Overheard: Houston experts discuss women in med tech, insight from investors, and more

Eavesdropping in Houston

Health care innovators joined Houston Methodist and Texas A&M University's ENMED program to discuss women in health care innovation and venture capital investment. Photo courtesy of Houston Methodist

Houston's health innovation community is making strides every day toward greater quality of care and technology adoption — but what challenges is the industry facing these days?

Through a partnership between Houston Methodist and Texas A&M University's ENMED program at Houston Tech Rodeo, health innovators weighed in on topics surrounding the industry, including biases and investment opportunities.

Missed the conversation? Here are seven key moments from the panels that took place at A&M's new ENMED building in the Texas Medical Center on Thursday, March 3.

“When I look at learning and understanding the priorities — how to take care of patients and also enable those who are doing that work, that’s part of understanding the culture and learning because in the 40 years that I’ve been in the industry, it’s never been the same. There are always things that continue to present challenges from unexpected places.”

— Ayse McCracken, founder of Ignite Healthcare Network, says on the "Four Fierce Females" panel, referencing the rate of tech disruption and how new technologies, medicine, etc. can change the health care industry and practitioners need to find ways to keep up and stay ahead of the curve.

“Whenever you experience biases, what can you do? You can lean into the fact that we are in a position to help educate and make a change. And that’s going to look different for every one of us, but lean into that instead of feeling down by it.”

— Samantha Lewis, principal at Mercury Fund, says on the "Four Fierce Females" panel, explaining that women across industries should lean into being a change agent when met with bias in the workplace.

“The reason I feel so passionate is (I’m always thinking,) ‘What more can we be doing for our community? What’s working well and what’s not working well,' so I can take that back and make positive changes in our organization.”

— Michelle Stansbury, vice president of innovation and IT applications at Houston Methodist, says on the "Four Fierce Females" panel, explaining that when she's on the other side of the equation as a patient, she really considers her experience and how it could be better.

“Every time you raise money you’re telling a story. You have to figure out what adds value to that story. … I think health care is tricky too because people getting into it aren’t necessarily aware of how complex it is.”

— Dan Watkins, venture partner and co-founder at Mercury Fund, says on the "Where’s My Money At?" investor panel, adding how important it is to investors that founders have specific information — market potential, road map, etc. — when pitching to VCs.

“As a health care startup founder and CEO, you have to wear so many different hats — especially if you’re talking about diagnostics and medical devices. It starts in the science, moves to engineering, and then winds up being commercial. To expect someone to be an expert at all those fields is very difficult.”

— Tim Marx, venture partner at Baird Capital, says on the "Where’s My Money At?" investor panel, adding that, “That’s why we look for the CEOs who really understand where they are, where they’re going, and what they need.”

“One of the things we really appreciate when we engage with founders, it’s not about ‘here’s why my company is great.’ It’s more about understanding the questions your business needs to answer. … If you think about that, that’s what we want to fund. We want to invest in the vision, opportunity, and the people, but we want to fund the — the roadmap — that usually comes with being thoughtful about the questions you’re trying to answer.”

— John Reale, venture lead at TMC Venture Fund, says on the "Where’s My Money At?" investor panel, adding "That's where we get energized."

“The idea to attract talent that’s already built great companies across the US and the world to come here, hire here, and grow here — that’s starting to actually pay off. One of the things that’s big about Houston is it’s really gritty — it’s very ‘show me the data and prove it to me first.’ … We’re having those proven points.”

— Emily Reiser, associate director of innovation at the Texas Medical Center , says on the "Where’s My Money At?" investor panel about the work TMC is doing with its accelerator program.

It's all a numbers game, and Mercury Data Science is about setting up startups for success. Getty Images

Data-focused Houston company arms startups with the AI tools they need to grow

numbers game

While some say a picture is worth a thousand words, having the right data can be make or break. Houston-based Mercury Data Science is using data and artificial intelligence to paint some really specific pictures for its clients.

MDS was born out of a need for Houston-based Mercury Fund's portfolio companies that wanted a firmer handle on artificial intelligence and data science.

"Three years ago, a number of Mercury Fund portfolio companies and potential investments began to have increasingly important data science and AI components," says Dan Watkins, co-founder and managing director of Mercury Fund. "Mercury's partners wanted a deeper understanding of AI, to understand how the cutting edge meets industry use cases."

Mercury Fund's first move was to tap data scientist Angela Wilkins to lead some training, which then turned into even more workshops and advising. The companies ranged from early seed stage startups to companies that had raised over $100 million — and they wanted Wilkins' help, either with the basics of data science or execution of analytics.

"In fact, many of the more established companies were sitting on data assets with plans to build AI-enabled products but didn't have the time or people to really start that process," Wilkins says. "After helping a few companies, we realized the need was pretty deep, and bigger than the Mercury Fund portfolio."

Wilkins, who serves the company as CTO and co-CEO with Watkins, has seen her efforts grow MDS client base. InnovationMap sat down with Wilkins to see how far MDS has come — and where it's going.

InnovationMap: What sort of problems and data solutions are you providing clients?

Angela Wilkins: We love projects that have a direct impact on human health. In health, we build machine learning driven products to create new forms of digital diagnostics to help improve diagnosis in areas like cognitive functioning and depression. We have helped several therapeutics companies accelerate drug discovery and development by extracting insights from biological and imaging data. We have internal tools that use natural language processing to extract knowledge from millions of scientific publications and patents.

We have also worked quite a bit in consumer behavior and some of our physics-oriented data scientists are now working on noise reduction in geophysics technologies.

IM: What feedback do you get from clients?

AW: Company leaders in every sector are feeling the pressure to gain the advantages of AI or risk falling behind. There are many expert level teams available to Fortune 500 organizations. We are one of the very few teams that is entrepreneurial and agile enough to work with earlier stage, high growth organizations.

IM: How does MDS work with Mercury Fund? Has that relationship evolved over the years?

AW: We continue to work with the Mercury Fund portfolio companies but that is a smaller part of what we do. We are venture backed ourselves, and have now become a Mercury Fund portfolio company, with the same growth ambitions as all venture backed companies.

IM: Recently, MDS has seen some growth. How many employees have you added and are you still hiring?

AW: We are up to 20 employees, mostly data scientists, many with 5 to 8 years of experience working in AI, bioinformatics, and data science to provide insights and build products. We are always looking for great data scientists and data engineers to join our team. We also started a fellowship position for recent graduates, and so we can identify and train the next generation of data scientists

IM: What's been the biggest surprise for you as MDS has grown?

AW: We have been able to create this unique culture that thrives on diversity of thought and background. Half of our team is women. We are solving hard problems that benefit from the creativity you get from a wide variety of views.

IM: Where are MDS clients based?

AW: We have clients from San Francisco to Basel. We have learned how to build an integrated, high communication team with the client, so location is not critical.

That being said, we are active in and committed contributors to the Houston innovation ecosystem. Many of us are from a computational biology and bioinformatics background with deep roots in the Texas Medical Center institutions. Houston has amazing talent and we want to show the data scientists that they don't have to leave Houston to work on interesting problems and continue to build skills at the cutting edge while working for companies all over the world.

IM: What sort of trends are you seeing in venture capital? Are these trends happening in Houston?

We are seeing increasing investments in health AI. Fierce Healthcare reports that health AI topped all other sectors last year with $4B invested into AI startups. Andreesen Horowitz has announced their third and largest biotech and health care fund with $750 million to invest: "Machine learning and artificial intelligence [will] have an outsize impact on how we discover drugs and diagnose disease."

We see similar trends in other areas from industrial software to financial services. The upshot is that the adoption of AI creates significant opportunities for startups and significant challenges for larger companies that are not entrepreneurial and able to build their own data science skill set.

As far as Houston goes, the same trends are there but we tend to lag the major technology hubs in adoption. Efforts like TMC Innovation, Station, Rice University/The Ion and Houston Exponential are having a big impact on both the number and pace of startups and, increasingly, those have AI as a key part of their technology stack.

IM: We've talked about how MDS flies under the radar — why do you think that is? Do you think that'll change as you grow?

AW: Our initial focus was on the work for our clients and on building our team. We are ready to be noticed. Thank you for helping us tell the story with this article.

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Rice University partners with astronaut foundation to offer new STEM scholarship

space scholars

Rice University has partnered with The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF) to offer a new scholarship opportunity for junior or senior STEM majors, beginning this spring.

The prestigious Astronaut Scholarship includes up to $15,000, mentorship, networking and a paid trip to the ASF Innovators Symposium and Gala. The scholarship is funded by the James A. Lovell Jr. Family Endowment, in honor of the late American astronaut and founder of the ASF.

“This scholarship opportunity represents an exciting new avenue for Rice STEM students to synthesize their experiences in courses and research and their commitment to advancing the public good as leaders in their field,” Danika Brown, executive director for the Center for Civic Leadership at Rice, said in a news release. “We are so grateful to the Lovell family and to the foundation for investing in Rice students, and we are confident that the foundation will be impressed with our nominees and that selected students will have a life-changing experience as astronaut scholars.”

The Rice Space Institute and the Center for Civic Learning recently hosted the ASF at the Ralph S. O’Connor Building for Engineering and Science.

At the ASF event, Jeff Lovell—son of James Lovell, who commanded Apollo 13 and flew on Apollo 8—announced the scholarship aimed at Rice STEM students. Charlie Duke, who served as spacecraft communicator for the Apollo 11 Moon landing and as the lunar module pilot for Apollo 16, also spoke at the event.

The ASF awarded 74 scholarships to students from 51 universities across the U.S. last May.

The ASF awarded its first seven $1,000 scholarships in 1986 to pay tribute to the Mercury 7 astronauts. It has since awarded more than $10 million to more than 850 college students.

So far, only students from Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin have received the scholarship in Texas.

Houston hospital first in U.S. to use new system for minimally invasive surgery

sharper images

Houston’s Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center has introduced an innovative new surgical imaging system that will allow surgeons to increase the number of minimally invasive procedures as well as reposition on the fly during operations.

Minimally invasive surgery has been shown across the board to improve patient outcomes with less chance of infection and shorter recovery times compared to traditional open surgery. However, the human body is not exactly easy to work on through small incisions, necessitating the development of state-of-the-art cameras and imaging technology to guide surgeons.

Enter GE HealthCare’s Allia Moveo, now a part of the Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center operating room. Using cutting-edge technology, it uses the same high-definition imaging usually seen in the catheterization lab at speeds fast enough to respond to shifting surgical conditions. Its cable-free setup allows surgeons to switch positions much faster, and it features advanced 3D imaging that compensates for breathing motion and interference from metal implants.

Its design supports a range of cardiovascular, vascular, non-vascular, interventional and surgical procedures, according to CommonSpirit Health, a nonprofit Catholic health network, of which Baylor St. Luke's is a member.

“This innovative platform enhances how our clinicians navigate complex minimally invasive procedures by improving mobility, image clarity, and workflow efficiency. It strengthens our ability to deliver precise, patient-centered care while supporting our teams with technology designed for the evolving demands of modern interventional medicine,” Dr. Brad Lembcke, president of Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, said in a news release from Baylor and the Texas Heart Institute.

Baylor St. Luke’s is the first hospital in the U.S. to use the Allia Moveo technology. The definition and responsiveness of the new system allow surgeons to navigate the body with greater accuracy and smaller incisions, even for very delicate operations.

“Allia Moveo gives us the flexibility and image quality needed to manage increasingly complex minimally invasive procedures with greater confidence,” Dr. Gustavo Oderich, vascular surgeon and professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine, added in the release. “The ability to quickly reposition the system, obtain high-quality 3D imaging, and integrate advanced guidance tools directly into the workflow enhances procedural accuracy. This technology supports our mission to push the boundaries of what is possible in endovascular and interventional surgery.”

Houston clocks in as one of the hardest working cities in America

Ranking It

Houston and its residents are proving their tenacity as some of the hardest working Americans in 2026, so says a new study.

WalletHub's annual "Hardest-Working Cities in America (2026)" report ranked Houston the 37th most hardworking city nationwide. H-town last appeared as the 28th most industrious American city in 2025, but it still remains among the top 50.

The personal finance website evaluated 116 U.S. cities based on 11 key indicators across "direct" and "indirect" work factors, such as an individual's average workweek hours, average commute times, employment rates, and more.

The U.S. cities that comprised the top five include Cheyenne, Wyoming (No. 1); Anchorage, Alaska (No. 2); Washington, D.C. (No. 2); Sioux Falls, South Dakota (No. 4); and Irving, Texas (No. 5). Dallas and Austin also earned a spot among the top 10, landing as No. 7 and No. 10, respectively.

Based on the report's findings, Houston has the No. 31-best "direct work factors" ranking in the nation, which analyzed residents' average workweek hours, employment rates, the share of households where no adults work, the share of workers leaving vacation time unused, the share of "engaged" workers, and the rate of "idle youth" (residents aged 16-24 that are not in school nor have a job).

However, Houston lagged behind in the "indirect work factors" ranking, landing at No. 77 out of all 116 cities in the report. "Indirect" work factors that were considered include residents' average commute times, the share of workers with multiple jobs, the share of residents who participate in local groups or organizations, annual volunteer hours, and residents' average leisure time spent per day.

Based on data from The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), WalletHub said the average American employee works hundreds of more hours than workers residing in "several other industrialized nations."

"The typical American puts in 1,796 hours per year – 179 more than in Japan, 284 more than in the U.K., and 465 more than in Germany," the report's author wrote. "In recent years, the rise of remote work has, in some cases, extended work hours even further."

WalletHub also tracked the nation's lowest and highest employment rates based on the largest city in each state from 2009 to 2024.

Source: WalletHub

Other Texas cities that earned spots on the list include Fort Worth (No. 13), Corpus Christi (No. 14), Arlington (No. 15), Plano (No. 17), Laredo (No. 22), Garland (No. 24), El Paso (No. 43), Lubbock (No. 46), and San Antonio (No. 61).

Data for this study was sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Travel Association, Gallup, Social Science Research Council, and the Corporation for National & Community Service as of January 29, 2026.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

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