At HealthHelper, we believe that healthcare providers should spend their time delivering care—not chasing administrative tasks, managing fragmented workflows, or struggling to keep up with complex payer contracts. Our mission is simple: to take the work off providers’ plates so they can focus on their patients.
To dive deeper into HealthHelper’s journey, the challenges we’re solving, and what’s ahead, I sat down with Jake Kahane, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer. We talked about what inspired him to start HealthHelper, the role AI plays in scaling care coordination, and his vision for the future of provider workflows.
From automating care gap closure to orchestrating complex workflows across healthcare networks, HealthHelper has built the infrastructure that allows providers to do more with less. Here’s what Jake had to say about how we got here—and where we’re headed next.
1. What inspired you to start HealthHelper?
The idea for HealthHelper really started with a simple observation: In population health, there’s no shortage of data—but providers struggle to turn that data into action. Health systems and medical groups have dashboards, reports, and lists of patients who need care, but actually operationalizing interventions—getting patients scheduled, closing care gaps, and ensuring follow-through—was a major challenge.
Over the years, I have learned a lot about patient engagement, care navigation, and what actually works to activate patients in their healthcare. It became clear that the place where this mattered most was primary care and preventive medicine—where the right intervention at the right time can prevent complications and improve long-term outcomes.
I wasn’t sure we were going to start a business, but I’ve always subscribed to the belief that when you have an idea, you just keep taking small steps forward and reassess along the way. The more we dug into the concept, the clearer it became that primary care providers were drowning in work. And when we started talking to them, practice managers, and staff, their reaction was the same: this would be a huge help.
That’s what keeps driving us today. We continue to hear from our clients that we’re making a real difference—offloading administrative burden, improving patient engagement, and ultimately helping practices succeed in both value-based and fee-for-service care.
2. What’s the biggest problem HealthHelper is solving today?
The biggest challenge we’re solving is simple: helping practices get more done with limited resources. Whether it’s a high-performing practice trying to scale or a group struggling to improve quality scores, the core issue remains the same—there’s too much work and not enough time or staff to handle it all effectively and efficiently.
We hear this all the time: “We’re doing fine now, but as we grow, we know this isn’t a scalable approach.” Even top-performing practices run into this. They’re doing well, but everything still feels manual, fragmented, and inefficient—and they know they can’t just keep working harder forever. And with constantly changing rules, payer demands, and operational complexities, it’s impossible to keep up without burning out.
The reality is, health systems, FQHCs, and medical groups know they need to close care gaps, improve coding accuracy, and meet quality targets—but they simply don’t have the bandwidth to do it efficiently. Staff are stretched thin, payer contracts keep evolving, and existing technology isn’t built to fit seamlessly into their workflows.
To make things even more challenging, hiring more people isn’t always the answer. Human capital is expensive, and many organizations can’t afford to throw money at the problem just to end up right back where they started. And when staff leave, it creates an even worse situation—disrupting workflows and setting them further back.
That’s where we come in. HealthHelper eliminates these barriers. We bring the right mix of technology, automation, and people to help practices actually get this work done—without adding to their burden.
From a product perspective, we’ve built a reliable, future-proof solution that not only helps practices scale—but also protects them when they need to contract. Whether they’re expanding or facing staffing shortages, they can rely on HealthHelper to provide stability, efficiency, and sustained performance—no matter what comes next.
3. HealthHelper is expanding its capabilities beyond closing care gaps. What’s next?
We’ve got some big product enhancements coming this year that we’re really excited about. I can’t share all the details just yet, but what I can say is that our clients keep asking us the same question: ‘What other workflows can HealthHelper help us scale?’
The reality is, healthcare has no shortage of inefficiencies and operational challenges. But solving them isn’t just about building technology—it’s about earning the trust of provider organizations to take these problems off their plate. That’s exactly what we’re doing.
Moving forward, HealthHelper will orchestrate and augment more of their workflows. We’ll be rolling out new solutions that allow practices and networks to quickly spin up tech-enabled workflows that scale, orchestrate, and hardwire best practices for specific patient populations. But this isn’t just technology, this includes the nimble service augmentation that actually gets the work done.
One of the biggest pain points we’re tackling is the constant changes in and impressive complexity of having to deal with a multitude of payer contracts. Every time a contract changes, practices aren’t in a position to completely overhaul their workflows for that payer’s patients. But with HealthHelper, they don’t have to. We combine technology and coordination resources to make those adjustments seamless.
Instead of spending weeks on planning, staffing, and change management, practices and networks can turn to HealthHelper to activate high-value workflows that drive performance improvements—without having to change their own workflow, without having to worry about tech integrations, and without adding more administrative burden. We orchestrate the workflow…and we execute the work.
4. What role do AI and automation play in HealthHelper’s future?
It’s an exciting time to be in care navigation—moreso than ever before, AI is allowing us to do more with fewer resources. But let’s be clear: AI isn’t here to replace providers or care teams—it’s here to amplify their impact.
At HealthHelper, we’re AI-enabling our care coordinators so that most of the patient engagement and care coordination can run on autopilot, while our team steps in when human judgment, creativity, and problem-solving are needed. Many patients want to know that there is a human there to help. HealthHelper clients learn quickly that in fact there are so many gaps and inefficiencies in healthcare that still require a real person to connect the dots, and that’s where the AI-plus-human approach becomes so powerful.
That’s also why we’re skeptical of companies claiming AI can do it all. Healthcare is complex. Data is messy. Systems don’t always talk to each other. We’ve seen firsthand that you still need people in the loop to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. That’s why our focus is on AI working alongside humans both to scale adoption of coordinator best practices and to actually take work off our clients’ plates—end to end.
5. Where do you see HealthHelper in five years?
When I think about where HealthHelper will be in five years, I think about the brand we’re building. Right now, we’re known as a trusted partner for primary care providers—an extension of their team that actually helps them get work done. That trust is everything, and it’s what sets us apart.
Five years from now, HealthHelper will still be that trusted partner—but our impact will go far beyond care gap closure. We’ll be known for orchestrating and augmenting all types of provider workflows—helping practices and health systems run more efficiently, scale operations, and do more with less.
We’ve already proven that we can seamlessly integrate into primary care teams and take work off their plates. That foundation gives us the ability to expand—taking on more administrative and operational burdens so that providers can focus on patient care. And as we grow, we’ll continue leveraging AI and automation to make our solutions even more effective and efficient.
Ultimately, I see HealthHelper becoming a critical infrastructure piece for primary care, health systems, and the networks that support them. We’ll be the go-to partner for healthcare organizations that want to scale highly effective provider workflows—powered by smart automation and deep healthcare expertise.
That’s where we’re headed, and I couldn’t be more excited about what’s next.
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