HaVy Ngo-Hamilton, Pharm.D. | 2026 MHE Emerging Leaders in Healthcare

I grew up in Vietnam, immigrating to the United States at 16, and it was shortly after arriving that I was diagnosed with renal lupus, a chronic condition that would set me on an unexpected but purposeful path into healthcare.

That early experience navigating an unfamiliar system as a patient became the driving force behind my passion for patient advocacy and medication affordability throughout my career.

I earned my bachelor’s of physical sciences degree from Auburn University and then my Pharm.D. from Auburn’s Harrison College of Pharmacy. Motivated to broaden my expertise in healthcare business and policy, I am now pursuing an MBA in healthcare management at Mercer University.

My career began as a center operations manager for a home infusion pharmacy serving multiple states across the South, an experience that grounded my early understanding of how healthcare systems function at scale.

I built my clinical expertise as an internal medicine clinical pharmacist at major academic institutions, including the University of Minnesota Medical Center and MaineHealth Maine Medical Center, working across intensive care units and medical-surgical and psychiatry floors as part of multidisciplinary teams.

Today, as senior pharmacy director at Buzz Health, I lead at the intersection of clinical expertise and healthcare technology, shaping integrated prescription solutions that make medication access more transparent and equitable for all.

Turning point in your career

Before I became a healthcare provider, my experience as a patient gave me an early and profound understanding of what it means to navigate a complex healthcare system with a lifelong condition. That lived experience became the lens through which I approach nearly everything in my career.

But my true turning point came unexpectedly. When I joined Buzz Health in 2021 as the pharmacy editor for BuzzRx, I discovered that BuzzRx’s blog was reaching up to 2 million monthly visitors.

For the first time, I realized that my clinical knowledge wasn’t just helping the patients in front of me — it was reaching millions of people navigating the complexity of our healthcare system.

That realization stayed with me, gradually reshaping how I viewed my role over the years.

At Buzz Health, I recognized that the most significant barriers to affordability weren’t at the pharmacy counter. They lie upstream, woven into coverage rules, pricing structures and fragmented systems. Instead of helping patients one interaction at a time, I am now able to contribute my clinical expertise to the development of the technology and infrastructure to drive drug price transparency and improve medication access, ultimately advancing healthcare equity for everyone.

Biggest day-to-day challenges

One of my biggest day-to-day challenges is operating at the intersection of two distinct worlds: clinical practice and healthcare technology. Bridging this gap in a way that is both precise and practical is a challenge I face daily.

Staying current in both fields presents its own set of challenges. Reviewing clinical guidelines, staying up to date on new research, drug development, and monitoring healthcare policy updates are ingrained in my approach to practice. However, the technology side demands more intentionality. I have made a conscious effort to set aside time for learning, asking questions and immersing myself in a space that was not part of my clinical training.

What excites me most, though, is the synergy created when these two worlds connect. As I deepen my understanding of healthcare technology, I see more clearly how clinical expertise, healthcare legislation and policy directly shape the tools we build. Contributing to solutions that meaningfully improve patient care is what makes this work so rewarding.

Use of AI

In my day-to-day, I use AI [artificial intelligence] as an efficient research and data-gathering tool. When I am diving into a new topic or project, AI allows me to surface relevant studies, case reports and data points far more quickly than traditional research methods. After that, I evaluate each source individually, assess its clinical relevance and credibility, and determine which findings best serve the specific need at hand.

There’s no doubt that AI is a powerful tool, but in healthcare, the difference between a powerful tool and a dangerous one lies entirely in how intentionally it is used. That is the lens through which I approach AI, both professionally and personally.

Top priority

At Buzz Health, our top priority is to continue establishing ourselves as the infrastructure for prescription price transparency, powering a more connected and equitable prescription ecosystem. Practically, that means expanding our presence across pharmacy and prescribing workflows, deepening integration into enterprise systems, and delivering the transparency, control, and efficiency that our partners and, ultimately, patients rely on.

Personally, my priority is to keep advancing the clinical voice within that work. Every product decision, every integration, every workflow we touch has a downstream impact on a patient standing at a pharmacy counter trying to afford their medication. My focus this year and next is to ensure that clinical insight, healthcare policy awareness and the lived patient experience remain central as we scale, particularly as we grow our footprint across retail pharmacy networks and prescribing environments. If we do that well, we won’t just be keeping pace with where healthcare is headed; we’ll be helping define it.

Recommended book, article, podcast, TV show or documentary

I recommend starting with “An American Sickness” by Elisabeth Rosenthal. I read it during my recovery from my second kidney transplant in 2020, and its core message, that U.S. healthcare has shifted from patient care to profit, deeply resonated with me as both a patient and pharmacist.

In pharmacy school, we were extensively trained in medication adherence: how to identify nonadherence, how to motivate patients and how to use interviewing techniques to uncover barriers.

But as I advanced in my career, I kept confronting the same uncomfortable truth: Patients often don’t take their medications as prescribed not because they don’t want to but because they simply can’t afford them.

Rosenthal’s unflinching analysis of drug pricing transparency helped me understand and articulate what I’d witnessed in practice. Every healthcare professional should read this book.

For podcasts, I never miss “What the Health?” by KFF, a weekly, in-depth look at health policy and legislation that explains how decisions affect real people. It’s essential listening for anyone interested in the impact of policy on patient care and communities.

In addition,“The Curbsiders Internal Medicine Podcast” has been a staple for me since 2017, when I first started practicing. It keeps me clinically sharp, helping me revisit foundational knowledge while staying current with new developments in internal medicine — something I consider nonnegotiable as a clinical pharmacist.

And my latest favorite is “HITea With Grace,” a podcast that spotlights women leaders in healthcare IT [information technology] and pharma innovation. As a minority woman working at the intersection of clinical practice and healthcare technology, representation matters enormously to me. Hearing the professional and personal stories of these women leaders, people I can both learn from and genuinely relate to, is as motivating as it is inspiring.

Making U.S. healthcare less expensive

U.S. healthcare is expensive because it is fragmented by design. Pricing, coverage and fulfillment operate in separate silos that rarely communicate with one another, and that disconnection creates cost at every step. Nowhere is this more visible than in the prescription ecosystem, where a single medication can carry multiple prices depending on insurance status, pharmacy, geography or whether a patient happens to know that a discount option exists. Patients are left to navigate that complexity on their own, often at the pharmacy counter, and the result is predictable: People walk away from medications they need because the system never made the true cost or the alternatives visible in time.

What should be done about it is, in my view, less about building something entirely new and more about connecting what already exists. We need real-time price transparency embedded directly into prescribing and dispensing workflows so prescribers and pharmacists can see insurance pricing, cash pricing and discount options side by side at the point of decision. We need infrastructure that allows modernization without forcing health systems and pharmacies to replatform. And we need policy that continues to push the industry toward openness rather than opacity.

This is exactly the gap Buzz Health is built to close. By serving as the intelligence layer that connects prescribing, pricing and fulfillment, we are helping turn transparency from a talking point into an operational reality, one that meaningfully reduces cost and improves access for the patients who need it most.

Personal goal

Outside of work, I love knitting and crocheting. They’re my favorite ways to unwind and create with my hands while listening to a good book or podcast. While I’m a skilled crocheter, I’m still honing my knitting skills. I’ve made scarves, mittens, blankets and beanies. This year, I’m tackling my biggest project yet: my first sweater.