Press Release
Vital.io guides 7M patients through ER, urgent care, inpatient & surgical visits, accurately predicting wait times, reassuring frustrated patients, and providing clear guidance on what to do next.
Vital, which uses AI to predict ER wait times, explain doctors notes in human terms to hospitalized patients, and gives real-time updates during surgical procedures to family members, has been recognized by TIME and Statistica as a top company in the Health Information Management category. The award list was announced on September 17th, 2026, and can be viewed on Time.com. Vital.io guides millions of patients during their visits, leading to lower leave-rate, fewer readmissions, better patient scores, and - unsurprisingly when you treat people right - better financial outcomes for 3 of the top 6 health systems, plus dozens of others.
“Wow! Happy to be recognized by TIME (and Statistica). And what a coincidence. Every morning, next to ‘Live, Laugh, Love’, I look at one of those TIME Person of the Year frames that’s really just a mirror. This award was clearly made to live beside it. I mean what do you do to hype yourself up to change healthcare each morning?” asks Aaron Patzer, Vital’s Cofounder & CEO. He further muses, “Seriously, by ‘you’ I mean you the human, the person who’s reading this press release. I’ve been worried that it’s all just AI agents these days. If you’ve made it this far, you’re going to love - okay, probably just tolerate - the rest. I wrote the whole thing, and quoted myself here, crazy right? Who’s regulating press releases, or more importantly, AI for that matter?”
Vital does a few things exceptionally well: it’s used by 65% of patients during hospital & emergency stays. Your standard comes-with-the-EHR software, 10-15% during a visit. As a result of being super-easy for patients, it produces great outcomes: 30-50% reduction in left-without-being-seen (LWBS) which is when patients are so fed up with waiting they bail; a 30% increase in follow-up visits, so people actually get better long term and don’t just end up back at the hospital. That’s our enterprise system.
Vital also runs Vital Care Finder directly for consumers. We have millions of doctors, dentists, nurses and physician assistants listed everywhere, sorted by price, which other find-a-doc systems seem to neglect. It matches using your clinical fingerprint, so the “best doctor” for you depends very much on what chronic conditions you have, age, language,s etc. It’s also built for AI, with deep integrations into ChatGPT & Claude via widgets and MCP servers.
We also are a founding member of AICareStandard.com created with industry leaders and executives from MedStar, IU Health, HCA, Patients for Patient Safety, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and more.
In short, we’re the pro-patient company. And for all patients, rich and poor, insured or not. This feels rare in health care for some reason. We’re allowed to use like 1500 words, but press releases are a bit like corporate journal entries, self-focused and a bit look-at-me. Thanks for getting this far. Consider going outside. Or just standing up. Or drinking some water. Something for your health - we stopped short so you could.
About Vital.io
Vital.io today guides 7M patients annually through emergency, urgent care, and inpatient visits across dozens of health systems including 3 of the top 6 largest IDNs. Vital is known for its innovations in safe, patient-facing AI, including the doctor-to-patient translator launch in May 2023, and its status as a founding member of the PatientAI Collaborative™ at aicarestandard.com committed to safe, accurate, and clinically responsible AI-driven patient communication.
Vital was founded by Aaron Patzer, formerly Founder of Mint & VP of Product Innovation at Intuit, and Justin Schrager, MD, a practicing emergency physician at IU Health & Emory. Vital is backed by Transformation Capital, Threshold Ventures, First Round Capital, and luminaries in healthcare including the founders of Flat Iron Health, Patient Ping / Bamboo, and more.