A Thousand Points of Light—and the Hard Truth About Healthcare Innovation

It’s a familiar script.

At the start of 2026, I came back to work re-energized – ideas flowing, optimism intact. But here at the end of January, the realities of operating in healthcare innovation reasserted themselves, as formidable as ever.

The whirlwind of the JPM Healthcare Conference was both an inspiration and a reality-check. My adopted hometown of San Francisco was practically glittering. Hallways were buzzing, calendars were stacked, and I was reminded how much I genuinely love this industry—and the people in it. I made IRL connections with the friends I’ve known for so many years working in healthcare, and I continue to be inspired by the energy pouring into women’s health in particular. I met founders from new companies, reconnected with longtime leaders, and literally ran into familiar faces on the street.

And yet…

The sunshine and upbeat conversations at JPM masked a harder truth: The mountain of challenges facing healthcare has never been bigger. Costs are staggering. Access is shrinking. The population is getting sicker.

We now spend $5 trillion a year on healthcare in the U.S. at almost 18% of GDP, more than any country in the world. And despite decades of reform, digitization, and billions of dollars invested in innovation, outcomes continue to lag. Life expectancy has declined. Rural hospitals are closing. Burnout is rampant. Patients are delaying care because they can’t afford it.

So the uncomfortable question keeps surfacing: How have we funded all this innovation—and still ended up here?

Now layer in the hype cycle around AI, and the cognitive dissonance only grows. AI is powerful, no doubt. But AI layered on top of a dysfunctional system is still dysfunction. Technology alone doesn’t fix misaligned incentives, fragmented care, or a payment system that rewards volume over value.

From the vantage point of any single innovator, the problem can feel impossible. We’re trying to move a $5 trillion behemoth one product, one workflow, one population at a time. Even the most successful digital health companies (like those that have reached IPO scale) are still relatively small when measured against the sheer size and inertia of the healthcare system.

And yet… I do see the change.

I see it every time I hear a patient story where we catch a risk early. When an intervention around a life circumstance—housing, mental health, caregiver stress—meaningfully alters someone’s health trajectory. Those moments matter. They are real. They are not hype.

Which brings me to the question I keep coming back to: If thousands of companies are each making small but real improvements, does that add up to something bigger?

I think it has to.

Progress in healthcare doesn’t arrive as a single breakthrough moment. It comes from a thousand points of light – incremental advances, often invisible on their own, slowly reshaping how care is delivered and experienced. We’ve seen this pattern in other industries.Transformation happens not because one company “fixes everything,” but because many players push the system forward together.

But here’s the critical part: Those points of light can’t exist in silos.

If each of us builds in isolation, we remain fragile and small links in a chain that’s prone to breaking. If we collaborate, integrate, and design with the broader ecosystem in mind, those links become stronger. Connected. Resilient.

Healthcare doesn’t need another silver bullet. It needs alignment. It needs interoperability. Not just technical, but organizational and cultural. And it needs innovators who recognize that impact at scale is rarely about standing alone.

I don’t think optimism is naïve here. I think it’s necessary. But it has to be paired with realism – and a willingness to work together in ways this industry hasn’t always been great at.

A thousand points of light can move healthcare forward.
But only if we let them connect