In this episode of the DevReady Podcast, host  Anthony Sapountzis, CTO and Co-Founder of Aerion Technologies and DevReady.Ai, speaks with Leah Houston, Founder of evercred, about her remarkable journey from emergency medicine to healthtech entrepreneurship. Leah reveals how a case of identity theft and Medicare fraud exposed deep flaws in the medical credentialing system, sparking her mission to build a secure, AI-powered platform that eliminates friction and protects professional identities. Her decade-long medical experience gave her unique insight into the inefficiencies and risks of the existing 4–6-month verification process, inspiring her to leverage technology to transform how doctors manage credentials and compliance.

After discovering that many other doctors faced similar issues, Leah harnessed her Silicon Valley network to design and build evercred, a platform that simplifies credential management and safeguards data integrity. Through an SEC-approved crowdfunding campaign, she raised capital from 600 physician investors, creating a community-driven approach to innovation in healthcare technology. Despite launching during the COVID-19 pandemic, Leah successfully led a distributed team, building evercred from concept to functional product while learning the fundamentals of software development and startup leadership along the way.

Leah opens up about the hard lessons of her early startup journey, from hiring the wrong technical co-founder to rebuilding an entire product that was poorly architected. Comparing software development to “building a house without blueprints,” she and Anthony discuss the importance of planning, technical accountability, and recognising the difference between genuine full-stack expertise and overconfidence. Today, Leah’s team leverages modern tools like DevSwarm and PostHog, using AI-driven parallel development and analytics to accelerate delivery, ensure scalability, and gain real-time visibility into user experience. She also shares her first-hand experience learning to code through platforms like Cursor and Vercel, deepening her understanding of workflows, prototyping, and product communication.

As evercred grows, Leah remains focused on aligning technical innovation with business goals. She explains how the platform manages both medical and personal identification data under HIPAA-level compliance, with new features like advanced OCR for credential detection, expiry notifications, and upcoming AI-powered agent automation. Through practical analogies, such as Heinz’s multi-million-dollar investment in designing its iconic ketchup cap, Leah underscores the importance of knowing when to prioritise design, usability, and iteration. The conversation highlights how startups must balance ambition, design precision, and resource constraints while maintaining long-term strategic vision.

Leah also reveals the broader mission behind evercred—to build a decentralised network of physicians that empowers doctors to collaborate, coordinate care, and receive fair compensation through direct payment engines and AI-enabled autonomy. Her long-term vision is to tackle the inefficiency of healthcare systems where up to 70% of funding is lost to waste and administration. By combining decentralisation, automation, and collective intelligence, Leah aims to redefine how healthcare operates, creating a transparent, efficient, and equitable future where physicians regain control of their data and their profession.

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