A reminder that we’re still looking for a researcher in residence. If you want to be a personal trainer of the mind for On Deck’s CEOs, head over to beondeck.com/researcher

 Nikhil Krishnan is the author of the Out of Pocket newsletter. Out-of-Pocket is making the business of healthcare easy to understand. Nikhil writes in plain English and compliments industry analysis with memes and humor.

We haven’t done a true digital health episode yet, and Nikhil was the perfect person to provide us with an overview of the space.

The first question we asked was probably the hardest for Nikhil to answer. Marshall asked “What the is the problem?" in US healthcare right now, and Nikhil laughed. The American health system is uniquely complicated. Everyone thinks everyone else is the bad guy and an obtuse system means that nobody knows what the best direction to row in is.

Nikhil points out how healthcare is more emotionally charged. The industry has a fundamentally different risk-reward dynamic when the stakes are quite literally life and death. 

Still, there is reason for hope, amid all the grief. Nikhil helps identify all the areas where health tech entrepreneurs might be able to create meaningful change in an industry that has been particularly ravaged by COVID during the past two years.

For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com