As physician burnout rates continue to remain high, many doctors are considering career opportunities outside of medicine. One thing I get asked a lot by my colleagues is how physicians can break into health tech. Many doctors I know think that they lack tangible skills that could be useful in the tech world and all they can do in their professional life is practice medicine. There are physicians who solely want to practice medicine which is great but for those who want to either split their time between medicine and tech or even leave medicine entirely to pursue a career in tech, there are options.

I want to break down what these options are and the concrete steps you can take to make them happen. It obviously takes work and some luck, but I think it’s a viable path for many physicians.

Figuring Out Your Skills

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a doctor which means that you are hyper aware of what you’re good at but probably more aware of what you’re not good at with a fine dose of imposter syndrome. That’s okay.

Lots of my friends worry they lack the necessary skillset needed to work in tech. We’ll talk about skills but the first thing that all of us have is our intimate knowledge of the healthcare system and how it works on the front lines. This is not easily accessible to most people (it requires getting into medical school + years of training). Just by having this, you have a leg up because health tech companies are building for a system that you understand deeply. Leverage this - it’s your greatest asset.

With that out of the way, it’s important to be honest with yourself and identify what skills you do have. These aren’t just technical skills like programming or data science (though these help and will give you access to different types of jobs). They also include soft skills like project management, operations, and working in teams. This may sound fluffy, but lots of MBAs hired into strategy or product roles aren’t necessarily domain experts. They just know how to take a project and push it to the finish line.

Think about experiences where you have done this. You probably have more examples than you think. These could include serving as a medical director for an inpatient service, coordinating a publication or research study across multiple sites, or managing a team on the wards or in the ICU. If you don’t have any concrete experiences then maybe it’s time to take on administrative projects at your institution (e.g. running the operations of a stepdown unit, plugging into outpatient population health, or working on hospital quality measures). This is easier to do as an attending than a resident, but most institutions will support this type of work and likely have tracks for attendings interested in these roles.

One important thing to note - these are not domain-specific skills. They are just experiences demonstrating your ability to contribute beyond clinical medicine and operate at the level of the system. Domain knowledge is still important, so let’s discuss that next.

Choose a Domain

After asking about the necessary skills you need to work in tech, the next question I usually get is: “which part of tech or the healthcare system should I work in?” When I tell people that after residency I’m likely going to go back to tech they either nod and say “Oh yeah, AI is the future” or “Please fix Epic” - health tech is somewhat of a foreign concept to most physicians and that’s alright. Let’s clarify what domains are out there.

It’s impossible to cover the entire health tech ecosystem, but there are a few mental models for breaking it down. The two I use are: 1) what population of patients am I interested in working with and 2) which part of the healthcare system do I want to interface with.

In terms of patient populations, you can think of this from a disease perspective. Many companies target specific diseases like diabetes, heart disease, COPD, primary care, or mental health. If you’re passionate about a particular disease or body system, use this as a guide. You can also break down populations based on which communities of patients you want to work with. The quick way of doing this is by payer model (e.g., Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, dual-eligibles, private insurance, employer-sponsored insurance). The other way would be to look for companies that are serving specific communities you care about (e.g., Black patients or South Asian patients).

You can also choose a domain based on the part of the healthcare system that interests you. Broadly this includes pharma (drug discovery, research, or distribution), payers, providers (telehealth or in person), or ancillary services (DME, homecare, wraparound services). There are many more but essentially these are the parts of the healthcare system that you’ve interacted with as a doctor and see potential for improvement.

Using the above mental models for myself, I’m interested in working with the Medicaid population/underserved patients and focusing on the provider side, either through direct care, collaborating with provider systems, or focusing on wraparound services for provider groups. With that in mind, I’ll target companies working in these spaces (e.g., Waymark, Pair Team, Galileo Health, Cityblock Health) and expand my search based on what I find.

Last thing on domains - market maps are useful for domain analysis and are widely available online. Many venture capital firms publish them, or you can subscribe to newsletters like Rock Health or Health Tech Nerds, who regularly publish good ones for various parts of health tech. Here’s an example from 7wireVentures.

When you pick a domain, don’t feel like you have to be the top expert in that domain. It definitely helps and I would argue that you need to know the ins and outs of what’s going on in the space you’re interested in. This seems obvious but requires a lot of reading and keeping up with things but also interacting with other people in the space to build connections. As much as I don’t like networking, it can be helpful, especially when done in a genuine way.

I’m also working on compiling a database of health tech companies (example below) that is tagged and can be filtered on different domains. If you want to get the full database when it’s ready you can sign up here.

Types of Roles

So you’ve figured out which part of the health tech ecosystem you’re interested in. Great work! Now what the heck do you do at these companies? You’ve identified your skills, have projects supporting them, acquired domain-specific knowledge, and are ready to dive in. There are several options for different roles, depending on your background.

The most obvious job is being a provider at a health tech company if they are patient-facing and deliver care. This pivot is easier for some doctors and gives them a foot in the door at a tech company if they ever want to move to a different role down the line.

However, most people enter tech not just to practice medicine but to diversify into other jobs. The next logical step is operations, most likely clinical operations. Tech companies typically have similar org structures. There are engineers and product managers who build the product, operations teams who work out the kinks in the product and focus on how users interact with them, marketing teams that put the word out, sales teams who sell the product, data teams who analyze company data, and finance teams who handle the money. There are of course other teams and this is an extremely broad generalization, but in essence this is how it works.

Clinical operations typically collaborates with both product/engineering and customers to ensure solutions effectively address the problem at hand and are thought about from a clinical perspective. This is where that skillset of knowing the ins and outs of healthcare delivery works combined with the ability to work with cross-functional teams comes into play. Lots of clinicians are well suited to do these roles, and there is an increasing need to hire smart doctors who can integrate clinical medicine with system problems to make health tech solutions work.

If operations isn’t your jam, consider product management. Most product managers collaborate with engineers to develop product features. Often, they’re not domain experts but know how to move the needle from zero to one to get a feature built. However, there is a need for clinically competent product managers. If you have a knack for how a product should function, this could be a viable path.

The last role I’ll mention is working on a data team, which is more niche and likely requires a background in data and programming. It’s not for everyone, but many doctors with research experience and knowledge of languages like R or Python could transition into data roles at health tech companies.

One thing I’ll say that really helped me when I worked in tech was learning SQL. It’s technically not a programming language (it’s used to query databases), but being able to analyze data on my own was infinitely helpful and I think could be beneficial in any role within tech role. I highly recommend everyone learn SQL because the learning curve is not hard at all and the ROI is so high.

How to Find Jobs

Once you’ve identified what you want to do and have an idea of what kind of company you want to work at, the next step is to find a job. This can be tough and overwhelming, and to be honest takes a little bit of luck. For me, building connections with others has been huge and cold emails go a long way. Don’t hesitate to reach out to people at companies, especially other physicians. They know where you are coming from and can help you get your foot in the door.

There are also a number of online job boards that you can follow through various newsletters and websites, and you should always keep tabs on company websites for job postings because they change quite often. I’ve personally found Twitter to be extremely helpful for this. You can meet people online, learn about different spaces you’re interested in, and it’s much easier to reach out to people at different companies. The name of the game here is persistence. It may take some time and several failed interviews before you get your first break but it’s definitely possible. The more you learn about the space and the more connections you make, the better chances you’ll have to land a job.

Should I Get an MBA?

I know you’re thinking about it so let me give you my two cents. As physicians who spent many years in school, we often believe formal education is the best learning method. This isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s just not my personal view on the matter. I don’t think you need an MBA to break into health tech. It might simplify things, and if you really think you need a formal education then by all means go for it.

I’ll just say that what I’ve heard from friends who have done MBAs is that it is more for networking than education. It can help you get a job, especially if you go to one of the top MBA programs, but from my perspective it’s added time and debt. I’ll leave it at that because I’m sure there are various opinions on this but that’s mine for what it’s worth.

Some Parting Thoughts

That was a lot of info! I hope it was helpful, and I truly believe there’s a pathway for smart, curious doctors in health tech, especially as more doctors get burned out and don’t want to practice medicine full time. We have the internal knowledge of the system and are well-positioned to drive change and improve healthcare for our patients. Who knows, maybe you’ll even start your own company one day!

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Thanks to Jared Dashevsky and Pratik Patel for reading drafts of this and providing feedback.