Derek Streat, CEO and Founding father of DexCare, is an skilled entrepreneur with a monitor report of founding and main six venture-backed corporations, 4 of which have achieved profitable acquisitions. His ventures have included scaling companies to over $100 million in income and establishing non-profits that profit greater than half of all kids with kidney transplants. Streat focuses on fixing large-scale, impactful issues by leveraging modern knowledge options to deliver transparency and effectivity to markets, lowering prices and delivering societal advantages.
DexCare is a care orchestration platform that optimizes healthcare supply and workforce capability whereas enhancing affected person comfort. It integrates with present programs to unify knowledge, forecast demand, allocate sources, and information sufferers to probably the most acceptable care, delivering actionable insights and streamlined operations.
DexCare was born out of your private journey with healthcare, particularly in serving to your baby entry vital care. How did this expertise form your imaginative and prescient for DexCare, and the way does it proceed to affect the corporate’s mission right this moment?
Fifteen years in the past, my three-year-old baby wanted a lifesaving kidney transplant. It was an arduous journey full of sleepless nights as my spouse and I struggled to navigate a fragmented healthcare system. We watched as our baby moved between specialists, surgical procedures, and intensive care, in the end receiving a transplant. By all of it, I noticed simply how lucky I used to be to have unfettered entry to care. For a lot of People, that’s not the case.
Over 37% of People dwell in healthcare deserts. My very own expertise, mixed with years of working intently with healthcare programs, revealed a transparent must bridge the entry hole for everybody. The truth is, not each affected person must see a doctor – they want the appropriate care, in the appropriate place, on the proper time. And that perception led me to discovered DexCare, a platform designed to orchestrate the place and the way care is delivered. By lowering supplier burnout, creating capability, and increasing entry, we goal to serve extra sufferers successfully. Incubated at Windfall, DexCare spun out in 2021 and now proudly companions with main well being programs throughout the nation, together with Texas Well being Sources, Tampa Normal, and Piedmont Healthcare.
You’ve efficiently based a number of healthcare-focused corporations. What particular challenges did you encounter in founding DexCare, and the way did your prior ventures put together you for launching this care orchestration platform?
From thought to prototype, to elevating capital and scaling, each startup faces acquainted hurdles. In healthcare, these challenges are amplified by expertise wars, lengthy gross sales cycles, cautious capital markets, and an ever-shifting regulatory panorama. Success calls for a cautious balancing act. Having based and exited a number of corporations, I’ve been within the trenches and gained firsthand perception into what it takes to construct resilient groups and merchandise able to thriving below stress. These classes grew to become important when launching DexCare and crafting a method to succeed amid the complexities of healthcare.
My foray into healthcare started with Medify, an intelligence firm that used NLP expertise to create structured knowledge from the huge, international repository of medical literature. The platform made an actual distinction for sufferers with uncommon illnesses, bringing collectively small, scattered populations into bigger teams with significant insights. At its peak, one in ten medical doctors throughout the U.S. relied on our information base to search out therapies and therapies that might make a distinction for his or her sufferers. Finally, Medify grew to become a part of Alliance Well being, a number one well being community.
After Medify, I started tackling a distinct set of challenges, specializing in how expertise might immediately affect medical observe by C-SATS.
An AI-powered platform, C-SATS leveraged robotics and machine studying to judge surgical efficiency, offering surgeons with actionable insights to enhance their abilities and affected person outcomes. This work with AI—lengthy earlier than right this moment’s hype— opened my eyes to the uncharted complexities of integrating superior expertise right into a high-stakes atmosphere like healthcare. Whereas the platform sidestepped privateness considerations by utilizing anonymized surgical footage, it surfaced deeper points, as surgeons have been apprehensive about being credentialed based mostly on expertise, because it had direct implications for his or her careers and livelihoods. This expertise taught me that introducing innovation in healthcare requires greater than technical experience—it calls for constructing belief with stakeholders and proactively addressing the unintended penalties that may emerge when expertise intersects with human lives.
All through my profession, I’ve targeted on dismantling systemic boundaries—scarce sources, disconnected knowledge, and inequitable entry—by leveraging expertise rooted in practicality, not hype. When constructing DexCare, I prioritized knowledge intelligence because the cornerstone of our AI purposes. And this focus ensures clear, dependable, and unified knowledge that powers how care is orchestrated, routed, and delivered. By exposing capability imbalances—figuring out overburdened suppliers and underutilized sources—we’re reimagining healthcare to optimize operations and to ship higher outcomes for sufferers.
DexCare was incubated throughout the Windfall Well being system. Might you discuss some great benefits of growing a startup from inside a big healthcare group, and the way that formed DexCare’s development?
DexCare was born inside Windfall to resolve a key problem in healthcare: balancing provide and demand by leveraging present advertising, IT, and operational infrastructure. Being constructed inside a well being system gave us an intimate understanding of the twin challenges dealing with healthcare right this moment. For organizations, it is the fixed battle to fulfill rising care calls for with restricted sources. And for sufferers, it is the frustration of discovering care when and the place it is wanted. This angle uniquely positions us to empower well being programs with vital infrastructure for more practical digital discovery and entry, whereas concurrently optimizing system capability. And our incubation inside Windfall allowed us to refine the platform earlier than scaling to well being programs nationwide.
AI in healthcare has been heralded as revolutionary, however it has additionally confronted vital hurdles. How have you ever seen AI evolve in healthcare through the years, and the place do you assume it has fallen in need of its potential?
The rise of AI in healthcare has sparked each pleasure and warning. Whereas AI is turning into extra mainstream, vital hurdles stay earlier than it could remodel the trade. A latest survey revealed that 96% of healthcare CIOs see AI adoption as a aggressive benefit, but integration challenges—like system interoperability and workflow alignment—typically stand in the best way. And with out seamless integration into the each day course of, clinicians, physicians, and directors are unlikely to embrace these instruments.
The crowded panorama of over 14,000 AI-focused corporations provides to the complexity, making it troublesome for well being programs to separate hype from options that ship actual worth. Choosing the proper expertise companion requires greater than evaluating options—it calls for options that combine easily, improve present workflows, and handle real-world challenges.
However the core situation isn’t simply discovering the following device—it’s unlocking the potential inside healthcare’s present knowledge. Sustainable programs depend upon harmonizing knowledge throughout care data, workflows, and third-party platforms. Solely then can we sort out actual priorities, like releasing clinicians to give attention to individuals over paperwork and shutting vital care gaps. And that is exactly the place DexCare suits in.
DexCare makes use of AI to optimize healthcare supply by predicting and distributing care sources. Are you able to stroll us by how the platform’s AI works and the way it has impacted care supply at scale?
DexCare’s care orchestration platform harnesses superior knowledge intelligence by consolidating key inputs—scheduling, modalities, utilization, places, and prices—to find out the place, when, and the way care needs to be accessed. Our AI not solely ingests and organizes large knowledge units but additionally dynamically aligns care supply with affected person wants. As an example, the platform categorizes content material—whether or not it’s an article on seasonal flu, preventive care, or specialised companies—and matches it to probably the most acceptable pathways to care, all whereas understanding advanced taxonomies and synonyms. The outcome? By linking related content material to probably the most appropriate venues of care, the platform ensures sufferers are guided seamlessly to the companies they want, enhancing each entry and outcomes.
The outcomes communicate for themselves. DexCare permits 40% extra sufferers to obtain care utilizing the identical medical sources, drives a 24% improve in new affected person acquisition, and saves over 34,000 hours of doctor time. By eliminating pointless steps and presenting clear, actionable selections from the beginning, we’re reworking affected person entry and operational effectivity at scale—delivering measurable enhancements for sufferers and suppliers.
AI has the ability to automate duties and streamline processes, however it could additionally create concern round job displacement in healthcare. How do you see AI impacting the healthcare workforce, and what methods can mitigate these considerations?
Addressing fears of job displacement in healthcare begins with readability. AI isn’t right here to exchange the human contact in care supply—it’s right here to enhance it. Know-how, together with AI, augments the capabilities of healthcare professionals, however it’s not a silver bullet for addressing the rising hole between growing affected person wants and a shrinking doctor workforce.
Platforms like DexCare show how AI generally is a vital device in extending the capability of restricted healthcare sources. By intelligently balancing workforce calls for, controlling prices, and optimizing capability, AI helps well being programs function extra effectively. This not solely ensures sufferers obtain the care they want but additionally alleviates burdens on suppliers, lowering burnout and making a extra sustainable healthcare atmosphere. It’s about constructing smarter, extra resilient programs.
What are a few of the unintended penalties you’ve noticed within the implementation of AI in healthcare, notably by way of accountability for AI-driven errors? How does DexCare handle these moral challenges?
Once I was at C-SATS, we used robotics and machine studying to coach surgeons and to enhance affected person outcomes. Whereas modern, this method raised essential questions on privateness, consent, surgeon autonomy, and the moral use of knowledge. These challenges highlighted a vital fact: implementing AI in healthcare requires rigorous, standardized insurance policies to make sure the secure and moral use of the expertise.
In healthcare, there is no such thing as a margin for error—lives are at stake. This makes it crucial to determine clear pointers and frameworks that may function a ‘North Star’ to navigate uncharted authorized and moral questions. And accountability and transparency have to be on the coronary heart of AI purposes in healthcare. By specializing in knowledge integrity and designing programs to reinforce, not overshadow, human decision-making, we will advance innovation responsibly whereas addressing the wants of the trade.
Whereas AI provides large potential for enhancing entry to care, what steps do you assume healthcare programs must take to make sure equitable AI adoption, particularly for underserved populations?
AI adoption in healthcare, particularly for underserved populations, requires a give attention to knowledge constancy, range, and aggregation. In an trade beset by fragmented knowledge silos, the flexibility to unify and analyze info is essential. Generative AI has the potential to create life-saving connections by integrating affected person data, inhabitants well being disparities, and propensity fashions to enhance prognosis, therapy, and care outcomes. Nevertheless, these developments depend upon utilizing bias-free datasets at scale to keep away from perpetuating inequities.
Accountability doesn’t relaxation solely with well being programs. A unified method is required, beginning with standardizing AI deployment at scale. Smart, national-level laws can guarantee AI improves our collective healthcare whereas, on the identical time, should keep away from overreach that stifles innovation. Overly restrictive measures threat hampering progress, however clear pointers on infrastructure, utilization, and knowledge governance are important. These requirements might help handle bias, mitigate dangers, and foster a system the place AI elevates care high quality for all sufferers, not simply the privileged few.
From a founder’s perspective, what recommendation would you give to entrepreneurs trying to deliver AI into healthcare, contemplating the distinctive regulatory and moral challenges of the trade?
Profitable entrepreneurs, notably in healthcare, should not solely problem the established order but additionally reject the notion that the system is past fixing. The alternatives to enhance healthcare are immense, however when you dive deep into the self-imposed complexities and the hurdles the trade presents, the size of the issues can appear overwhelming. True innovation requires resilience—the flexibility to confront these challenges head-on and to stay steadfast in your mission. Your imaginative and prescient to enhance care and outcomes should all the time outweigh the obstacles of scaling expertise.
Success in healthcare isn’t simply in regards to the expertise – it’s additionally about aligning with the wants of sufferers, suppliers, and programs, and having the resolve to smile even when the trail will get steep. My recommendation: Keep adaptable, embrace setbacks, and give attention to constructing options that clear up for rapid, real-world issues.
Trying forward, what are probably the most thrilling AI developments you foresee within the subsequent 5–10 years for healthcare, and what particular areas do you assume AI will battle to penetrate?
Predicting the longer term is difficult—it’s unsure and ever-changing. With 1000’s of corporations exploring AI from each angle, the potential is unimaginable, however so are the challenges. What we do know, nevertheless, is that AI is poised to basically reshape how care is accessed, delivered, and skilled. Probably the most thrilling developments I foresee over the horizon is really customized drugs—tailor-made therapy plans and distinctive therapeutic “cocktails” designed to offer every affected person precisely what they should heal and thrive.
Healthcare – lengthy hamstrung by fragmented knowledge and outdated programs – is on the point of breaking free. And by connecting affected person data, addressing inhabitants disparities, and utilizing predictive fashions, AI has the ability to create life-saving options whereas shifting the main target of healthcare towards better entry and consumer-centric care.
We’re nonetheless within the early phases of this journey and navigating unknowns. Whereas we will’t predict the precise breakthroughs forward, we all know AI is steadily enhancing how care is delivered—driving higher outcomes for sufferers and empowering suppliers. The progress already being made is inspiring, and I’m proud to contribute to this transformation.
Thanks for the good interview, readers who want to be taught extra ought to go to DexCare.
