Power To The People w/ guest Dr. Kaitlan Baston

Join us on this week's TechTalk episode as Dr. Jay and Brad interview Dr. Kaitlan Baston.Dr. Kaitlan Baston is the Chief Executive Officer of Vinyl Health, an AI-driven health technology company redefining how people experience and navigate care. Vinyl is built on a simple but transformative idea: healthcare should make sense to the people living it. By capturing and translating clinical information into clear, personalized, and shareable insights, Vinyl helps patients and families understand what is happening, what to do next, and how to stay aligned across providers. This closes one of the most persistent gaps in modern healthcare. Dr. Baston brings a rare combination of frontline clinical experience, executive health system leadership, and public policy expertise to this work. Most recently, she served as Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Health from August 2023 to May 2025 under Governor Phil Murphy. During her tenure, she led efforts to address the social, environmental, and economic drivers of health, with a focus on reducing disparities, improving maternal and child health outcomes, and advancing integrated models of physical, behavioral, and mental healthcare. She also spearheaded landmark regulatory reform, creating a single, integrated license for outpatient healthcare facilities and unlocking innovation that had been stalled for over a decade. Prior to her role as Commissioner, Dr. Baston served as President and CEO of University Hospital in Newark, a major urban academic medical center and Level 1 trauma center. There, she led a period of transformation focused on access, quality, and community partnership. Earlier in her career, she founded and led the Cooper Center for Healing, an innovative program integrating pain management, addiction treatment, and behavioral health, well ahead of broader system adoption of integrated care models. Dr. Baston began her career as a full-spectrum family physician committed to underserved communities. Her clinical and public health work has spanned international and community-based settings, including public health initiatives in Rwanda, hospital-based care in the Dominican Republic, and bilingual community health services in Seattle. Across every chapter of her career, Dr. Baston has been driven by a consistent belief: the United States does not lack clinical expertise or innovation; it struggles with misaligned incentives, fragmentation, and a level of complexity that makes it difficult for people to understand and act on their own care. She has long believed she could not simply work within that system without actively working to improve it. With Vinyl Health, she is building toward a different model. One where information is clear, care is connected, and people are able to participate fully in their own health. She is energized to do this alongside a team of deeply committed, like-minded individuals focused on making healthcare work better for the people it is meant to serve. To connect with Kaitlan, visit her website at vinylhealth.ai, her email at [email protected] or on her LinkedIn at kaitlan-baston.