New awards program honors the clinicians, executives, and operators redefining how patients access care, launched on the heels of Assort’s $120 million Series C and its Ascend 2026 summit

SAN FRANCISCO, July 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Assort Health, the most widely-used AI agents platform for the patient journey, today announced the inaugural Frontier Awards, a new recognition program honoring the clinicians, executives, and operators redefining patient access through thoughtful AI adoption. 

The awards were unveiled during Assort Ascend, the company’s invitation-only customer summit, where more than 200 healthcare executives, operators, and patient access leaders from provider groups and health systems across the country gathered to discuss the next phase of AI in healthcare. During the event, co-founders and co-CEOs Jon Wang and Jeffery Liu also announced the company’s $120 million Series C financing, led by Menlo Ventures at a $1.2 billion valuation, and introduced the company’s new brand platform, Healthcare That Remembers.

Assort chose to use that moment to recognize the healthcare leaders driving transformation inside their own organizations. The Frontier Awards celebrate the people turning AI into measurable operational improvements for patients, care teams, and the organizations they serve.

The choice reflected the spirit of Ascend itself. Unlike traditional vendor conferences, Ascend centered on peer-led conversations between healthcare operators. Specialty- and role-based roundtables gave leaders the opportunity to compare deployment strategies, share operational lessons, and discuss what was actually working inside their organizations.

“There is no better room in which to share this news,” said Jon Wang, Founder and Co-CEO of Assort Health. “Ascend was built to bring together the people doing some of the hardest work in healthcare: redesigning how patients access care while keeping their organizations running every day. The Frontier Awards are an extension of that. They’re about recognizing the operators, clinicians, and leaders who are setting a new standard for what’s possible, and giving them the recognition they deserve.”

Introducing the Frontier Awards
The Frontier Awards recognize the people setting a new standard for patient access through operational excellence, thoughtful AI adoption, and measurable impact. Nominations are open to clinicians, executives, patient access leaders, and operational teams working across hospitals, health systems, physician groups, and specialty practices, and will remain open through midnight Eastern on August 14, 2026.

Four categories are open for nomination:

• The Clinical Innovator Award: Recognizing a clinician, technologist, or healthcare leader who helped their organization adopt AI with confidence.
• The Frontier Builder Award: Honoring the executive or practice leader who turned AI strategy into measurable organizational change.
• The Patient Access Transformation Award: Celebrating the frontline operator who transformed how patients access care.
• The 10x Impact Award: Recognizing the individual who unlocked new capacity for their organization, helping teams accomplish more with the resources they already had.

“AI isn’t becoming important because the models are improving. It’s becoming important because healthcare organizations are beginning to redesign how care is delivered around it. That’s a much bigger shift, and it’s being led by operators, not software vendors.” said Jeffery Liu, Founder and Co-CEO of Assort Health. “They’re setting a new standard for patient access and showing what’s possible when AI is thoughtfully integrated into healthcare. We’re honored to celebrate the innovators whose work is making care more accessible, efficient, and human.”

Winners will be announced in the fall and recognized publicly across Assort Health’s website, social channels, and an official press announcement. Each honoree will receive an invitation to an exclusive gathering of healthcare innovators and operators.

Nominations can be submitted at assorthealth.com/frontier-awards.

Summit Highlights: What the Room Was Talking About 
Assort launched Ascend to build a different kind of healthcare conference, one centered not on product announcements but on the operators solving some of healthcare’s biggest challenges, and bringing them together. Across specialty practices and health systems alike, one message was remarkably consistent: healthcare leaders are moving beyond AI experimentation and prioritizing solutions that deliver measurable operational improvements quickly, earn organizational trust, and expand over time. Rather than debating whether AI works, they shared practical lessons on deployment, governance, organizational change, and scaling from one successful workflow to many.

The broader program featured former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, NFL Hall of Famer Joe Montana, former Nuance CEO Paul Ricci, and AI leaders from Cartesia, LiveKit, Braintrust, and ElevenLabs, who shared perspectives on leadership, innovation, and the future of AI infrastructure. A customer panel brought together operators from dermatology, family practice, orthopedics, and ophthalmology to share implementation lessons and measurable outcomes from deploying AI, including how they captured more patient demand while reducing administrative burden for staff. The discussion reflected the summit’s emphasis on practical, peer-led learning.

To explore more from the conversations that shaped Ascend 2026, read Assort Health’s blog post, “What We Heard at Ascend 2026: 5 Signals Shaping the Future of Healthcare AI,” where we unpack the biggest themes, emerging AI trends, and key takeaways shared by healthcare leaders throughout the summit.

About Assort Health
Assort Health is the most-widely used AI agents platform for the patient journey, from scheduling and intake to referrals, forms, document processing, medication refills, and payments. It is built on 190 million specialty patient interactions and a model that updates in real time to handle the complexity of healthcare that general-purpose AI can’t. That foundation now powers patient access across multi-site practices, multi-specialty groups, and health systems. Customers see a 5% lift in appointment volume, a 115% increase in labor capacity, and a 4.3 out of 5 patient satisfaction score. The platform integrates natively with leading EHR and practice management systems, including Epic and Athena, enabling deployment without disrupting existing clinical workflows. Provider groups and health systems turn to Assort when the complexity outgrows their existing tools. To learn more, visit assorthealth.com.

Media Contact: Kara Spak, 120/80 MKTG, assorthealth@12080group.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/assort-health-launches-frontier-awards-to-recognize-healthcare-leaders-transforming-patient-access-302822466.html

SOURCE Assort Health