About the Author: Jonathan Govette

CEO/Co-Founder @ Oatmeal Health | AI Lung Cancer Screening | Almost Became a Doctor | Engineer | Follow to Share What I’ve Learned Along the Way I help patients get the care they need earlier, preventing late-stage cancer. That's been the throughline across three companies and almost 20 years in healthcare. At ReferralMD, we fixed broken referral networks so patients didn't fall through the cracks. At Oatmeal Health, it's lung cancer: building the diagnostic and screening infrastructure so the 85% of cases caught too late get caught early instead. Today as CEO of Oatmeal Health, I lead a team embedding AI into radiology workflows to turn routine lung CT scans into reimbursable cancer risk assessments. We partner with FQHCs to reach underserved communities, and with health systems and payers to make early detection economically sustainable. Think HeartFlow or Cleerly, but for lungs. Between companies, I advised at Techstars and Plug and Play, mentoring founders building in digital health. That experience shaped how I think about what separates companies that ship from companies that stall: distribution, reimbursement, and clinical trust, not just technology. I'm a CancerX alumnus, a 3x healthcare founder, and someone who believes the biggest problems in cancer aren't scientific. They're operational. We're hiring mission-driven builders at Oatmeal Health. If you want to work on something that matters, reach out. When I'm not working, I'm traveling, mentoring, and keeping up with one very energetic husky. 🐾 Substack - The Oatmeal Bite: Millions of patients get less care because of who they are, where they live, or how they look. I'm fighting to change that. CEO @OatmealHealth, a startup built for the underserved. The Oatmeal Bite: intel for clinicians, investors, and advocates. Jonathan Govette CEO of Oatmeal Health Substack: https://oatmealhealthjonathangovette.substack.com/

FDA AI Clearance: Speed Without Safety

By |July 18th, 2026|

More FDA clearances in radiology AI should mean safer imaging. It does not. The number on the scoreboard looks impressive. According to AI Certs, academic analysts verified 950 cleared AI tools as of August 2024, and industry media now cite 1,400 to 1,500 authorizations through mid-2026. Radiology captures roughly 70% of that entire list. Chest imaging triage and intracranial hemorrhage detection lead the pack. We are winning the clearance race. We may be losing the evidence race. Here is the part that should make every health system pause: A JAMA Health Forum study mapped 182 recall events across 60 cleared tools. Nearly half of those recalls occurred within twelve months of authorization. Researcher Tinglong Dai called the findings "stunning." And ...

Pearl Health $50M Series C

By |July 17th, 2026|

$110 million just went into fixing Medicare. Here is why that matters. Pearl Health raised $50 million in Series C equity and locked in a $60 million credit facility, according to Startup Geek citing Axios Pro Rata. The lead investor is Andreessen Horowitz. Viking Global Investors, AlleyCorp, and Ulysses Capital also participated. This is not just another health tech raise. This is a bet on a specific, hard problem. Pearl Health builds the operating system for value-based care in Medicare. Their platform synthesizes claims data, ADT feeds, and EHR data to identify which patients need attention before costs spiral, guide care teams on next steps, and automate the administrative work that burns out clinicians. Here is what they have built ...

Q2 2026 FDA Radiology AI Clearances

By |July 16th, 2026|

86 FDA AI clearances in one quarter. Most people read this wrong. I read the Innolitics Q2 2026 AI/ML FDA clearance breakdown and stopped at one line: 84 of those came through 510(k), but only 12 were Special 510(k)s. That small number is the entire story. Here is why that distinction matters more than the headline count. According to Innolitics, FDA authorized 86 AI/ML devices in Q2 2026. Radiology led with 59 records. That sounds like momentum. But if you are building or buying AI for your imaging workflow, the total authorization count is almost irrelevant. What matters is how these products evolve after first clearance. I call this The 4-Stage AI Device Maturity Stack. Use it to evaluate any ...

One Big Beautiful Bill: The FQHC Reckoning

By |July 15th, 2026|

Everyone says this is a budget bill. It is not. For every FQHC director, community health worker, and safety-net provider reading this, H.R.1 is a patient volume crisis arriving in slow motion. A pregnant woman shows up at a community health center. She applied for Medicaid after her first prenatal visit. Under the old rules, her coverage could be backdated two months to cover care she already received. Under H.R.1, that window is now one month for Medicaid expansion enrollees. The bills for that first visit, and anything else before her application date, now fall on her. That is not an edge case. That is the new normal. According to the National Consumers League, here is what H.R.1 actually does ...

Radiology AI: Prove It or Move Aside

By |July 14th, 2026|

Radiologists, why does 95% of the AI you piloted never reach a patient? That number should stop you cold. According to Rad AI, citing the MIT Nanda report, the AI pilot failure rate across healthcare sits at 95%. Not 30%. Not 50%. Ninety-five percent of AI pilots succeed on paper, then stall in practice. That is not a technology problem. That is a healthcare culture problem. And in radiology, it is getting harder to ignore. Here is the data picture Rad AI laid out in a July 2026 piece worth reading: • 95% of AI pilots fail to scale beyond the pilot stage, per the MIT Nanda report • Implementation costs alone can exceed $200,000, per work out of Duke ...

Medicaid Work Requirements Miss the Mark

By |July 13th, 2026|

Medicaid just drew a line that science says is wrong. And millions of people in long-term recovery are standing on the wrong side of it. The One Big Beautiful Bill passed about a year ago. It drastically altered Medicaid. Now we are in the rulemaking phase, where CMS explains to the public exactly how those changes get implemented. According to Faces and Voices of Recovery, we are in the midst of a rulemaking process that is highly complex and covers several aspects of the legislation. Two provisions deserve your full attention right now. First: work requirements for Medicaid recipients. There is a Medically Frail exemption, but it requires you to meet one of five specific categories: • Blind or disabled ...

Healthcare Congressional Oversight 2026

By |July 12th, 2026|

A congressional staffer sits at a desk in 2026, not November, not after the midterms. They are already requesting that companies preserve information. Already cultivating external sources. Already drafting investigative frameworks. This is the reality according to Healthcare Dive, citing attorneys from Holland and Knight's Washington, D.C., office. Congressional Democrats are planning investigations into major healthcare topics if they win majorities in the 120th Congress this November. But the preparation is not waiting for election results. Here is what they are targeting: • Drug pricing strategies and manufacturer price increases • Insurance premium increases and cost-sharing structures • Facility fees and billing practices • Compliance with the No Surprises Act • Medical debt collection and credit reporting practices • Private ...

ACA Collapse Is a Systemic Failure

By |July 12th, 2026|

💥 Everyone calls the ACA enrollment crash a fraud story. The people who left did not commit fraud. They just ran out of money. 📰 According to KFF Health News, ACA plan enrollment continues to drop after Congress allowed enhanced ACA subsidies to expire. Insurers say they are expecting to hike premiums even more next year. And many Americans are publicly saying they can no longer afford coverage. The Trump administration, for its part, attributes the enrollment drop to a crackdown on fraud. 🎯 That framing is a political escape hatch, and I am done watching people accept it. When the price of something doubles and people stop buying it, we do not call that a demand problem. We call ...

Medicaid Cuts Are Already Here

By |July 11th, 2026|

😤 Everyone said the Medicaid cuts would hurt adults. They lied. The kids were in the crossfire the whole time. 📰 According to First Focus on Children, one year ago President Trump signed into law the biggest cuts to Medicaid in U.S. history in H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Congress insisted the cuts targeted only the childless adult population. New data published this week, on the law's one-year anniversary, says otherwise. Medicaid and CHIP together cover approximately 36 million babies, toddlers, school-aged kids, teens, and young people transitioning into adulthood. These youth comprise nearly half of all Medicaid and CHIP beneficiaries. Congress did not protect them. It miscalculated, or it lied. 🔥 Here is my take. The ...