The PennHealthX Podcast

Latest Episodes:

95 - Investing in Innovation - Dr. Rod Wong, MD, MBA Sep 15, 2026

Show notes

In this episode of the PennHealthX Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Rod Wong, founder and CIO of RTW Investments, to discuss his path from medical school to healthcare investing and entrepreneurship. We explore the role of physicians in driving biomedical innovation, the value of an MBA, investing and philanthropy as tools for impact, and why continuous learning is essential to building a successful MD+ career.

94 - The Business of Better Sleep - Dr. Funke Afolabi-Brown, MD, FAASM Aug 21, 2026

Show notes

In this episode of the PennHealthX Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Funke Afolabi-Brown, a triple board-certified sleep medicine physician, author, and entrepreneur. We discuss her journey from academic medicine to building her own sleep practice, learning the business of medicine from the ground up, using media to expand her impact, and her advice for students looking to pursue an MD+ career.

93 - From Bedside to Boardroom - Dr. Andrew Parambath, MD, MBA Aug 05, 2026

Show notes

Dr. Andrew Parambath, MD, MBA, is an emergency medicine resident at Stanford and a healthcare investor at Pear VC, a venture capital firm based in San Francisco. He completed his MD at the Perelman School of Medicine at Penn, where he pursued the MD-MBA program between his third and fourth years and served as a member of PennHealthX. At Pear, he works with the investment team to identify and support early-stage healthcare founders — while continuing to see patients in the ED.

In this episode, Dr. Parambath walks Will and Bella through the full arc of a healthcare VC investment — from sourcing and diligence to winning a deal and supporting founders through company building. We hear what it actually looks like to balance residency with investing, what superpowers and red flags he looks for in founding teams, and why he believes the breadth-versus-depth question is less about your resume and more about your velocity of learning.

We close with Dr. Parambath's take on what's overhyped and what's underappreciated in healthcare right now, a case for why care navigation deserves far more attention than it gets, and his advice on how to network with actual intention. His message: don't network with everybody — narrow your domain, show up with something to offer, and work at a rocket ship before you try to build your own.

92 - A Sequence of Controlled Falling - Yakov Gradinar, CP Jun 08, 2026

Show notes

Yakov Gradinar, CP, is the Chief Medical Officer of the Protez Foundation, a nonprofit organization that flies Ukrainian war amputees to the United States to receive custom prosthetics, rehabilitation, and counseling services. He trained as an orthopedic trauma surgeon in Ukraine before immigrating to the United States, where he retrained as a prosthetist. When the war in Ukraine escalated in 2022, he left a stable career to launch the Protez Foundation out of his garage — and has since grown it into an organization with over 80 employees, 150 volunteers, and donors across 40 countries, having served nearly 260 patients across 30 groups.

In this episode, Yakov walks us through a life shaped by an early cancer scare that taught him to treat every day as a gift, the humility of starting over in a new country, and what it actually takes to build a multidisciplinary nonprofit from nothing while raising seven kids and leading a church. We hear how Protez coordinates care across prosthetic fitting, physical therapy, mental health support, and community reintegration.

We close with Yakov's vision for what modern amputee care should look like, his case for a multidisciplinary and systemic approach to rehabilitation, and the philosophy that has carried him through it all. His message: name what is lost, focus on what is left, and ask yourself what you can do with it.

91 - Dr. Kit Delgado - Systems, Behavior, & Innovation May 30, 2026

Show notes

In this episode of the PennHealthX Podcast, Ziad Hassan and Habib Akouri sit down with Dr. Mucio Kit Delgado to explore his work at the intersection of emergency medicine, behavioral science, and health system innovation. Dr. Delgado is an emergency and addiction medicine physician-scientist at Penn Medicine, where he serves as Executive Director of Transformation Science & Behavioral Insights and Faculty Director of the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit. He also holds roles as an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine & Epidemiology, Associate Director at CHIBE, and Co-Chair of Penn Medicine’s Opioid Task Force. Through his leadership of the BeSAFIR Lab and Penn PORTAL, Dr. Delgado utilizes behavioral design and data-driven strategies to improve decision-making in acute care, advancing efforts in opioid stewardship, injury prevention, and patient safety.

90 - Building the Doctor's Second Brain - Dr. Dereck Paul May 20, 2026

Show notes

Dr. Dereck Paul, MD, is the co-founder and CEO of Glass Health, an AI platform helping clinicians with clinical decision-making, documentation, and workflow optimization. Dr. Paul’s path into healthcare innovation began long before residency — from studying music composition to applying to Y Combinator before even starting medical school.

In this episode, Dr. Paul reflects on the pivotal decisions that shaped his career, including balancing startup ambitions with clinical training and ultimately taking leave from residency to scale Glass Health. He shares how his frustrations with outdated healthcare software inspired him to build tools designed specifically around the realities of clinical practice and explains how modern AI systems can function as real-time collaborators for physicians.

We also explore the rapidly evolving intersection of AI and medicine, including how clinicians and students can prepare for a future increasingly shaped by large language models and automation. Dr. Paul discusses why resisting AI is the wrong approach, how physicians can stay on the technological frontier, and why empathy and firsthand clinical experience remain critical when building healthcare technology.

The conversation closes with advice for students and trainees considering entrepreneurship: embrace uncertainty, recognize rare technological inflection points when they arise, and pursue the work that would leave you with the fewest regrets.

89 - From Academic Medicine to Biotechnology - Dr. Jason Chien Apr 11, 2026

Show notes

Dr. Jason Chien, MD, MS, is the Chief Medical Officer of Mozart Therapeutics, where he leads clinical development of a first-in-class pipeline targeting autoimmune diseases, including type 1 diabetes and celiac disease. He trained in internal medicine, infectious diseases, and pulmonary and critical care medicine before building an NIH-funded research program at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He then spent nearly eight years at Gilead Sciences and five years at Johnson & Johnson, leading global R&D strategy, before returning to his scientific roots in biotech.

In this episode, Dr. Chien walks us through a career he describes as unfolding in decades — each phase building on the last. We hear what pulled him out of academia and into industry, why learning to crunch his own numbers changed everything, and what it feels like to now be responsible for putting a brand new mechanism of action into human beings for the very first time.

We close with Dr. Chien's take on leadership, the MD/MBA question, and what he would do differently looking back. His advice to students: stay curious, watch where AI is taking the field, and resist investing in any one thing that makes you lose sight of where you actually want to go.

88 - Dr. Jeff Stuart - Conflict Management & Hospital Administration Apr 01, 2026

Show notes

Hosts Isabella Stuart and William Hayes sit down with Dr. Jeff Stuart, co-founder of Resolve Conflict, board-certified anesthesiologist, and former Chief Medical Officer.

They discuss his journey from early interest in medicine to a career that spans clinical practice, hospital leadership, and entrepreneurship, highlighting key inflection points and the value of staying adaptable. Dr. Stuart shares insights on pursuing leadership roles, his decision to obtain an MBA mid-career, and how to think intentionally about MD+ pathways.

A central focus of the episode is conflict management in healthcare. Drawing from decades of experience—including leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic—he explains how communication breakdowns impact teams and patient care, and offers practical strategies rooted in self-awareness and emotional intelligence.

They also explore balancing clinical and administrative work, the evolving relationship between physicians and healthcare systems, and the importance of mentorship, curiosity, and embracing new opportunities throughout a medical career.

87 - Dr. Evan Fieldston - Leadership, Operations, & Value-Based Care Dec 03, 2025

Show notes

Hosts Habib & Ziad sit down with Dr. Evan Fieldston, Associate Chief Medical Officer at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine, who focuses on improving healthcare systems for children and their families. They discuss his journey from childhood patient to physician-leader, how training in pediatrics, business, and public policy shapes his approach to value in healthcare, the nuts and bolts of evidence-based management and quality improvement, the role of technology and AI in hospital operations, CHOP’s future expansion and behavioral health initiatives, and his advice for students interested in system-level impact.

86 - Dr. Akl Fahed - Digital Health, Genetics, & GLP-1s Nov 14, 2025

Show notes

In this episode of the PennHealthX Podcast, Habib sits down with Dr. Akl Fahed to discuss his career as an interventional cardiologist, physician–scientist, and digital health entrepreneur working at the frontiers of genomic medicine and chronic disease care. Dr. Fahed serves at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute, where he leads an NIH-funded research program focused on using large-scale genomics and data science to better understand cardiometabolic disease and identify risk long before symptoms appear. He is also the clinical co-founder of GoodPath, a virtual-first care platform that delivers integrated, whole-person management for chronic conditions through a multidisciplinary, value-based model.

This episode explores how advances in genetics, data-driven prevention, and technologies like AI can transform the way we identify, manage, and ultimately prevent chronic illness. We discuss the emergence of obesity “endotypes,” the promise of polygenic risk scores, and the rapidly expanding role of GLP-1 medications. Dr. Fahed also shares how digital health tools can reduce fragmentation, enhance patient engagement, and address rising healthcare costs by meeting patients where they are. His career offers a compelling look at how clinicians can shape the future of medicine by bridging scientific discovery, clinical practice, and technology to build systems that meaningfully improve patient health.

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