Livongo's former CFO gets real on today's digital health market

(Shapiro, R, with former Livongo CEO Glen Tullman, L. Credit: NASDAQ.)

When Livongo merged with Teladoc in the summer of 2020 for $18.5 billion, it was a major moment for digital health. Before that happened, there weren’t many examples of runaway success stories in the space. There were a few notable IPOs and exits, to be sure, but nothing that put the sector on the map in such a big way.

One of the key execs behind all that was Lee Shapiro, the company’s longtime Chief Financial Officer. Shapiro, who had joined the company from AllScripts, offered up a different kind of story than Wall Street had heard before. As he put it in our interview, it meant introducing investors to the idea that the antiquated healthcare system would finally get its “Internet moment.”