 largest dermatology groups in the U.S., supporting more than 2,800 providers at more than 1,100 locations, according to its announcement. It also signed a national collaboration with Qualderm Partners, which supports nearly 160 practices in 17 states, and is moving into primary care, behavioral health, and other specialties.
Jung Park profileParakeet Health review
1 in 10U.S. inpatient discharges handled by AKASA's customers
3. Malinka Walaliyadde
Co-founder and CEO, AKASA
- Company
- AKASA
- Why now
- AKASA launched autonomous inpatient coding and documentation review on October 2, 2026.
Walaliyadde co-founded AKASA with Ben Beadle-Ryby, Andy Atwal, and Varun Ganapathi because, in his words, "the healthcare system itself is overly complex and inefficient." AKASA trains AI on each health system's own clinical records and coding decisions, so billing teams can turn a patient's chart into a claim faster.
Why now
AKASA's new AI can code an inpatient case less than 90 seconds after discharge, work that typically takes a human coder 30 to 60 minutes, according to its announcement. The inpatient volume AKASA processes grew almost six times in the past year, and its customers account for about 1 in 10 U.S. inpatient discharges.
Malinka Walaliyadde profileAKASA review
8xGrowth in Medallion's credentialing files from 2024 to 2026
4. Derek Lo
Founder and CEO, Medallion
- Company
- Medallion
- Why now
- Medallion acquired Andros on September 15, 2026.
Lo started building Py, a mobile app that teaches coding, from his Yale dorm room in 2016 and sold it to Hired in 2019. He founded Medallion in 2020 to automate the credentialing, licensing, and compliance work that slows down provider networks.
Why now
With Andros, Medallion added more than one million providers across nearly 400 organizations and health plans, and it says the deal makes it the largest AI-native credentialing platform in the country (announcement). Its credentialing volume grew from 24,739 files in 2024 to more than 204,000 so far in 2026, and NCQA renewed its certification through 2029, according to its certification update.
Derek Lo profileMedallion review
5xGrowth in Abby Care's patient census since 2024
5. Havi Nguyen
Founder and CEO, Abby Care
- Company
- Abby Care
- Why now
- Abby Care announced its Series C in October 2026, with its patient census up more than five times.
Nguyen grew up in Baytown, Texas, the eldest daughter of Vietnamese immigrants who ran a nail salon, and handled her family's Medicaid paperwork from a young age. She built Abby Care to train and pay family members who care for relatives at home, according to Forbes Vietnam.
Why now
Abby Care's patient census has grown more than five times since the third quarter of 2024, and it now operates in eight states, according to its announcement. Nguyen said that pairing a family caregiver with clinical oversight and technology means "you can deliver care that is more proactive and preventative than other traditional care models."
Havi Nguyen profileAbby Care review
3National health plans committed to CertifyOS's shared credentialing program
6. Anshul Rathi
Founder and CEO, CertifyOS
- Company
- CertifyOS
- Why now
- CertifyOS launched its National Shared Credentialing Program in September 2026.
Rathi was one of the first employees at Oscar Health, where he spent six years building its provider network team. When he looked for credentialing vendors there, he mostly found narrow compliance tools, and he began building CertifyOS during the pandemic.
Why now
UnitedHealthcare, Cigna Healthcare, and Centene committed to the program, which gives providers one shared credentialing home in place of separate applications to each plan. "We can finally remove the duplication and delays that have strained the system for years," Rathi said in the announcement.
Anshul Rathi profileCertifyOS review
NationwideEverlywell began offering Clairity Breast across the U.S.
7. Connie Lehman
Founder and CEO, Clairity
- Company
- Clairity
- Why now
- Everlywell rolled out Clairity Breast nationwide in October 2026.
Lehman is a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and was division chief of breast imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. With MIT professor Regina Barzilay she built a deep learning model that predicts from a mammogram whether a woman is likely to develop breast cancer within five years, and she founded Clairity in 2020 to bring that prediction into everyday screening.
Why now
"The information we need to understand a woman's breast cancer risk has been in her mammogram all along," Lehman told pharmaphorum as Everlywell began offering the test nationwide. Updated National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines earlier in 2026 added AI-based mammogram risk assessment as an option for women from age 35.
Connie Lehman profileClairity review
750,000+Eko devices delivered to clinicians
8. Connor Landgraf
Co-founder and CEO, Eko Health
- Company
- Eko Health
- Why now
- Eko received FDA clearance for and launched the CORE 300 on October 22, 2026.
Landgraf started Eko in 2013 while finishing a bioengineering degree at UC Berkeley, after a senior thesis project led him to the stethoscope, which he has said "hadn't meaningfully changed in 200 years." Eko began with an attachment that made analog stethoscopes digital and then built FDA-cleared AI for heart murmurs and low ejection fraction.
Why now
The CORE 300 combines traditional and digital listening in a single chestpiece and is priced in line with premium traditional stethoscopes, according to Eko's announcement. "Our goal is to bring the most ubiquitous clinical exam into the precise digital era," Landgraf said.
Connor Landgraf profileEko Health review
86%Faster referral processing at Lifepoint Health with Basalt
9. Ben Hackett
Founder and CEO, Basalt Health
- Company
- Basalt Health
- Why now
- Basalt announced its Lifepoint results and Series A on September 24, 2026.
Hackett spent nearly a decade as a product leader at Accolade, and he grew up with a mother and grandmother who were nurses. He founded Basalt in 2024 to speed up how rehab and skilled nursing facilities review the referral packets hospitals send them.
Why now
Basalt cut median referral processing time at Lifepoint Health from 8.5 minutes to 1.2 minutes, and it is rolling out to 62 ScionHealth hospitals and 49 more Lifepoint markets by the end of 2026, according to its announcement.
Ben Hackett profileBasalt Health review
4xGrowth last year in Powered by Tiny, its business-to-business arm
10. Cheryl Sew Hoy
Founder and CEO, Tiny Health
- Company
- Tiny Health
- Why now
- Told Crunchbase News in September 2026 that revenue has more than doubled each year.
Sew Hoy, a Cornell-trained engineer and mother of three, started Tiny Health after her daughter's eczema and food sensitivities led her into research on the infant gut. She had earlier founded Reclip.It, a shopping startup.
Why now
Sew Hoy told Crunchbase News that revenue has more than doubled every year and that Powered by Tiny, which sells tests through clinicians and companies, grew fourfold last year. More than 6,000 practitioners use Tiny Health's tests, a channel that began when customers took their results to their doctors.
Cheryl Sew Hoy profileTiny Health review
What to Watch Next Month
- Healthleap's new conditions. Josiah Meyer's Healthleap is validating programs for aspiration pneumonia, pressure ulcers, and heart failure readmissions beyond its malnutrition screening.
- Basalt's rollout. Ben Hackett's Basalt is due to reach 111 Lifepoint and ScionHealth markets by the end of 2026.
- CertifyOS's launch. Anshul Rathi's CertifyOS plans to launch its shared credentialing service in fall 2026.
The Healthcare Founders to Watch list is updated monthly. This is the first edition. Past editions will be linked here, and every HIR list and report is in our research library.