The PennHealthX Podcast

92 - A Sequence of Controlled Falling - Yakov Gradinar, CP

Yakov Gradinar, CP, is the Chief Medical Officer of the Protez Foundation, a nonprofit organization that flies Ukrainian war amputees to the United States to receive custom prosthetics, rehabilitation, and counseling services. He trained as an orthopedic trauma surgeon in Ukraine before immigrating to the United States, where he retrained as a prosthetist. When the war in Ukraine escalated in 2022, he left a stable career to launch the Protez Foundation out of his garage — and has since grown it into an organization with over 80 employees, 150 volunteers, and donors across 40 countries, having served nearly 260 patients across 30 groups. In this episode, Yakov walks us through a life shaped by an early cancer scare that taught him to treat every day as a gift, the humility of starting over in a new country, and what it actually takes to build a multidisciplinary nonprofit from nothing while raising seven kids and leading a church. We hear how Protez coordinates care across prosthetic fitting, physical therapy, mental health support, and community reintegration. We close with Yakov's vision for what modern amputee care should look like, his case for a multidisciplinary and systemic approach to rehabilitation, and the philosophy that has carried him through it all. His message: name what is lost, focus on what is left, and ask yourself what you can do with it.

91 - Dr. Kit Delgado - Systems, Behavior, & Innovation

In this episode of the PennHealthX Podcast, Ziad Hassan and Habib Akouri sit down with Dr. Mucio Kit Delgado to explore his work at the intersection of emergency medicine, behavioral science, and health system innovation. Dr. Delgado is an emergency and addiction medicine physician-scientist at Penn Medicine, where he serves as Executive Director of Transformation Science & Behavioral Insights and Faculty Director of the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit. He also holds roles as an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine & Epidemiology, Associate Director at CHIBE, and Co-Chair of Penn Medicine’s Opioid Task Force. Through his leadership of the BeSAFIR Lab and Penn PORTAL, Dr. Delgado utilizes behavioral design and data-driven strategies to improve decision-making in acute care, advancing efforts in opioid stewardship, injury prevention, and patient safety.

90 - Building the Doctor's Second Brain - Dr. Dereck Paul

Dr. Dereck Paul, MD, is the co-founder and CEO of Glass Health [https://glass.health?utm_source=chatgpt.com], an AI platform helping clinicians with clinical decision-making, documentation, and workflow optimization. Dr. Paul’s path into healthcare innovation began long before residency — from studying music composition to applying to Y Combinator before even starting medical school. In this episode, Dr. Paul reflects on the pivotal decisions that shaped his career, including balancing startup ambitions with clinical training and ultimately taking leave from residency to scale Glass Health. He shares how his frustrations with outdated healthcare software inspired him to build tools designed specifically around the realities of clinical practice and explains how modern AI systems can function as real-time collaborators for physicians. We also explore the rapidly evolving intersection of AI and medicine, including how clinicians and students can prepare for a future increasingly shaped by large language models and automation. Dr. Paul discusses why resisting AI is the wrong approach, how physicians can stay on the technological frontier, and why empathy and firsthand clinical experience remain critical when building healthcare technology. The conversation closes with advice for students and trainees considering entrepreneurship: embrace uncertainty, recognize rare technological inflection points when they arise, and pursue the work that would leave you with the fewest regrets.

89 - From Academic Medicine to Biotechnology - Dr. Jason Chien

Dr. Jason Chien, MD, MS, is the Chief Medical Officer of Mozart Therapeutics, where he leads clinical development of a first-in-class pipeline targeting autoimmune diseases, including type 1 diabetes and celiac disease. He trained in internal medicine, infectious diseases, and pulmonary and critical care medicine before building an NIH-funded research program at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He then spent nearly eight years at Gilead Sciences and five years at Johnson & Johnson, leading global R&D strategy, before returning to his scientific roots in biotech. In this episode, Dr. Chien walks us through a career he describes as unfolding in decades — each phase building on the last. We hear what pulled him out of academia and into industry, why learning to crunch his own numbers changed everything, and what it feels like to now be responsible for putting a brand new mechanism of action into human beings for the very first time. We close with Dr. Chien's take on leadership, the MD/MBA question, and what he would do differently looking back. His advice to students: stay curious, watch where AI is taking the field, and resist investing in any one thing that makes you lose sight of where you actually want to go.

88 - Dr. Jeff Stuart - Conflict Management & Hospital Administration

Hosts Isabella Stuart and William Hayes sit down with Dr. Jeff Stuart, co-founder of Resolve Conflict, board-certified anesthesiologist, and former Chief Medical Officer. They discuss his journey from early interest in medicine to a career that spans clinical practice, hospital leadership, and entrepreneurship, highlighting key inflection points and the value of staying adaptable. Dr. Stuart shares insights on pursuing leadership roles, his decision to obtain an MBA mid-career, and how to think intentionally about MD+ pathways. A central focus of the episode is conflict management in healthcare. Drawing from decades of experience—including leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic—he explains how communication breakdowns impact teams and patient care, and offers practical strategies rooted in self-awareness and emotional intelligence. They also explore balancing clinical and administrative work, the evolving relationship between physicians and healthcare systems, and the importance of mentorship, curiosity, and embracing new opportunities throughout a medical career.