Dr. Iman Abuzeid had heard the same complaints from family and friends for years. As a physician turned tech founder, she watched doctors struggle with understaffing while her co-founder, Rome Portlock, listened to nurse relatives voice another frustration:
“I’m experienced and I’m qualified and I apply to 10 places and I usually don’t even hear back.”
The disconnect made little sense.
“Healthcare is the biggest labor sector in the country by number of workers,” Abuzeid said in an interview. “It also has the biggest labor shortages. And so we thought, this doesn’t make any sense. Everyone should be hired fast.”
What they found when digging deeper surprised them. “The tools, the technology, the mindset — nothing’s changed in over 20 years,” Abuzeid said. “We said, ‘Okay, there just has to be a better way.'”
That realization led to the creation of Incredible Health, now the largest AI-powered healthcare career marketplace in the U.S., serving more than 1 million healthcare workers — approximately one in three nurses nationwide — and over 1,500 employers. On Sept. 24, the company announced two AI voice agents, marking one of the industry’s biggest hiring transformations.
AI Agents Built by Hospitals, for Hospitals
What makes this launch stand out is its origin. Instead of Silicon Valley engineers trying to predict what hospitals need, four major health systems — Johns Hopkins, NY-Presbyterian, Baylor Scott & White Health, and Sutter Health — partnered with Incredible Health to design Lyn, an AI voice agent for employers.
“We didn’t build Lyn on our own,” Abuzeid said. “We collaborated with four of our health system partners, and they were our design partners when creating Lyn.”
Hospitals had long described the same problem: they were being asked to hire more workers with the same number of recruiters.
“They’re expected to do this hiring with the same number of recruiters, and they’re asking, ‘How are we going to do all this work?’” Abuzeid said.
The solution came in the form of two AI voice agents:
Gale, named for Florence Nightingale, acts as an AI career partner for healthcare workers. It helps with resumes, interview prep, and career navigation.
Lyn, named for Marilyn Hughes Gaston, the first Black woman to direct the U.S. Bureau of Primary Health Care, supports employers by conducting candidate interviews and ensuring top talent is reached.
A Convenience Revolution
One of the biggest hurdles healthcare workers face is time.
“We’ve had nurses do interview preparation at midnight, on Sunday at noon, because they’re usually working, overworking,” Abuzeid said.
The 24/7 access has been a game-changer. “One of the things (healthcare workers) like the most is that it’s very convenient. They can interact with Gale 24/7,” she said. The feedback has been strong: “Ninety percent of nurses give Gale a thumbs up and would recommend it to their friends.”
For employers, Lyn removes hiring bottlenecks by conducting consistent interviews at scale and reaching out to candidates while human recruiters focus on higher-level strategy.
“Health system leaders want their recruiters to operate at the top of their skill set,” Abuzeid said. “They want this repetitive work, which is frankly lower skill, to be handled by AI agents.”
Financial Impact
The economic results are significant.
“For each hospital we work with, we save each location at least $5 million a year when they use Incredible Health,” Abuzeid said.
Savings can be achieved by hiring permanent workers more quickly, reducing reliance on temporary staff, and enhancing employee retention.
“The retention of hires from Incredible Health is usually about 15% higher than the employer’s baseline,” she said. Hiring timelines also drop from the industry standard of 90 days to fewer than 20. With AI agents, the goal is to cut that to just a few days.
Abuzeid believes specialization is the key to success. “When it comes to AI agents, we’re really big believers that you have to be a specialist — this has to be a vertical focus,” she said.
A Different AI Story
Unlike other industries where AI often eliminates jobs, healthcare is showing the opposite.
“We’ve seen AI be quite disruptive in a negative way for many industries, including replacing workers,” Abuzeid said. “But I think the one exception there is healthcare, where AI agents like Gale and Lyn are there to actually improve the hiring experience and improve employment for healthcare workers.”
The tools also give healthcare workers access to career support that was once only available to those who could afford it.
The Bigger Picture
The U.S. healthcare workforce is facing a growing strain as the population ages and demand for services increases. Supply of workers is not keeping pace.
“Our goal is to really focus on this vision and mission of helping healthcare professionals live better lives and helping them find and do their best work in order to attract more and more people to this profession,” Abuzeid said.
With hospitals already adopting Gale and Lyn, Incredible Health plans to expand further, even offering Lyn as a standalone product that can be used with applicants outside the platform.
“We’re defining a new category of software and AI-enabled hiring in healthcare, and that category doesn’t exist — we’re building it,” Abuzeid said.
For millions of healthcare workers, that shift is already reshaping careers. For hospitals, it may be the lifeline needed to manage costs and keep quality care within reach.
Image Credit: Photo by Laura James; Pexels
