The MD Who Stayed in Medicine - by Leaving It
Justin Schram went to medical school, trained as a physician, worked on the front lines of senior care - and then walked away from clinical practice to build the software those caregivers actually needed. That sequence is not a pivot. It's an argument.
His years as a Regional Medical Director at Landmark Health - delivering value-based care directly to seniors in their homes and communities - gave him an intimate view of the friction points that bad technology creates in real care settings. Scheduling chaos. Missed medication administrations. Incident data that arrived too late to matter. He saw how much energy caregivers spent fighting their own systems rather than caring for residents.
In 2020, Schram co-founded August Health alongside Erez Cohen, a former Apple executive who had built and sold a geospatial startup (Mapsense) to Apple. The pairing is deliberate: one person who knows how care breaks down, one who knows how to build software that doesn't. They share the CEO title. The division of labor is less important than the shared conviction.
Most senior living software was built by people who had never worked a shift in a senior living community. Schram had. That's the entire thesis. When you understand what caregivers actually need - not what administrators think they need - you design differently.
August Health's platform spans the full operational stack of senior living: electronic health records, medication administration, care tracking, analytics, billing, and payments. The newest layer - August Intelligence - uses AI to shift communities from reactive crisis response to proactive care. The platform flags elevated risk before a fall happens, not after. That distinction is the product.
The company raised a $29M Series B in August 2025, led by Base10 Partners, with General Catalyst, Matrix Partners, Stanford University, and others participating. Total funding now stands at $44M. The round is earmarked for expanding August Intelligence, growing the engineering team, and deepening customer support. Sonida Senior Living - one of the largest operators in the country - runs August Health across all 94 of its communities.
Schram is based in Seattle, Washington. August Health is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. The distance between a physician's training and a software company feels smaller when you realize that both are fundamentally about the same thing: figuring out what a person needs before they have to ask for it.
We are building August Health to help senior living communities shift from reactive tactics to proactive care strategies.- Justin Schram, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, August Health
What August Health Actually Builds
Six distinct products, one operating system for senior living. The goal: every clinical, operational, and financial function in one place - so caregivers stop switching tabs and start spending time with residents.
What the Numbers Say
Running a startup with a co-CEO structure is unusual. Most investors will tell you to pick one person. Schram and Erez Cohen - former Apple executive, ex-founder of Mapsense (a geospatial startup Apple acquired) - run August Health together. The bet is that the problem is hard enough to require two very different kinds of expertise at the top of the org chart: someone who has seen how care actually fails from the inside (Schram), and someone who knows how to build software that doesn't (Cohen). The proof, so far, is in the partnerships. Sonida Senior Living didn't sign a 94-community deal with a product that was splitting its attention.
From Penn Medicine to Series B
Medical training at one of the country's top programs. The foundation that every subsequent product decision runs through.
Led value-based care delivery for seniors - the role that produced the core insight behind August Health: caregiver software was failing the people using it.
Teaching medicine while advising digital health companies in the US and India. A bridge between clinical practice and the technology sector.
Partnered with ex-Apple executive Erez Cohen to build an AI-enabled EHR platform for senior living communities. Took on the Co-CEO role alongside Cohen.
Joined the advisory board of ConcertoCare, staying connected to value-based care innovation while building August Health.
August Health's next-generation medication administration platform launches. Sonida Senior Living commits the platform across all 94 communities - a landmark enterprise deal.
Base10 Partners leads a $29M Series B bringing total funding to $44M. August Intelligence - the AI care partner - announced for fall 2025 rollout.
Why Senior Living Software Needed a Doctor to Fix It
What's Been Built
- Co-founded August Health and raised $44M in total funding, including a $29M Series B led by Base10 Partners in August 2025
- Built a platform now operating across hundreds of senior living communities nationwide
- Closed a 94-community comprehensive partnership with Sonida Senior Living - one of the country's largest senior living operators
- Extended the platform to Belmont Village Senior Living across all U.S. communities
- Customers report 23% reduction in resident incidents and 20% increase in revenue after deployment
- 82% of caregiving staff report increased job satisfaction using August Health
- Platform has identified millions of dollars in previously untracked care services for customers
- Attracted Stanford University as an investor - a signal of research and outcomes potential beyond the commercial case
- Launched August Intelligence AI care partner (Fall 2025) - the company's biggest product push to date
- Built and scaled to 110 employees across engineering, design, clinical, and customer success functions
August Intelligence will serve as an AI-enabled care partner that helps communities deliver better, more personalized care.- Justin Schram on the August Intelligence platform launch
The Specifics
Schram holds an M.D. from Penn's Perelman School of Medicine but never opened a traditional practice. He went straight from clinical medicine into building technology for the patients he once treated directly.
August Health's unusual co-CEO structure pairs Schram with Erez Cohen, who previously built and sold Mapsense - a geospatial analytics startup - to Apple. Clinical depth plus Silicon Valley product discipline at the top of the org.
Stanford University itself invested in August Health's Series B. Academic medicine has a stake in whether the platform's data and outcomes approach actually works at scale.
Before August Health, Schram held advisory roles in digital health companies in both the United States and India - giving him a broader view of care delivery than most US-focused founders carry.
The platform's customers have collectively identified "millions of dollars in previously untracked care services" through August Health's analytics. Some operators found revenue they didn't know they were leaving uncollected.
Schram lives in Seattle, Washington - far from August Health's San Francisco Bay Area HQ. The distributed setup reflects the company's remote-first engineering culture and the fact that senior living is a nationwide market, not a coastal one.