Jonathan Palmer

Welcome to another episode of Bloomberg Intelligence's Vanguards of Healthcare podcast, where we speak with the leaders at the forefront of change in the healthcare industry.

I'm Jonathan Palmer, and I'm a healthcare analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, the in-house research arm of Bloomberg.

I'm thrilled to welcome Bob Siegert, the chairman and CEO of Athena Health, to our program today.

Bob has a very distinguished track record of leading major technology and information services companies

But he's perhaps best known for steering Athena Health through its transformative era, from a public company, through the virus-health merger, and more recently into the $17 billion acquisition by Bain Capital and Hellman Friedman.

Today, Athena Health is a cloud native titan, supporting over 160,000 physicians and touching nearly 20% of the U.S.

patient population.

I'm excited to dive into the future of EHRs and the role of generative AI in the clinic.

Bob, welcome to the program.

Great, Jonathan.

Thanks.

It is great to be here.

Well, why don't we start with what brought you into healthcare?

I like to start with people's journey and how they got into the industry.

So let's rewind a little bit and get to your start in software and what led you to Athena in the first place.

Well, let's go back to that combination with Veritas.

When you joined, let's talk about the heavy lifting that you had to do.

And maybe let's start with what Virens was and then what Athena was and what the combined entity looks like now.

Did I just say Virens?

And so what was the biggest challenge in that combination?