How Zoe Heineman’s Lifelong Fight for Diabetes Access Led Her to The Intersection of Healthcare Research & AI

For Zoe Heineman, Head of Commercial of Syntactiq, Type 1 diabetes never remained a personal diagnosis. What began as an unexpected disruption in her early twenties gradually became the defining force behind a career dedicated to expanding access and advancing innovation for people living with chronic disease.

Over the decades, her work has taken her all over the USA, from medical device development to classrooms, to advocacy initiatives, and Medicare policy reform, all driven by a belief that patients deserve more than treatment alone. “They deserve access to the technologies and research that can improve the quality and trajectory of their lives,” Heineman says. That mission began shortly after her diagnosis at age 23, when the realities of managing diabetes revealed challenges that extended far beyond medicine itself.

According to Heineman, one of the earliest lessons came from the financial realities of managing the disease. Despite having health insurance, she recalls paying for essential diabetes supplies herself, with family members purchasing syringes and testing materials as birthday and holiday gifts. Those experiences convinced her that access to care and technology required more attention from policymakers and industry leaders.

“Too many people are embarrassed to talk about the toll of living with a chronic disease,” Heineman says. “It is a physical challenge, a financial challenge, a professional challenge, and a time challenge. There are many dimensions to it that people do not always see.”

Her advocacy work eventually extended into healthcare policy. Heineman helped support efforts that expanded access to diabetes technologies, including insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitoring systems for Medicare beneficiaries. From her perspective, innovation only reaches its full potential when patients can realistically access and benefit from it.

The economic impact of diabetes continues to be significant. It is estimated that diagnosed diabetes generated approximately $413 billion in total costs in the United States, including direct medical expenses and indirect costs associated with lost productivity.

After spending much of her career focused on policy and access, Heineman saw an opportunity to contribute to another part of the healthcare ecosystem when she connected with the team behind Syntactiq. The company develops AI-powered research technology designed to help organizations analyze sensitive health data while maintaining privacy and regulatory compliance. According to the company, its platform Syno allows researchers to ask complex questions using natural language and generate reproducible, auditable results without moving sensitive data away from its origin, instead remaining within its protected environments.

What initially stood out to Heineman was the people behind the business. The founding team shared a common experience living with Type 1 diabetes, and according to her, that personal understanding created a strong sense of purpose around the company’s work.

“This was a chance to have a broader impact on research,” Heineman explains. “Instead of focusing on a single product or technology, we could help researchers working across many different areas of healthcare get answers to important questions not only reliably, but within minutes.”

Founded in Austria and launched just over a year ago, Syntactiq supports collaborative research by enabling data analysis within secure environments, allowing institutions to work with sensitive information while preserving privacy protections.

From her perspective, one of the most important goals is helping researchers spend less time navigating technical and administrative barriers and more time exploring scientific questions. She notes that researchers remain the individuals driving discoveries, while technology serves as a tool that supports their work.

The company’s long-term vision includes expanding access to research capabilities across healthcare, government, and academic institutions. According to Heineman, unlocking insights from existing data while maintaining privacy could help accelerate progress across a range of medical fields.

Looking back, Heineman sees a clear connection between the challenges she faced as a young adult living with diabetes and the work she does today.

“The answers we need may already exist within the data,” she says. “Researchers are the people asking the right questions and making discoveries. If we can help them access insights more efficiently and responsibly, then we can contribute to progress that ultimately improves lives.”