With over 4,000 global submissions, Boston-based health tech company Laudio Inc. has been named “Best MedTech Startup” in the 9th Annual MedTech Breakthrough Awards. The award directs the spotlight on a slowly building issue in healthcare provision, and technology that seeks to address it.
At a time when health systems are bleeding talent and frontline leaders are burning out, Laudio Inc.’s recognition isn’t just a win for one startup. It’s a validation of a shift in thinking: that leadership, specifically, the operational core of it, needs a tech overhaul.
Whereas a lot of healthtech companies are tackling diagnostics, billing, or patient experience, Laudio Inc. has identified a more mundane, but all-important niche: frontline manager workflows.
Today, a nurse manager may be dealing with 50 to 70 direct reports. That’s not sustainable, and the statistical results support that claim too. The turnover rate among the staff is increasing. The involvement is decreasing. And the task to rectify usually falls to the shoulders of the very leaders who were disparaged by the administrative burden.
Laudio’s AI-powered leader operations platform helps managers cut through the noise. It centralizes workflows like recognition, rounding, development tracking, and compliance audits, all in a single interface.
It doesn’t replace the human touch. It makes it scalable.
“Great leadership is the cornerstone of great healthcare,” says Russ Richmond, MD, CEO of Laudio Inc. “And leadership hasn’t had the tools it deserves.”
According to Richmond, the platform’s power lies in surfacing timely, actionable insights, like who on your team might be heading toward burnout, or which staff member hasn’t been recognized in weeks. These nudges allow leaders to act before issues become exits.
The MedTech Breakthrough Awards are no small feat. Run by independent market intelligence firm Tech Breakthrough, the program honors innovation across telehealth, EHR, medical devices, cybersecurity, and more. This year’s competition saw record participation from over 18 countries.
Laudio Inc. stood out, according to judges, for tackling a root issue plaguing healthcare systems across the globe: the fragility of their frontline workforce.
“Laudio’s intelligent platform solves one of healthcare’s biggest workforce challenges: stability of the frontline workforce,” said Steve Johansson, Managing Director at MedTech Breakthrough. “By centralizing and streamlining leader workflows, Laudio Inc. helps managers focus on more of what matters: people.”
That idea, more time for people, has become a mantra in an industry where human interaction is too often the first casualty of a system under strain.
Most hospital tech is either clinical or financial. Laudio Inc. sits at an unusual intersection: leadership infrastructure.
It’s not a leadership training app. It’s not a pulse survey. And it’s not a one-size-fits-all HR system. Instead, it pulls live data from HCM and EHR systems to build a dynamic, daily action plan for each frontline leader.
The payoff? More engaged teams. Fewer missed check-ins. Earlier identification of at-risk employees. And ultimately, lower turnover.
The company is also aligning its platform with C-suite priorities, ensuring that operational goals aren’t just top-down directives, but are actually lived out at the unit level, day to day.
Richmond calls this approach “closing a gap in the industry.” Healthcare leaders, he says, haven’t had the right tools to execute what they know works: consistent, meaningful interaction with their teams.
Laudio Inc.’s win comes amid a broader recognition that workforce challenges in healthcare can’t be solved with better staffing models alone. Tech has to step in, but in a way that’s both human and operational.
And while the MedTech space is filled with buzzwords like “automation” and “intelligence,” Laudio’s value proposition is refreshingly grounded. It’s about improving leadership, in tangible, and more meaningful ways.
That’s exactly what made the win resonate with the judges, and why it may catch the attention of CNOs and COOs who’ve seen too many tech solutions fall short.
While Laudio Inc. hasn’t disclosed the number of health systems using its platform, it’s clear that enterprise-scale deployment is underway.
Plans for the next 12 months include deeper EHR integrations, more robust burnout analytics, and tailored recommendations for different unit types, from emergency departments to med-surg floors. For now, though, the recognition signals something deeper: a shift in how healthcare defines innovation.
Not just in cutting-edge diagnostics or in AI-assisted surgeries.
But in the overlooked routines of leadership, where burnout begins, and where culture can truly change.
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