{"slug": "ozz-health-pilots-an-ai-guide-for-the-hours-hospitals-leave-unexplained", "title": "Ozz Health pilots an AI guide for the hours hospitals leave unexplained", "summary": "Ozz Health, a five-person startup founded in 2024 by trauma scholar Galit Desheh, is piloting its AI hospital companion Dorothy at two US hospitals and one in Israel, with research underway at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Dorothy connects with hospital records to explain procedures, wait times, and results to patients, aiming to reduce anxiety without adding tasks for clinical staff. The company is also conducting research with the emergency department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, according to a CTech profile.", "body_md": "# Ozz Health pilots an AI guide for the hours hospitals leave unexplained\n\n**Galit Desheh, a trauma and gender scholar, founded Ozz Health to give patients context clinicians often lack time to provide.**\n\nBy [RuntimeWire Staff](/author/runtimewire-staff)\n· Published\n\nPrimary source: [CTech](https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/ryibvtuugl)\n\n## Why it matters\n\nOzz Health is testing whether trauma expertise can become hospital infrastructure, giving patients clarity while producing outcomes health systems will pay for.\n\n[Galit Desheh](https://il.linkedin.com/in/galit-desheh-997bab37?ref=runtimewire) has taken Ozz Health's AI hospital companion into pilots at two US hospitals and one in Israel, testing whether better explanations can give frightened patients some control without creating another task for clinical staff. Ozz Health is also conducting research with the emergency department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, according to a [CTech profile published Friday](https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/ryibvtuugl?ref=runtimewire).\n\nThe five-person [Ozz Health](https://ozzhealth.com/?ref=runtimewire) was founded in 2024 by Desheh, chief product officer Tanya Abarbanel and chief technology officer Yaniv Sidi. Ozz Health's website also lists emergency physician Michael J. Drescher as co-founder and chief medical officer. Together they are building [Dorothy](https://ozzhealth.com/?ref=runtimewire), an AI system designed to connect with hospital records and explain what is happening during an emergency visit or admission.\n\nDesheh, 56, arrived at the problem from well outside the usual health-tech founder pipeline. She had no computer science training and describes Ozz Health as her fifth career. Her previous work included running the Israel Women's Network, leading education at the Tel Aviv Sexual Assault Crisis Center, advising organizations on diversity and inclusion, and managing Power in Diversity, a venture-backed effort to increase women's representation in Israeli technology. She holds a political science doctorate focused on gender from the [Hebrew University of Jerusalem](https://sw.huji.ac.il/people/%D7%92%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%A9%D7%94?ref=runtimewire) and is listed there as a teaching fellow.\n\nThat background gave Desheh a product thesis centered on trauma rather than hospital administration. The origin was personal: her brother, Oz Desheh, died from a brain tumor at 59 after a 10-week illness. During one hospitalization, his family arrived at his ward and could not find him. Hospital staff had moved him overnight from rehabilitation to internal medicine without informing them. His wife later brought him home for hospice care.\n\nA later conversation with a neighbor who had struggled to navigate hospitals with his elderly parents turned the experience into a product idea. Ozz Health's name refers both to Oz and the Land of Oz; Dorothy is named for the novel's protagonist. The metaphor is unusually literal for enterprise software: Desheh wants to keep patients on a clearly marked path through a system that routinely leaves them wondering where they are and what happens next.\n\n### Turning hospital data into an explanation\n\nDorothy is intended to tell patients why they are waiting, what a test is for, how long it may take, whether it may hurt, what a result means and what the care team expects after discharge. Ozz Health says Dorothy does not make medical recommendations. It restates and reinforces information from clinicians, changing the language, pace and level of detail for each patient.\n\nOzz Health says Dorothy can use details from medical records, including age, sex, location and occupation, alongside factors such as culture, health literacy and trauma context. The product is being built to sit on top of Epic and MyChart, according to Ozz Health's website. Desheh describes the approach as identity-based communication. \"Empathy isn't about being nice,\" she told CTech. \"Empathy is the ability to see the other person according to their needs.\"\n\nThat promise creates a demanding product and clinical test. Personalization has to improve comprehension without turning demographic information into a collection of automated assumptions. Dorothy also has to translate live hospital data accurately, distinguish explanation from medical advice, and preserve the care team's authority when patients ask questions that require clinical judgment.\n\nOzz Health's decision to avoid medical recommendations narrows the immediate safety risk, though it does not make the work simple. An incorrect explanation of a test, wait or discharge instruction can still shape what a patient does. Hospital integrations also tend to be slow, especially when software touches protected records and appears directly in front of patients. Ozz Health's pilots will have to show that Dorothy can perform reliably inside those constraints.\n\n### Patient experience is also a hospital budget line\n\nDesheh is selling empathy into a market that buys on operational and financial outcomes. In the US, Medicare's [Hospital Value-Based Purchasing program](https://www.cms.gov/medicare/quality/value-based-programs/hospital-purchasing?ref=runtimewire) scores hospitals on measures that include patient experience, safety, mortality and efficiency. Separate [readmission penalties](https://www.cms.gov/medicare/payment/prospective-payment-systems/acute-inpatient-pps/hospital-readmissions-reduction-program-hrrp?ref=runtimewire) can reduce applicable Medicare payments.\n\nThat structure gives Ozz Health a commercial argument beyond making a frightening experience less alienating. Clearer instructions could improve survey results, reduce repeated questions and help patients follow discharge plans. Those outcomes would matter to hospital executives if Dorothy can deliver them without adding work for nurses and physicians. Ozz Health currently presents those benefits as the product's case for adoption; the hospital pilots are where that case must become measurable.\n\nOzz Health is entering a busy category. [Suvi Health](https://www.suvi.health/?ref=runtimewire), working with Mayo Clinic, is developing ambient AI that captures bedside conversations and converts them into plain-language plans and reminders. Larger patient-journey vendors operate across scheduling, intake, referrals and payments. Assort Health said in June that it raised a [$120M Series C](https://www.assorthealth.com/blog/assort-health-raises-120-million-series-c-to-scale-largest-deployment-of-ai-agents-for-the-patient-journey?ref=runtimewire), showing how much capital is moving toward AI products that mediate between healthcare institutions and patients.\n\nDorothy's narrower focus may help Ozz Health. Desheh is concentrating on the emotional and informational gaps inside a hospital stay, where patients are vulnerable, clinicians are busy and generic chatbot language can be especially damaging. Her bet is that trauma expertise can become a defensible product discipline rather than a layer of friendlier copy around an existing hospital portal.\n\n### The pilots come before the fundraise\n\nDesheh told [Calcalist](https://www.calcalist.co.il/magazine/article/tml3k6yes?ref=runtimewire) that Ozz Health repeatedly postponed fundraising when the war intensified and now intends to begin raising capital. That timing puts unusual weight on the current hospital work. A small founding group with three pilots can demonstrate access and demand; investors will still need evidence that hospital integrations can be repeated and that Ozz Health can convert research and pilots into durable contracts.\n\nOzz Health is applying the same method in southern Israel through Lior's Lighthouse, a project supporting trauma-affected residents of Sderot and communities near Gaza as they navigate medical care. The project commemorates Lior Tarshansky, who was murdered at age 15 in Kibbutz Be'eri on October 7th, 2023. It operates through the Sheba-Sderot accelerator and the Resilience & Health Innovation Hub, with support from Sheba Medical Center, the Sderot municipality and Israel's National Insurance Institute.\n\nFor Desheh, Dorothy is an attempt to turn a family's worst hospital experience into infrastructure that keeps another family informed. The founder-market fit is clear even if it did not come from engineering credentials: Desheh understands what confusion does to people under stress. Ozz Health's next job is proving that understanding can survive contact with medical records, procurement departments and the crowded reality of a hospital ward.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ozz-health-pilots-an-ai-guide-for-the-hours-hospitals-leave-unexplained", "canonical_source": "https://runtimewire.com/article/ozz-health-ai-hospital-guide-galit-desheh", "published_at": "2026-09-04 06:48:56+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-04 06:52:26.402212+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["Ozz Health", "Galit Desheh", "Dorothy", "Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center", "Tanya Abarbanel", "Yaniv Sidi", "Michael J. 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