

How Being a Doctor Made Me a Better Founder - jakek
http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/how-being-a-doctor-made-me-a-better-founder.html

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dmfdmf
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.

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stillbreathing
Not sure whether docs generally make better, same or worse businessmen, but my
experience with medical training taught me to question everything rather than
to encourage overconfidence. There's certainly value in artificial confidence
in medicine as it applies to most patients, who aren't knowledgeable or alert
enough to distill information like you may be able to.

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dmfdmf
> medical training taught me to question everything...

Certainly this has value but the ability to question everything in an
intelligent way is not generalizable. By that I mean that the training in med
school includes a huge context of medical knowledge not just this method. The
danger and error that I see is that many docs think the method is sufficient
without out the context.

> There's certainly value in artificial confidence in medicine as it applies
> to most patients...

I get it and understand the need. However, in my experience the eventual dupe
of the con is not the patient but the doc. I have seen it often enough that it
is my default assumption though I have met some good people who happen to be
doctors who have not fallen into that trap.

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kyro
Great article.

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.

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siculars
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.

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.

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davak
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

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Mithaldu
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:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/8gk8om9gnsujhte/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/8gk8om9gnsujhte/Screenshot%202014-02-07%2002.17.30.png)

Edit: Huh, looks like they don't even have a product yet.

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gautamsivakumar
Unfortunately we've had to prioritise building product and taking care of our
customers - the corporate site is a lower priority item ;)

But we're hiring, so anyone who desperately wants to fix the website should
send us an email.

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Mithaldu
I don't see it as something unfortunate, just a consequent application of your
other conclusions. :)

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ztnewman
The biggest takeaway is that medical troubleshooting methodology carries over
to running a startup? Someone clearly needed some press...

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crackerz
I was expecting to open this article and read the word "MONEY" in big bold
font.

