Is it okay to ask a personal question?
For those of you who are in digital health… Why?
What matters to you about being a leader in this space?
Really though. You're here, and I’d love to get to know you better. Tell me your story!
But okay, I’ll kick things off...
As a clinician and scientist, I got into healthcare to help people. And I imagine that, like me, many of you also came to digital health with a mission to create a bigger impact - help more people - than you could in more traditional settings.
I started out in the startup world full of hope and optimism. I honestly thought the first startup company I joined was going to change the world. Sigh, simpler times.
But I knew nothing about how the business of healthcare works.
And when we don’t deeply understand the business of healthcare, our innovative efforts are dead in the water.
(Spoiler: that first startup went out of business.)
Since then, the more I've learned about the business of healthcare, the more I see the truth:
The system is fundamentally flawed. It’s effed, as we millennials would say. And – at least for now – we’re stuck with it.
The hardest lesson I’ve learned is that successful healthcare innovation requires us to operate within the profit-driven, capitalistic system of US healthcare. We can’t sidestep it or ignore it - startups that try to do that will fail.
To create real change and serve our mission, we have to create businesses that can succeed within our flawed system, and chip away at it from within. Am I happy about that? No, not particularly.
But, I have come to embrace the mission of changing healthcare from the inside out. I dove headfirst into the business side of healthcare, determined to figure out how to marry profit with real, impactful outcomes.
And that brings me to my point. Why digital health, for me? Because healthcare absolutely, desperately, urgently needs improving.
And in my next chapter, I want to create that change by supporting and empowering digital health leaders who aren’t just in it for the headlines, but for the hard work and the reward of making healthcare a little bit better for a lot of real people.
So, what about you? Why digital health? What's the change you’re burning to make?
Looking forward to hearing your story.
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