The Heart of Healthcare | A Digital Health Podcast

Precision Medicine Is (Almost) Here | Tempus AI CEO Eric Lefkosky

Feb 23, 2026

Eric Lefkofsky, founder and CEO of Tempus and serial entrepreneur, built AI-driven precision medicine after a personal cancer wake-up call. He discusses building a sequencing lab and massive clinical data infrastructure. He explains the struggle of extracting EHR data, how AI will reshape patient-physician interactions, and what policy changes could responsibly pay for AI in healthcare.

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ANECDOTE

Wife's Diagnosis Sparked Tempus

Eric Lefkofsky started Tempus after his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis exposed how genomic reports lacked clinical context.
He sequenced her sample, noticed reports knew only she was human, and resolved to connect EHR data to sequencing for true personalization.

INSIGHT

Vertical Integration Was Necessary

Tempus vertically integrated by building its own lab because sequencing companies refused to share data needed to contextualize results.
They opened a lab ~9 years ago and became the largest sequencer of cancer patients in the U.S.

ANECDOTE

Initial Hospital Pushback Then Snowball Adoption

Early on Tempus struggled to convince hospitals to share clinical data for self-learning diagnostics; four of five said no.
Positive clinician feedback from intelligent reports created a snowball of adopters that changed hospital attitudes.

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When Eric Lefkofsky’s wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, it exposed how little technology and data were shaping cancer care, pushing the serial entrepreneur to build a different model.

Lefkofsky is the founder and CEO of Tempus, now a $10B publicy traded health tech company, and previously founded Groupon. At Tempus, he’s building a tech-first company applying multimodal data and AI to make diagnostics smarter and treatment decisions more tailored, starting in oncology and expanding across disease areas.

We cover:

What Tempus does in plain English
Why Tempus built its own lab, and how it became one of the largest sequencers of cancer patients in the U.S.
The hard part: extracting usable clinical data from EHRs and scaling to thousands of hospital connections and hundreds of petabytes of data
How AI changes the patient-physician relationship, and why patients will increasingly arrive highly informed
What Eric would change at CMS and HHS to responsibly pay for AI

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About our guest:

Eric Lefkofsky is the founder and CEO at Tempus, a leader in artificial intelligence and precision medicine. He is the co-founder and General Partner of Lightbank, a private venture capital firm specializing in investments in technology companies. He is also the co-founder of Pathos AI, a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on re-engineering drug development; Groupon (NASDAQ: GRPN), a global e-commerce marketplace; Mediaocean, a leading provider of integrated media procurement technology; Echo Global Logistics (NASDAQ: ECHO), a technology-enabled transportation and logistics outsourcing firm; and InnerWorkings (NASDAQ: INWK), a global provider of managed print and promotional solutions.

He co-chairs the Lefkofsky Family Foundation with his wife Liz to advance high-impact initiatives that enhance lives in the communities served. Lefkofsky also serves on the board of directors of The Art Institute of Chicago and Northwestern Medicine. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.

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