Raising Health

Can AI finally make healthcare cheaper? UnitedHealth Group Chief Commercial Officer Dan Kueter believes it can, potentially within a single-digit number of years, but only once AI moves beyond automating existing administrative work and starts enabling things the healthcare system couldn’t do before.
At a16z BUILD, Dan joins General Partner Julie Yoo to discuss a generational shift in employer-sponsored health insurance, why self-funded plans are becoming accessible to smaller employers, and how AI is changing everything from underwriting and distribution to consumer navigation.
They also get into UnitedHealthcare’s goal of eliminating 30% of prior authorizations, what a “touchless” version could eventually look like, and why personal AI agents could become a new front door to healthcare, forcing insurers to meet consumers wherever they choose to interact.

Resources:
Follow Dan Kueter on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dankueter/
Follow Julie Yoo on X: https://x.com/julesyoo
Learn more about a16z Bio + Health: https://a16z.com/bio-health/

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Healthcare spent the last 15 years digitizing medical records. Now the challenge is making that data useful to patients, AI agents, and new health technology companies. National Coordinator for Health IT Dr. Tom Keane says the next phase is about interoperability, patient access, and lowering barriers for new entrants.
Tom joins a16z’s Julie Yoo and Colin Rom to discuss how healthcare data can move more easily through APIs and TEFCA, how wearables and AI-generated data fit in, and where privacy and security concerns can become competitive moats.
And when Julie asks when AI might produce a serious new competitor to today’s dominant electronic health record companies, Tom predicts: within one to two years.

Resources:
Follow Thomas Keane on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-keane-b41a5012/
Follow Julie Yoo on X: https://x.com/julesyoo
Follow Colin Rom on X: https://x.com/CF_Rom
Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT: https://healthit.gov

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AI is making healthcare advice abundant. But what happens when you actually need to act on it? General Medicine CEO TJ Parker argues that the new bottleneck is getting the lab, booking the specialist, filling the prescription, or understanding what any of it will cost.
At BUILD 2026, a16z General Partner Vineeta Agarwala sits down with TJ to unpack General Medicine's vision for a healthcare “store”: one place where patients can understand their options, prices, and insurance coverage, then actually get care.
They discuss why convenience can materially change patient behavior, how AI can connect medical records and benefits to the right next step, and what TJ learned building PillPack and Amazon Pharmacy about making a complicated healthcare system feel simple.

Resources:
Follow TJ Parker: https://x.com/tjparker
Follow Vineeta Agarwala: https://x.com/vintweeta
Learn more about General Medicine: https://generalmedicine.co/
Learn more about a16z Bio + Health: https://a16z.com/bio-health/

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a16z General Partner Jorge Conde sits down with Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel to discuss a major milestone for mRNA technology: positive Phase 3 results from Moderna and Merck’s individualized treatment for melanoma, after more than a decade of work on personalized cancer vaccines.

Stéphane explains how the treatment works by sequencing an individual patient’s tumor and healthy cells, identifying the mutations most relevant to their cancer, and encoding up to 34 of them into an mRNA designed specifically for that patient. Rather than simply unleashing the immune system, the goal is to teach it exactly what to recognize and attack.

They also unpack the engineering challenge of manufacturing a different medicine for every patient, how Moderna has brought the process down to roughly 42 days from biopsy to treatment, and what it would take to manufacture personalized medicines at scale. Finally, Stéphane looks beyond melanoma to lung, kidney, bladder, pancreatic, and gastric cancers, as well as Moderna’s longer-term work applying mRNA to rare genetic and autoimmune diseases.



Resources:

Follow Stéphane Bancel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/st%C3%A9phane-bancel-8185251/

Follow Jorge Conde on X: https://x.com/JorgeCondeBio





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Julie Yoo sits down with Dr. Suchi Saria, founder and CEO of Bayesian Health, to discuss the current state of clinical AI and what it takes to deploy AI systems in real-world healthcare settings.

While much of the recent attention around AI has focused on copilots, chatbots, and administrative workflows, Saria argues that the greatest opportunity lies in helping clinicians make better decisions at the point of care. She explains how Bayesian Health's clinical intelligence platform continuously analyzes multimodal patient data to identify signs of deterioration, sepsis, and other high-risk conditions before they become medical emergencies.

The conversation explores FDA approval, reimbursement, clinician trust, AI governance, hospital workflows, and why healthcare requires a higher standard of evidence than most software categories. Along the way, Saria shares lessons from bringing AI into clinical practice, the future of proactive medicine, and why the next era of healthcare may be defined by continuous intelligence rather than reactive care.

 

Resources:

Follow Suchi Saria on X: https://x.com/suchisaria

Follow Julie Yoo on X: https://x.com/julieyoo

 

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