Company leader
Sam Holliday
Co-founder and CEO
Oshi Health
Sam Holliday is co-founder and chief executive of Oshi Health, a virtual gastroenterology clinic that treats adults with digestive conditions through a team of GI providers, dietitians, and gut-brain specialists. A chemical engineer by training, he spent his career in health technology, including running operations at a diabetes telehealth company, before building Oshi around his mother's experience with irritable bowel syndrome.
From Chemical Engineering to Health Technology
Holliday earned a BSE in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA in healthcare management and finance from The Wharton School, according to his American Telemedicine Association speaker bio. On the Slice of Healthcare podcast in 2021 he said he had “been in healthcare my whole career, always with the theme of, you know, how do we use technology to improve various aspects of healthcare?”
At Greenway Health, an electronic health record company, he built clinical trial recruitment, medication adherence, and population health businesses as internal startups. At Everyday Health, the online health information company, he built a marketing business for hospitals and health systems around its acquisition of Tea Leaves Health.
He then became chief operating officer of Cecelia Health, a diabetes education and coaching company that served health plans, employers, and drug makers. He scaled its clinical team, oversaw product and technology, and helped the company triple its customer and revenue base in two years, according to the ATA bio.
His Mother’s IBS and the Idea for Oshi
In 2017 Holliday's mother was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome and told about the low FODMAP diet, which she worked out on her own, Oshi's About page says. A stressful life event later set off a flare that put her in the emergency room and the hospital.
His mother is a trained cook, and when she went back to her gastroenterologist having worked out her trigger foods, “his mind was blown,” Holliday told the Wharton Pulse podcast. “That was the first light bulb moment for me.” He told the Slice of Healthcare podcast that nobody had explained to her how stress, anxiety, and depression affect the gut. Patients, he said, were left to find a gastroenterologist, a dietitian, and a therapist on their own, often without insurance paying for all three. “Why, why doesn't anybody put all those providers under one roof?” he asked.
Building Oshi Health
Oshi took shape when Holliday met Dr. Sameer Berry, a gastroenterologist who trained at the University of Michigan, and Mike Goodman, who had been incubating a tool for IBD patients and their doctors with Takeda, and the three decided to join forces, according to a Wharton Pulse podcast summary. They launched Oshi at the end of 2019 and spent 2020 building its technology and clinical protocols. He has described Oshi as a partner to local gastroenterology practices, which handle colonoscopies, endoscopies, and infusions, while Oshi provides the dietary, psychological, and remote monitoring care those practices rarely have time for.
Oshi spent two years running a clinical study with a health plan before pushing for growth. “Without that clinical trial and that cost savings proof, I don't know that we would have been able to convince health plans to cover our care the way they are,” Holliday told Fierce Healthcare in October 2024, when Oshi raised a $60 million Series C led by Oak HC/FT. He said the round should carry the company to profitability in 2027.