Spotlight: Sami Malik @ Linear Health

A spotlight is a short-form interview with a leader in health tech. In this spotlight, you'll hear from Sami Malik, founder and CEO of Linear Health.

What does Linear Health do?

Linear Health builds custom AI agents that automate the work between appointments. Referral processing, prior authorizations, care gap closure, contact center operations. Voice, SMS, and email agents that work directly inside the EHR. Most organizations have coordinators doing this manually. We automate about 80% of it and give ops teams real-time visibility into the full pipeline.

How did you end up working in health tech?

I started out designing warships for the British government, then had an epiphany that I wanted my work to have a more direct impact on the communities around me. I built, operated, and exited a healthcare services company that scaled to all 50 states. During that journey I experienced how broken the operational engine behind US healthcare really is. When AI matured enough to actually do meaningful work, the timing was right to go back and fix it and help other operators in the same shoes.

How does your role intersect with revenue cycle management (RCM)?

We sit upstream of traditional RCM. Most revenue leakage doesn't start at the billing office. It starts when a referral never converts, a prior auth sits in a queue, or a care gap goes unaddressed because nobody has capacity to make the call. We automate that coordination layer so referrals actually convert, auths get completed, and claims go out clean.

What do you think RCM will look like two years from now?

The fee-for-service model is buckling under its own administrative weight. Shrinking workforce, compressing margins, and organizations spending more on coordination overhead while getting worse outcomes. Two years from now, AI agents will handle upstream coordination work autonomously, from eligibility verification to patient outreach to scheduling, so that by the time a transaction hits the billing stack, the data is clean and the patient has actually completed care. That's where the biggest gains are hiding.