Want To Become a Physician-Entrepreneur? Start Building Early!

Shivam Shah is is a fourth-year resident at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. In addition to completing his clinical training, he works on tech projects for the hospital. In this video op-ed, Shivam urges physicians to seek out non-clinical opportunities as early as possible.

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Transcript:

Calls to action for physicians to go out and build are becoming more frequent. And rightfully so.

Physicians know the pain points in our healthcare system, and they understand exactly how different problems affect patient care.

Many physicians are inspired to build, but they’re daunted by the prospect of actually doing it. I know this because, during my residency, I’ve spent the last few years also building system-wide tech platforms to improve patient access and clinical workflows. These projects aren’t part of my training — I’ve sought them out myself. In the process, I’ve listened to hundreds of other doctors talk about the challenges of breaking into tech. I’ve created a network of like-minded peers who’ve made the jump. And I’ve seen what it takes to dive in, and what holds physicians back.

A lot of physicians mention the same concerns: They’re not sure what the first step is. They want to get advice and make connections, but they don’t know where to turn. And they feel under-educated about the business aspect. Also, physicians spend years mastering their crafts. They’ve chosen well defined career paths with high earning potential. So, it takes a decent level of risk tolerance to cut bait and try something else.

As a result, some physicians with innovative ideas for products or companies just give up. Others wait years before trying. One way to help more physicians become confident entrepreneurs, I believe, is to encourage them to seek out exposure to non-clinical opportunities much earlier on.

Most residents and fellows don’t learn anything about the business side of medicine, or about creating businesses outside of traditional medicine. So it’s on us to take initiative.

I’ve come up with three tips for trainees and early-career physicians who want to break into less conventional career paths.

First: Operations is a great place to start (and sometimes end).

Many residents begin their training programs saying they're interested in “administration.” This goal can feel nebulous and be tough to pin down.

Often, departmental operations is where the rubber meets the road. The operations team is working behind the scenes — focusing on things like expanding clinical pathways, smoothing out workflows, and improving interdepartmental communications. After your first year or so of residency, once you feel a little more comfortable as a clinician and are ready to consider non-clinical involvement, I recommend starting your exploration with departmental operations.

Many ops teams are overloaded with tasks, which means they’re looking for help.

Approach a few attendings and ask to help on a project. If it’s not for you, you can move on to something else next. But if some aspect of the project piques your interest, continue down the rabbit hole. Are any new technologies being implemented to improve these workflows? Is your ops team assessing any third parties to integrate into your specialty’s department?

Second: Take mentorship seriously

Many med students find mentors to write letters of recommendation, provide research opportunities, and so on.

It’s vital to keep finding mentors during residency. Find attendings whose practice you want to emulate, or whose patient-interaction skills you admire. The thing is, most residents who seek out mentors stop here. But I think we should go further, and find non-clinical mentors too. Talk to attendings who’ve augmented their clinical practice with administrative projects, outside consulting, their own ventures, or something else. Ask about their career trajectories — their achievements, growth spurts, pitfalls, and more. Most importantly, pass the mentorship forward by supporting the next generation of trainees.

Third: Always make training the cornerstone of your career

We all go into medical school — and then residency, and then possibly fellowship — with the same goal: to become the best physicians possible. We should never abandon this guiding philosophy. As we move forward professionally, gaining experience and more senior titles, there will still be a need for more physicians to become entrepreneurs and find solutions within the system. There will still be a need for more physician administrators to influence patient care at a systems-delivery level. The way to be most effective in these roles is to cement our knowledge and skills first as clinicians.

The extensive, rigorous training we go through in order to practice makes us unique and uniquely valuable, even compared to other types of medical experts.

Who better than a community-based primary care provider to create a weight-loss company tailored to patients’ needs?

Who better than a cardiologist to harness the power of AI to improve arrhythmia detection?

Who better than an ER doctor to build a product to triage and treat patients asynchronously? (By the way, that’s one of the projects I’m working on.)

The world needs more physicians working on healthcare start-ups, more physicians prescribing solutions for lagging patient outcomes, and more physicians developing products to lighten our own workloads.

So, seek out external opportunities. Keep finding those mentors. And prioritize your clinical training to be the advocate and doctor that our communities need.