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Startup Physicians Names Inaugural Rising Stars in Healthcare Innovation
Startup Physicians Rising Stars List Honorees 2026
The first national recognition program dedicated to early-stage physician co-founders announces its 2026 honorees.
A physician who builds the right company can change the standard of care for more patients than they will treat in a lifetime of practice. This list recognizes the founders already doing that work.”
— Alison Curfman, MD, MBA, Founder & CEO, Startup Physicians
NASHVILLE, TN, UNITED STATES, May 14, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Startup Physicians today announced the 2026 Rising Stars in Healthcare Innovation list, the first national recognition program dedicated to early-stage physician co-founders building at the intersection of clinical expertise and innovation.
The honorees represent a cohort of physician entrepreneurs whose companies span AI-enabled primary care, oncology, genomics, cardiac therapeutics, and clinical data intelligence — selected for the strength of their traction, clinical insight and early evidence of impact.
The Rising Stars program was created to address a gap in how healthcare innovation gets recognized. The industry's most visible awards track scale and revenue. This list tracks something earlier: the physician founders operating at the stage where clinical insight becomes a company — before most recognition programs take notice.
Among the 2026 honorees:
Muthu Alagappan, MD (Counsel Health) is a Stanford-trained physician and former AI researcher who founded the AI-enabled virtual care company backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures in a $25M Series A — two years after launch. Counsel's physician-supervised AI platform now serves more than 100,000 members nationwide, and its care model resolves 96 percent of medical issues while saving health plans $381 per engaged member annually.
David Johnson, MD, MPH (Atlas Oncology Partners) is a urologic oncologist and former Medical Director of Value Transformation at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina who co-founded the value-based oncology care platform that raised $28M in Series A funding in February 2026, led by Flare Capital Partners. Atlas embeds interdisciplinary care teams directly into community oncology practices and recently launched a partnership with Humana to extend its model to Medicare Advantage members.
Kalie Dove-Maguire, MD (Evidently) is an emergency medicine physician and President of the clinical data intelligence platform that raised $15M in Series A funding and, earlier this month, secured an enterprise deployment with UNC Health across hospitals and clinics in the Triangle region of North Carolina — where pilots showed clinicians saving 40 minutes per day on chart review.
Ann Wu, MD, MPH (GeneSprout) is a pediatrician and former Harvard Medical School professor whose 200 publications in genomics demonstrated that actionable genes should be screened for at birth. After 20 years at Boston Children's Hospital, she founded GeneSprout to bring newborn and pediatric genetic screening directly to families — translating two decades of research into accessible precision medicine.
The complete 2026 list of 15 honorees is available at https://www.startupphysicians.com/rising-stars.
Curfman is the co-founder of Imagine Pediatrics, which grew from concept to serving nearly 100,000 children on Medicaid across multiple states within three years of launch. She continues to practice emergency medicine.
Honorees were nominated through a national process drawing on healthcare investors, accelerators, and physician networks, then evaluated by the Selection Council on founding credentials, clinical relevance, and early evidence of traction.
Startup Physicians supports physician entrepreneurs at every stage. Its six-month Incubator program, launching June 2026, pairs early-stage physician founders with the strategic guidance, peer cohort, and ecosystem access that some of the Rising Stars wished they had when they started.
ABOUT STARTUP PHYSICIANS
Startup Physicians is a physician-entrepreneur ecosystem founded by Alison Curfman, MD, MBA. Curfman co-founded Imagine Pediatrics — scaling it from concept to a company serving nearly 100,000 children on Medicaid across multiple states. Startup Physicians operates the Rising Stars in Healthcare Innovation recognition program and a six-month Incubator for physician co-founders. More at https://www.startupphysicians.com
Alison Curfman, MD
Startup Physicians
team@startupphysicians.com
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