CEO Spotlight Interview
From Navy Corpsman to Building the Autonomous Healthcare Administrator: Why Autumn-Kyoko Cushman Founded ShiftRx
Autumn-Kyoko Cushman, ShiftRx
CEO Background
I initially started my career with the intention of going into medicine, and served as a Hospital Corpsman in the US Navy for nearly 5 years stationed in Washington DC. Working on the nursing side while enrolled in my undergraduate degree, I worked in Hematology/Oncology units and Executive Medicine. Upon exiting my service obligation, it was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and short staffing in healthcare systems was severely affecting providers.
I had done a degree in Information Technology out of general curiosity, and ended up taking a role in bioinformatics and managing engineering teams for the NCI/NIH working on precision medicine and cancer clinical research trials. This experience rolled me into another opportunity working with data and customer teams at IBM's Watson Health with large pharmaceutical companies and healthcare systems.
One issue persisted throughout my entire career journey, from all ends of the healthcare ecosystem—the staffing crisis. I knew it was the problem I wanted to spend the rest of my life working to solve. I paired up with a childhood friend and now co-founder, Leann, who had also left her clinical provider position. We utilized our clinical knowledge of the problem, my background in data and engineering, and Leann's expertise in healthcare administration and staffing cycles to build our first product.
“One issue persisted throughout my entire career—from all ends of the healthcare ecosystem: the staffing crisis.”
“Automate the back-end burdens, reduce costs, and give organizations the ability to pay clinical staff more.”
The Key Problems Being Addressed
We felt that in order for the healthcare provider shortage to truly be solved, providers needed to be fully supported and paid more to incentivize new providers and retain remaining ones. ShiftRx aims to accomplish this by automating the back-end staffing burdens so those duties are removed from falling on providers, reducing administrative costs and headcount throughout healthcare facilities, and ultimately increasing operating margins—giving organizations the ability to increase pay and personnel for clinical staff.
We utilize AI and LLMs to help healthcare facilities—pharmacies, to start—source, credential, schedule, onboard, and pay PRN workers. Now we're bridging into full-time placements as well to own the staffing cycle from end to end.
Building Toward the Autonomous Healthcare Administrator
The problems we're solving are mundane, routine tasks where AI can train quickly and complete actions end to end—without the hallucination risks that haunt more open-ended AI applications. It's essentially allowing the computer to play Tetris, and computers are very good at Tetris.
“Our broader vision is to build an Autonomous Healthcare Administrator.”
Our broader vision is to build an Autonomous Healthcare Administrator—a platform that handles the full operational lifecycle of healthcare staffing so that clinicians can focus entirely on care. We're not just filling shifts; we're rebuilding the infrastructure around clinical work.
A Future-Forward Partnership: ShiftRx and Tau Ventures
Amit, Sanjay, and the entire Tau team are incredible value-add investors. They are extremely well-versed in the world where AI and healthcare intersect. From our first conversation, I could tell they actually understood where we felt AI is practically applied throughout the product rather than the hype cycle talk track happening in Silicon Valley.
We've leaned on the Tau team for intros—we have an awesome CTO advisor, thanks to Tau—as well as resources, expertise, and support. They've always given thoughtful, substantive help, and they supported our broader vision of building an Autonomous Healthcare Administrator from day one.