Company leader
Kristen Valdes
Founder and CEO
b.well Connected Health
Kristen Valdes is the founder and chief executive of b.well Connected Health, a Baltimore, Maryland, company whose platform gathers a person's medical records, claims, and device data into one profile for apps run by health plans, health systems, and employers. She spent years in Medicare and health insurance before her daughter's illness led her to start the company in 2015. Valdes believes people should control their own health data, and she is trying to make that data follow each person across every doctor, plan, and app.
Medicare and Health Insurance
Valdes started her career at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, working on the first national payment integrity programs for Medicare and Medicaid, MedCity News reported. She helped build XLHealth, a Medicare Advantage company for chronically ill people that UnitedHealthcare acquired in 2012 for $2.4 billion, and then led Medicare Advantage plans across 12 states as an executive at UnitedHealthcare.
Searching for Bailey's Diagnosis
Her daughter, Bailey, went seven years without a diagnosis. During that search a doctor prescribed a sinus medication that Bailey should not have taken, because a specialist's records held a diagnosis the prescribing doctor could not see. "She nearly died. That could have been completely avoided had we had interoperability," Valdes said at a HIMSS session in 2020, according to Healthcare Finance News. "My daughter has 17 patient portals," she added.
Founding b.well in Baltimore
Valdes founded b.well in 2015 and gave it a name taken from Bailey, whom she calls the company's "chief inspiration officer." "I didn't make the decision to want to lead an organization one day. When my daughter got sick, I just felt passionate that I knew how to solve this problem," she told UpSurge Baltimore. She also described the questions she faced as a woman raising money, including being asked, "What does your husband do?"
She has been recognized as a 2019 Top Innovator in the Accenture HealthTech Innovation Challenge, a 40 Under 40 Healthcare Innovator, and one of Maryland's Most Admired CEOs, and she has served on the board of the CARIN Alliance, a group working on consumer access to health data.
Building a National Health Data Network
Valdes called the 21st Century Cures Act's data-sharing rules a "sentinel event in healthcare that no one saw coming." "Data is not an asset that companies should have the right to own," she told UpSurge Baltimore.
In July 2026 b.well said its CMS Aligned Network was live, letting patients share records across Froedtert ThedaCare Health, Google, Samsung, and other partners, and Valdes called the launch "a transformative moment for healthcare interoperability."