How a Geriatrician Built a Global Health Tech Startup Without Leaving Medicine with Dr. Michael Fang
Episode Description
In this episode of Startup Physicians, Dr. Alison Curfman sits down with Dr. Michael Fang, a practicing geriatrician and serial entrepreneur, to explore how physicians can build impactful healthcare startups—without leaving clinical medicine.
Michael shares his journey from traditional medical training to founding multiple healthcare technology companies, beginning with something deceptively simple: an Excel spreadsheet tracking social factors affecting elderly patients. Long before “social determinants of health” became a buzzword, Michael identified how caregiver availability, nutrition access, and home support predicted hospital readmissions with striking accuracy.
That insight led to a startup that ultimately scaled to serve over 7 million patients internationally, helping health systems allocate resources more effectively—years before U.S. reimbursement models caught up.
Throughout the conversation, Michael breaks down why physicians are uniquely positioned to be entrepreneurs, how curiosity fuels innovation, and why you don’t need to learn to code or get an MBA to build meaningful solutions. He also explains how entrepreneurship can actually reduce burnout, offering physicians a renewed sense of agency and creativity.
Finally, Michael introduces Ryze Health, a company designed to support independent medical practices by making healthcare benefits more affordable and accessible—reinforcing his broader mission to democratize healthcare.
This episode is a must-listen for physicians who:
- See broken systems and want to fix them
- Are curious about entrepreneurship but don’t know where to start
- Want to build alongside medicine, not abandon it
Chapters
00:00 – Physician to Entrepreneur (Without Planning It)
02:51 – Seeing the System Break in Real Practice
03:35 – Predicting Readmissions With an Excel Sheet
05:56 – Social Determinants of Health Before It Had a Name
09:48 – Why Physicians Are Built for Entrepreneurship
12:30 – You Don’t Need to Code (Or Get Another Degree)
14:39 – Finding Startup Partners Outside Medicine
15:34 – Practicing Medicine While Building Companies
19:22 – Entrepreneurship as Burnout Prevention
20:10 – The Secret Weapon: Physician Curiosity
22:37 – Asking “Why” Inside Broken Systems
24:36 – Introducing Rise Healt
27:10 – Why Independent Practices Matter
29:03 – A Call to Physicians Ready to Build
Resources Mentioned
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