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Originally posted on Fast Company.
Solving healthcare’s manifold problems is no easy task, in part because there are just so many. There are the research questions of how to treat diseases, there’s questions of access and affordability, and even about creating better working conditions for staff. These require different solutions ranging from technical to human. As such, for the third year in a row, Fast Company‘s Most Innovative Companies is recognizing 20 companies moving the needle on some of healthcare’s most pressing challenges.
This year we’re celebrating honorees like Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for conducting research on bespoke gene therapy treatments, AxMed for ensuring people have access to medicine, and Alice, a Brazilian insurer, that’s building a different kind of care team to improve health outcomes for its members.
And, of course, it goes without saying, in a year where AI’s presence is undeniable, we’re also raising a glass to the companies who are breaking new ground with AI. Our honorees include companies that are doing everything from using AI to assist with dental health diagnoses (Overjet), reduce pre-authorization denials (SamaCare), and surgeons improve their technique (Theator).
1. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
For breaking new ground with gene editing therapy
When KJ Muldoon was born, he was diagnosed with a rare, life-threatening urea cycle disorder. At the time the only treatment was a liver transplant—a challenging procedure for newborns. Doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia had been researching how to create bespoke gene therapy treatments for diseases like KJ’s, and realized that they had a potential solution. They raced to develop a custom CRISPR therapy in which a gene entered the nucleus of the cell, and corrected defects in his KJ’s liver. In February 2025, KJ became the first person in the world to receive personalized gene-editing therapy and is thriving.
CHOP is positioning itself as a leader in the nascent field of cell and gene therapy. It currently has more than 65 clinical trials using cell and gene therapy (CGT) to treat heart failure, metabolic disorders, hearing loss and more.
In 2025, CHOP treated 132 children with approved and investigational cell and gene therapy—more than double what it did in 2019. It has received over $35 million in NIH funding for CGT research, and its spinout company, Latus Bio, received over $54 million in Series A funding to develop gene therapy treatments for hard to reach areas of the central nervous system.
2. Axmed
For coming up with a treatment for global drug shortages
Nearly two billion people, a quarter of the world’s population, have no access to safe, high quality, and affordable medication. Health-tech platform Axmed wants to change this. In February, the Swiss company launched a digital procurement platform that connects vetted drug manufacturers to verified buyers such as government health departments, hospitals and NGOs in eight countries.
One of Axmed’s major innovations powering this platform is a quality assurance and verification engine that ensures manufacturer credentials, regulatory approvals, and product quality data can be listed on the digital marketplace.
In June, the company also launched a partnership with Every Pregnancy, a coalition of NGOs that work to ensure safe pregnancies happen in areas of conflict. Under the partnership, Axmed plans to help ensure that expecting mothers in undeserved and conflict-affected countries have access to the medications they need for a safe delivery.
And people are buying in: during 2025, the company served over 4.2 million people, facilitating delivering over 56.5 million units of medications. The company raised $13 million, including $6 million from the Gates Foundation. Axmed is on track to close out the year with a whopping high seven figure revenue—steep growth from five figure revenue the year before.
3. Lantern
For making specialty care such as infusions more accessible and cost effective—and then showing everyone else how it’s done
Over the next year, healthcare costs are expected to rise by about 10%. Specialty care such as surgeries, cancer treatment and infusions are expected to account for about half of costs, putting employers in a difficult situation.
Texas-based Lantern is a specialty care platform that wants to lower employer costs for specialty care. The company recently expanded its coverage to include infusions, a key treatment for cancer and other complex conditions like autoimmune disorders. Typically, hospitals charge about $75,000 a year per patient for infusions. In 2025, Lantern added over 500 infusion sites to it’s national network, including ambulatory centers and home care providers. This allows employers to save up to 40%, while also ensuring a lower nurse to patient ratio and that patients have care options closer to home.
Lantern’s model has been successful on multiple fronts. Its complications rate for surgery is below 1% compared with an industry average of 8-15%, and members get appointments 24 days faster than average while saving between $2,000 and $4,000 per procedure. To date, Lantern has generated over $1 billion in savings for employers as well and covers over 12 million members.
4. Overjet
For bringing transparency to dental treatment costs
Almost half of patients decline recommended dental treatments because they are not sure how much the treatment costs and if insurance will cover it. Overjet, founded by experts from MIT and Harvard, is building AI tools that can help standardized dental diagnoses and bring transparency to the cost of treatment.
Last November, Overjet launched IRIS, an AI powered imaging software that uses X-rays and photos to capture cavities, gum disease, bone loss and infections, and AI to provide analysis. IRIS uses AI to sharpen blurry images, and provides AI analysis in the same system, rather than using two separate systems (one for photos and one for AI), consolidating costs. As of September 2025, over 1000 clinics are using IRIS.
Overjet also launched ReviewPASS insurance platform. This tool lets patients know when they are in the chair if their insurance claim will be approved, instead of forcing them to decide whether or not to get treatment and then wait weeks to find out if insurance will cover the cost.
In December, Overjet acquired DentalBee, a voice-powered AI clinical documentation company. This enabled it to launch Voice AI, which can automatically document patient visits. Currently, 60,000 dentists work with Overjet and 25% of all U.S. dental schools also use Overjet.
5. MyLaurel
For reducing healthcare costs by bringing elder care into the home
In the U.S., where healthcare costs are projected to reach $6 trillion in 2027, a typical hospital admission can cost $15,000. Yet, not all of these visits are necessary: older adults make up for 60% of avoidable hospital admissions. New York based company, myLaurel, is on a mission to reduce these visits by partnering with health systems to provide in-home care to patients. The company offers in-person care supported by telehealth and therapeutics. MyLaurel also allows hospitals to discharge patients earlier and can provide at least 15 days of follow-up care at home.
In 2025, myLaurel launched a refined version of its product, which allows hospitals more flexibility. Hospitals can to customize services to meet patient needs while balancing them with their operational and financial needs. The company also embedded AI into its model, adding in call summarization and follow-up suggestions. In late 2025, myLaurel expanded its Acute Care at Home program into specialty care areas including oncology, and surgery.
MyLaurel’s pre-hospital intervention program resulted in 91% of patients being treated safely at home and avoiding hospital visits in 2025. It’s early discharge program saved over 8 bed days per hospital resulting in approximately $8,000 in savings per person and reduced hospital stays by 1.5 days. It’s recovery-at-home program reduced readmissions by 49% and resulted in over $2 million in savings. In addition, myLaurel also closed a $14 million funding round in June.
6. Clarium
For bringing clarity and speed to hospital supply chains
On average, healthcare systems experience 65 supply disruptions per week. Clarium, an AI powered, hospital supply network is working to close this gap and modernize the supply chain.
Its business model relies on two pillars: a national network of partners which include health systems like The Cleveland Clinic and Kaiser Permanente and an AI-powered engine. Its engine provides advance warning by identifying products manufactured in areas at risk of disruption (for example, by a natural disaster or strike) allowing health systems to rapidly assess their exposure. Clarium can then use its national network to find substitutes. During Hurricane Helene and Milton, which were back-to-back, Clarium was able to find 74% of the affected items.
This year, Clarium unrolled several new innovations. It created a recall manager that uses FDA recall data to let health systems know which items have been impacted, and automates the removal and replacement process, which usually takes weeks of manual labor. Second, it added a resiliency monitor that continuously monitors supplier’s metrics such as order fulfillment, so that Clarium can find gaps before they become critical issues and address them. Third, it built a pharmacy monitor which allows it to work with the pharmacy supply chain to understand and mitigate drug shortages.
Overall, Clarium has saved its partners 5-7% of their annual supply spend. This year its headcount has increased by 100%. In May it completed its series A funding and raised $27 million.
7. Maven Clinic
For bringing coaching and smart ovulation tracking to the fertility journey
One in six people worldwide is struggling with infertility. Fertility doctors are in short supply and treatments are expensive and inaccessible to many. In-vitro fertilization can cost up to $30,000 per cycle, has a roughly a 50% success rate and is invasive and painful. Yet, simpler solutions may help. Research shows 40% of women don’t understand how ovulation affects fertility.
In 2024, Maven Clinic, a virtual healthcare clinic dedicated to women and families, created a fertility coaching program. Members work with a coach who educates them on how to maximize their chances of getting pregnant—over 50% of people who enrolled became pregnant without needing any additional treatments.
In August of 2025, Maven also launched a smart ovulation tracker in its app that learns the patterns of each user’s cycle, flags irregularities, and connects members to Maven’s care team. In the same month, the company made at-home semen testing available to its members, since internal research suggested that many men avoided semen testing out of shame. In a pilot program, 40% of men using the kits found they needed additional care.
Maven’s approach to healthcare is filling a hole in the market. Today, Maven is offered by over 2,300 employers and health plans and covers more than 28 million people.
8. Regard
For unlocking all the data in a patient’s medical record to help clinicians make better diagnoses
Healthcare systems capture over 50,000 data points per patient, a number that has grown exponentially over the past few years and continues to grow. Yet, it’s difficult for physicians to mine this data for insights: typically, they only see about 3% of it in a patient’s chart. Meanwhile, 800,000 people die or are permanently disabled every year because of diagnostic errors.
Last July, clinical decision software company, Regard, launched an AI powered ‘Proactive Documentation’ platform that combines data from the patient’s medical record with patient-physician conversations to recommend diagnoses and generate a draft note. Regard’s platform also includes an AI agent, named Max, which can answer questions about the chart, summarize meetings with patients, and help with documentation. Within the space of a month, the New York-based company was able to catch nearly 18,000 cases of sepsis early, flagged a life-saving medication that a doctor had missed, and identify the cause of a stroke which helped prevent a second stroke.
Currently, Regard is used at over 150 hospitals in 15 states. In 2025, clinicians used over 10 million diagnoses from Regard, and its customers saw a 10% improvement in their ability to diagnose conditions, and a 20% improvement in documentation time.
9. Merck & Co.
For building an open-access AI platform to identify the biological mechanisms behind diseases
Pharma giant Merck was founded in 1891, but is on the cutting edge of ensuring drug researchers from all over the world can use AI. The company developed TEDDY (Transformers for Enabling Drug DiscoverY), a family of large AI models that can help researchers understand the biological mechanisms behind diseases.
TEDDY is trained on a dataset of over 116 million cells from over 24,000 donors spanning 122 diseases, 860 different cell types, and 413 tissues. TEDDY is able to detect patterns humans can’t identify to help researchers identify what molecules in the body drugs should be binding to, improve drug trial designs, and develop personalized therapies. For example, researchers at Merck are using TEDDY to understand who responds to TL1A, a protein messenger in the immune system, that’s a potential target for treatment in people with colitis and Crohn’s disease. In 2025, Merck made TEDDY open access so developers could use it. Now researchers at startups and other organizations can use TEDDY’s models to further their own work.
TEDDY has a 72% accuracy rate for disease classification and already been used to research six diseases including Alzheimer’s, breast cancer, lung cancer, and more.
10. Vheda Health
For pairing smart devices and care teams to improve the quality of Medicaid and Medicare members’ health
During a medical emergency, minutes can be the difference between a full recovery, permanent disability, or death. Vheda Health is combining remote monitoring with live care for Medicaid and Medicare members. Patients are given a smartphone and remote monitoring devices as well as unlimited broadband access.
In 2025, Vheda Health expanded its platform beyond chronic conditions and maternal care to add behavioral health programs. Participants receive a personalized kit of remote monitoring devices, and a smartphone with access to telehealth, pharmacy, transportation, social services, and health coaching.
Vheda’s model has resulted in $100 million in cost savings, a 38% reduction in ER visits. It’s currently available in 16 states and plans to expand to five more in 2026.
11. Alice
For ensuring its patients have short and healthy hospital stays
Alice is a private health insurance company in Brazil that is reimagining how insurance can improve outcomes for members by taking care inside the hospital building. In 2025, the São Palo based company created a new program where it has “retaguarda” teams in hospitals: physicians who work in the hospital, but who are hand selected for their technical skill and their values to represent Alice. These physicians work with Alice’s care coordination nurses and the patient’s larger care team such as their primary physician to coordinate every aspect of the patient’s stay from testing to discharge planning.
Alice rolled this model out to 24 hospitals in Brazil and so far 150 physicians are participating in the program. Under the Alice’s model the average patient stay is 2.5 days compared to an average of 4.3 days in comparable settings. Readmissions rates are 6.6% compared to 13% in the United States. Surgeries have dropped by 35%, and emergency room admissions by 30%.
The results are paying off for Alice. Its membership grew by 100% year over year, reaching 80,000 members. Meanwhile, 80% of members rate their healthcare as good or excellent, compared to a 69% average for the market.
12. Inspiren
For using AI to keep seniors safe and healthy
America’s population is aging rapidly. The number of people over the age of 65 is expected to increase by over 40% by 2050, yet senior homes are seeing staffing shortages. Inspiren, founded by Michael Wang, a former Green Beret turned cardiothoracic nurse, is using AI to reimagine senior care. In March it launched its first senior living ecosystem.
Smart devices mounted on the walls of each resident’s room can monitor when someone gets in and out of bed. There’s an emergency call system that includes live video triage so responders have visual context as well as two way voice. Inspiren’s AI system is able to notify staff when a resident may need extra help, or is in a potentially unsafe situation. Meanwhile the aggregated data offers insights into how to improve care for the greater community as well as improve care for each individual resident. In one community, Inspiren was able to reduce 911 calls due to falls by 83%, and reduce hospital stays by 60%.
In 2025, Inspiren raised $135 million in venture funding, and has raised a total of $147 million to date. In addition to its first system, it has also partnered with Arrow Senior Living operating in twenty-seven communities across six states.
13. Theator
For creating algorithms that document surgery accurately and effortlessly
Theator wants to use AI to bring transparency to surgeries. The company uses AI to analyze footage captured during laparoscopic and robotic surgeries. It compares techniques and patient outcomes, distilling out best practices.
The Palo Alto company took another swing at creating more transparency in the operating room by building Surgery-to-Text, which uses AI to generate a surgical report from the footage of the operation. Studies have found that reports written by surgeons have inaccuracies 30% of the time and can have gaps which may lead to denied insurance claims or proper continuity of care. Theator’s proprietary model is able to identify key moments during the surgery as well as generate the relevant billing codes. Early pilots on several thousand surgeries have shown that Theator’s Surgery-to-Text can reduce documentation time by up to 70% and increase profitability on an operation by $186 per case on average.
According to PitchBook, Theator has raised $43 million to date. It is currently used in about twenty hospitals in the US, Canada, and Israel including the Mayo Clinic and University of Miami.
14. SamaCare
For using AI to reduce prior authorization denials
Prior authorization requires doctors to get approval from insurance before they can provide certain types of care. They are a pain. The average doctor’s office completes over 40 prior authorizations a week and spends 12 hours obtaining them. Roughly 10% of prior authorization requests are denied, which can lead to delays in care and compromise patient health. SamaCare has built an AI platform that reduces prior authorization denials by 42%, and speeds up approval timelines by 80%.
Over the past year, the company launched three different innovations that draws insights from a database of over a million prior authorizations to make this possible. Script-to-Therapy helps pharmaceutical companies understand what insurance barriers patients face and design programs to help patients get access to the medications they need.
Also new is SamaCare’s AI powered point-of-care support platform, which provides workflow nudges for the steps care providers should take to get the fastest approval, and what steps to take if their request is denied.
Finally, the company built a feature called ‘Policy Precheck’ which compares a pre-authorization submission against an insurer’s policy before it’s submitted. If the pre-authorization doesn’t meet the requirements, the system flags the problem and provides suggestions on what to change.
SamaCare supports over 30,000 providers, tenfold growth from three years ago, and currently partners with 40% of the leading pharmaceutical companies.
15. First Stop Health
For creating a virtual mental health benefit people actually use
Small-to-medium sized businesses, which employ over half of Americans, have been hit hard by rising health care costs and nearly a third have discontinued their health insurance coverage. Telehealth care provider, First Stop Health, makes it a point to work with these companies, offering them a per employee per month rate, so costs are predictable.
In 2025 First Stop Health launched a mental health program, adding to it’s current portfolio which has an urgent care and primary care program. The mental health program offers patients unlimited visits and can be accessed as part of First Stop’s other offerings or on a stand-alone basis. First Stop found 74% of patients who used these services reported a higher sense of purpose and 66% had a reduced risk of alcoholism and tobacco use. Nearly a third of First Stop patients ended up using the program, and were able to connect with a provider in under three days. Meanwhile, 85% of cases were resolved without additional referrals or costs.
In 2025, First Stop Health marked the milestone of completing 1 million patient visits. It grew its membership base by 25% and saved employers nearly $80 million in healthcare costs.
16. RatingsMD
For helping patients find verified reviews of their doctors using AI
Launched in 2018, RatingsMD is home to thousands of patient reviews and has tools to verify them. In 2025, the company committed to more future-forward experience by repackaging patient reviews for the age of AI.
To do this, the Atlanta-based company launched an AI reputation engine which structures verified patient reviews so they can be ingested and summarized by AI platforms. The company also created a feature called “Sentiment Summaries” which distills thousands of patient reviews into easy-to-read summaries that can help patients make better decisions about which doctors to choose.
Last year, over 9 million reviews were published on RatingsMD in 2025, and the company saw an 92% increase in review visibility across AI search platforms. Meanwhile, more than 50% of RatingsMD’s health system clients have started using its AI capabilities.
17. Lyric
For creating a one-stop system that allows health insurers and clinicians to understand payment data
Healthcare costs are a mystery. No one knows how much anything costs and as a result payers and clinicians spend billions dickering over bills. According to one study, 80% of medical bills in the US contain errors.
In 2025, Lyric launched Studio42 in an effort to create greater transparency in the world of clinical billing. Currently, insurance claim data is scattered over multiple tools. Studio42 brings the data together in one dashboard for clinicians and insurers. The platform is able to also track and link cases together so payers and clinicians can get a total view of a patient’s history and payment responsibilities. Studio42 processes claims and its AI explains each decision. In addition, everyone sees the same data at the same time. When health plans adjust a payment, providers can see why and the evidence backing the adjustment.
Lyric also has a feature called “Replay” which finds payment errors, and learns from them (such as getting updates from the patient’s life and employment events), to ensure these errors don’t happen again.
Lyric currently processes over 50% of the claims in the country. It’s used by nine of the top ten healthcare plans in the US, covering 190 million Americans.
18. Form Health
For keeping GLP-1 drugs going only to the patients who need it—and saving employers money in the process
GLP-1 medications have taken the world by storm—which has led to a number of problems. Employers and payers face rising costs, while patients without coverage may turn to alternatives such as compounds. Traditionally, employers have had two choices: cover GLP-1s for everyone who qualifies and risk seeing costs spiral, or eliminate coverage entirely.
Form Health, a company that specializes in science-backed obesity care, created and launched a three- pronged approach in 2025 to address these problems. First, for employers who want predictable costs, employees are matched with a physician and dietician to develop personal care plans which include FDA-approved medication as needed. Second, for employers who allow open prescribing, employees do an evaluation with a physician and then meet monthly with a dietician before they can qualify for GLP-1 coverage. Finally, there’s a specialist option for employers who don’t cover GLP-1s. Employees can access Form Health, but GLP-1s are purchased through manufacturer cash-pay programs.
One of Forms’ clients, a Fortune 100 company, was able to avoid $10 million in costs by ensuring only employees with a clinical need were prescribed GLP-1s, and lower-severity patients were prescribed a lower-cost medication.
Form Health currently works with several partners, including over a dozen Fortune 1000 employers.
19. Bunkerhill Health
For unifying AI healthcare innovations under one umbrella
The healthcare industry abounds with AI solutions that can eliminate make-work, improve patient outcomes, and improve physician burnout—but the tools are limited. Often, they flag a problem leaving teams spinning their wheels trying to find a solution, or they provide a solution—but only one. Bunkerhill Health, headquartered in San Francisco, was founded in 2021 to narrow the gap between AI’s potential and it’s real world use in clinical practice.
In 2025, the company launched Carebricks, a platform that allows healthcare teams to create custom AI agents and use AI models and clinical guidelines to improve patient care. This encompasses everything from help creating referrals, sending messages, and tracking a patient case.
Bunkerhill’s FDA-cleared algorithms come from its research consortium of over 25 leading academic medical centers including Stanford, Johns Hopkins and Cleveland Clinic. It also works with independent researchers whose work the consortium then validates.
Over the past year, Bunkerhill secured seven FDA clearances including work from a high school student (who created an algorithm to detect life-threatening abdominal aortic aneurysms on abdominal CT scans), a two-person team in France and India with no funding, and a PhD student working at Google.
Bunkerhill’s algorithms have resulted in a 80% faster triage of urgent cases for lung cancer screening and 51% increased efficiency for advanced practice providers. The company has signed contracts with over a dozen health systems and has over 30 custom AI workflows across more than 50 sites. It’s revenue increased by twenty-fold in 2025.
20. LucyRx
For allowing patients with complex conditions to save money and skip the specialty pharmacy
Prescription drugs are expected to double in cost within the next seven years. Meanwhile, nearly 16 million people live in pharmacy deserts, making it difficult to get medications. LucyRx, a pharmacy benefits manager, is on a mission to help people lower the cost of their prescriptions and access medication more easily.
Last March, it created the Sustaining Pharmacy Access & Rural Care Program to help support independent pharmacies in underserved communities, including pharmacy deserts, by increasing per-prescription reimbursements to these pharmacies.
In April, LucyRx expanded it’s Connected Specialty Care Network to include more than 130 specialty pharmacies. This network allow patients with cancer and other chronic conditions to receive medication at their point of care, instead of waiting for it to be shipped from a large central pharmacy. One study found cancer patients who were able to use pharmacies at their point of care, had 32% lower medical costs and needed less medical care than patients who got their medications shipped.
In June, the company also announced a partnership with Personify Health, a health plan administrator, to ensure that employees using GLP-1s for weight loss also combine this with nutrition and exercise coaching so they don’t stay on the medications indefinitely.
LucyRx now serves over 1.65 million members across 4,000 clients and has raised over $500 million to date.
Learn more and explore the full list on Fast Company.
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