[SaaS & Healthcare Series] Solving Healthcare’s Inventory Blind Spots With Michael Prokopis

Michael Prokopis is the CEO of DARVIS, an AI-powered company transforming healthcare inventory management through real-time visibility and autonomous solutions. Under his leadership, DARVIS is helping health systems use AI and computer vision to improve inventory accuracy, reduce waste, and prevent stockouts. Prior to DARVIS, he held senior roles at institutions including MD Anderson Cancer Center and Steward Health Care. A former US Navy Surface Warfare Officer, Michael has managed $3.2B+ in spending and driven $360M+ in savings through operational transformation and efficiency programs.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [4:04] Michael Prokopis shares how DARVIS brings real-time visibility to healthcare inventory
• [5:59] Why manual inventory tracking fails in large hospital systems
• [7:46] DARVIS’ evolution from mobile gaming to healthcare inventory technology
• [11:05] The massive supply chain challenges faced by MD Anderson Cancer Center
• [13:15] How AI-powered cameras achieve 98% inventory accuracy
• [17:45] Building a revolutionary healthcare AI platform with a lean engineering team
• [24:38] Breaking through red tape when selling technology to hospitals

In this episode…

Healthcare supply chains operate under constant pressure, where missing inventory can delay care, increase costs, and create major operational headaches. Yet many hospitals still rely on outdated manual tracking systems that lack real-time visibility. How can AI help healthcare systems reduce waste, prevent shortages, and make smarter inventory decisions?

For Michael Prokopis, a healthcare supply chain and operations veteran, the answer lies in combining AI-powered computer vision with real-time inventory intelligence. He highlights how DARVIS uses camera-based AI systems to track thousands of medical products across large hospital systems, reduce manual labor, and prevent costly stockouts. This technology helps healthcare teams automate replenishment, improve forecasting, and respond faster during supply disruptions. He also explains how the system continuously learns and adapts to different healthcare environments, making implementation faster and more scalable. By improving visibility and accuracy, hospitals can operate more efficiently while giving supply chain leaders stronger data for decision-making.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Michael Prokopis, CEO of DARVIS, to discuss AI-driven healthcare inventory management. They explore how DARVIS uses computer vision for real-time inventory tracking, the challenges of selling technology to hospitals, and how AI reduces supply chain waste and shortages. Michael also shares lessons from his Navy and healthcare leadership experience.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Michael Prokopis on LinkedIn
• DARVIS
• UT MD Anderson: Cancer Treatment & Cancer Research Center
• Inventory and Production Management in Supply Chains by Edward A. Silver, David F. Pyke, Douglas J. Thomas
• The Goal: 40th Anniversary Edition: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M Goldratt, Jeff Cox

Special mention(s):

• Brian Earp on LinkedIn
• Jan-Philipp Mohr on LinkedIn
• Chris Stewart on LinkedIn
• Dan Hurry on LinkedIn

Related episodes:

• “The Engine Behind Growing From 9 To 60 Healthcare Clinics With Peter Cunningham, Founder and CEO of Evolve Healthcare Marketing” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Winning Digitally With Scott Becker, Founder and Publisher of Becker’s Hospital Review and Becker’s Healthcare” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Improving Healthcare Through Patient Engagement with Wes Michael of Rare Patient Voice” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top SaaS & Israel Business Series] From Handling Million Dollar Cameras to Reinventing Security With Joe Levy” on Inspired Insider Podcat

Quotable moments:

• “The product has to show ROI within 12 months, or healthcare CFOs won’t approve it.”
• “Healthcare systems manage tens of thousands, sometimes millions, of inventory items.”
• “If you can’t count inventory fast, critical supplies can run out before you know it.”
• “Our AI delivers over 98% inventory accuracy across different hospitals and rooms.”
• “Selling new technology in healthcare takes patience and long-term commitment.”

Action steps:

1. Prioritize real-time inventory visibility: Access to live inventory data helps healthcare teams respond faster to shortages, reduce waste, and make better operational decisions.
2. Leverage AI and automation for repetitive tasks: AI-powered inventory tracking improves accuracy, reduces manual work, and minimizes costly human errors.
3. Set clear ROI goals for new technology: Solutions with fast, measurable returns are more likely to gain support from healthcare leadership and finance teams.
4. Collaborate closely with end users: Working with clinicians and supply chain teams ensures solutions address real operational challenges and improve adoption.
5. Continuously optimize inventory management: Regularly reviewing inventory trends and usage patterns helps prevent shortages, reduce excess stock, and improve efficiency.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here. I am the Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Michael Prokopis of Darvis.com. Michael, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out, since this is part of our healthcare series, you know, really a SaaS series and a healthcare series.

In a couple of past episodes, I had Peter Cunningham. Peter Cunningham is the Founder of Evolve Healthcare Marketing, and he helps a lot of healthcare clinics. A lot of them are PE-backed, right? So P companies may have, who knows, own ten, 20, 30 more clinics, and they’ll hire him to drive patients to those clinics. Right. So Pete will check out DARVIS, of course. The other one is Scott Becker of Becker’s Hospital Review and Becker’s Healthcare. He’s got an amazing platform and conferences, and he’s been doing it for over 30 years. I know a lot of people in space have probably heard of him. And then Wes Michael of Rare Patient Voice. So he uncovers the intricacies of patient recruitment for maybe rare diseases that can be helped. So with different data, studies, and treatments. So check that out also, and more on InspiredInsider.com.

This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses connect to their dream partnerships and relationships in a couple of ways. One, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, accountability, and the full execution production number two, an easy button for a company’s gifting. So we make gifting and staying top of mind. It could be for clients, partners, prospects, or even staff from a cultural perspective. And you know, Michael, we’re not sending like a mug with someone’s logo on it. I like getting food. So we actually send food-related items and think sending your partners something in the mail every 3 to 4 months for five years. Right? And that’s what we do, right? For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I always look at ways to give to my relationships, and I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people I admire in my podcast and send them sweet treats in the mail. So check out Rise25.com. I am super excited to introduce. Michael said. He’s the CEO of DARVIS. You can check him out at Darvis.com.

We’ll pull it up. And you know, really, he’s been in health care operations supply chain executive for. I’m not going to age you, Michael, for decades at this point. And DARVIS really leads the advancement of real-time visibility and autonomous inventory solutions across the healthcare ecosystem, which means if someone’s ordering too much stuff, they don’t have money for other stuff. And, you know, keeping track of inventory is also if there’s a shortage, the doctors and the people cannot do their job how they need to do it. So it’s like mission-critical for this stuff. He previously led supply chain organizations at MD Anderson Cancer Center and Steward Health Care. And really, you know, building that deep industry expertise and operational transformation, and a former US Navy surface warfare officer as well. So if that doesn’t scream disciplined, Michael, I don’t know what does. But thanks for joining me.

Michael Prokopis: 03:50

Might have been the black sheep.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:52

Right, exactly. So let’s start off and just talk about DARVIS and what you do. And it’s a really interesting origin story of you and DARVIS, too. But what’s DARVIS doing? I’ll pull up the website.

Michael Prokopis: 04:04

Yeah, absolutely. Jeremy. Thanks for having me today, and I appreciate you having the opportunity to do it with your, with your, with your audience. So. DARVIS. We are a 24-over-seven real-time visibility company that helps healthcare manage its inventory. And, you know, quickly, when I got into healthcare eight years ago, I was asking, you know, where is my real-time data? And I heard about Po and invoice matching out of the ERP. I heard about two big Kanban systems. I heard about weighted bins. I heard about several RFID technologies, a number of different technologies, but none of them really solved the real-time problem. And many of them, unfortunately, are just too expensive for healthcare. So we have been mission purposed US healthcare only, and we’re, you know, extremely focused on making sure we deliver value in the inventory space around two.

The first product is DARVIS Digital Shelves. And then the second product has gone to Alpha Testing, which is a digital procedure that will give a supply chain lead the ability to see from the receiving dock to the patient exactly how their items are being consumed. More importantly, when the velocity of when or unfortunately, sometimes things don’t move at all, and that will allow you to send signals that hopefully will reduce your wastage because you’ll have an opportunity to move it to a place that is using it, and or even put it on the third market and selling it to to other health care systems that may in fact need it. So we’re very excited about how we’re positioned and what we’re bringing to the industry at this point.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:38

What have you? What are the solutions? They’re not using this because velocity is key. I know people who sell in e-commerce, there are different platforms, and also people who sell on Amazon. Amazon provides that inventory. Okay, here’s the velocity, and here’s when you should reorder. They’re telling you. What are these health care systems doing now?

Michael Prokopis: 05:59

Yeah. So we’re trying to do it manually in many instances. Or we are using some technology. But the instance like of RFID, you know, you have to put a sticker, an RFID sticker on every single item. Well, you can do that for your expensive, high-value, high-volume items, which may be orthopedic implants, but you’re certainly not doing it for 1000 syringes and your supply closets. And so you run.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:22

Out of rubber gloves. You’re kind of up the creek, you know what I mean?

Michael Prokopis: 06:25

Yeah, you put it on a box, but you’re certainly not putting it on a pair of gloves, that’s for sure. And so that causes you to only be able to cover a portion of your inventory. Or there are two big Kanban, you know, a great system for manufacturing environments where you’re managing a couple of hundred SKUs. But in healthcare, we’re not managing a couple of hundred. We’re actually managing tens of thousands. You know, it’s not unusual to hear my peers talk about 35,000 SKUs under management with an eye to a master file that might. Actually extend to 750,000 or even a million items. And so the complexity of.

That changes the nature of what you can actually do. And then there’s weighted. Bin technologies and others. And they tend to be expensive. They have a lot of maintenance associated with them. And so when you do a total cost of ownership, you find an ROI that may have a payback in 4 or 5 years. And the one thing we know in supply chain is CFO is not going to fund something that has a payback and supply chain in 4 or 5 years when they can put another MRI in, that will start generating revenue immediately. And so those are the trade-offs that we have to make in health care. And so that’s an important part of, of our of our math as we think about how we’re going to approach the industry.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:36

And talk about interesting, you met the founders, and what was DARVIS then compared to now?

Michael Prokopis: 07:46

Sure. So, so DARVIS actually started in 2015. Jan-Philipp Mohr and Brian Earp were Co-founders, and they started in the mobile gaming app space. They spent several years doing that, creating a lot of really cool intellectual property and starting a patent portfolio, but never really reaching commercialization. Around 2019 or so, they pivoted to what I call inventory control, working at Airbus, where they were making sure the right repair part got put in the right tote with the right label shipped to the right airport to fix the right airplane. Because, as you can imagine, as complex as that is, it would be easy to ship something in the wrong place. And now you’ve got a very expensive asset that’s grounded until it gets to the part. And then. But again, interesting. Lots of cool technology, patentable, but not necessarily commercializable.

And they did some work with the USPS and queuing and manual sorting. Same kind of idea, you know, envelope, right slot, right home for delivery. I found them in the fall of 2023 through a friend of mine, Chris Stewart at Healthtrust, having a conversation at an ID and summit, and he said, Hey, Michael, you know, what are you up to these days? And I was telling him, and I said, you know, I’ve still got this vision, though they haven’t been able to bring it to fruition. And as we talked about, he said, You know what? I know a company that might be able to help. So he arranged for a meeting, and we went to their demo site in Nashville, and we walked in. And the minute I walked in, I saw what they had displayed on their screens. And I said, This is it. These guys can help me realize this vision. So we started working together in February of 24, and by November of 24, we had a commercializable product. And then I was fortunate enough that they asked me to become their CEO in July of 25. And here we are today.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:27

You know, it’s always interesting when people have deep conversations with their customers. It really fills their specific need. Right? At that point, you were their customer, right? And you’re telling them what you wanted.

Michael Prokopis: 09:42

Yeah, absolutely. You know, and this is one of those instances where, you know, you can say it’s serendipitous, you can say it’s locked, you know, because I had this original idea in 2018 or in 2008. Sorry. And I was like, but technology wasn’t advanced enough to execute it. And then, you know, in the 20s and the teens, I started playing around with RPA and a lot of machine learning. And so I understood things better, but I was still not really able to bring it to the marketplace. And so to find a DARVIS had these advanced capabilities and just really, quite frankly, needed a bull’s eye, i.e.,

US healthcare inventory management really made it an easy conversation to have, where we both saw value. And then, and by the way, you know, the same conversations I had with DARVIS about what’s inspiring us to do this product set was repeated by many luminaries in the healthcare industry, whether it was, you know, Eric or Daphne or Gartner who kept talking about the autonomous supply chain, or it was Ed Hiscock at Trinity Healthcare who was who understands from the ground what it feels like not to have supplies and the backorders and the stockouts and all of those shortages. And so as you talk to, you know, your peers and your friends, you quickly realize that there’s a real opportunity in this space.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:55

With the MD Anderson Cancer Center. What was the biggest pain point or pain points for you that you’re like, we need this?

Michael Prokopis: 11:05

Yeah. MD Anderson is, is, is a very, very complex supply chain. So, a typical ID n doesn’t have one supply chain. They actually manage thousands of supply chains. You’re managing food, you’re managing beds, you’re managing linen, you’re managing, you know, Stryker or Baxter, whoever it happens to be. You’re managing these portfolios, and each one has a unique supply chain. It’s magnified at MD Anderson because their care is for infants all the way to the elderly and everything in between. And so you can’t get by with three sizes. You have to have 20 sizes because you have to be able to marry up the item to the physicality or the physical nature of the person. And so that made the, the, the, SKU explosion, you know, really significant. And at MD Anderson, I probably had 75000 active SKUs in my item master file. And as I thought about, you know, Backorders and Stockouts, and I’ll be honest. Let’s talk about the hurricane that happened. You know, for IV fluids in 2024, we were their customer, and all of a sudden, we’re not going to get water.

And you say, well, it’s just saline, and you ought to be able to get it somewhere else. But it’s not saline. There are literally hundreds of SKUs that make up the product set that you need if you’re going to actually execute your delivery of care. And so we had to figure out how to do that. But the problem was that I couldn’t count my inventory. It took us three days to wander around every nook and cranny at every clinic, at every offsite, every and every floor of the hospital to figure out what our inventory position is. Well, those three days are burning, and you’ve got to be able to figure it out. And what you do is you find out you have seven days on hand. Now I’ve got a I’ve got a real complex problem because I have to replace all of these products. And I literally only have four days to do it because I just burned through three days of inventory. So that actually just kind of emphasized the need for doing something like this.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:55

So was the biggest thing. I mean, I don’t know if you want to talk about how it works a little bit, but the digital shelves, like how do, how do they actually implement? Like, it seems great. There are a lot of issues, and this seems like a logistical nightmare to have in health care. But then, how do you implement something like this? Are the digital shelves or?

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