Yale's health innovators put community first

"Move fast and break things" has been Silicon Valley's mantra for over a decade. At the 2026 Yale Innovation Summit Health Track, a different imperative took hold: chase the problem that needs solving — and slow down long enough to listen to communities.

The Health Track was held May 27–28 at the Yale School of Management as part of the Yale Innovation Summit, organized by Yale Ventures. Led by volunteer organizers from across Yale, the track brought together experts, entrepreneurs, investors, and health system leaders to explore how innovation can build trust, improve health outcomes, and expand access to care.

The Health Track focused on centering community voices and using AI to serve people, not just efficiency, said YSPH Senior Fellow Kaakpema “KP” Yelpaala, MPH ’06, the Health Track's volunteer lead.

Building trust by developing technology that makes health care more inclusive was a theme of the “Health and Veritas” podcast with co-hosts Howard Forman, MD, MBA and YSPH Dean Megan L. Ranney, MD, MPH. Forman and Ranney introduced themselves to a live audience as “physicians and scientists trying to get closer to the truth about health and health care.”

They led their guests in conversation about developing technology alongside underserved communities. Jaya Dadwal, MPH ’26 (Healthcare Management) and founder of forEVA Health, said she became an entrepreneur to develop a tool that helps women understand and validate their health care experiences.

“It’s very much what women deserve,” she said.

A reason for a lack of trust in health care is that many people don’t feel listened to and don’t have solutions that work for them, Ranney, a physician and one of the country's leading public health experts, said.

Kimberley Steele, MD, a bariatric surgeon and program director at the federal Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), focuses on research that is "structurally stuck" — topics neglected by traditional medicine. The lymphatic system is one. Steele's interest in it became personal when her son was diagnosed with a lymphatic disease at age 6; he is now 17 and stable, though no cure exists. Drawing on lived experiences—hers and others—is, she said, "the best part of my job."

Yusuf Ransome, associate professor at YSPH, founded Soul Health, a chatbot-based technology solution that engages users in a way that matches their spiritual belief systems. He describes spirituality as “the missing middle” of mental health wellbeing. Seven out of 10 Americans describe themselves as spiritual, Ransome said. “How do we incorporate that belief system into our health systems?”

“The challenge isn’t building more technology. It’s ensuring that as innovations scale, we also reach the communities that stand to benefit most,” said Yelpaala, who is Inaugural Faculty Director of YSPH’s Future of Health Innovation Hub.

During a discussion that Yelpaala moderated with health entrepreneurs and investors, Moses Adubi, principal at Deerfield Management Company, urged entrepreneurs to “chase the problem that needs solving,” such as gaps in rural health care. But innovative technologies should bridge health divides, not make them worse, Adubi said. Virtual care delivery platforms for mental health and aging in place are other gaps, he noted.

The panel explored how AI, workforce innovation, and new care delivery models are changing health care. Panelists emphasized that successful companies will combine technology with trusted human relationships and measurable health outcomes.

Colby Takeda, co-founder and CEO of Pear Suite, is considering how AI can improve the company’s margins and outcomes while keeping its focus on supporting community health workers. In addition to venture capital, Pear Suite has also received funding from foundations and grants, including Rock Health, whose CEO, Katie Drasser, was also on the panel.

Adubi suggested that startups search for investors who “help you solve problems rather than just writing a check.” There is a confirmation bias on the definition of success, he added. “Not everyone has to have a billion-dollar outcome.”

The Health Track also featured a live pitch competition where entrepreneurs presented solutions in maternal health, AI-enabled clinical intelligence, medical devices, workforce innovation, and care delivery. Finalists competed for prizes and received feedback from investors, clinicians, and industry leaders.

The track also included a partnership with the Yale New Haven Health AI Symposium, held on May 26, with its programming included in the Summit’s first day. This included panelists from Yale School of Medicine and Yale New Haven Health discussing the opportunities and challenges of using AI in clinical care and health systems.

Ingrid Katz, MD, MHS, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, moderated a discussion about how global health leaders are expanding access to care and strengthening health systems using AI, digital tools, and new financial models in low- and middle-income countries.

Ransome moderated the final panel discussion on wellbeing and young people. Topics included emotional intelligence, mental health, and the need to design community-focused tools that connect online and offline worlds, especially for young people. Speakers said it is important to build solutions that support human connection and wellbeing, as well as technological innovation.

"We could do more if we slow down," and take the time to speak with communities about their needs, said Panelist Wizdom Powell, PhD, CEO of Unified Health.

On the second day of the summit, Ranney hosted a fireside chat with Andy Slavitt, former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and senior advisor to the COVID-19 Response Coordinator during the Biden administration.

Slavitt, co-founder and general partner of Town Hall Ventures, discussed how AI is transforming productivity in health care and solving real problems for patients and clinicians. “It allows quality medicine to get to people regardless of their circumstances,” he said.

Drawing on his experiences in government, entrepreneurship, and venture investing, Slavitt emphasized that health innovators must balance ambitious goals for improving health care with the policy, reimbursement, and financing environments needed to scale new solutions. He highlighted the growing importance of value-based care models that align improved outcomes with lower costs and noted that Town Hall Ventures looks for founders with the resilience, commitment, and long-term vision required to navigate the complexities of the health care system.

When asked about his transition from the private sector to public service, Slavitt said that as soon as he saw his office, he knew he had made the right decision. “I had never had a job before with an American flag in my office,” Slavitt said. “It was there to remind me why I was there.”

Ranney ended the conversation with a question about innovation in public health. “We have clearly undervalued what public health has given us as a society. We took it for granted,” Slavitt said. “COVID set us back to some degree – with some portion of the public even further. The question we must answer is if we don’t value public health, who takes care of the things that are in the people’s interest to do?”

Jeffrey Townsend, Elihu Professor of Biostatistics at YSPH and Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, hosted a Biotech ePoster presentation at the 2026 Yale Innovation Summit about MultiTarga, a company that recently received two investor commitments, including funding from a Yale Angel Initiative.

The Multi-Targeted Primer (MTP) reagents he invented are computationally designed to capture only the RNA that matters, said co-founder Evan Cudone, a Yale PhD candidate in Computational Biology & Bioinformatics. MTP solves a core problem: when scientists sequence RNA from a biological sample, most of what they capture is “noise,” molecules with little research value.

Their patented machine-learning platform is configurable for any organism, target class, and biological question. The goal is to lower the barrier to high-quality RNA sequencing across medicine (oncology), agriculture, and infectious disease surveillance.