Skovos began where many of the best ideas in healthcare do—at the intersection of research and real-world need. In 2019, working out of the Harvard Innovation Labs, our founding team started training machine learning models to predict preventable hospital admissions for Accountable Care Organizations. What started as a research project quickly became something more: a platform with the potential to fundamentally change how healthcare organizations manage risk, optimize outcomes, and deliver value-based care.
We published peer-reviewed research alongside collaborators at MIT and Harvard Medical School, demonstrating that AI could identify patients at risk of avoidable hospitalizations with meaningful accuracy. That work validated what we believed from the start: the data to transform healthcare outcomes already exists—what was missing was the infrastructure to act on it.
From Research to Startup
The transition from academic research to company-building happened naturally. Our models showed real predictive power. Healthcare leaders we spoke with were desperate for tools that could reduce emergency department utilization, improve chronic condition monitoring, and support the transition to value-based care. The gap between what AI promised and what was available in practice was enormous.
We were selected as semifinalists in Harvard’s President’s Innovation Challenge, which gave us both validation and visibility. From there, we began building Harrison-1, a healthcare-specific large language model designed from the ground up for clinical and operational use cases. Working with NVIDIA, we developed a model architecture optimized for the unique demands of healthcare data—structured and unstructured, longitudinal, and governed by strict privacy requirements.
Building the Platform
Harrison-1 became the foundation of a broader platform for outcome optimization. We built tools for patient risk stratification that could identify high-risk individuals across entire populations. We developed chronic condition monitoring systems that tracked disease progression in real time. We created analytics dashboards for value-based care that gave ACO leadership visibility into quality metrics, cost trends, and intervention opportunities.
The platform was designed to reduce ED utilization by catching problems before they escalated—identifying patients who were likely to present at the emergency department within 30 days and enabling proactive outreach. For ACOs navigating the shift from fee-for-service to value-based reimbursement, this kind of predictive capability translates directly into better outcomes and lower costs.
Partners and Early Traction
From the beginning, we focused on working with organizations that were committed to transforming care delivery. Our early partnerships have shaped the platform and proven its value in production environments.
We work with the ABC Network, led by Anthony Rodgers, a former CMS administrator who understands the regulatory and operational landscape of value-based care better than almost anyone. Through this partnership, we have been able to deploy our platform across a network of practices navigating complex quality reporting and risk adjustment requirements.
VBCare selected Skovos as their enterprise AI platform for population health management. Palm Beach ACO, Aledade, Doctor’s ACO, and Athens Family Medicine are among the organizations using our tools to improve quality metrics, reduce avoidable utilization, and drive better financial performance under value-based contracts.
Vision: Healthcare’s Platform for Outcome Optimization
Our vision for Skovos is to become healthcare’s definitive platform for outcome optimization. Not another point solution or pilot program, but the infrastructure layer that connects clinical data, predictive models, and care workflows into a single system that continuously improves patient outcomes at population scale.
This vision has been recognized beyond our partner organizations. Will Haver was invited as a Distinguished Guest Speaker at the Columbia University Global Sustainability Summit, where he presented on the role of AI in making healthcare systems more efficient and equitable. The presentation focused on how predictive analytics and population health tools can reduce waste, improve access, and drive sustainable healthcare delivery.
Will also serves as an Advisor and Board Member at Marbella AI, contributing to the broader ecosystem of responsible AI development in healthcare and life sciences.
The Team Behind Skovos
Skovos was co-founded by Will Haver, Vikas Bommineni, Arthur Belkin, and Le Qi—a team that combines deep expertise in machine learning, healthcare operations, and clinical informatics. Together, they built the company from a research project at Harvard Innovation Labs into a platform trusted by ACOs and healthcare organizations across the country.
Our advisory board reflects the breadth of expertise required to build at the intersection of AI and healthcare:
- Anthony Rodgers — Former CMS administrator and leader of the ABC Network, bringing decades of experience in healthcare policy and value-based care regulation.
- Jorge Cortell — Oxford and MIT-affiliated researcher and entrepreneur with deep expertise in health informatics and digital transformation.
- Phil Green — Harvard Business School, providing strategic guidance on scaling healthcare technology companies.
- Dr. Jason Dou — Marbella AI, contributing expertise in clinical AI applications and responsible deployment.
The Path Forward
The healthcare organizations we work with are taking on some of the hardest problems in the industry—reducing preventable admissions, closing gaps in chronic disease management, and building the operational infrastructure for value-based care. We have seen firsthand what becomes possible when an organization commits to data-driven outcome optimization: measurable improvements in quality, reductions in avoidable utilization, and sustainable financial performance.
What we believe, and what our partnerships continue to reinforce, is that the limiting factor is no longer technology. The data exists. The models work. What remains is the organizational commitment to redesign care delivery around proactive, predictive systems—and the availability of platforms purpose-built to support that transformation.
The next chapter of healthcare will be written by the organizations willing to do this work. We consider it a privilege to do it alongside them.
Read more from the Skovos team.
And if you want to help us build towards this future, come join our team.
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