Fierce Healthcare Senior Writer Anastassia Gliadkovskaya spotlighted the 2025 class of Fierce 15 honorees on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday morning.
In a NYSE TV interview segment, Gliadkovskaya spoke with Senior Anchor Kristen Scholer about changes in the healthcare space and how members of the 2025 class of Fierce 15 honorees leverage these trends to stand out from the pack.
"This report takes months to put together, and our team takes a combination of nominations as well as our own research to determine 15 private U.S. companies—smaller companies—that are taking bold steps to really make changes in the healthcare industry," Gliadkovskaya said. "We are looking for companies that are taking an approach that is different and trying to fill gaps in the market. And we really want to see that they are demonstrating the outcomes—that they’re walking the walk and that they’re making good on their promises."
Check out the video above (and directly on YouTube here), or read through the transcript of the interview below.
Kristen Scholer: What are the top overall trends that you see really driving innovation in healthcare right now?
Anastassia Gliadkovskaya: There’s several. Obviously, AI is No. 1, as well as weight loss drugs, GLP-1s. We’re also monitoring provider consolidation from hospitals to retail health. We’re looking at women’s health, mental health and, of course, federal policy changes under the new Trump administration.
KS: Maybe we can go one by one. So, starting with AI, are there honorees on your list that you believe are doing a great job of tapping into that innovation for good?
AG: Absolutely. Reimagine Care is one I would call out. It’s an app to support patients going through the cancer care journey, and this app can answer questions around the clock, especially during a very stressful time when patients might not have access to their specialists. When questions come up, this is a really important step to make sure that patients don’t get lost throughout the journey and that they have support.
KS: GLP-1s, weight loss drugs, have become such a popular conversation piece, if nothing else, and a treatment option for some people. What are you seeing in that space?
AG: There’s a lot of attention being paid to weight loss drugs. We have an honoree this year, Form Health, which is focused on obesity care, personalized weight management. It's a really popular thing we're seeing now, and there's different approaches that are being taken there.
Most of these companies are serving adults, and they're trying to encourage a kind of holistic approach—so not just emphasis on GLP-1s but also diet, lifestyle changes, personalized nutrition support. They’re really trying to tackle this holistically, because they know that to make lasting changes, you need to not only change one thing, or take one medication, and you need to really attack it from all sides.
KS: Another facet that I think the world has become more comfortable talking about is mental health, and how important it is to take care of your mental health. What did you find putting this list together in terms of which companies are doing it right and how they’re making improvements?
AG: Well, there’s one company, Bend Health, they are an intensive mental healthcare provider for teenagers and adolescents. They are trying to fill the gap in care deserts. … They took advantage of telehealth to say ‘Hey, we can provide really intensive, high-quality, important mental healthcare to higher acuity teenagers and adolescents—and we can do it virtually.’ It’s easier to scale and it’s easier to reach people, especially where there are care deserts.
But we see other companies that are also using mental health as part of their offering. So maybe it’s not the bulk of their offering. For example, Holon Health, which is an app to support people with substance use disorder who are involved with the criminal justice system. They’re also using peer support and psychiatric resources embedded in the app to support patients holistically.
KS: What else were your takeaways from putting this together?
AG: It’s just such an exciting space. I would call out AI—most companies on this list are using AI one way or another, and that wasn’t the case even just a couple of years ago. The goal is to make it a seamless experience the way that it is in other parts of our life as consumers. So we’re seeing companies offer around-the-clock AI chatbots to answer patient questions, or relieve some of the burdens of paperwork from busy doctors, or even analyze data to make more informed treatment decisions. So [what] stood out to me was just how many companies are leaning into the AI trend.