Big Picture Medicine

By Mustafa Sultan, MD

The health entrepreneurship podcast — focusing on big picture stuff.

Interviews with health/biotech entrepreneurs and leaders having impact at scale. Health stuff a techbro/sis would find interesting... more

5

33 ratings

Download on the App Store

Download on the App Store

Get it on Google Play

FAQs about Big Picture Medicine:

How many episodes does Big Picture Medicine have?

The podcast currently has 153 episodes available.

Big Picture Medicine episodes:

August 25, 2025 #135 $1.4bn Startup Tackling Loneliness, Papa (CEO, Andrew Parker)
In 2017, Andrew Parker launched Papa with a 1-800 number, offering 'grandkids-on-demand' in Miami. By 2021, the company was valued at $1.4bn (backed by SoftBank and Tiger Global).

This is a YC-backed gig economy company operating in the regulated elder care market at unicorn scale.

On paper it shouldn't have worked -- and yet it did.

Links
Papa: https://www.papa.com/
Dr Mustafa Sultan: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.musty.io⁠
...more
40min
January 01, 2025 #134 Sean Duffy, Omada Health ($1bn+ Valuation)
According to Business Insider, Omada Health has quietly filed its S-1 to prepare for an IPO. Here's how Sean Duffy (CEO & Co-founder) built it.

0:00 Intro
0:17 Signing first customer
1:51 How to have good ideas in healthcare
4:00 Why metabolic health is a hard area to innovate in
5:18 What the MVP product looked like
11:16 Sean's secret tactics
14:55 Operational innovation as a differentiator
20:19 The Omada playbook — is it repeatable?
25:31 What boss moves have you made Sean?
29:37 The difference between good and great
32:29 Sean's best tip on selling in enterprise healthcare
33:35 Sean's advice to himself

Links
Omada Health: https://www.omadahealth.com
Dr Mustafa Sultan: ⁠⁠https://www.musty.io⁠
...more
36min
October 27, 2024 #133 A New Radiology Foundation Model ($160M Raised) — Harrison.ai CEO, Dr Aengus Tran
Dr Aengus Tran is the CEO of Harrison.ai — an Australian radiology AI startup who have raised $160M.

Harrison.ai just released their radiology foundation model, Harrison.rad.1. And it's really good.

0:00 Intro
2:25 I'm glad I didn't found my startup in the US
4:21 Partnering with a clinical operator is key
7:28 Scrappy stories from the early days
11:17 Where human radiologists outperform AI (zero-shot learning)
17:23 Big bets on the future of radiology
21:18 What happens when GPT-8 arrives?
25:29 How can AI reach suprahuman radiology performance?
28:58 What boss moves did you make?

Links
Harrison.ai: ⁠https://harrison.ai⁠
Dr Mustafa Sultan: ⁠https://www.musty.io⁠
...more
35min
August 26, 2024 #132 Arcadia CEO ($100M ARR) on How To Sell Enterprise Healthcare — Michael Meucci
Michael Meucci (CEO) transformed Arcadia — formerly a mid-sized consultancy into a healthcare platform with $100M of Annual Recurring Revenue. How?

Lots of smart moves, including becoming really good at enterprise healthcare selling. Here's how he did it.

Links
Arcadia: https://arcadia.io/
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/

...more
26min
May 27, 2024 #131 Scaling Contraceptive App to 2M Users By Daring Not to Be Free (Dr Elina Berglund, CEO Natural Cycles)
Dr Elina Berglund is the CEO/Co-founder of Natural Cycles, which she has grown to 2M users. When every other app seemed to be free — she made a brave decision: She charged her users a monthly fee. And it worked...

0:57 - The Birth of Natural Cycles
2:57 - The Decision to Charge from the Start
3:47 - Building Trust Through Pricing
4:23 - From Personal Struggles to Public Solution
5:52 - Creating the Fail-Safe Algorithm
6:32 - Collaboration with CERN Colleagues
7:13 - The Human Body: Complex Beyond Measure
8:37 - The Promise and Challenge of Wearables
10:16 - Understanding User Behavior
11:04 - Gaining Regulatory Approval
12:26 - Secrets to Growth and Marketing
13:43 - The Challenge of Direct-to-Consumer Healthcare
16:02 - Data-Driven Decision Making
17:13 - Instincts Versus Data
19:01 - Staying Honest with Data
21:20 - Calibrating Communication for Investors
22:30 - Benefits of Being Profitable
24:08 - Data as a Superpower
24:59 - Overcoming Negative PR
27:13 - Future of Contraception
29:30 - Impact of Roe v. Wade Overturning

Links
Natural Cycles: https://www.naturalcycles.com/
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
...more
31min
March 24, 2024 #130 Kaia Health, Raising $125M By Turning $50,000 Elite Pain Rehab into an App (CEO, Konstantin Mehl)
Konstantin started Kaia Health after paying $50,000 to cure his back pain at an elite pain rehab centre. It worked. But it seemed stupid. Why did this need to cost $50,000?

Kaia Health has since raised $125M and helped 625,000 users.

0:00 The 90 second story
1:22 How did he grow 20% every week?
2:15 Market timing is everything
7:43 We never put pressure on this making any money
10:51 How does an app cure back pain?
14:43 US vs Germany for digital health entrepreneurs
16:40 Go to market of Kaia Health
19:51 Why raise so much money?
24:57 The hero license

Links
Kaia Health: https://kaiahealth.com/
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
...more
30min
February 04, 2024 #129 Jon Ronson on Writing, Hustle and the Psychopath Test
Jon Ronson is one of the most interesting people alive today — period.
He’s the author of the Men Who Stare at Goats, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and The Psychopath Test — which spent 10 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
His two Ted talks have been watched 20 million times, his books have been brought to life by George Clooney on the big screen, he has written screenplays for Netflix blah blah blah.
Don’t believe me, listen to a pitch Jon wrote for ‘the Psychopath Test’. If you are not dying to hear what happens next — then, I don’t what to tell you…

0:00 Jon's pitch for the Psychopath Test
1:41 Jon's story
6:00 Strategies Jon used to bypass career gatekeepers
7:03 Would Jon Ronson be on Substack/podcasting
12:05 Does Jon Ronson pay attention to analytics? Post mortems
16:26 Startup philosophy applied to storytelling
19:08 Writing Advice from Tim Ferriss: Jon's opinion on doing interesting things to write better
24:59 Does Jon Ronson like being famous?
28:49 Analysis of 'The Psychopath Test' pitch to Ira Glass
37:30 Should you make decision based on what would be a good story
38:48 Jon Ronson's habits for creative success
...more
44min
December 24, 2023 #128 AgeTech: Shopify vs Amazon Model — Birdie CEO, Max Parmentier
Max Parmentier is the CEO of Birdie, a Series B AgeTech startup who have raised $52M from the likes of Sofina, Omers Ventures and Index Ventures — and captured 10% of the UK market whilst currently scaling into Europe.
0:00 Intro
2:37 Shopify vs Amazon model in AgeTech
7:26 Product pivots: D2C never wins
11:56 Predictive AI AgeTech
13:58 I pitch an idea to Max
19:34 Lessons building Birdie
24:13 Leaving money on the table for purpose

Links
Birdie: https://www.birdie.care/
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/

...more
30min
December 03, 2023 #127 Gentle Disruption Wins in Healthcare — DrDoctor CEO Tom Whicher
Tom Wicher is CEO of DrDoctor — who have served over 20M patients and just raised £10M in their recent Series A round. But he spent the first 7 years bootstrapping, and diverged from his colleagues: Opting for the slow and steady gentle disruption path. Why?

0:00 Gentle disruption beats move fast and break things
3:36 Picking a problem in healthcare
5:44 Behavioural change theory
7:52 Stop treating patients like kids
10:30 Systems-level efficiency vs personalisation
13:02 Why don't patients show up for their appointments?
16:02 Overbooking: Learning from airlines
18:54 Carrot or stick: Motivating health behaviors
22:35 There's no big conspiracy in healthcare
26:24 PIFU model of patient booking
28:14 Sometime it's better not to empower patients
31:16 Habits/frameworks that have helped Tom succeed

Links
DrDoctor: https://www.drdoctor.co.uk/
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
...more
34min
October 31, 2023 #126 Drug Discovery is Becoming More $$$ — Here's Why, And The Startup Fixing It (Lindus Health)
Drug discovery is becoming more expensive and producing less results than ever before (Eroom's Law)—why?
One of the ballooning costs are clinical trials. Pharma/biotech often outsource their trials to CROs (contract research organisations).
But many CROs are incentivised to make trials as bloated and inefficient as possible. That means more money and less results.
Meri Beckwith is building the anti-CRO: Lindus Health—to solve this problem.

0:00 Intro
1:39 The big problem in drug discovery
4:10 Why do CROs exist?
7:24 The incentive problem in drug discovery/CROs
10:57 Pharma are anti-startups
12:11 How much a clinical trial costs
15:11 How can you compete with big CROs?
17:26 Are you going to build your own drug pipeline?
18:56 Lessons from VC to Founder
23:42 Brand/PR/Positioning as a biotech startup
29:03 Billion dollar ideas in bio/health
31:33 Habits that have helped Meri
Links
Lindus Health: https://www.lindushealth.com/
Meri Beckwith: https://twitter.com/meribeckwith
Mithi Thaya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mithi-thaya/
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
...more
36min

FAQs about Big Picture Medicine:

How many episodes does Big Picture Medicine have?

The podcast currently has 153 episodes available.