Medicaid reimbursements are shrinking, providers are pulling back, and vulnerable populations are losing access to care. Akido Labs is betting that AI can expand care capacity fast enough to reverse that trend.

This week, Halle sits down with Prashant Samant, co-founder and CEO of Akido Labs, to discuss what it actually takes to scale care with AI. They explore why Akido built a full-stack healthcare company, how its AI operates inside real clinical workflows, and why the hardest patients are the best place to test whether this model works.

We cover:

Why he chose to build a full-stack care model
How AI changes who can deliver care, and where
Why most healthcare AI tools fail once they hit real clinical workflows
Why the doctor shortage cannot be solved by training more doctors
How the bottleneck in healthcare AI is absorption, not innovation

About our guest:

Prashant S. Samant is CEO and co-founder of Akido, a healthcare technology company that builds clinical AI and operates a multi-state medical network serving hundreds of thousands of patients. He co-founded Akido in 2015 through USC’s Digital Health Lab. In 2023, he and his co-founders received the EY Entrepreneur of the Year–Greater Los Angeles Award. Samant is also a co-founder and board member of Grid110, a nonprofit accelerator supporting early-stage entrepreneurs. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis.

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Show Notes:

Akido’s recently-published white paper on street medicine

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What It Takes To Scale Care With AI | Aikido Labs CEO Prashant Samant

The Heart of Healthcare | A Digital Health Podcast

What It Takes To Scale Care With AI | Aikido Labs CEO Prashant Samant