Lumata Health CEO on moving healthcare from reactive to proactive

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This week’s Making Rounds spotlights Landon Grace, co-founder and CEO of virtual eye care platform Lumata Health. In March, Lumata raised $23 million in Series B funding from venture firms including McKesson Ventures, LRVHealth, and Cencora Ventures.

Grace talked with Healthcare Brew about being a hands-on CEO, how data is reshaping healthcare, and switching from a reactive to proactive model of care.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in healthcare?

My background is in aerospace engineering and I’m also a pilot, so I naturally think in terms of systems and navigation. I see my role as CEO a lot like air traffic control. Our job at Lumata Health is to help patients with chronic eye disease get from point A (being diagnosed with a chronic eye condition) to point B (living a full life while maintaining their vision).

The plane in this analogy is powered by our people, fueled by our data, and guided by our technology. The Lumata leadership team and management are the flight attendants and the pilots. As CEO, I’m not the one flying the plane, but I’m setting the course, helping the team navigate obstacles, and keeping the flight on track. Ultimately, the flight is successful because the entire crew works together to get passengers (patients) safely where they need to go.

What’s the best change you’ve made or seen at your company?

The biggest change I’ve led was pivoting Lumata from diagnosing eye disease to ensuring patients actually get treated after diagnosis. When we first started Lumata Health, we focused on screening patients for diabetic retinopathy in Native American communities in Oklahoma. We saw thousands of people being diagnosed with the disease, which was a step in the right direction, but too many patients still lost their vision because they couldn’t overcome barriers to care, particularly getting their eye injections. We realized diagnosis wasn’t the main problem—treatment adherence was. So we shifted everything, including our operations, resources, and the scope of the diseases we targeted to include more diseases beyond diabetic retinopathy.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job?

That a CEO is holed up in a corner office, not interacting with employees. That’s just not me. I spend a lot of time in the weeds with the team, and that would probably surprise people. I thrive on digging in at the ground level and working with the team on product strategy, innovation, and solving tough challenges in the business. I don’t like to give big directives and then completely walk away. I like to help solve the problems and accomplish the goals, which often means digging in. The best part of this role is seeing ideas take shape across the company and being an active participant in the process that makes them real.

What healthcare trend are you most optimistic about?

How data-driven insights are now reshaping healthcare. I don’t necessarily mean AI; I mean our ability in healthcare to acquire, clean, and derive insights from data to help people be healthier across the board. We’re finally getting to a point where insights from data can help tailor care to the individual and drive better outcomes.

What healthcare trend are you least optimistic about?

The biggest challenge in healthcare is misaligned incentives, which is essentially the trend that won’t quit. The system rewards volume over outcomes, and it’s a problem that seems to take two steps forward and one step back. Healthcare leaders are trying to shift the model, but the inertia of the reactive care model is strong.

We focus on keeping patients engaged and involved in their treatment and preventing problems before they happen. It’s harder to build a proactive care model like this because it’s so different from what most people are used to, but it’s the right thing to do, and it’s where healthcare needs to go.