Yicheng Sun

Healthcare Product · AI · Innovation

Hi, I'm YC.

I turn ambiguous, high-stakes problems into shipped products, new ventures, and strategic growth. For the last decade at IDEO, I've led product and innovation work for major payers, providers, and healthtech companies.

I'm a Senior Director leading IDEO's healthcare portfolio — a player-coach who started as a product-minded engineer and still leads that way.

San Francisco, CA
694K+users across 15 shipped products
156K+California youth reached by Soluna
$188–271Mstate contract secured with Kooth for CA DHCS
$7.6M+in contracts originated and delivered
500+product teams guided through AI transformation at a Fortune 15
97%client recommendation rate

Selected clients & partners

What I'm known for

Zero-to-one in regulated spaces

Turning early user signals into products that ship inside healthcare's hardest environments — payers, providers, public health, and clinical trials.

Player-coach product leadership

Building and leading cross-disciplinary teams across research, design, product, and engineering — equally at home with executives and in the build.

Creative technology DNA

Electrical engineer turned design leader. Prototypes, installations, and AI products that make abstract strategy tangible.

Work

Designing the AI-Augmented Future of Health Advocacy

Elevance Health

A 5-week AI design sprint that produced Advocacy+, a human/AI hybrid advocacy service MVP for a Fortune 20 health insurer targeting a $4.2B market.

Future of Women’s Health Services

Cottage Health

Architected a differentiated women’s health vision for a 135-year-old legacy hospital — from ethnographic research across life stages to board-approved strategy.

GLP-1 End-to-End Experience Design

Elevance Health

Transformed GLP-1 coverage from a binary insurance decision into a personalized metabolic health journey with AI coaching and clinical supervision.

Diamond Flex Plan: Next-Generation Commercial Health Plan

Elevance Health

Redesigned commercial insurance from opaque, deductible-first to transparent, wallet-funded, and income-equitable — for one of America’s largest health insurers.

Sydney App: Distributed Care Layer Strategy

Elevance Health

Repositioned a 19.5M-user health insurance app as a trusted intelligence layer across member healthcare journeys — and set up a $975K Phase 2.

Codesigning and launching a digital mental health platform for California's youth

Kooth / CA DHCS

Designed and launched Soluna — California's free mental health app for 6 million youth — co-designing with 150 young people and shipping from concept to App Store in under a year.

Pediatric Obesity Care Model for Medicaid Families

Clarity Pediatrics

Designed pediatric obesity care for Medicaid families through healing-centered research and Theory of Change — published as a public benefit case study.

Dementia Diagnosis Pathway Redesign

Together Senior Health

Tackled one of healthcare’s most underserved gaps — half of all dementia cases undiagnosed — with research, concepts, and a sustained client partnership.

Digital Dream Lab: Creative Technology Community

IDEO Internal

Built IDEO’s creative technology community from zero to 50+ members — and led it through public failure into repair.

MCI Digital Experience & Market Expansion Strategy

Together Senior Health

Reframed cognitive care strategy from product-first to diagnosis-first, opening a pathway to 15 million underserved Americans.

Facebook Young Adults Engagement

Meta Platforms

Six re-engagement concepts for young adults on Facebook — all six moved into development.

KPMG Lakehouse Interactive Campus Experience

KPMG

Designed nine installations across a $450M corporate campus — including a Figma-to-Unity pipeline that turned 2D design files into 3D spatial experiences, built from scratch.

Yosemite Mobility & Visitor Access Vision

Yosemite Conservancy / National Park Service

Mapped Yosemite’s traffic crisis into a comprehensive mobility vision that seeded the park’s bike share program and visitor management plan.

Parkinson’s Disease Report System Redesign

Global Kinetics Corporation

Turned a 30-minute neurological data puzzle into an interactive report that shipped to production unchanged — earning co-inventor status on a U.S. design patent.

HLTH Vegas Exhibition

IDEO Internal

Confidential work

Some projects are under NDA. If YC shared a passphrase with you, enter it below to preview the full portfolio.

Talks

Writing

Research methodology from the Soluna program also contributed to peer-reviewed studies in Frontiers in Psychiatry and JMIR.

About

I'm Yicheng — most people call me YC. I'm a healthcare product, AI, and innovation leader working at the intersection of product strategy, design, transformation, and human-centered healthcare.

As a Senior Director leading IDEO's healthcare portfolio, I've grown complex relationships with major payers, providers, and healthtech organizations — shaping product strategy, launching new ventures, and building teams that span research, design, product, and engineering. My work has reached hundreds of thousands of patients, members, and young people, from a statewide youth mental health platform to AI transformation programs inside some of the largest health organizations in the country.

I started as an electrical engineer and creative technologist, and I still lead that way: close to users, close to prototypes, close to the build. I'm equally comfortable aligning executives around a strategy and sitting with a team debugging the thing we're shipping next week.

Outside of work you'll find me making large-scale art installations, teaching at the Stanford d.school, and chasing light with a camera.

hello.yc.sun@gmail.comLinkedIn ↗Instagram ↗

Contact

Working on something in healthcare, AI, or product innovation? I'd love to hear about it — whether that's a role, a collaboration, or a conversation.

Prefer email? hello.yc.sun@gmail.com

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