It has been my experience that doctors make horrible businessmen. I think it is the medical school training that encourages over confidence in their abilities, even outside their domain, and a dangerous reluctance or inability to listen to outsiders or experts of lower social status. Perhaps this guy is the exception but I don't think it was the doctor training so much but the fact that high intelligence is general can quickly be applied to any area.
Great article.<p>What I have come to appreciate more and more about physicians is their on-the-fly algorithmic decision-making ability whereby the doctor must account for factors that go well beyond pathophysiology and extend into statistics, social/cultural conventions, benefits/costs analyses, financial situations (insurance coverage, or lack thereof), and more. To gather, categorize, rank, simplify and prioritize data is an incredibly valuable skillset no matter your profession, particularly for an entrepreneur whose roles can vary greatly hour-to-hour.
Spot on. I work in medical informatics and my brother is a doctor. Doctors have a unique way of distilling information. My brother likes to say "does it change management?" aka, is a piece of information important enough to change outcome.<p>The problem I have with virtually all medical information related startups revolves around protected health information (PHI). How does a startup get it? How does a startup attain a level of credibility, both financially and technically, where an organization that has access to a patient population - like a physicians group, hospital, etc. - get the opportunity to prove their product. Unless you make your case directly to the patient and get them to give you their data, any sizeable organization is going to be extremely reticent to part with their PHI for political, legal and, of course, general technical ineptitude reasons. Not a trivial problem, I can assure you.
I'm also a physician and my hospital uses a similar product that I wrote with symfony. It's rough but we've been using for three years now. If you are interested in helping me take it to the next step or you need a doctor as part of your project, just contact me. carotids at g mail
Very interesting article. Just wish it explained what medisas actually does. Also slightly amused that they really seem to stick to the priotizing by having a website that's simple and not minding that it's slightly broken: <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/8gk8om9gnsujhte/Screenshot%202014-02-07%2002.17.30.png" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/s/8gk8om9gnsujhte/Screenshot%202014-...</a><p>Edit: Huh, looks like they don't even have a product yet.