Health Catalyst's shares jumped 51 percent on the same July day that Livongo, another health tech company, made its debut. By 2019 American hospitals had spent billions moving patient records onto computers. The records sat in dozens of systems that did not talk to each other. Health Catalyst, a Salt Lake City company, sold a data platform and the analysts to make sense of it all. Its pitch was simple: use the data you already have to treat patients better for less.

A Three-Person Start

Health Catalyst was founded in 2008 and is based in Salt Lake City. Dan Burton joined in January 2011 as an investor and adviser, when the company had three people. He later became chief executive. The bet was that hospitals would pay to pull clinical, financial and operational data into one warehouse. Health Catalyst sold that platform alongside services from its own analysts and improvement experts.

Up Fifty-One Percent

Health Catalyst priced 7 million shares at $26 on July 24, 2019, above its $24 to $25 range. On Nasdaq the next day it reached $39.69 and closed at $39.17. In August 2025 the company said Burton would step down as chief executive. Ben Albert, who joined as president that September, took the top job. The company cut about 9 percent of its workforce in a restructuring. It still trades on Nasdaq as HCAT.

Cover: The Convalescent, Madame Lepère, Louis Auguste Lepère. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a woman on the mend by the sea (health care, getting better).