Thoughts
Perspectives on healthcare innovation, the challenges we see, and what we're looking for in the companies we back.
Three Years In: The Fastest Adoption Curve We Have Ever Measured
Three years after ChatGPT launched, 58% of American adults use generative AI, an AI answer now sits atop nine out of ten health searches, and the economists who once dismissed the AI job threat are signing public statements comparing it to the Industrial Revolution on a compressed timeline. This is the first post in a series about what that speed means for health systems - and why the clock inside our industry runs so differently.
Mike Anderes
July 22, 2026
Hiring the Infinite Employee
If AI is moving at consumer speed, why do health systems take a year or more to deploy it? Because deploying true AI is not a software purchase - it is a hiring decision. AI is, by definition, a machine that does knowledge work: it reasons, generalizes, and produces recommendations and decisions. The only way organizations have ever acquired judgment is by hiring people, so the hiring questions reappear when a health system hires a machine - the vacancy, the job description, the credentialing, the total compensation, the supervision. Add the annual budget cycle, a building full of internal customers with competing vacancies, and the fact that every AI hire is also an outsourcing decision in a community where the health system is the largest employer - and the slowness stops looking irrational.
Mike Anderes
July 22, 2026
How to Hire an Infinite Workforce, Faster
The hiring questions health systems ask of AI are legitimate. Answering them sequentially, one requisition at a time, is what takes years. This post lays out how each party can compress the timeline: what startups must bring to the interview, how health systems can build a standing hiring machine instead of artisanal one-off reviews, how to think about Epic as the permanent internal candidate, and the five metrics that should decide which AI roles get filled first.
Mike Anderes
July 30, 2026
The Prescription Is the Relationship
A generation ago, filling a prescription meant one thing: the pharmacy down the street. Today a patient can fill the same script a dozen different ways, and new technology is making the choice faster, cheaper, and more confusing all at once. We think the local health system pharmacy should win that choice. Not because we say so, but because of what it can do that none of the alternatives can. Here's the case, and the beginning of a conversation about what we will need to do differently.
Trish Tanner & Mike Anderes
June 22, 2026
100 Health Needs a Year. Three Doctor Visits.
How many times a year do you have a health need? A headache, a new pain, an upset stomach, a night of poor sleep. Research puts the answer near 100, and each one ends in a decision: ignore it, self-manage it, or seek help. New data shows AI can shape most of those decisions. Today, we are already seeing a volume exceeding one billion health questions per day.
Mike Anderes
June 15, 2026
What is the Front Door to Healthcare?
In Q1 2026, Amazon, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and CVS each launched health AI products. 32% of U.S. adults now consult AI before calling a doctor. The front door to healthcare has moved, and health systems need to decide how to respond.
Mike Anderes
June 3, 2026
Physicians Deserve a Better Way to Find Their Next Job
Physicians spend a decade training for their careers, then get asked to make one of the biggest decisions of their professional lives based on a job post, a recruiter pitch, and a carefully curated site visit. Here's why we're backing Tessellate - a company building the tool physicians should already have.
Mike Anderes
May 26, 2026
Where the Operators Lead
Most health system venture funds invest in what looks promising. We're taking a different approach: starting with the problems our health system leaders actually need to solve, and partnering with early-stage companies to address them together.
Mike Anderes
May 18, 2026
Ballad Ventures Thesis
Ballad Ventures partners with entrepreneurs solving the hardest problems in rural healthcare. Here's how we work, what we look for, and why we believe innovation built for places with the fewest resources is the innovation that scales everywhere.
Mike Anderes
May 11, 2026