Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

Greg Born built Lacuna Health to catch gaps in care that could lead to serious harm

The Nashville-based startup is a protective layer for health technology platforms, including the AI scribes that now sit in on medical visits. When a high-risk patient leaves without a referral or a next step for a problem that needed one, Lacuna alerts the provider.

According to The American Journal of Managed Care, ambient scribes run in the background of about 62% of US hospitals, transcribing the conversations between patients and providers to help with note-taking and history tracking. But when a conversation takes twists and turns, the transcript gets long, and doctors may tune out in real time.

In these cases, a physician may miss a mention of chest discomfort, dietary changes or prolonged pain.

“We expect certain professionals to always be on their game at 100%, but they’re people and can miss things,” Born said. “My patent-pending technology would alert the provider and their team when a high-risk patient leaves the practice without a referral or next step for an addressable problem.”

An estimated 795,000 Americans die or are permanently disabled by diagnostic error each year, according to a 2023 Johns Hopkins study by David Newman-Toker: 371,000 deaths and 424,000 permanent disabilities.

“With this technology, our goal is to reduce that number and create much better patient outcomes,” Born said.

Spotting shortfalls and helping hospitals respond promptly

Born explained that Lacuna integrates with ambient scribe systems, electronic medical record (EMR) platforms, and other health technologies.

Alerts for potential missed symptoms would be delivered directly to whoever the hospital chooses: a doctor, nurse, tech or office manager. Each alert is planned to include an actionable next step, so the physician can decide whether to act immediately or hold off until the next visit.

He added that Lacuna could also protect hospital systems by keeping a record of potential errors, so they could eventually be resolved in real time.

Behind the founder: Greg Born

Born is a Nashville-based serial entrepreneur, health-tech executive, author and former Air Force C-5 pilot. He said his Air Force background prepared him to work in high-stakes Fortune 500 environments, including at companies like GE, Comcast, and Oracle. But Born really found his stride when he shifted to scaling startups.

“In really big businesses, they’re like battleships to turn. More decisions to be made, more people involved, more approvals needed,” he explained. “The smaller the business is, the more your efforts can impact its growth.”

Born’s shift was gradual, eventually leading him to run MD Save, a technology startup focused on creating price transparency in healthcare. The company sold to Tendo in fall 2023, opening an opportunity for him to pour into new projects.

In the years following, he joined Osso VR, as interim turnaround CEO, authored three books about business, joined a number of advisory boards and then settled in to kickstart Lacuna.

Bringing Lacuna to market

Born’s next step is to get the technology into the hands of healthcare providers through a pilot program. He wants to test whether it can catch missed symptoms in real time.

To date, he has bootstrapped the startup, paying for his own patent and depending on his own coding capabilities and business acumen to bring Lacuna from zero to one.

“The success going forward really hinges on landing a pilot,” he said. “I’m already in several active conversations with organizations that are interested in the research that comes from that.”

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a Lacuna is a gap or space. Born is fixing that in healthcare.

For more information, visit the Lacuna Health website.

Connect with Greg Born.

---