Meet Ali Parsa, Ph.D.:
Ali Parsa, Ph.D. is a British-Iranian healthcare entrepreneur and engineer. He is the founder and CEO of Babylon Health. He is also a UK Cabinet Office Ambassador for Mutuals. Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of Circle Health. Dr. Parsa was recognized by The Health Service Journal as one of ‘the 50 most influential people in UK healthcare’ and he was featured in the Maserati 100. Dr. Parsa received a Ph.D. in Engineering Physics from University College London.
Key Insights:
Ali Parsa shares an optimistic, but still practical vision of entrepreneurship.
- Not Healthcare. The incentives in healthcare are fundamentally broken. What we call healthcare is really “sick care,” because we wait until patients are having health emergencies to intervene. Babylon Health aims to prevent health emergencies by utilizing data, AI, and monitoring to catch problems before they get worse.
- Desirable Difficultly. Dr. Parsa arrived in the UK as a refugee at 16 without his family. He built his life and career from scratch. However, he views these difficulties as giving him strength. He has the experience to deal with adverse situations.
- Advice for Founders. Dr. Parsa encourages founders to dream big, build fast, and be brilliant. Anything that matters takes a lot of effort, so you might as well do something big. He also asks that we work to create an ecosystem that allows for others to dream big as well.
This episode is hosted by Rishi Sikka, M.D. He is a guest host for Day Zero and is a Venture Partner at Lifeforce Capital and Professor at Brown University School of Public Health.
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