AI is everywhere in healthcare, and May&#x27;s big question is whether it&#x27;s actually delivering. The money is flowing, the promises are bold, but some cracks are starting to show. Steve and Michael break down the month&#x27;s biggest stories. We cover: Digital health hitting its strongest funding quarter since the pandemic peak, and why deal concentration tells the real story How Medvi built a billion-dollar GLP-1 company on fake doctor profiles, fake reviews, and a drug with zero bioavailability Why AI in prior authorization and billing may be inflating healthcare costs rather than cutting them The peptide craze: what the science says, what regulators have banned, and why Michael is actually taking one How AI could collapse today&#x27;s narrow medical specialties into a &quot;generalist specialist&quot; model New research showing Epic&#x27;s out-of-the-box AI models fall short on real-world clinical benchmarks — Show notes: Rock Health Q1 2026 Funding Report NYT Profile of Medvi + Futurism Investigation Peterson Health Technology Institute: Administrative AI Report STAT News / Undark: BPC-157 and the Peptide Craze Health Affairs Scholar: Kocher &amp; Wachter on the Generalist-Specialist Model Springer Nature / Journal of General Internal Medicine: Epic AI Model Meta-Analysis — 🙏 Do you like this podcast? An easy and free way to help keep the show going is to leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you&#x27;re listening. — 📍 Connect with us: Heart of Healthcare website LinkedIn YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

📣 Digital Health Download: May 2026

The Heart of Healthcare | A Digital Health Podcast

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** The Heart of Healthcare | A Digital Health Podcast

## Participants

- **Hallie Tecco** (None)
- **Michael Esquivel** (None)
- **Steve Kraus** (None)

## Transcript

I have a friend, a very good friend of mine who is on the public buy side and he was asking about a company that is, you know, doing the pre-IPO roadshow, what I thought about it. But he said to me, is this a good company or is this just the best looking house in a bad neighborhood? And what he meant by that is like, is the overall digital health healthcare innovation sector just like not as attractive as all the rest of the sort of venture backed ecosystem.

Welcome to the Heart of Healthcare podcast. I'm Hallie Tecco. I'm Michael Esquivel. And I'm Steve Kraus. And every Monday we bring you the latest in healthcare innovation as we sit down with entrepreneurs and industry experts. So buckle up and join us as we figure out how to improve healthcare for all.

Hello listeners, and welcome back to the Heart of Healthcare. I'm your co-host, Steve Krause. And today I'm excited to be joined by Michael Esquivel as we talk about the digital health download news for the month of May. They say April showers bring May flowers. Michael, I could tell you here in the Northeast, we need some sunshine and flowers. But we got a lot of great blossoms of news stories to talk about this week. Lots on the plate. How you doing my friend? Yeah, doing well, Steve. Great to see you and excited.

We definitely had some rain here on the West Coast as well. So excited for some great weather. But listen, Steve, before we kick off, it would be remiss of me not to say congratulations to you and Hallie on our podcast winning a Webby Award. Yeah. How exciting. I mean, the episode that you co-hosted, Steve, with Eric Larson on why healthcare is totally unprepared for AI was the winner. Amazing. And I'm super excited, super humbled to be on this journey with you and Hallie, Steve, and congratulations.

I mean, it takes a village and we know it's not just the three of us, but what an amazing recognition. Yeah, we have a whole team behind us who we are grateful for, who helped produce episode, including our wonderful producer, Kyle, who's listening in the background here. But also what it shows, Michael, is if you get great guests and talk about great topics, it leads to good podcasts. And we had Eric Larson on, as you mentioned, it was an amazing episode about a year ago.

It was released talking about why healthcare is totally unprepared for AI. And so listeners know we're recording another episode with Eric a year later, which we're going to release on May 18th about where healthcare AI stands. So that'll be fun to take a look back 365 days hence.

For sure. There was a little over $4 billion across 110 deals of capital that was raised. But maybe like the broader global Q1 numbers, the real story is deal concentration. Fewer deals, but bigger checks, Steve. You know, it's something tha...

📣 Digital Health Download: May 2026

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.

📣 Digital Health Download: May 2026

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.