Big Picture Medicine

Dr David Albert is a physician, inventor and serial entrepreneur. He studied at both Harvard and Duke University Medical School. In 2001, he sold Data Critical to GE in a deal that valued Data Critical at $45M. Perhaps his Magnum Opus: AliveCor has raised over $150M and creates devices which are able to take ECGs or heart traces — from anywhere, at anytime. It’s newest innovation: The KardiaMobile Card is a credit card which can take an ECG — all whilst fitting into your wallet. He also has over 75 patents and 100 scientific publications. We speak about his formula and framework for innovating, lessons he’s learnt from his buddies such as Eric Topol and Vinod Khosla and whether everything in Medicine should be democratised. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Dr Susan Thomas trained as a Geriatrician, before joining Ernst and Young — eventually becoming Health and Sciences Lead Partner. In 2021 she left to become Clinical Director of Google Health UK. We speak about her decision to leave a very lucrative and established role at EY to join Google Health, things she still misses about practicing Medicine, her approach to leadership and whether life gets better as you climb up the career ladder. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Dr Michael Cantor studied both Law and Medicine at the University of Illinois, before completing his Residency at Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Hospital. He is a Geriatrician and has a very interesting career, being the Chief Medical Officer of both Uber Health and Intuition Robotics. We talk about Uber’s role in the future of healthcare, the gig economy and hardcore free market economics applied to patients and why it’s so important for doctors to be in the driving seat as leaders — not just passive observers. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Dr Claire Novorol trained as a Specialist Registrar in London before completing a PhD in Developmental Neurobiology at the University of Cambridge. With 18 months left until becoming a Consultant, she left Medicine to co-found Ada Health — an AI powered self-assessment health tool. Ada has raised $190 million dollars to date with over 10 million users. We speak about her decision to leave Medicine when she did, whether the NHS is where startups go to die and the power of timing and just taking a calculated risk when it makes sense for you. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Peony Li is Founder and CEO at Jude — a company bringing bladder care into the mainstream. She studied Economics at Cambridge, and has worked in Investment Banking, she worked as Head of Investments at Founders Factory, at Daye as Head of Operations before finally founding Jude and raising $2.5M. We talk about the rosy picture of entrepreneurship versus the harsh reality, what it’s like to be a founder in a taboo industry and how optimism is a habit rather than something you’re born with. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Dr Dafydd Loughran trained as a surgeon, before joining Babylon Health as an AI Clinician and then founding Concentric Health. Concentric is digitising the consenting of patients prior to surgery. Essentially, bringing traditional paper consent forms into the 21st century. It started as a surgical consent aide-mémoire which Daf made as a Junior Doctor. He has since raised over $1M and Concentric has been adopted by NHS Trusts such as Imperial College and Chelsea and Westminster. We talk about what it’s like to be CEO as an introvert, the challenges and opportunities in digitising consent and distributed leadership. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Dr Keith Grimes is Clinical Digital Health & Innovation Director at Babylon Health — essentially, he teaches machines medicine. He’s also a General Practitioner with a special interest in Digital Health & Urgent Care, as well as founder of VR Doctors. We talk about how to get into digital health as a doctor, the importance and unimportance of credentialism in the field, virtual reality and its applications to healthcare and Keith’s experiences with burnout. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Herman Pontzer is an Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University. He studies how our species’ deep past shapes our health and physiology today. He is the author of Burn: New Science Reveals How Metabolism Shapes Your Body, Health, and Longevity. In his book, he follows the Hadza community — a group of people who live in Tanzania and are relatively untouched by the modern sedentary lifestyle. They are hunter gatherers and are about 7 times more active than the average American. You would expect then, that they must be burning thousands of more calories than the typical desk jockey — but they don’t. In fact, on average, they burn the same number of calories as the average American — even when we adjust for height and weight. So what’s going on? You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Dr Imran Mahmud studied Medicine at Oxford, before studying Public Health at Harvard on a Fulbright Scholarship. He then ranked first in the country and entered the Ophthalmology training programme which he then promptly left, joining McKinsey. In 2018 he co-founded NYE Health, raising over £4M. He is now a startup advisor, angel investor and consultant on digital health topics. We speak about leaving Medicine and if the grass is really greener on the other side, how to network, effective decision making and lots more. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Dr Andrew Vallance-Owen MBE was the Chief Medical Officer of Bupa between 1995–2012. He led work to bring patient reported outcomes into vogue in both the private and public sectors — and he was awarded an MBE in the 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours. He now has a number of non-executive roles in healthcare, including as Chief Medical Officer of Medicover and on the boards of startups such as Testcard, Jude and Cerina. We talk about his story, what he learnt about crisis management and the future role of private healthcare in the UK. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io