Why Oral Health Is the Missing Link in Healthcare Innovation with Katie D'Amico

Sabrina Rumbach: Most founders are building solutions for symptoms while ignoring one of the biggest drivers of whole person care, which is oral health. In today's episode, we sat down with Katie D', Amico, leader of CareQuest Innovation Partners, operator of the Smile Health accelerator and a healthcare innovation leader advancing medical dental innovation across the healthcare ecosystem. Together, we discover why adoption, workflow integration and collaborative infrastructure matter more than hype. If founders want to scale in healthcare,

Co-host: healthcare entrepreneurs, are you ready to rewrite the rules for your business so you can have more time off, a great team and more income while creating a positive social impact? Then you are in the right place. Welcome to the Provider's Edge.

Sabrina Rumbach: I'm your host, Sabrina Rumbach.

Co-host: I'm a provider, an international peak performance keynote speaker and a best selling author. Let's open the gateway to profitability for you.

Sabrina Rumbach: Today.

Co-host: My guests and I help healthcare entrepreneurs and startup founders like you break through barriers so you can control your business, control your life and control your future. This is your defining moment to be a disruptor in healthcare. Welcome Katie. She is the amazing person behind a mission driven healthcare leader who has been covering a decade of experience identifying, operationalizing and scaling transformative solutions to some of the industry's most complex challenges. And across digital women's health and oral health, which are all some of the things that we care so much about because we all know everything really start from the mouth. Food is nutrition. And in her current role leading Care Quest Innovation Partners, the for profit arm of Care Quest Institute, the world's largest world health and the world's largest world health nonprofit, Katie is advancing the critical mission to make oral health more integrated. And I think those is definitely some of the key points that we have been talking about a lot is integration is no longer seeing health care as a separate specialty. We're so used to practicing medicine as you are the cardiac, you are the renal, you're the pulmonary, you're the dental. We need to refer you to see that instead of how do we get back to where medicine used to be, we're collectively talking about patient in that roundtable perspective and then start thinking how one thing is connected to the next. And that's where accessibility, equitability, through everything from innovation to funding across the whole healthcare system. And I'm so fortunate she's here with us because they are evaluating hundreds of companies, innovation startups across the board and really focus on uh, oral health. And we met doing health and it's definitely exciting. First time they have a huge oral pavilion with many of her startups showing up in their accelerator. So Katie, your journey has been always very exciting. So at what point, how much work did you have to do to push that World Health Pavilion to go into health?

Katie D'Amico: Yes. Thank you so much for having me, Sabrina. Excited to be here today. And you know there's always when you're playing in some of these historically overlooked area, whether it's digital health, pre Covid women's health or oral health, you know, there are questions and it is a similar pattern and you know, but when you bring the right data points and champions behind it, you know, you start to see when you start incorporate these historically overlooked areas, you know, there's improvements in outcome equity and billions of cost savings to the system. And you know, super excited for the discussion today. There's so much opportunity and momentum in oral health. And at CareQuest we're truly in a very unique position in the ecosystem like you mentioned, sitting at the center of hundreds of global startups focused on oral and integrated health. We work with a amazing uh, community of uh, public and private corporate partners and also investors. And so you know, we recognize this change isn't going to happen overnight and it really will take a village. And so taking that partnership ecosystem driven approach and including partners like health who have quickly seen the importance of oral health and overall health and have been wonderful champions with us in bringing that message to the broader healthcare conference to over 50, 15,000 attendees there.

Co-host: Exactly. It's all about recognizing what we already seeing in the market. Nutrition as medicine has been talked about for the past few years and as we're pushing that as a new way of thinking, how do we prevent tree and taking care of our longevity then everything actually start from nutrition, right. It start from the oral health and in some degree the funny thing is the last year I went to a uh, comedian and who's a dentist. Right. And then the whole entire show majority and there's a one attendee going around, it's like are you a dentist or hygienist? Right. And then about 80% of the rooms are in there who are dentists because they understand the joke of are we a doctor? What are we? Are we cosmetic? Right. And also is private practice and think the business side of dental care. Oral care does help. Not so much like medical practitioners, uh, because many people are going to large entities. Right. So sometimes our thinking, our innovation are felt restricted because where the funding coming from? Oh, your large health system has to prove that. That's where you're thinking the private entity have to prove that versus in some of the smaller Traditional practices we can start thinking about how can we as uh, individual clinicians, individual experts, help to drive that innovation forward? And I think a lot of my work as you know, and your work as well is that uh, helping those women led uh, these sub niche area that people haven't spent enough time. How do we tilt that balance scale?

Sabrina Rumbach: Right?

Co-host: And then that's where you guys have been stepping in and doing so well. So tell us a bit more about the accelerators and that you guys have because we all know we love to help a lot of innovation companies, but there's just no way that we can help everyone. So there are things that we always see as uh, the green flags versus red flags. What are you guys looking for when you're putting each cohort together?

Katie D'Amico: Yes, great question. We are in our fifth year of our Smile Health accelerator. We work with matter. We work with 20 different industry and investor partners who love working with clinicians. We also have payers, we have partners across both the medical and the dental side. And you know, together every year we review all the different applications that come in, taking a very strong mission, first approach and also multidisciplinary. And you know, we're very much looking past solutions that are, you know, just a hype. We're looking at, you know, tactical proof points, you know, will it fit into actual clinical workflows, is it meaningfully engaging or reducing friction or for providers or patients. And you know, we at CareQuest remain deeply committed to solutions and founders who are focused or are currently helping serve some of those underserved, underrepresented populations. So we are actually going to be launching applications again this year. Every year we get about 100 different startups apply from 15 or so different countries. And you know, we see more toothbrushes and types of innovative toothpaste than you can ever imagine. And you know, we see a lot of breakthroughs within oral health and also helping move the needle to exactly what you're talking about, drive more of that integrated care. So those are some of the key things that we're really looking at together with our ecosystem of partners.

Co-host: That's the exciting part now is international applicants. We're also seeing a lot of those, right? We have partners, uh, in the Latin market where the house delegates through the house systems, right? Policymakers in those countries and then start thinking about, okay, what do we do? Well in the US perhaps some of the solution can go there versus how are the other solution in other countries that can really bring to the US because there is a proof of concept, right? So I think that integrated process of us bringing together online communicated and some are able to all fly in right for a few days that those are exciting moment. And for you guys are these accelerator accepting, these are also getting funding or mostly it's about helping them to make sure the business infrastructure and then actually helping them to launch into the next phase.

Katie D'Amico: Yes, great question. So we provide a non dilutive stipend for those who are selected into our cohort and then through the engagement with our investors and we're an investor as well, we have seen investments coming out of the accelerator but there is not like the Y Combinator model where we would expect initial investment with participation in our accelerator. And I think there's pros and cons of course to that approach but we really focus on using the accelerator to make those connections to go advance a pilot or an in market project or insight that really helps catalyze the path for these startups. And you know we've seen that we have many of those different case studies over the past four years that is

Co-host: such a critical point because many times when we talk to medical school or innovation hub that is their challenge is people getting that pilot started whether it's their first one or their next one. Because at the end of the day I was just on the investor um, uh roundtable earlier is that if we don't see these innovation actually have users and able to understand that language then they're not sellable and if they're not sellable then they're not vulnerable either. So giving those opportunity how to present themselves, how to actually get into a pilot, get those data started is really critical for many of these startup like yourself, sorry the uh, accelerators like yourself be able to help the startup to achieve healthcare.

Sabrina Rumbach: Founders often focus so much on um, building the solution that they forget the health system only adapts what can actually integrate into workflows and improve outcome. Now some people get defensive when we ask them what exactly are you improving? Give us something tangible. They will be saying well we're not there yet, we're in clinical trial. But what we're hoping to get is ABC that's better than they are too broad in their explanation. Like Katie highlighted uh, why overlooked space like oral health are now become critical entrance point for whole person care while also reminding us that real innovation requires more than hype. It takes operational readiness, partnerships and proof that your solution can work in the real world. So before you jump into the second half of our conversation, I also want all of you who are founders who has grown Your company beyond Series A. People who are like you listeners are leaders in health system hospitals, ACOs or you running multiple private practices. You have something that you can really teach the rest of us. So we would love for you to speak on our podcast plus be a speaker on um, Provider's Edge. Thank you for making up ranked top 100 under entrepreneurship in the US. Go to the providersedge.com to apply now.

Co-host: What's next? What do you guys are looking for? Anything that we wanted to celebrate or anything we're looking forward to in the rest of the year.

Katie D'Amico: Yeah, so we actually have another program in addition to our accelerator called Accelerate that provides additional non dilutive funding to a startup and a partner who are advancing a mission aligned project over a longer time period. And so exactly to your point, once that match is made, you know, the magic can really happen and the impact can be had. But sometimes it takes more than, you know, a 12 week accelerator to really advance that work in a meaningful way that drives to you know, a uh, commercial deal or an acquisition or a big funding round. And so we're very excited about continuing to grow our Accelerate program, including opening it up not just to our Smile community, but also to other startups. We're also seeing tremendous opportunity around medical dental integration and so continuing to advance pilots with partners, you know, to really bridge mission and market opportunities and making whole person care the norm, not the exception. Right. We're seeing pockets in the public and private sector but part of our mission is we want to make this the norm.

Sabrina Rumbach: Yeah, for sure.

Co-host: Is how do we see things as a default and not feel like oh let me ask more questions or we ask questions question because the curiosity to grow and expand instead of questioning of is that even a valid idea with the Accelerate, uh, are you guys looking for certain stage of companies that's the best sweet spot for other people to start thinking about it?

Katie D'Amico: Yes. So still we're focused on the early emerging stage, but are, you know, flexible depending again on the level of mission alignment and the reach to our underserved population. So I'd say there's openness from C to probably series B. Amazing.

Co-host: And there's so many different components of uh, what we can do in the healthcare space. And for you guys is the front end driver of how do we have the dental medical integration. And at the end of the day it's about having these collaborative conversation. Right. And we host Venture Vitality specifically in healthcare investors. Other people has other angel spots. Right. Like uh, in. I think that's where we needed to be right. Like when we're able to be with our peers, be with other people doing similar thing or different stages when bringing the insights, ideas and new creative ways to see how do we actually work together instead of feeling like which a lot of our are we all doing kind of the same thing with the same hope, but isolated instead of, well, let's just pull our research together if you're doing something similar. We were just talking about the impact of war, right? Like there are so many things that you guys are already doing. Hey, let us support it, right? How do we bring the right people to you? That's the power. True collaboration, true interconnectability and introduction with intent become that much more important. So anybody from the startup out there that you guys are listening from leaders, we want you to start talking with Katie, with myself, with other people that you see those collaborative ideas with. Right. And um, I think it is also never too early to start those conversations because you never know where the sparks are coming from. What do you see right now could be the biggest challenges in uh, innovative space within oral health?

Katie D'Amico: Yes, well, you know, funding continues to be a challenging environment. That's why we've also looked at kind of some creative constructs to continue to catalyze work in this space and help the startups, you know, prove out some of these key things and work on, you know, in market pilots to unlock m next levels of funding. You know, I, we're starting to see, especially on medical, dental integration, some um, policy. And so there was big News with the 2026 Medicare physician fee. CMS made a policy to recognize oral health as part of a quality improvement and care coordination. But there's still a long way to go in terms really advancing the incentives, the infrastructure, the workflow to lay the foundation. Right. For these innovative startups to scale at the end of the day. And so, you know, being able to help bridge that gap between dental and medical will create ultimately a bigger market and bigger reach. And there's tremendous access issues across the board where medical and dental integration can also help solve. Right. We know 27 million Americans see a dentist but not a physician. I think that's a really interesting statistic and shows, you know, dental care can be an access point into our healthcare system. Um, but there's still, you know, more work to be done in terms of some of that foundational layer to advance multiple innovations at scale.

Co-host: Right. Is that there are people who are so used to oh, I get my care from the er, I got my care by going to urgent Care because there's a never established bio primary physician or individualist. And then same thing, there are more women go to ob GYN than even going to then primary care. Right. So dental is right in that category of how can we collectively have a system of that referral system that people just not just say you should go to that provider but there's a direct connection. And then eventually it's what I always say, we cannot build a castle on top of sand. So how do we put the right blocks, foundations so then when we have innovation and layer into each other, it become a big marketplace and then solutions become interconnected and it doesn't feel like we are trying to run when we barely can walk. Right. So the eagerness of innovators. We also needed to say okay, it's not that we're asking you to slow down, we're simply asking you to make sure you have what it need. The right people, the right operational infrastructure, the right legal support, the right financials and then the right go to market. Your story, your messages. It need to be a collective way of seeing across the board of all 12 critical domain business and not feeling like oh I should have been there yesterday. Right? Uh, and those over excitement sometimes that's when even investors will look at it and we're like it uh, doesn't quite make sense and then you see more red flags than green flags. So we're so appreciative for you to be the champion of world health and world health innovations and there's a lot to be said and we definitely will continue to support you support each other at uh, different events.

Sabrina Rumbach: One of the biggest lesson founders should learn from this part of our conversation is that founding does not come from having the loudest pitch. It comes from providing your solution that can survive inside a real healthcare environment. Katie shared how pilots, partnerships and market validation create the foundation for long term scaling. While we also talked about why healthcare founders cannot build in IC isolation anymore. The companies that um, move faster are the ones building collaborative ecosystem, not disconnected point solutions. Now if you're someone who is actively raising capital or just simply wanted to pitch your ideas to see if it's valid, we have a session called Pitch to. Yes, it is a room where we have operators, founders, investors who can hear your pitch, give you feedback and perhaps you might be able to work with some of them to get to the next level of founding or help you to say hey, that idea doesn't quite sound possible or you have to do some other researches, then you don't have to waste a lot of your time going down a rabbit hole. Go to pitch to yes.com to submit your pitch so we can give you the personal feedback that you need.

Co-host: Make sure to check out what CareQuest is doing and if you are in a space of world health innovation, definitely reach out. So how do you believe is the best way for people to connect with you when they wanted to learn more?

Katie D'Amico: Yes, please feel free. Reach out. You are always welcome to reach out to me directly. Have an amazing multi disciplinary disciplinary team behind all of our programs and work that we do at CareQuest and we're very active on the conference scene. Always happy to meet in person as well. But you know, whether you're a startup, be on the lookout for Smile Health applications. If you're a provider interested in piloting some of this oral health or integrated health innovation, we would love to talk with you or other partners on the medical dental investor side interested in this space. There's growing momentum and we are really excited about the year ahead.

Co-host: Amazing. We appreciate everyone. So make sure you comment below if you have thought about the medical dental integration. What's your idea? What are you working on? Let us uh, support you until next time.

Sabrina Rumbach: Today's conversation grounded healthcare innovation back to reality. Great ideas alone do not scale without work flow alignment, operational infrastructure, strategic partners and real market adoption. Katie shared why overlooked areas like oral health are becoming critical drivers of whole body care. While I reinforced that founders must focus on pilots integration, a sustainable system before chasing rapid growth or larger funding realm, you have to prove that you can actually get there. Here are the key learning points from today's conversation.

Co-host: 1.

Sabrina Rumbach: The biggest healthcare opportunities are still being overlooked. Some of the most impactful healthcare categories like oral health, women's health and digital health were historically dismissed until the data become impossible to ignore. Katie shared how founders in this space must learn to connect innovation to measurable outcomes, equity improvement and system wide cost saving before markets fully pay attention. 2. Healthcare innovation fails when it creates more work the future of healthcare is not about building more tools, it's about building solutions that reduce friction for providers and patients while fitting naturally into existing clinical work. Katie emphasized that CareQuest evaluates whether startup can realistically integrate into care delivery instead of simply adding more operational complexity. And when we take on um, startups to connect them into health systems for pilots or getting the right accredited investors, uh, to write those checks. One of the things that we also look into not only getting the 10 to 20 experts in that specific field of clinicians to validate, but also for us to look at a holistic way of how are you guys as founders, co founders and your board is able to execute together, working well together. Because we all know there's plenty of a place errors out there, but not all of them necessarily can play well together. So we care about you having a good performer as well as a executive team that really can push things forward. Number three, if your product isn't adapted, it isn't foundable. One of the biggest mistakes founders make is chasing funding before proving adoption. Now some people say, well, we have to really show that this thing can work. So if you just gave me a pilot, I just need some money to get to the pilot, right? It's about selling that hope. Now I reinforce that startup really need is about uh, having some kind of user pilot program. It can be free, can be paid, some of the programs can be paid very actually reasonable cost. If you are not doing it in the US and typically we have partners in Latin American areas or even Europe to do that. And because when you have demonstrated a clear workflow validation, you're just not talking about conceptualization and getting at least 100 people to look through the experience, then you have operational credibility. So going back to the last point, that means you actually can execute on what you're promising before investors will see them. Otherwise your company just going to sound like a good idea instead of something that can create the right roi. Number four, collaboration is becoming a growth strategy. Not a nice to have. Healthcare founders often try to solve problems in isolation because they believe in the niched M expertise. When multiple companies are tackling connected challenges, then you are actually moving things forward that much faster. This conversation highlight how strategic partners, ecosystem collaboration and intentional introduction can accelerate innovation much faster than operating alone. We all know, we heard so many times a founder telling me, well, we're just one person, we have to do all that well. If you are one person, you are not thinking as a stakeholder for your company, you're thinking as a staff member. So whatever we have seeing a lead or founder in early stage even you just have yourself with a couple of people helping you. Every single person should have a clear defined job role and a KPI metric. Otherwise why are you doing those things? You're just going to be doing too many busy stuff and then worried that you're not closing your phones or your pilot is not happening. So truly is about how do you leverage the strategic connections, those people that can take some of the work out of your hand and then because their contribution you will move that much faster. Number five Founders cannot scale on weak infrastructure. Many startups want to move fast but speed without operational readiness creates bigger risks. Later I explained this before. Many people want to say I just wanted to talk to as many investors as possible. I just want to talk to as many physicians as possible to get my pilots in. But I seen it over and over again with some of the startup that

Co-host: has said oh I have 10 contract

Sabrina Rumbach: and then a few months later they down to one or two.

Co-host: Why is that happening?

Sabrina Rumbach: Is because they cannot actually fulfill what they are promising. There's no operational infrastructure so people are running around like chicken got their head cut off. That is not sustainable world and that also fall back on um leadership on

Co-host: the type of people you're working with,

Sabrina Rumbach: on uh how everybody is supporting each other. So you need to have the right people in the right seat and have the right legal structure, financial system and workflow to truly work together. And therefore your go to market strategies must align with the individual ability, not just a good practice. Other companies similar to you have done it because if you cannot do something that is measurable and repeatable, then you will never going to pass the current hurdle. You will be stuck. Number six the future of healthcare is Whole person integration. This episode repeatedly challenged the outdated model of treating healthcare specialties as disconnected silos. From oral health to primary care to women's health, the future belongs to founders building integrated systems that support coordinated, accessible whole person care. Now let me ask you this. Have you seen more traction from building independently or through strategic partnerships and ecosystem collaboration?

Co-host: Thank you for listening. Remember, the positive change we're seeking starts right here with me and you. If you are a fan of the show or if you are just having struggles or success that you either experienced in the past or are experiencing now, uh, in the healthcare industry, these matter to all of us. I want to hear from you. Visit sabrinarumbach.com connect and send me a direct message. Talk soon.