Babylon Health: How Founder and CEO Dr Ali Parsa Plans to Make Healthcare a Utility for Every Human on Earth
May 15, 2018
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Dr Ali Parsa, founder and CEO of Babylon Health, shares his ambitious vision to provide affordable healthcare to the world. They discuss the challenges of making healthcare accessible, raising capital, and the importance of AI. The podcast also includes stories about overcoming fear of failure and the early days of building Shazam's fingerprint library.
Babylon Health aims to make healthcare accessible and affordable for every individual by using AI and human support, similar to how Google revolutionized access to information.
Dr. Ali Parsa's journey exemplifies resilience, creativity, and passion in his mission to provide accessible and affordable healthcare to every person on Earth through Babylon Health.
The use of artificial intelligence in healthcare can help reduce costs associated with personnel and timing, making healthcare more efficient and affordable.
Deep dives
The Vision of Accessibility in Healthcare
The podcast episode explores the vision of making healthcare accessible and affordable for everyone using AI and human support. The speaker compares it to what Google did with information, aiming to put comprehensive healthcare in the hands of every individual. The focus is on addressing both mental health and long-term disease management through a virtual GP service. The episode highlights the need for utility in healthcare, just like tap water, and emphasizes the potential impact of revolutionizing the current process of visiting a General Practitioner.
The Story Behind Babylon Health
The podcast delves into the inspiring journey of Dr. Ali Parsa, the founder of Babylon Health. Dr. Parsa's story begins with his challenging upbringing and escape from Iran after the revolution. Despite facing numerous obstacles, he exhibited remarkable determination and achieved academic success in civil engineering and engineering physics. Driven by his entrepreneurial spirit, Babylon Health became his third venture, with a mission to provide accessible and affordable healthcare to every person on Earth. The episode highlights Dr. Parsa's resilience, creativity, and passion for making a positive impact on the healthcare industry.
The Importance of Affordability in Healthcare
The podcast focuses on the significance of making healthcare affordable alongside accessibility. Dr. Parsa emphasizes the two major cost factors in healthcare: people and timing. The episode discusses the use of artificial intelligence to augment human capabilities, allowing for more efficient healthcare delivery. The goal is to reduce costs associated with salaries and address timing by capturing health issues earlier. While accessibility is addressed through mobile devices, affordability is the key challenge that needs to be tackled, leading to the creation of innovative solutions by Babylon Health.
Importance of Choosing the Right Shareholder Base
Entrepreneurs need to be aware of the importance of selecting the right shareholder base for their business. The speaker highlights how many businesses have been destroyed by having the wrong shareholders and emphasizes that entrepreneurs should give thought to this aspect. They explain that taking money from venture capitalists (VCs) can be a challenge as VC funding often comes with significant control over the business. Instead, the speaker suggests seeking capital from multi-billion dollar sources, which may require persuading them to invest early but provides a source of long-term capital without the constraints of VCs.
Long-term Planning and Avoiding Short-term Thinking
The speaker discusses the value of thinking and planning for the long term in business. They share an advice from Rupert Murdoch about the advantage of having a 10 to 15-year plan, as most businesses operate with short-term goals. By having a long-term perspective, the speaker argues that businesses can gain a competitive edge as they focus on the future rather than being tied down by immediate concerns. They also reflect on the need for entrepreneurs to embrace risk-taking and avoid fear of failure, as losing everything can be a valuable learning experience that can lead to even greater achievements.
Our guest this week is the very inspirational Ali Parsa, founder and CEO of Babylon Health. Babylon is the world’s largest healthcare app successfully changing the way we as humans are getting access to healthcare.
Their mission? To provide affordable healthcare to the world and to be, in Ali’s own words, “the Google of healthcare”.
We don’t say this often, but get ready to have your mind blown at the scale of his ambition and, even more importantly, his execution.
So tune in or you’ll miss out!
We chat about:
Coming to the UK as a refugee and steering clear of negativity
