Founder Instincts · Enterprise Scale · Healthcare AI
Scott Michael Willey
From TechCrunch Disrupt to 43 million lives served. Thirty years of building platforms, leading teams, and shipping products at every scale.
30+
Years Experience
43M
Lives Served
100+
Team Members Led
5
U.S. Patents
Background
About
I'm a Silicon Valley founder, Fortune 500 healthcare executive, and currently working with the team to architect an agentic AI platform purpose-built for health plans. That combination — startup founder instincts inside enterprise-scale organizations — is what sets me apart.
Currently VP of Engineering & Product Management at Medecision (a wholly-owned subsidiary of HCSC), I lead a cross-functional team of up to 100 delivering AI-driven healthcare products that serve 43 million lives across commercial and government health plans.
Before that: co-founded and launched Groovice at TechCrunch Disrupt after securing investment from NFX Guild in Silicon Valley. Won an internal innovation challenge at Vizient from a pool of 3,000 employees, founded Aptitude, and scaled the team from 4 to 70+ in under two years. Whether I'm pitching a board or reviewing a system design, I operate with equal credibility on both sides of the table.
Domain Expertise
- ›Healthcare Clinical Delivery & Interoperability (FHIR)
- ›Agentic AI & Healthcare Automation
- ›Supply Chain & Market Platform Design
- ›Multi-tenant Cloud Architecture (GCP, AWS)
- ›Product-Market Fit & Go-to-Market Strategy
Location
Dallas, TX
Contact
scottmwilley@gmail.com
Philosophy
Innovation Philosophy
These are the frameworks that have most shaped how I approach product, engineering, and business strategy. Each one answers a question every platform builder needs to ask:
Synthesis
Innovation Philosophy
Scott's Perspective on Modern Innovation Systems
Across my experience working with innovation frameworks and strategy teams — including exposure to Lean Startup, Lean UX, Sprint, Ten Types of Innovation, and hands-on work with NFX — a consistent pattern becomes clear:
Innovation is not a creative activity. It is a system of speed, structure, communication, and defensibility.
Most organizations fail not because they lack ideas, but because they are structurally too slow to interpret, align, and act on those ideas.
The Core Failure Mode: Slow Understanding
The biggest constraint in innovation is not execution — it is interpretation. Even when strong ideas exist, they break down in translation: requirements become misaligned, intent gets diluted across teams, decisions are delayed through documentation, complexity hides real system behavior. This creates a gap between what is known and what is understood across an organization. That gap is where innovation fails.
Learning Must Be Faster Than Certainty
Modern innovation systems attempt to solve this through acceleration. Together, they represent a shift away from planning-based certainty toward learning-based execution. However, learning alone is not enough if organizations cannot act on it.
- ›Lean Startup focuses on rapid experimentation and validated learning
- ›Lean UX replaces assumptions with continuous user feedback
- ›Sprint compresses decision-making and testing into days instead of months
The Structural Constraint: Organizational Resistance
From The Innovator's Dilemma, a deeper constraint emerges: even when evidence is clear, organizations resist change due to existing incentives, customer alignment with current products, internal ownership and "territories," and structural dependency on legacy success. This creates a fundamental gap: organizations can learn faster than they can change.
Defensibility Determines What Matters
Not all innovation creates durable value. Network effects determine whether growth becomes temporary traction or structural defensibility. Different types — direct, indirect, data, marketplace — define how value compounds over time and whether a system becomes resistant to competition. Speed creates advantage, but defensibility determines whether it lasts.
Innovation Is a Portfolio, Not a Single Idea
From Ten Types of Innovation, innovation is not one thing — it is a system of choices across product, experience, business model, operations, and ecosystem design. Most organizations over-index on product innovation while ignoring higher-leverage structural changes. At an executive level, innovation becomes a portfolio allocation problem, not a creative one.
The Missing Layer: Communication Speed
Across all frameworks, one constraint appears beneath everything else: how quickly people can form a shared understanding of complexity. Tools like UML diagrams, data flow diagrams, and system architecture maps are not documentation tools — they are alignment mechanisms. A diagram compresses what would take pages of explanation into immediate shared understanding. A picture is not worth a thousand words — it is worth thousands of milliseconds of lost interpretation time.
Final Thesis
Modern innovation is not defined by ideas or tools alone. It is defined by the ability to:
- ›Learn faster than certainty
- ›Communicate faster than ambiguity
- ›Decide faster than complexity accumulates
- ›Build systems that become defensible over time
Closing Insight
The companies that win are not those with the best ideas. They are the ones that reduce interpretation lag, increase learning velocity, design defensible systems, and maintain alignment under complexity.
Innovation is not a department or a process. It is a system of accelerated understanding and compounding advantage.
Career
Experience
Vice President, Engineering & UM Product Management
Medecision
Integrated health management software company (wholly-owned subsidiary of HCSC BCBS IL, TX, OK, NM, MT) supporting virtual care and digital health.
- ›Reporting to CEO, leads delivery of Utilization Management, Appeals & Grievances, API Access, Care Intelligence Engine, Provider Portal, and AgentFoundry — a healthcare-native Agentic AI platform
- ›Launched new Utilization Management platform — a comprehensive solution for streamlining UM processes across payer and provider networks, including prior authorization workflows, clinical review, and turnaround time management
- ›Launched new Appeals & Grievances product — enabling payers to manage, track, and resolve member and provider appeals with configurable workflows and audit-ready documentation
- ›Led company-wide FHIR API strategy ensuring full compliance with the 21st Century Cures Act (ONC Final Rule) and CMS Interoperability & Patient Access Rule (CMS-9115)
- ›Implemented Da Vinci implementation guides: Prior Authorization Support (PAS), Coverage Requirements Discovery (CRD), Documentation Templates & Rules (DTR), and Payer Data Exchange (PDex) — enabling real-time payer-provider interoperability
- ›Leads cross-functional team of up to 100 including BAs, PMs, UI/UX designers, architects, and developers
- ›Directed migration of UM infrastructure from hybrid Rackspace/AWS to Google Cloud Platform
- ›Led architectural shift to scalable multi-tenant data platform
Chief Technology Officer & Chief Product Officer
Startup OS (Silicon Valley Bank)
Multi-sided platform designed to foster a community for founders, mentors, and investors.
- ›Recruited by Silicon Valley Bank to realign product development strategy and lead engineering team growth
- ›Led product relaunch within 5 months after the company struggled with product-market fit, resulting in a completed, market-ready launch
- ›Built and scaled high-performing team across engineering, design, and product management
- ›Implemented full product metrics framework: Acquisition, Activation, Engagement, Retention, Monetization, and North Star metric
- ›Managed application and AWS security; created a comprehensive security enhancement plan
- ›Designed startup curriculum covering Market Segmentation, TAM/SAM/SOM, Persona Builder, Value Prop Quantifier, LTV, COCA, and MVP Builder — giving founders a structured path from idea to investor-ready
Vice President, Enterprise Architecture
Medecision
- ›Designed and architected a scalable multi-cloud Data Platform (AWS → GCP)
- ›Spearheaded migration from Universal Data model to HL7 FHIR-based models
- ›Implemented Google Cloud Healthcare API including HL7® FHIR®, HL7® v2, and DICOM® APIs
- ›Architected new reporting solution using BigQuery, Amazon S3 data lake, and Redshift EDW
Sr. Technical Manager, Product Management
Zynx Health (Hearst Health)
Zynx integrates evidence-based information into healthcare workflows to optimize decision-making.
- ›Built and launched Lumynz at HIMSS 2019 — a cloud-based clinical performance improvement platform identifying practice variations and driving evidence-based provider behavior change
- ›Implemented FHIR ResearchStudy and ResearchSubject resources for evidence-based decision-making
- ›Led three Google Ventures Design Sprints with Zynx and Hearst Health teams
Director of Product Software Development
Lanvera
Provider of end-to-end outsourcing solutions for transactional documents across healthcare, banking, and utilities.
- ›Collaborated with CEO to transform company into a SaaS software business
- ›Transitioned development methodology from Waterfall to Agile Scrum
President / Co-founder, CTO
Blueberry Home / Groovice, Inc.
Founder
- ›Secured significant investment from NFX Guild and relocated to Silicon Valley
- ›Successfully launched at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco (Sept 2015)
- ›Built distributed team across Silicon Valley, Dallas, Chicago, and Austin
Senior Manager, Clinical Customer Engagement & Mobile Technologies
DaVita Rx
- ›Led strategic direction and enhancement of the Pharmacy Insights product, focusing on clinical integration to improve outcomes
- ›Collaborated with CIO to oversee a diverse portfolio of business and clinical systems, managing project intake and system roadmaps
Leadership Team / Director of Product & Engineering
Vizient (VHA, Inc. | Novation | Aptitude, LLC)
- ›Won internal innovation challenge from 3,000 employees leading to creation of Aptitude, securing $10B in spend data
- ›Scaled Aptitude team from 4 to 70+ including engineers and clinicians
- ›Designed and launched MicroStrategy dashboards driving 60% increase in hospital utilization
- ›Boosted Novation finance performance 30% through new Cash Receivable System integrated with Lawson ERP
Senior Application Developer, Enterprise Solutions
Compuware Corp
Developed, architected, and enhanced applications for clients including Merck, ExxonMobil, State of Florida, and State of Michigan.
Industry Stage Appearances & Product Launches
Vizient Connections Summit
Aptitude
Las Vegas, NV
Won an internal innovation challenge and launched Aptitude — a supply chain analytics platform — at Vizient's national conference. Secured $10B in spend data within 12 months.
TechCrunch Disrupt
Groovice
San Francisco, CA
Launched Groovice publicly on the TechCrunch Disrupt stage after securing investment from NFX Guild and relocating operations from Dallas to Silicon Valley.
HIMSS
Lumynz
Las Vegas, NV
Launched Lumynz for Zynx Health (Hearst Health) at HIMSS — a cloud-based solution identifying variations in clinical practice and driving provider behavior change through evidence-based insights.
Medecision · HCSC
UM & Appeals Platform
Enterprise Launch
Built and launched Medecision's complete healthcare management suite — a full Utilization Management platform with AI Policy Management, Agentic AI, Fax AI, Appeals & Grievances, Provider Portal, and end-to-end FHIR interoperability. Serves 43 million lives across commercial and government health plans.
Highlights
Selected Projects
Career-defining initiatives
Medecision
In DevelopmentAgentFoundry
A healthcare-native Agentic AI platform I am currently architecting and building at Medecision — enabling health plans to configure, trust, and scale event-driven AI agents across clinical and operational workflows. Agents reason over FHIR-structured data, trigger on clinical events, and operate within configurable guardrails purpose-built for healthcare compliance.
Pre-built Agent Library
Technical
Skills
AI & Agentic
Cloud
Frontend
Backend
Databases
API & Interoperability
Leadership & Process
Design & Tooling
Training
Certifications
Google AI Essentials
2025HCSC Leadership with Coach
2024NFX Guild – Market Networks
2016Professional Scrum Master
2014Doblin – Ten Types of Innovation
2011PMI – Project Management Professional
2007Achievements
Recognition
Thought Leadership Excellence (Individual)
Novation / Aptitude Board of Directors — from CEO
2014
Thought Leadership Excellence (Team)
Novation / Aptitude Board of Directors — from CEO
2014
Thought Leadership Excellence (Individual)
Novation — from CEO
2012
LinkedIn Recommendations
What People Say
Scott is one of the most strategic and technically adept leaders I've worked with. He has a rare ability to bridge the gap between high-level business strategy and deep technical execution, making him an invaluable asset to any organization looking to scale and innovate. Scott is a leader who not only drives results but also empowers those around him. Any organization looking for a technology executive who can lead with vision, strategy, and execution would be fortunate to have him.
“Scott is that rare 'vision guy,' reminiscent of the startup founders I've worked with. Within the healthcare space I saw a zealous obsession that primed Scott for the kind of insights and innovations most other people overlook. Combine this passion with a vocal presence, and you've got the guy who'll drive ideas to completion, never overlooking a stray detail.”
“Scott embodies the ideal characteristics every visionary could only hope to obtain. His drive and direction allowed our team to really carry the product above and beyond in every phase of its development. His knowledge expands beyond IT solutions, healthcare and product development — making him a well rounded leader and valuable mentor.”
“Scott brings a passionate enthusiasm and deep commitment to his craft. He demonstrates a deep understanding by listening to the customer, developing and vetting both problem and solution hypothesis, and ultimately bringing a product from PowerPoint vision to commercially available solution. A creative and innovative thinker with a unique combination of technical and product management expertise.”
“I had the enjoyment of working (and mostly learning) with Scott as he owned the product vision and delivery in allowing the company to secure substantial revenue growth within just 12 months. I was always in awe of Scott's impressive technical knowledge — all while keeping the greatest sense of humor I've ever had from a client.”
“Scott is a passionate technology leader that really cares about making a difference. His enthusiasm is backed up by a deep understanding of both business processes and technical understanding of what is possible and practical. His skills and passion was essential for the success of the product we were working on.”
“I worked with Scott on a complex product design. He picked up difficult concepts with stunning speed. He is sharp, energetic, focused and disciplined in his pursuit of the ultimate user experience. I have worked with many. He is the best.”
“Scott can always be counted on to lend assistance and works tirelessly to get the job done. He is able to solve complex issues by applying his extensive technical experience and a common sense approach. Scott is a team player, I enjoyed working with him, and hope to again in the future.”
“If you want vision and passion, look no further. Scott will blow the doors off conventional thinking, and deliver a brilliant product every time.”
Life Beyond Tech
Beyond the Work
Fifty years on the water — from a Sabot dinghy on a Canadian lake in 1976 to racing keelboats across the Pacific and Caribbean. Sailing is where strategy, leadership, and performance under pressure all converge.
Let's Talk
Contact
Whether you're exploring a leadership opportunity, discussing a healthcare technology challenge, or want to talk platform strategy — I'm happy to connect.
Open to CTO, CPO, CPTO, and CAIO opportunities in healthcare AI and enterprise technology.