Episode Details

A few weeks ago on our weekly Food is Health Livestream, we sat down with Pryce Ancona, an industry leader in healthcare interoperability (and friend!) who has spent the last decade connecting the disconnected systems of American healthcare (or at least trying). What started as a conversation about frozen olive trees in Texas turned into an hour-and-a-half deep dive into how AI is about to fundamentally change the relationship between you and your health data. Whether healthcare believes it or not. And guess what… our guest walked away rethinking the true implications.

Here’s the full video. If you somehow find this TV worthy, you can now access our content on the Substack TV app on your smart TV. FYI, it took a hot second in our house, one TV let me download the app and one didn’t. Because some folks prefer the written word, we have a recap below.

If you are new here - WELCOME! And thank you, there are thousands of you as of February. Just a little context for those who have just jumped in…when we talk about Food Is Health, we’re talking about a full systemic redesign where nutrient density and nutrition becomes affordable. From soil, through ingredients, through packaged goods, all the way through distribution, retail, restaurants, and into healthcare itself. To break it down, we created a framework we call System A (inherent health - evolution - pre-20th century - not scalable), B (current state - cheap calories fueling a chronic disease epidemic leading to a crippling healthcare cost burden). And System C - our mission - a new system built on first principles, designed around human outcomes and human health. Our current healthcare system still handles what it was meant to do (acute care), but a parallel system emerges that’s focused on keeping people healthy in the first place starting at the root through food. Fully upstream with primary prevention.

Meet Pryce: The Guy Who Connects Healthcare Data

I first met Pryce Ancona when I pretty much forced him to share an UBER to the airport for when we were both leaving the first HHS/CMS Digital Tech Bootcamp in DC and became an immediate fan of System C. He’s now that friend who texts me randomly when he sees something that fits into the future state we aim to build and brings me a massive smile. Pryce started his career at 21, fresh out of college, working for a massive electronic health records company in Wisconsin - one that everyone in health tech has heard of - you know the one. Over the past decade, he’s become one of the sharpest minds in healthcare interoperability - which is a fancy way of saying he figures out how the hundreds of thousands of disconnected healthcare data silos in this country can actually talk to each other. Or at least tries REALLY hard.

He’s now at HTD Health, lured there by our friend, the man, the myth, the legend, Brendan Keeler - who writes a brilliant Substack (Health API Guy). The firm consults with payers, providers, and software vendors on how to connect systems, interpret info-blocking regulations, and build strategies for data mobility. When he describes his work, Pryce puts it simply: we made all these software systems, and now we’re trying to make them talk to each other.

And that brings us to the big news.

What Actually Changed: AI Meets Your Health Records

Here’s the shift that Pryce highlighted: OpenAI and Anthropic have both announced that their AI systems can now talk directly to your doctor’s systems. OpenAI is using b.well, and Anthropic is using HealthEx.

Think of it like Plaid for healthcare. The same way your budgeting app uses