While the Galaxy Fold7 captured headlines at Samsung’s Unpacked event, the real story unfolded at Brooklyn Fish Transfer, where Samsung’s acquisition of Xealth signaled the tech giant’s audacious entry into healthcare’s most complex challenges. The industrial venue, with its exposed beams and concrete floors, provided a fitting backdrop for a discussion about rebuilding healthcare’s infrastructure from the ground up.
“Samsung started as a grocery store not that long ago that is now a global technology company innovating for the future,” declared Dr. Hon Pak, Senior Vice President & Head of Digital Health Team at Samsung Electronics. “It gives me hope that we can do what is unimaginable.”
The Visionary Leading the Charge
Dr. Hon Pak moderated the healthcare forum with the authority of someone who has spent decades in medical innovation. His background spans serving as adjunct faculty at Georgetown University, editorial board member for the Journal of Telemedicine and eHealth, former Chair of The American Telemedicine Association Board, advisor for the Health category at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and Chief Medical Information Officer for the U.S. Army. Yet his motivation runs deeper than credentials.
“My why has to do with my belief in that regardless of skin color, your beliefs, where you live, I think we have some basic needs, and that need is about being loved and to be able to love others around you,” Pak explained. “I think that’s a fundamental foundation that is common to all human beings, and we believe that we are in an area with health. We have the opportunity to care for other people.”
This philosophy drives Samsung’s healthcare strategy. “What’s more important in my mind is that this is not about Samsung changing healthcare. It’s about Samsung in its ecosystem and enabling and bringing those players so that we together and make health a reality.”
Transformation One: From Patient Centered to Person Centered Care
Healthcare has long prided itself on being patient centered, but Dr. Rasu Shrestha believes that’s not enough anymore. As Executive Vice President, Chief Innovation & Commercialization Officer of Advocate Health, he articulated this transformation with the precision of someone who has led health system innovation for decades.
“For the longest time in health, we’re always talking about patient centered care,” Shrestha explained. “And as a physician, I got to tell you, it is important, it is critical, right? You always have to have the patient in the middle. But the opportunity here is to broaden that aperture from patient centered care to person centered care.”
“When we look at a person and say, that’s my patient, I’m now thinking of vital signs and, you know, past medical history. But when I think of a person, I think of what are their needs? How are they living day to day, how are they sleeping? That needs a complete mindset change,” Pak added.
This shift enables movement “from more of an episodic, broken and fragmented care methodology and business model that’s the business model that drives healthcare today to more of a connected, ubiquitous, always on system of health.”
Shrestha’s credentials lend weight to this vision. Prior to Advocate Health, he served as Chief Innovation Officer at UPMC, where he earned global recognition for spearheading groundbreaking health IT solutions. At Advocate Health, one of the largest health systems in the United States, he oversees transformative initiatives that leverage technology, data, and AI to redefine the delivery of care and improve patient outcomes.
“My why is what got me into medicine in the first place. It’s the reason I became a doctor. It’s because I wanted to make a difference in the life of a patient, not just saving patients lives, but really making a difference in the life of a patient.” Connected health, he emphasized, “really isn’t about devices or data. It’s about dignity, patients, consumers the world over are asking us to hear me, to know me, to sense me, to really understand.”
Transformation Two: From Hospital Centric to Connected Care Everywhere
Advocate Health is betting big on a fundamental shift in where healthcare happens. “We’re really pushing for this at Advocate health is broadening that aperture from just more of a hospital centric way of providing healthcare to more of a connected care everywhere strategy. I talk about it as moving from bricks and mortar to clicks and mortar. Home is where the health is,” Shrestha explained.
Hospitals will never disappear entirely. “Hospitals will never go away. I’m a radiologist, right? We’re going to need scans, surgeries, procedures. We’re human beings. We’re going to break down. Hospitals will not go away.” But their role evolves dramatically. “I see with what we’re talking about today, with Samsung and Xealth coming together, the opportunity to really reposition hospitals also as what I call care traffic control centers.”
At Advocate Health, this vision drives their strategic planning through what they call “rewire 2030,” their next five year strategic plan. “And as part of rewire 2030 one of our highest priority items meshes directly with everything that we’re talking about here today and it is our priority of what we call health at home and wellness that is one of our six strategic differentiators that we are betting on.”
Investment scale demonstrates serious commitment. “We’re investing heavily into, we’re building directly around in terms of how we’re evolving as a health system. Another part of our rewire 2030 paradigm is what we call our innovation partnership ecosystem.”
Transformation Three: From Transactional to Experiential Healthcare
Anyone who has navigated the healthcare system knows the frustration Shrestha described. “The biggest challenge that we’ve had in healthcare today, which is it is highly transactional, very transactional, right? It’s about ICD 10 codes and CPT codes, and it’s about filling codes, and it’s about schedules, and it’s very transactional.”
Meanwhile, consumers expect something entirely different. “Yet we consumers, people, human beings, all of us live in an environment where it really is about experiences. So the opportunity to elevate health care from transactional health care to experiential health care.”
Simply throwing digital technology at broken processes won’t solve the problem. “The challenge is that if you take digital and throw digital at a broken process, you end up with a broken digital process. So what we need to do and the power of Samsung coming together with Xealth working with companies and entities like us, is to really say all right, what is the root cause of those challenges? How do we address the broken processes so that we can bring in the power of digital, AI and connected devices and sensors?”
The Xealth Acquisition: Mobile Expertise Meets Healthcare Need
Michael McSherry brings a unique perspective to healthcare as someone who has successfully built and sold multiple technology companies. His background includes co founding six companies, most in mobile technology, and extensive work with Samsung. Among his successes is Swype, the groundbreaking keyboard technology acquired by Nuance Communications.
“My why is obviously friends and family, a balanced life is incredibly important to have longevity and health and wellness in life. But intellectually, I have a passion for curiosity, and that’s led me to co founding six different companies that’s been my career as startups.” His journey to healthcare was intentional. “Using our energy and knowledge around mobile, we saw the inevitability that it was going to bridge into healthcare, and how would we use our talent and passions to bring the mobile skills and development and touch points to traditional care?”
Xealth emerged from an unusual incubation environment: inside Providence, one of the largest hospital systems in the country. This created a solution that allows clinicians to prescribe digital interventions. “That might be an app to manage diabetes or pregnancy, it could be an Uber ride to get someone to an appointment or meal deliveries to recover post surgical events.”
Timing of Samsung’s acquisition couldn’t be more strategic. “First off, I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity of working with Samsung. They bought Xealth earlier this week, and we’re thrilled with what happened to gather to greatly simplify care and connect care into traditional provider and clinician workflows that is so valuable and crucial to the future of care.”
The Technology Integration Vision
McSherry’s vision for the Samsung Xealth integration addresses one of healthcare’s most persistent problems: device proliferation. “This [phone] plus your devices – the watch, the ring – are going to replace the standalone blood pressure monitor, the pulse oximeter, a variety of different devices – it’s going to be one packaged solution and that’s going to simplify care.”
Current remote monitoring creates unnecessary complexity for healthcare providers. “It’s complex for the hospital system to discern someone getting released from a lung transplant surgery, what do you need to use to remotely monitor their health? Of someone getting released from an ortho procedure, what do you need to remotely monitor their recovery? Each procedure requires different levels of remote monitoring. If one device can do so many more elements of remote monitoring you’re simplifying care and reducing costs.”
AI integration adds sophisticated decision making capabilities. “You’re going to introduce a number of AI elements to discern how all these different data points of the patient in their home, their health, their daily lives, what brings the signal back to the hospital system and the doctor is going to be the quarterback of your health.” McSherry’s optimism was evident: “I firmly believe that technology and what Samsung and the rest of us are trying to do is really going to improve the quality of care moving forward and we’re all going to live happier, healthier lives.”
The Digital Health Infrastructure Challenge
Despite proven effectiveness, digital health solutions face significant reimbursement barriers. McSherry outlined the paradox with frustrating clarity: “93% of all Fortune 500 companies have a mental health app available to their employees. It’s showing clinical effectiveness. It shows ROI, does Medicaid reimburse for that? No. Does Medicare reimburse for that? No.”
This creates an impossible situation for healthcare providers. “So you have the most disadvantaged patient populations in the country. These are proven clinically effective, but the government doesn’t pay for it, so doctors at point of care don’t know whether a patient is Medicaid or Medicare or works for Intel or works for Samsung.” Healthcare systems need sophisticated solutions to navigate this complexity. “You prescribe the right app to the patient that’s going to be clinically eligible, that there’s some beneficiary paying for that, because you can’t expect the patient pay out of cost. And this is all proven cost effective, so the whole industry should adopt this very good.”
Economic pressures make innovation urgent. “It’s unsustainable to keep the costs going up, as Rasu said, the country just can’t absorb that cost and to spend against the GDP that we’ve got in this country. So we have to use the deflationary technology to improve quality.”
The Constructive Insurrectionist: Hinge Health’s Approach
Jim Pursley describes himself as a “constructive insurrectionist” in healthcare, and his background supports that characterization. As President of Hinge Health, the world’s leading digital musculoskeletal company, he oversees care for millions of people managing chronic pain. His career spans roles as Chief Commercial Officer of Livongo Health and various executive positions at Care Innovations and GE HealthCare Technologies. He holds an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.S. in Management Science and Information Systems from Pennsylvania State University.
Personal motivation drives his professional mission. “Everybody in this room, everybody watching online, has hopes, aspirations, desires, for themselves, for their family. And you think about health, while maybe not sufficient, is absolutely necessary for all that we all know somebody who seemingly has it all, who’s at the top of their field, the profession, everyone entities them for whatever reason, and yet they don’t have their health. Very quickly you realize how little everything else matters, and nothing else is possible without that foundational, basic element of good health.”
“The ability to give the gift of health, to fight for people’s health, is something very, very fundamental and basic to the human condition, and something that we get really passionate about, I get really passionate about, and it’s a pleasure and privilege to be on stage with all these other great people who are pushing the same direction.”
The Scale of Digital Health Impact
Numbers tell the story of digital health’s potential reach. “About 25 million Americans covered by Hinge today, my chances are some of you in the audience may have access to hinge. If any of you have hip, knee, back, shoulder, elbow, neck, whatever kind of musculoskeletal pain, check us out and see AI. See the power of technology at work as we’re able to approximate physical therapy in the palm of your hand.”
Pursley’s diagnosis of healthcare’s fundamental problem resonates across the industry. “There’s not a lack of innovation, there’s not a lack of good doctors, there’s not a lack of a lot of clinical technology. There’s a lack of unification.” His call to action was direct: “Push us to unify. Don’t accept the constructive insurrectionists in this fight to unify care, to elegantly integrate the physical and digital. And I think if we can do that, build that infrastructure, and we’re going to be in a lot better shape than we are today.”
Looking ahead, Pursley sees dramatic automation potential. “We have a belief that almost all non touch elements of health care will be able to be automated through AI. There will still be there will still be a need for in person health care, but the vast majority of non touch health care that we experience today can be automated through AI.”
Samsung’s AI Strategy: The Holistic Health Coach
Samsung’s AI ambitions extend far beyond simple data collection. Pak announced significant developments launching later this year: “At the end of the year, we’re going to be launching a beta version of a health assistant health coach that is holistic across the four pillars. It is our beginning of our journey, but I’m very excited about what this means, because today we’ve been giving you, here’s what you do for sleep, here’s what you do for activity, but that’s not we’re not pieces, we’re a whole.”
Acknowledging imperfection while embracing iteration defines Samsung’s approach. “It’s going to be imperfect. I’ll be the first one to tell you, but you know what experience it give us feedback, and we’ll continue to evolve it so that we can envision this part together.”
Customer feedback drives Samsung’s focus on actionable insights. “Clearly from a Samsung perspective, what we’re interested in, what our customers have told us is to say, look, just tell me what my problems are, but just don’t tell me I’m sleeping poorly, tell me something useful, so I can actually do something about it.”
The Marketplace Ecosystem Strategy
Samsung’s ecosystem strategy extends beyond their own technology to embrace partners like Hinge Health. “And that got us to really thinking all right, we can give you the data in a meaningful way, easy to understand. Give you insights and maybe even a little light coaching. But then when we realized that we have people like Hinge and others that are doing some amazing innovative things, and then we said, what would that look like to be able to connect a marketplace of innovative solutions?”
Timing gives Samsung a significant advantage. “What’s really exciting for me is that I think 10 years ago, while this conversation would not have been all that different in terms of concept and vision, what is different now is AI.”
The Historical Moment
Pak believes this moment will be remembered as transformative. “Looking at digital health as we look 10 years from now, I bet many of you probably don’t realize this is probably one of those central moments, when we’ll look back and say, remember, this is when the bridge was built.”
His closing words carried the weight of conviction: “If you don’t remember anything else, I hope that you’ll look back and say healthcare changed today, and I really mean that from the bottom of my heart, because healthcare really needs change, and it’s not the lack of innovations, it’s not the lack of great physicians, somehow the infrastructure pieces and the things that AI now can do for hyper personalization, hyper contextualization and scale now gives us hope to be able to do what we need to do.”
Pak also acknowledged the graveyard of failed healthcare disruption attempts. “Please know that many skeptics out there will say many great people have come and many dead bodies have been strewn along this path for trying to disrupt and improve healthcare. But also know that Samsung started as a grocery store not that long ago that is now a global technology company innovating for the future. It gives me hope that we can do what is unimaginable.”
The Ecosystem Imperative
Healthcare’s complexity demands collaborative solutions, as Shrestha emphasized throughout the discussion. “The reality is that with all of the challenges that exist in healthcare, it is not any one entity that can heroically go in and save healthcare, it really takes an ecosystem.”
Transformation timelines appear to be accelerating. “As we look into the future, just in the next couple of years, not even 10 years, in the next couple of years, our belief and what I’m excited about is really building this innovation partnership ecosystem to drive towards some of the specific things that we just talked about on this panel today.”
Success requires willing collaboration. “What it takes is a willing set of partners and collaborators that are enabled by the set of technologies and capabilities in this more open ecosystem approach that we’re talking about today. And that’s what I’m really, really excited about, because at the end of the day, it’s going to make a specific set of differences to the Quadruple Aim.”
Optimism pervaded Shrestha’s closing thoughts. “The word I’d share with you is hope. You know, the panel, the conversation, the events that are happening as a result of Samsung Xealth coming together, and the dialog that we’re having here just gives me hope. Gives me hope that finally, we’ll be able to solve some of the biggest challenges that exist in healthcare today.”
From a grocery store to a global technology leader, Samsung’s corporate journey mirrors the healthcare transformation they’re now leading. The convergence of AI, wearable technology, and healthcare expertise creates unprecedented opportunities to address systemic challenges that have persisted for decades. The panelists’ collective vision extends beyond technology implementation to ecosystem transformation, positioning this collaboration as potentially transformative for healthcare delivery.
Their shared commitment to person centered care, supported by AI driven insights and seamless data integration, suggests this initiative could mark the moment when healthcare fundamentally changed from fragmented, reactive care to connected, proactive health management. The fact that Samsung chose Brooklyn Fish Transfer, an actual working fish transfer facility, for their healthcare forum adds symbolic weight to their message about transformation. Just as this venue serves as a bridge between ocean and market, Samsung positions itself as the bridge between consumer technology and clinical care.