Ballad Ventures

We could not be happier supporting this team and its mission to save lives. It is not everyday that you can draw a straight line between venture investing and saving lives... but 410 Medical: LifeFlow does. Excited to see this technology get into the hands of more and more people across the country. https://lnkd.in/gJwaZm7f

We are looking for innovators who can help a health system pharmacy deliver value no chain, app, or mail-order warehouse can match. A generation ago, filling a prescription meant one thing: the pharmacy down the street. Today a patient can fill the same script a dozen ways, Amazon Pharmacy, mail-order, Cost Plus Drugs, Hims, Ro, same-day delivery, and in our region, increasingly, a shuttered storefront where a pharmacy used to be. More than 7,000 pharmacies have closed since 2019, and one in seven Americans now lives more than ten miles from one. We believe the local health system pharmacy should win that choice, because the pharmacist who can see your discharge, your labs, and your full medication list keeps a promise a warehouse cannot. Roughly half of patients do not take their medications as prescribed, and poor adherence more than doubles the rate of readmission. The prescription is not a transaction. It is the relationship. That advantage is real, but today it is mostly invisible to the patient choosing where to fill. The alternatives compete on price and speed and win. To compete, a health system pharmacy has to match them on convenience, then make its clinical value something a patient can actually see and feel at the moment of choice. So if you are building any of the following, we want to talk: → Price transparency at moments that matter → Delivery and logistics that work across rural, mountain geography → Adherence and efficacy tools → A consumer interface that surfaces the pharmacist, the clinical context, and the system pharmacy as the default We have the pharmacy infrastructure already. What we want are partners who can help us turn what makes a provider's pharmacy different into value a patient chooses every time. Read the full piece → https://lnkd.in/gmWgp5Nn Partner with us → https://lnkd.in/eF4kJ2GH Trish Tanner #Pharmacy #HealthSystems #RuralHealth #HealthcareInnovation #MedicationAdherence

How many times in a year do you think you have a health need? Before you answer, consider an ordinary week. A headache on a Tuesday afternoon. A new pain that was not there last month. An upset stomach. A night of poor sleep, or three. A stretch of anxiety about work, money, or family. Most people guess a number in the single digits or low teens. Six decades of research suggest the real number is closer to 100. And every one of those 100 moments ends the same way: with a decision, usually made in seconds. Ignore it. Self-manage it. Or seek help. Only 3 to 4 of those decisions become physician visits each year. Where do the other 96 go? The answer has changed dramatically in the past 18 months, and the data on who answers health questions today, at what volume, should reshape how every health system thinks about the patient relationship. We broke down the full pyramid, the research behind the 100-event estimate, and what we believe it means for health systems in our latest post. Read the data → https://lnkd.in/edyqAnV6 Partner with us → https://lnkd.in/eF4kJ2GH #HealthTech #AIinHealthcare #HealthSystems #ConsumerHealth #RuralHealth

For decades, the path to healthcare started the same way: call the office, wait for an appointment, show up, and hope for answers. That model assumed patients had no alternative. The doctor's office was the front door because it was the only door. That's no longer true. In the first three months of 2026, five of the largest technology companies launched dedicated health AI products. Amazon embedded Health AI where 200M people already shop. Google processes over a billion health queries every day. ChatGPT Health handles 230M health conversations per week. One in three US adults now uses AI chatbots for health information — double the rate from a year ago. The shift isn't just technological. It's behavioral. Patients prefer these tools. Seventy percent of health AI queries happen after hours, when clinics are closed. Somewhere between 42% and 58% of people who consult AI for a health question never follow up with a provider at all. It's tempting to say health systems have something these companies can't replicate. But let's look at what's changed: → Data access is no longer a moat. Thanks to interoperability, tech companies can now compile medical records just like we can. → Time isn't on our side either. A typical doctor visit is 15 minutes. The chatbot is infinitely patient. → Wellness is a blind spot. These platforms move seamlessly between sleep optimization and symptom checking. Most physicians aren't trained in wellness. → Knowledge is no longer proprietary. Clinical decision support runs on the same AI models available to consumers. We have the power of the pen. But that's being unbundled — Ro, Hims, and Amazon Clinic are already prescribing for common conditions. We have bricks and mortar. But that's a narrower value proposition than we've claimed. In a knowledge-based industry where knowledge is being commoditized, what's left? If AI can answer the question, compile the record, and triage the need - and if someone else can write the prescription - what exactly is the role of the health system before you need a procedure? We don't have a complete playbook. But the path forward starts with admitting the question. Read the full post → https://lnkd.in/es8RDchc #HealthTech #DigitalHealth #HealthcareInnovation

Think about the last truly consequential decision you made. You probably didn't make it based on a one-page summary, a 30-minute conversation with someone paid to sell you on it, and a gut feeling. Now imagine you're a physician choosing your next job. A decade of training. A specialty you've built. A way of working that feels like yours. The job you take next will shape your days, your income, your family's life - and whether you still love the work five years from now. And here's what you're handed: a job post written by marketing. A recruiter paid only if you sign. A site visit choreographed to look better than most Tuesdays actually do. That's not a decision framework. That's a pitch. 47% of US physician searches remained open at year-end (AAPPR). The fallout gets called "burnout." A meaningful share of it is something simpler: a mismatch no one measured before the physician said yes. Estimated cost across the system: ~$30B a year. That's why we invested in Tessellate. Tessellate starts by asking the physician what actually matters - specialty, case mix, call tolerance, community, family. Then it matches against the reality of every practice and health system in the country. Open positions and otherwise. Because the right job might not be one that's actively recruiting. It might be a place where the fit is so strong the conversation is worth having anyway. The physician chooses when to identify themselves. The physician chooses who to engage with. The physician is the customer - not the raw material of the product. A fair question: why would a health system back a tool that gives physicians more power in the hiring conversation? → We are not backing Tessellate for a recruiting advantage. We are backing it because the right physicians should find the right roles - even when that means a physician chooses somewhere else. If Ballad is the right fit, we want that match to be visible. If we are not, we would rather know why and improve. → We believe health systems should learn from aggregate, privacy-protected market signals about what physicians actually value - not to own that data, but because better information forces employers to build better roles. → Some physicians may be surprised to find they match well with us. We're willing to be measured honestly against every other option in the country. Congrats to Paul Vernich, Addison Kremer and the Tessellate team. If you're a physician thinking about your next move: Tessellate is free for physicians, private until you choose to engage, and built around a simple idea - don't sign blind. Read the full post → https://lnkd.in/ez3t3AxC #PhysicianHiring #HealthTech #HealthcareInnovation

Most health system venture investing follows a familiar pattern: identify a promising company, write a check, and hope operations eventually finds traction with it. The thinking is that even if operations isn't in love with the idea now, they'll eventually see the light. It's a coin toss. Heads they come around. Tails they don't. Ballad Health is taking a different approach. We start with the problems our operators are actually trying to solve - then look for the companies who can help. Before we seriously evaluate a company, we work with Ballad Health leadership to identify the stubborn, persistent challenges they need to move forward on. Workforce shortages. Access gaps in rural communities. Administrative burden that pulls clinicians away from patients. Those become our investment themes. To date, we've cataloged 120+ problems and opportunities sourced directly from our operators - the inventory driving every investment conversation we have. Health systems are complex. Even the most promising technology stalls without executive sponsorship, clinical champions, and operational bandwidth to support implementation. No amount of enthusiasm from a venture team can substitute for authentic pull from the business. Five areas of focus, each rooted in needs our leadership has identified: → Leadership-Identified Needs - solutions to the stubborn problems our executives are actively working to solve. Every investment conversation starts here. → Workforce Leverage & Capacity Expansion - technologies that extend clinical, operational, and administrative capacity → Digital Care & Distributed Care Models - solutions that deliver care beyond traditional physical and geographic constraints → Consumer Needs - companies that make Ballad Health the first choice for health in our region → Personalization + Precision - tools that make care more precise while respecting each person's unique characteristics What this means for founders: - We commit operational bandwidth, not just capital - clinical expertise, executive sponsorship, and a real commercial pathway - We invite peer health systems to co-invest, giving portfolio companies multiple partners and a clearer path to scale - We target 80%+ of our investments leading to commercial relationships with Ballad Health - not as a requirement, but as the natural outcome when we've done our job well In the coming weeks and months, we'll publish specific problems to solve and challenges - told from the perspectives of our leaders, clinicians, patients, and partners. When you see one that matches what you're building, that's the time to reach out. Read the full post → https://lnkd.in/e-kSz9kf #HealthTech #VentureCapital #HealthcareInnovation #RuralHealth

Most venture capital flows to urban markets. Ballad Ventures does something different. We partner with entrepreneurs taking on the problems that don't always make it into Silicon Valley pitch decks - workforce shortages, hours-long drives to specialty care, populations with complex chronic conditions, and communities where the nearest hospital may be the only hospital. The scale of the opportunity: → 60M+ Americans live in rural communities (1 in 5 US residents) → 1 in 3 rural hospitals is vulnerable to closure → 17% of rural Americans still lack broadband access We believe rural health systems can - and should - lead the future of healthcare innovation. Our role is to co-develop and accelerate solutions that strengthen access, improve outcomes, and keep this region at the forefront of how care gets transformed. We partner pre-seed through Series A across four areas, each rooted in problems surfaced by clinical and operational leaders inside Ballad Health: → Workforce capacity and efficiency → Digital and distributed care models → Consumer-focused healthcare → Personalized, precision care What we bring beyond the check matters more than the check itself - time from clinical and operational leaders, commercial pathways into a real health system, the chance to pilot and refine with real patients and real constraints, and introductions to peer systems and the broader investor community. Most corporate venture programs promise this kind of operational support. Few actually deliver. We're structured to make sure it shows up - because for the companies we back, that support is frequently worth as much as the capital itself. Most of our partnerships lead to commercial relationships with Ballad Health. That's intentional. We want our investing and our operations pulling in the same direction. Here's what we deeply believe: innovation that works in places with the fewest resources is the innovation that scales everywhere. If your solution can survive rural staffing, rural broadband, rural distances, and rural economics - it will work anywhere. Rural America has been underserved by both healthcare and venture capital for too long. Ballad Ventures exists to help change that — one partnership at a time. If you're building something that belongs here, we want to hear from you. Read the full thesis → https://lnkd.in/ed5dtgNZ #RuralHealth #HealthTech #DigitalHealth #HealthcareInnovation

Big things don’t always start big. Sometimes it’s a small team, pushing on a very real problem… patient stuck in the wrong setting, hospitals stretched thin, families trying to figure out what comes next. That’s why this stood out. Homecare Hub earning a Phase 2 SBIR from the NIH/NIA, and doing it with one of the top impact scores in the country, says a lot. Not just about the idea, but about the evidence behind it and the belief that this model can scale. Even more interesting is how they’re approaching it. Pairing real-world implementation with rigorous, multi-site research led by folks like Dr. David Grabowski and Dr. Chelsey Wilks. That combination matters. We need more of that in healthcare, and less “we think this works” and more “we can prove it works.” What keeps coming up for us is how many of our system’s challenges show up at the exact same point: - patients ready to leave, but nowhere appropriate to go - hospitals holding capacity they can’t afford to hold - post-acute options that don’t always match what patients actually need And yet… we tend to treat those as separate problems. They’re not. Models like this start to connect those dots by creating options that are better aligned to patients while also relieving pressure upstream. We’ve really enjoyed working alongside this team and continuing to explore what this could unlock - for patient experience, for hospital throughput, and for access to more personalized post-acute pathways. Still early. But this is the kind of work that, if it scales, quietly changes a lot. Mike Anderes Vipan Nikore MD, MBA, FACP Breanna Miller Shari Rajoo Mark Wilkinson Sean M. Clay Runnels

Excited to see Ballad Ventures represented at the Houston MedTech Rodeo this week. Our Managing Director, Mike Anderes, will be speaking on the panel “Health System Corporate Venture Capital: The Extreme Value-Add Investor,” alongside an incredible group of health system investors shaping the future of healthcare innovation. Health systems bring far more than capital to early-stage companies - bring clinical insight, real-world testing environments, and the ability to accelerate meaningful adoption. Mike is looking forward to sharing perspectives from Ballad Health work partnering with entrepreneurs building solutions that improve care across our region. If you’re attending the Rodeo, be sure to check out the session and connect with the panelists. Aileen H. Kipum Lee, PhD Liridon Rrushaj Zach Eisen Bo Wilkes

Excited to share that Mike Anderes, Managing Director of Ballad Ventures, will be attending the upcoming ViVE conference in Los Angeles next week. As the venture capital arm of Ballad Health, Ballad Ventures continues to focus on investing in and partnering with innovative companies that are transforming healthcare delivery, improving outcomes, and driving sustainable value for health systems and the communities we serve. ViVE brings together many of the leaders shaping the future of digital health, care delivery, and health system transformation, and we’re energized to be back in the market and actively engaging in the conversations that matter. Looking forward to a strong week in LA and continuing to represent both Ballad Health and Ballad Ventures on a national stage. #BalladVentures #ViVE #DigitalHealth #HealthcareInnovation #HealthSystemLeadership