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The Clinical Realist

The Clinical Realist

By: Dr. Sarah Matt
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Healthcare innovation is broken. We have billion-dollar AI running on 1990s infrastructure. We have startups dying in "Pilotitis." And we have leaders frozen by analysis paralysis.

Dr. Sarah Matt (The Clinical Realist) is here to fix the disconnect between the tech stack and the trauma bay.

Join Dr. Matt—physician, strategist, and author of The Borderless Healthcare Revolution—as she cuts through the hype to reveal what actually works in modern medicine. No buzzwords. No fluff. Just the raw, unvarnished truth about how to lead, build, and survive in the future of healthcare.

If you are tired of the "Star Trek" vision and want the "Clinical Reality," this is your show.

Subscribe to The Sarah Matt Briefing for weekly insights on healthcare AI, access strategy, and the business of medicine: https://drsarahmatt.com/newsletter-signup

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Episodes
  • Your Women's Health Strategy Is Labor and Delivery and a Mammogram, with Priya Bathija

    Your Women's Health Strategy Is Labor and Delivery and a Mammogram, with Priya Bathija
    Aug 5 2026
    Ask a health system CEO about their women's health strategy and you will hear two things. Labor and delivery. Mammography. Then they wipe their hands, and the checkbox is checked. Priya Bathija spent nine years at the American Hospital Association building maternal and child health policy at national scale. In 2022 she left to found Nyoo Health, where she now advises hospitals and health systems on women's health strategy: what to build, what it returns, and which of the 400 point solutions sitting in the inbox are actually worth a pilot. Her argument in this episode is not a moral one. It is a P&L one. Procedures performed on female anatomy are reimbursed up to 30 to 40 percent less than comparable procedures on male anatomy, and that gap quietly drives service line decisions whether anyone says it out loud or not. McKinsey has put a number on what health systems leave on the table by not screening women adequately, and the number is billions. Women are 51 percent of the population, use roughly 10 percent more healthcare than men, and make the care decisions for their children, their spouses, and their parents. They are the most important customer in healthcare. Most systems are not treating them like a customer at all. Then there is the part that lands hardest for anyone who owns a dashboard. Priya asks audiences how many of them stratify outcomes data by sex. Most do not. The ones who raise a hand are doing it for maternity care, which does not apply to men. One healthcare leader told her they could not stratify by sex because they do not collect that data. What Priya said back is the clip to send to your analytics lead. Dr. Sarah Matt brings the bedside read: what happens when a research patient asks you to interpret her own scan, why digital literacy is not evenly distributed across a panel, and why treating all women as one population is the same error the field just spent a decade unlearning about everyone else. What you will take away: - Why a women's health strategy that stops at L&D and mammography is a revenue decision, not a care decision - The reimbursement gap between female and male anatomy procedures, and how it shapes what gets built - The business case for midlife and menopause programs, and the referral economics that follow - What happens to your record when a patient gets hormones or a GLP-1 from a virtual provider you are not connected to - Why almost nobody stratifies outcomes by sex, and the cop-out leaders use to avoid it - Where consumer-facing AI actually helps patients (appointment prep, reading their own results, disputing a bill) and who should pay for it - How to pick the one women's health investment your community needs instead of the one with the best shine Find Priya: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/pbathija | Nyoo Health https://www.nyoohealth.com | The Women's Health Playbook, wherever you listen Mentioned in this episode: Meghan Rabbitt, "The New Rules of Women's Health"

    —

    Resources & Links:

    📖 Get the Book: "The Borderless Healthcare Revolution" is available now on Amazon and major retailers.

    💼 Work with Dr. Matt:
    Looking for a keynote speaker or strategic advisor?
    Visit: drsarahmatt.com

    🔗 Connect on Social:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahmattmd/
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrSarahMatt-ClinicalRealist

    📧 Subscribe to The Briefing: drsarahmatt.com/newsletter-signup

    —
    Disclaimer:
    The views expressed on this podcast are those of Dr. Sarah Matt and her guests. They do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institutions. This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice or a professional consulting relationship.
    Show More Show Less
    38 mins
  • Why Clinical Trials Keep Missing the Patients They Are Supposed to Help, with Lisa Sonneborn

    Why Clinical Trials Keep Missing the Patients They Are Supposed to Help, with Lisa Sonneborn
    Jul 22 2026
    Most clinical trial eligibility criteria are written by people who have never run a site. Lisa Sonneborn has run one for 15 years. She built the first stand-alone clinical trial facility in Upstate New York, focused on Alzheimer's and NASH research. Watched sponsor after sponsor send protocols with visit schedules, lab windows, and exclusion lists that were scientifically defensible and operationally unworkable. She would look at the eligibility section and know within the first three line items whether the trial was designed for the patients or for the data. In 2024, she co-founded Ichor Research in Syracuse: diagnostic trials for cancer, neurodegeneration, metabolic conditions, substance abuse. The markets large CROs do not prioritize. The patients clinical research has historically passed over. In this episode of The Clinical Realist, Dr. Sarah Matt and Lisa Sonneborn cover the specific protocol features that flag a trial was designed without a real site in mind, what the visit-burden dropout math actually looks like at a small independent site, how AI lands in practice at a three-person team in Upstate New York, the case for running diagnostic research in Syracuse, and what a different five-year future for clinical trial access looks like if small independent sites actually win. What you will take away: - The eligibility list red flag that signals a protocol was not designed for real patients - What dropout math looks like at a small site versus what the protocol assumed - How AI is actually used at Ichor Research versus the pitch version - Why small independent sites reach patients that large CROs skip - What Lisa built differently the second time, knowing what she learned from selling the first business Find Lisa: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-sonneborn-ma-lmhc-17047a63/ | Ichor Research https://ichorlifesciences.com Book a Discovery and Clarity Session: https://calendly.com/sarahmattmd Subscribe to The Sarah Matt Briefing: https://drsarahmatt.com/newsletter-signup

    —

    Resources & Links:

    📖 Get the Book: "The Borderless Healthcare Revolution" is available now on Amazon and major retailers.

    💼 Work with Dr. Matt:
    Looking for a keynote speaker or strategic advisor?
    Visit: drsarahmatt.com

    🔗 Connect on Social:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahmattmd/
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrSarahMatt-ClinicalRealist

    📧 Subscribe to The Briefing: drsarahmatt.com/newsletter-signup

    —
    Disclaimer:
    The views expressed on this podcast are those of Dr. Sarah Matt and her guests. They do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institutions. This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice or a professional consulting relationship.
    Show More Show Less
    36 mins
  • The Number That Should Stop You: Building Continuity Before Big Tech Does, with Amy Andrade

    The Number That Should Stop You: Building Continuity Before Big Tech Does, with Amy Andrade
    Jul 15 2026
    People whose care is scattered across multiple providers, with no single person or system holding the whole picture, have more than double the risk of dying, even after accounting for how sick they already are. Amy Andrade has spent her career on that gap. In this episode of The Clinical Realist, Dr. Sarah Matt talks with Amy Andrade, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Alphiniti and a biomedical data science researcher at Meharry Medical College. Alphiniti is building person-centric data continuity, infrastructure that keeps one person's record connected across health, financial, and legacy systems instead of scattered across every institution they have ever touched. Amy is also an active advisory client, so this conversation flips the mic on a build Sarah has watched from the inside. The conversation covers what continuity looks like as a shipped product rather than a slide in a deck, the split between institutional (B2B) and consumer-facing (B2B2C) buyers, why AI tools built to fix fragmentation can fail silently for the people already falling through the cracks, the middleware critique and where it does and does not hold up, and how a company Alphiniti's size competes for this category before Big Tech, already signaling interest in the same space, claims it. What you will take away: - Why fragmented data carries a measurable mortality cost, not just an inconvenience - What continuity actually means as a product, not a pitch-deck slide - How B2B and B2B2C buyers value the same infrastructure differently - Where the data-continuity-as-middleman critique is fair, and where it isn't - What has to be true for a company like Alphiniti to win this category Find Amy and Alphiniti: alphiniti.com Book a Discovery and Clarity Session: https://calendly.com/sarahmattmd Subscribe to The Sarah Matt Briefing: https://drsarahmatt.com/newsletter-signup

    —

    Resources & Links:

    📖 Get the Book: "The Borderless Healthcare Revolution" is available now on Amazon and major retailers.

    💼 Work with Dr. Matt:
    Looking for a keynote speaker or strategic advisor?
    Visit: drsarahmatt.com

    🔗 Connect on Social:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahmattmd/
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrSarahMatt-ClinicalRealist

    📧 Subscribe to The Briefing: drsarahmatt.com/newsletter-signup

    —
    Disclaimer:
    The views expressed on this podcast are those of Dr. Sarah Matt and her guests. They do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institutions. This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice or a professional consulting relationship.
    Show More Show Less
    36 mins
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