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

Marilyn Bartlett, Kimberly Carleson, Dylan Yahn, Benjamin Light, Matt McQuide, Ann Kempski, Spencer Allen, Scott Tromanhauser, 
Steven Elkins, Matthew Bunte, and Lori Smith.

Recent Episodes

EP531: Slaying the Three-Headed Monster of Health Plan Networks, With Evan Anderson
Relentless Health ValueSeptember 30, 2026
531
38:0634.88 MB

EP531: Slaying the Three-Headed Monster of Health Plan Networks, With Evan Anderson

Listen on Your Favorite App Today, Evan Anderson and I are talking about carrier networks, how they started, how it's going. Because irrespective of whatever the plan was at the very beginning, any given network, especially talking about the big status quo networks, has evolved into what I'll call a...

EP530: A Wildly Underappreciated Point: Overpaying for Infusions Means Overpaying for Stop-Loss Coverage, With Jake Velie and Keith Hartman, RPh
Relentless Health ValueSeptember 23, 2026
530
37:4534.56 MB

EP530: A Wildly Underappreciated Point: Overpaying for Infusions Means Overpaying for Stop-Loss Coverage, With Jake Velie and Keith Hartman, RPh

Listen on Your Favorite App Hello, all you Relentless Tribe members. Thanks for hanging with me this week. When a self-insured plan sponsor sees an infusion claim hit their high-cost case report, and a lot of these infusions are really expensive, so many of them hit the high-cost claim report. For a...

EP529: How Stark Law, Stipends, and Noncompetes Drive Hospital Consolidation, With Eric Bricker, MD
Relentless Health ValueSeptember 16, 2026
529
39:2936.14 MB

EP529: How Stark Law, Stipends, and Noncompetes Drive Hospital Consolidation, With Eric Bricker, MD

Listen on Your Favorite App Hello, all you Relentless Tribe members. Hey, thanks for being here with me every week, some of you every single Thursday. Give yourself a little round of applause, maybe silently and in your own head, depending on where you are. But yeah, you matter. You being here matte...

EP528: The Current State of Primary Care—Inevitable or Fixable? Will It Be Private Equity to the Rescue? With Yashaswini Singh, PhD
Relentless Health ValueSeptember 09, 2026
528
38:4935.53 MB

EP528: The Current State of Primary Care—Inevitable or Fixable? Will It Be Private Equity to the Rescue? With Yashaswini Singh, PhD

Listen on Your Favorite App Hello, all you Relentless Tribe members. Here's the backstory for this episode. Remember episode 519 with Lisa Rosenbaum, MD, where we played a high-stakes kind of game show called "Is the Current State of Primary Care an Absolute Inevitability, or Is It a Needless, Subop...

EP526: Generic Compliance Ratios, Pass-Through Contracts, and Other Pharmacy Plumbing, With Mark Cuban and Cora Opsahl
Relentless Health ValueAugust 26, 2026
526
20:1119.06 MB

EP526: Generic Compliance Ratios, Pass-Through Contracts, and Other Pharmacy Plumbing, With Mark Cuban and Cora Opsahl

Listen on Your Favorite App Hello, all you Relentless Tribe members. If you have listened to this show for any length of time, you know one of our favorite truths around here, which is where there's mystery, there's margin. But today, we aren't just here to point out the mystery. We're here to look ...

EP525: PMPM vs FFS—The Perverse Incentives Plan Sponsors Sometimes Miss, With Cristin Dickerson, MD
Relentless Health ValueAugust 19, 2026
525
16:3315.14 MB

EP525: PMPM vs FFS—The Perverse Incentives Plan Sponsors Sometimes Miss, With Cristin Dickerson, MD

Listen on Your Favorite App So, this one's gonna be a little bit different. Back last year, I sat down with Dr. Cristin Dickerson. She is the founding partner of Green Imaging , which is a physician-led radiology network doing direct contracting for imaging. And we talked about how imaging can run 6...

EP524: Beating Provider Network Pricing Games by Thinking About Buying Healthcare Like a Manufacturer Supply Chain, With John Quinn
Relentless Health ValueAugust 12, 2026
524
17:0215.59 MB

EP524: Beating Provider Network Pricing Games by Thinking About Buying Healthcare Like a Manufacturer Supply Chain, With John Quinn

Listen on Your Favorite App Hello, all you Relentless Tribe members. First off here, I would like to thank Casey Cormier for the really nice recurring donation. Thank you so much, Casey Cormier from  Stratis Group . Lately, traditional provider networks are increasingly being called into questi...

Listen and Follow

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