Tom Blue stumbled into the world of healthcare innovation for primary care and personal health management around 22 years ago, when he was working with  the NASA Langley Research Center, which later led him to take part in setting up the first concierge medical practice in Virginia. 

Such a novel service model came with the challenge of creating a compelling value proposition that would encourage people to invest their own money on a service not covered by insurance. 

During the initial set-up process, Tom serendipitously found a space next to Richmond's first electron beam tomography scanner. This allowed the practice to integrate coronary calcium scoring as part of their services. They later added advanced lipid testing, and other tests that had them offering one of the best cardiovascular risk assessment and management services in the US.

One valuable insight Tom learned from this experience, that has become a major driving force in his professional life, is that there are two worlds of medicine: the world that everyone knows, and this “future world” with medical advancements that actually already exist today, but only a few people had access to.

In this episode, we discuss the shortcomings of the US healthcare system, and  why the payer system shouldn't be the curator of the healthcare services that we make available to ourselves, to properly manage our own health.

• What led Tom to focus on innovating around delivery models for next-generation healthcare, in reducing the translational gap in the implementation of healthcare services, and in finding ways to do this at greater scale