Episode 103: Engaging Employees with Jonathan Ozeran from Zest Health
August 18, 201628:51

Episode 103: Engaging Employees with Jonathan Ozeran from Zest Health

Jonathan Ozeran is a product designer, software engineer, team builder and mobile technology evangelist who enjoys contributing to the growth of the Chicago startup community. His consumer-facing mobile apps have reached hundreds of thousands of users and have been featured by Apple in their App Store as well as on devices in their retail stores. His enterprise-facing web platforms and mobile apps have made an impact on a number of industries and have been used by tens of thousands of business users spanning campus recruiting, automotive, energy, aviation, healthcare, mobile commerce and security.


In his current role, Jonathan serves as Vice President, Product at Zest Health, a Chicago-based venture backed company that offers a personalized mobile concierge service that helps its members optimize their health benefits. Since early 2014, Jonathan and his team have grown their membership of healthcare consumers, providing 24/7 instant access to healthcare professionals, hassle-free appointment scheduling and discounted health-related services via their iOS and Android apps. He is also a co-founder of WÜF, a team working to bring to market the world's smartest dog collar after a successful Kickstarter campaign during the 2014 holiday season that raised nearly $100,000.

Additionally, he is an Adjunct Lecturer at Northwestern University where he teaches mobile application design and prototyping based on his experiences developing B2B and B2C mobile applications for both consumers and the Fortune 1000. He is also an active speaker, often on topics that include product design, mobile technology and startup culture. A sampling of events include the Twilio Conference, Health 2.0, Exponential Medicine, the Kellogg Technology Conference and enterprise briefings at Apple Headquarters and in their retail stores.

Academically, Jonathan received a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Michigan and a master's degree in computer & information systems from Northwestern University

Zest Health Twitter (@ZestHealth)  

Jonathan Ozeran's Twitter (@jozeran)


00:00 Employees, Employers and Healthcare.
02:20 Price Sensitivity and Good Long Term Decisions.
03:15 What Health Plan Cost increases are doing to both Employees and Employers.
05:00 Use Cases and how these are useful to employers.
05:30 Access to Telemedicine and Urgent Care as important resources.
06:30 Price Shifts and Increasing Health Needs for the modern-day Employee.
07:50 What Zest Health takes into consideration in providing guidance for Employers.
09:45 Defining ‘Patient Advocacy’.
12:15 Employers, Third Parties, and Offering Employee Benefits outside of Payer Services.
14:00 The ways in which Zest Health can assist Employees in accessing their Health Information.
15:20 Bringing all information to one place.
16:20 Utilizing information, and how having all Health Information in one place is paramount to Employee Health.
18:00 Zest Health’s HIPAA compliance and TeleHealth utilization.
20:30 TeleHealth & Healthcare Economics.
20:45 “Is TeleHealth a Cost-Saver, or a Cost-Driver?”
24:30 “Telemedicine is really critically useful.”
27:45 The reception of Zest Health’s service from a Payer standpoint.
29:20 You can find out more at www.ZestHealth.com, in the GooglePlay app store, on Twitter @ZestHealth or @JayOzeran, and directly with Jonathan Ozeran on LinkedIn.

healthcare,health,marketing,telehealth,telemedicine,payer,employee,zest health,
|

Episode Support Provided By

Special Thanks to Our 2026 Sustaining Monthly Donors

Kimberly Carleson, Dylan Yahn, Benjamin Light, Matt McQuideAnn Kempski, Spencer Allen, Scott TromanhauserMarilyn Bartlett, 
Steven Elkins, Matthew Bunte, and Lori Smith.

Recent Episodes

EP516: GLP-1s and Cash Pay From the Pharma Manufacturer Point of View, With Ophelia Johnson
Relentless Health ValueJune 17, 202644:0540.35 MB

EP516: GLP-1s and Cash Pay From the Pharma Manufacturer Point of View, With Ophelia Johnson

Listen on Your Favorite App Hello, all you Relentless Tribe members. Welcome to it. Today we have a show that will bend your mind in new directions. And yes, I have a head cold at a very weird time of year. I have trouble apparently doing things like normal people. Anyway, we talk a lot on this podc...

EP515: SNF (Skilled Nursing Facility) Fraud—Or Is It Fraud? With Michelle Cera, PhD
Relentless Health ValueJune 10, 202643:0739.47 MB

EP515: SNF (Skilled Nursing Facility) Fraud—Or Is It Fraud? With Michelle Cera, PhD

Listen on Your Favorite App Hello, all you Relentless Tribe members. Lately, I have been just obsessed with what's hiding in plain sight: the root cause glitches in how American healthcare is built. Not the symptoms now. Not the noise. The actual ground zero. I mean, what we call healthcare in this ...

EP514: Successfully Suing a Health System for Their Anticompetitive Contracts and Also Collecting Damages for Plan Sponsors and Members, With Matt Cantor
Relentless Health ValueJune 03, 2026
514
43:4340.02 MB

EP514: Successfully Suing a Health System for Their Anticompetitive Contracts and Also Collecting Damages for Plan Sponsors and Members, With Matt Cantor

Listen on Your Favorite App Hello, all you Relentless Tribe members. This is the third episode in our legal goings-on trifecta, starting with Doug Aldeen in episode 512 covering what amounts to the main reasons plan sponsors wind up suing their brokers or employee benefit consultants. For a full tra...

EP513: Revisiting Cunning Anticompetitive Hospital Contracts, With Brennan Bilberry

EP513: Revisiting Cunning Anticompetitive Hospital Contracts, With Brennan Bilberry

Listen on Your Favorite App If you are a large employer, union funds broker, fiduciary, or anyone responsible for a health plan that spends half of its dollars on hospital care (which most do), or if you have anything to do with policy or enforcement of policy, yeah … listen this week and next week....

EP512: 3 Kinds of Broker/EBC Rent-Seeking Payment Models—A Lawyer’s Perspective, With Doug Aldeen

EP512: 3 Kinds of Broker/EBC Rent-Seeking Payment Models—A Lawyer’s Perspective, With Doug Aldeen

Listen on Your Favorite App I wanted to talk to a lawyer ’cause, yeah, lawyers are the ones that see stuff that falls the whole way down to the level of legal action. But I wanted to find out what are the main categories of things that wind up in legal land when it comes to broker or EBC (employee b...

EP511: The Tension When Clinical Teams Take On Risk for Policymakers and Others Looking to Rustle Up Future Perverse Incentives, With Dr. Siva and Monica Lypson, MD, MHPE
Relentless Health ValueMay 14, 2026
511
29:3727.1 MB

EP511: The Tension When Clinical Teams Take On Risk for Policymakers and Others Looking to Rustle Up Future Perverse Incentives, With Dr. Siva and Monica Lypson, MD, MHPE

Listen on Your Favorite App Last week, we talked Medicare Advantage with Betsy Seals ( EP510 ), and we talked about finding members who a plan can serve well. This makes sense because Medicare Advantage is a capitated program. In other words, Medicare Advantage plans get paid by CMS a per member per...

EP510: The Impact on You of Medicare Advantage Goings-on (2026 Edition), With Betsy Seals
Relentless Health ValueMay 07, 2026
510
35:3032.5 MB

EP510: The Impact on You of Medicare Advantage Goings-on (2026 Edition), With Betsy Seals

Listen on Your Favorite App I came up with at least one way to tell the difference between making a fair profit and profiteering. If someone makes more money when the patients or members they serve are worse off, yeah, call that profiteering. For a full transcript of this episode, click here . If yo...

Listen and Follow

Sponsored by Aventria Health Group
©2026 BD Bridges LLC. All Rights Reserved.