From ICU to AI: How One Physician Made the Leap from Clinical to Startup Leadership with Dr. Darren Klugman

In this episode of Startup Physicians, I sit down with Dr. Darren Klugman — a pediatric cardiac intensive care physician who made the leap into health tech innovation. Together, we explore the critical role physician insight plays in shaping successful healthcare startups. Darren shares his own journey from clinical practice to industry, and highlights how his medical expertise and administrative experience have been essential in navigating the complex world of healthcare technology.

Tune in to hear how physician involvement can drive innovation and improve patient outcomes in the startup space.

Episode Highlights:

The Transition Journey
Dr. Klugman discusses his career path, from medical school to fellowships in pediatric cardiology and critical care, and how these experiences prepared him for the startup space.

The Value of Physician Input
Exploring why physician insights are crucial in healthcare startups and how they can lead to more effective solutions.

Skills Translation: From Clinic to Tech
How Dr. Klugman's clinical and administrative skills translate into valuable contributions in the tech industry.

Challenges in Healthcare Innovation
Discussing the common pitfalls tech companies face when entering healthcare and the importance of understanding the system's complexity.

Networking and Opportunities
Dr. Klugman shares his approach to networking and finding opportunities in the tech industry, emphasizing the importance of outreach and resilience.

Advice for Aspiring Physician Innovators
Tips for physicians looking to transition into the tech industry, including the importance of introspection and understanding one's unique value.

Conclusion: The Future of Healthcare Startups
Dr. Klugman reflects on the exciting opportunities for physicians in the startup world and the potential for impactful innovation.

Transcript

Alison Curfman (00:01.212)
Hi everyone, welcome back to Startup Physicians. I'm your host, Dr. Alison Curfman, and I'm excited to have a special guest with me today. Dr. Darren Klugman is a pediatric cardiac intensive care physician who has made a very impressive transition into the startup world and working with health tech companies. And Darren, thank you so much for coming on today.

Darren Klugman (00:27.358)
It's great to be here, Alison. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Alison Curfman (00:29.808)
So I feel like I skew towards like attracting a lot of pediatricians, but I, I've definitely had a lot of people on this podcast, but I found your journey particularly interesting. And I think that, you know, when we first connected, we obviously had so many similar thoughts about doctors transitioning into tech and into industry and the need for physician voices in this space. And

Darren Klugman (00:35.383)
You

Alison Curfman (00:59.592)
the need for really understanding what pathways doctors can take to get into new career paths. I would love if you could just start by introducing yourself and telling me a little bit about your background and sharing with people how you transitioned over to where you are now.

Darren Klugman (01:19.182)
For sure. Thanks, Alison. It's a pleasure to be here. I couldn't agree with you more. mean, there's no time other than now where we need physicians in this space more than ever. And I feel fortunate to be in it and I'm having a great time. My background is one that is interesting. I wound up here in DC for med school and wound up going through pediatric residency, like you said, and then doing three fellowships or excuse me, two fellowships in pediatric cardiology and pediatric critical care.

And, in retrospect, a lot of the decisions that I made actually make me realize that it really provided an outstanding backdrop to going into the startup space because I went in, I thought I was going to be a general pediatrician and work with inner city children and do a work with the underprivileged. I realized that general pediatrics wasn't for me during residency. And in spite of being a primary care track, I wound up doing cardiology and critical care. One of the most sub-specialized things.

a pediatric trained provider can do. And then I wound up getting very into administration. So wound up building pediatric cardiac critical care programs, leading those programs, running heart centers. And my non-clinical time was in quality and safety. had a fabulous mentor early on during my fellowship who got me involved and got me in the room, so to speak, in that space. And it really sort of clicked. And what I loved about it was

The idea that what quality improvement was is essentially it's defining a problem and then galvanizing a group of people around it, coming up with strategies to improve upon it and then defining metrics and measuring success along the way. And so I wound up doing that and a lot of safety work as well during my career.

Alison Curfman (03:07.256)
And I think that that's something that actually resonates with a lot of physicians that are working in more traditional environments, taking a big leap and going to work for industry sounds crazy, like, my gosh, I wouldn't know how to do that. But talking about quality and safety work, that's something that a lot of us do in our traditional environments of work. And we see it, and we see what sorts of skills are needed to improve initiatives, or like you said, working more in administration when you were

building cardiac intensive care programs and like, are all the pieces that are needed for kids to get the right care they need in your specific specialty? And so some of these skillsets that you're describing that are really more common within traditional practice environments can be such a step up when you're trying to move into industry.

Darren Klugman (04:00.686)
It's really amazing, Alison. You know, it translates perfectly. And I think one of the things that people have to understand when you, when you decide to make this transition is really take a moment and be introspective and think to yourself, what have I done that has developed a set of skill sets? And then once you define those, start to really think and dive into the whole area, the whole startup space and understand where are those skill sets best suited?

Right? So when I think about what I did, program building, quality improvement, patient safety, I did a lot of work with risk management and I started to think about what areas would be well suited to that. It really starts to come pretty clear that looking at health tech and solutions that are being implemented in a care delivery environment, right. And understanding how one would go about that.

those skill sets translate beautifully. And most importantly, you have the view from the other side, which a lot of founders and a lot of startups have no idea, right? You have the view from the other side of trying to do this as a physician leader, as a clinician and implementing a new solution.

Alison Curfman (05:05.605)
Yes.

Yeah.

Alison Curfman (05:16.59)
And one of the things that is so interesting is how many different approaches have been taken by big tech companies or others to try and be like, okay, well, we're going to fix healthcare. And they fall on their face, right? Like multiple big tech companies have tried to come in and be like, well, we've fixed e-commerce or retail or whatever. Like, I'm sure we could like find healthcare solutions. And I applaud companies for continuing to try and many

Darren Klugman (05:29.58)
You

Alison Curfman (05:45.573)
many, many, many, many founders and other people are really trying to tackle big, big problems in healthcare. But I feel like one of the reasons why some of these companies don't succeed is because they fail to understand the complexity of it or all the inner workings or all the layers. And those are things that we, as individuals who work day to day, day in, day out in the system, and we actually just know how the system works, it is such valuable perspective.

And it can be massive ROI for companies to bring really well-versed physicians into the fold to try and avoid making mistakes that would be very costly.

Darren Klugman (06:28.27)
100%. And, know, we have to remind ourselves that when you think about providers and their interaction with tech, right, it's not always, they don't leave with the most favorable impression. Right. I remember I was practicing when the EHR was rolled out. Right. Now, when that happened, we all were unhappy with it. Right. And even to this day, I don't think you would have anybody give you an honest opinion that

Any of the major EHR vendors are providing a perfect product, right? But it's here to stay and it's part of being a provider these days. And so we lived through that, right? And in my role, I was part of the team that helped implement an EHR product from paper, right? Change management, you think about going from, right, from that, the next evolution was, okay, now we're going to have order sets and care pathways.

Alison Curfman (07:17.166)
and change management.

Darren Klugman (07:27.052)
Right? And physicians first reaction is no way, no, we're not doing that because you're not going to tell me what to do. Right? Well, it's like, actually, no, no one's telling you what to do. We're trying to reduce your cognitive burden. So you can actually think about things that matter when patients aren't behaving the way you expect them to behave. Right? So all of these things that you think back on one's career, we've lived through what startups are trying to do. And you're a hundred percent right. You can have the most brilliant solution.

And if you don't understand the perspective of the providers and the system in which you're trying to implement it, it's dead in the water.

Alison Curfman (08:00.358)
So you have a lot of clinical training. You had a lot of administrative background, quality and safety work. What was the first transition you made over into industry and how did you find that position?

Darren Klugman (08:17.006)
Well, that's one of the most, you know, for many of us who do this for a long time, we never look for a job for a day in our life, right? You get done training, you make connections, maybe you stay at the institution where you train, maybe you go somewhere else for other reasons, and then you make connections in your industry. And if you need to move or you want to move, you make some phone calls and that's it. You don't really look for a job. So the first thing you have to do is you have to have that, take those, that time to really...

think about yourself and do some introspective thinking and really analyze the market and understand what you're looking for. And then you have to put all of your ego aside, right? And be ready to put yourself out there. And that's exactly what I did. I used LinkedIn as my marketplace, as my Rolodex, as my phone book. I'm going old school here, right? And I used it really in a very, you know, sort of intentional way. And I went on LinkedIn and I started

to think back through all of my connections. And I looked at all my connections and I sought out and I found all of these folks that I was connected with that are either have one foot in clinical medicine and in industry or have left entirely. And I started reaching out and I knew that some people would respond and some people wouldn't and that's okay. Right? And in doing so you find we had a chance to meet and I that's how I got my first opportunity to get to dive into this.

Alison Curfman (09:30.331)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (09:39.941)
One of the things that I hear from people in industry is that some of the things that set a physician apart is if they reached out. It's like, well, why did you hire that physician? they reached out to me and we thought they were great. They may not be even the top, top, top expert in their field that's published in JAMA, but they were interested in our work and they were personable and they did the hour. I mean, it's networking 101, right?

Darren Klugman (10:07.246)
Right. Right. And it is, and at the same time, you know, when you think about the social milieu right now, people don't do that. You know, how do we connect? You connect with a click or a like, right? Kids don't know how to pick up a phone and call and say, hi, Mrs. Curfman, can I talk to your son or whatever? We don't do that anymore. Right. There's no phone. And so it is very different. And, know, as the vice president of clinical operations, now a calm wave, that's how this happened. I saw a calm wave on LinkedIn. I spent some time looking into what it is.

Alison Curfman (10:15.899)
No.

Right.

Darren Klugman (10:37.196)
And I thought, wow, this is super cool and potentially very powerful. And I messaged our CEO on LinkedIn. And I gave a little brief introduction to who I was and said, I'd love the opportunity to meet you. And that was that.

Alison Curfman (10:44.027)
Yes.

Alison Curfman (10:51.878)
So it's so funny because you're describing, you basically went through the exact process that I kind of teach people how to do, which is first you took an inventory of your own skills. So you went back and you said, what have I done? What sort of things that I've done could actually translate into a different sort of work environment? So you knew you had done quality and safety, you had done program development, you had a really deep clinical knowledge and expertise. The other piece that I tell people to do is like actually decide like,

What are you actually interested in? You cannot find opportunities that you're excited about if you don't know what you're excited about. So I can't do that work for people. Sometimes people are like, where are all the opportunities? I'm like, you gotta tell me. What are you interested in? And I tell people to start with, what are some of the problems that you care about in health care that you feel like you would be excited to try to solve? And it's gonna be different for everyone. And I've worked with doctors.

Darren Klugman (11:29.39)
You

Alison Curfman (11:49.469)
across all these different specialties and the problems that they come up with, they're like, this is the thing that I feel like is so important to solve. They've all been different. Like no one has had the same ones, but that is your starting point. say like, this is what I know how to do and this is the thing I care about. And then you moved on to like, I'm actually going to start reaching out and I'm not going to have hurt feelings when 90 % of people don't respond. I mean, I don't respond to most text messages. Like I just, we live in a world where a lot of

Darren Klugman (12:07.51)
Right.

Alison Curfman (12:18.908)
There's a lot of noise and, but this process of putting yourself out there and saying like, here's a little bit about me. I'm interested in what you're doing. Um, it is cold outreach and it's, um, it is. You know, one form of networking. can also go to conferences. You can also, um, get involved in communities, but you're an example of how literally going through this process of identifying your skillset, deciding what you're interested in.

Darren Klugman (12:25.23)
you

Darren Klugman (12:45.262)
Thank you.

Alison Curfman (12:45.456)
doing some market research and actually being willing to send a message on LinkedIn, now you're the VP at an AI company.

Darren Klugman (12:52.59)
Right. And I think, I think there's one other piece to this, right? That once you take those steps, you have to do the work to actually be able to articulate to the founder, to Alison, to whomever you're talking to, how you're going to bring value, why you think it's a fit, right? Because there's a lot of need for us in this space, but not very many people are going to be willing to say, yeah, we want Alison because she's got an MDF or her name. That's not, that's, that's sort of it.

That's sort of the floor, right? And then you got to build upon that. And I think that's something that takes some time as well, because you have to have the insight to say, you know what? I think I can learn a lot. And I'm very willing to say, I don't know, but I don't think my skills necessarily fit very well with pharma and AI drug development. I couldn't probably fit very well in that space. I could try. And if somebody's willing to ask me to help them, I'm glad to give it a whirl if I think it's value add.

Alison Curfman (13:22.801)
Mm-hmm.

Darren Klugman (13:51.182)
not an ideal fit off the bat.

Alison Curfman (13:52.871)
Sure. And nobody wants to be doing work that's not valuable, right? Like I've certainly been approached by potential clients before and I'm like, I don't know how to do that. I don't know that I would be able to help you, but let me help you find someone who can because I have a great network of other physicians. But when we think about value, you can add to companies, it's either you're either improving their revenue. So it's like maybe you're like helping them do their business development or

Darren Klugman (13:57.846)
No.

Darren Klugman (14:05.715)
You

Alison Curfman (14:21.954)
expand their networks or expand the number of contracts they have to be able to do more of what they do. You are either helping them decrease their costs, which is helping them with their profitability, or you're helping them decrease risk, which I think the decreasing risk part of things is where physicians really fit in because you understand quality and safety. You understand how the system works. You understand

Darren Klugman (14:38.84)
Alison Curfman (14:47.002)
what sorts of pieces will need to be in place to implement something because you've worked in that other side. And I think that, like you said, if you can verbalize what sort of value you can provide to these companies with that sort of framework, are you going to help them increase their revenue, decrease their costs, or decrease their risk? And then putting your personal spin on it. I tell patient stories all the time. I talk to companies about, well, this is what I've seen.

Darren Klugman (15:11.765)
yeah.

Alison Curfman (15:15.6)
that relates to what you're trying to do. you all have credibility because you've all seen thousands of patients, right? Like you have so many of these stories in this perspective. And so being able to verbalize that and translate that to value to companies is a true skill set.

Darren Klugman (15:35.998)
Absolutely. There's no question about it. It's all, you know, at the end of the day, it's a business, right? And people are in this to make money, right? So it's, the margins come in from either end, right? You're going to make more money, you're going to spend less, or ideally both, right? You're going to make more profits, spend less, and then the risk piece is a big one, right? And I think when it comes to going to market strategies for a lot of solutions,

That's actually what a lot of people in the healthcare industry are looking at doing. We already know there's a backlog. We can't get enough of our patients through the system for any number of reasons. There's a myriad of them to address. The other piece that hospitals are always trying to do is reduce their risk. There's a lot of opportunity in this space. There's a lot of way to bring value.

Alison Curfman (16:14.961)
Right.

Darren Klugman (16:22.234)
And that's what I saw when I started as a consultant with CommWave is this is what this platform is doing. It's doing all of those things. Right. And when I joined, there was no physician with that group. Right. So again, I had no idea there was no physician, but I saw something and I saw potential in it and I saw how I could bring value. And there were many, many, many examples, by the way, of people have emails that I send and conversations that I had that I was really excited about. And it sounded like

the startup or the company or the CEO was excited and then it sort of never went anywhere. And that's okay too, because we have to realize when you do this, every interaction you have is an opportunity for you to learn, right? Every one of them and develop resilience, right? So it's, it's been amazing.

Alison Curfman (16:56.54)
Mm-hmm.

Alison Curfman (17:02.832)
Yes, and develop resilience.

Well, and sometimes some of those conversations like come up again a couple of years later. Like I have certainly had conversations with founders that I, you know, wanted to do work with and they either weren't ready yet or they weren't at a stage that they could. And I've been there. I've been a founder drowning with like wearing all the hats and it's like, you know, sometimes things don't pan out and then six, eight, 10, 12 months later, you're like, who was that person that I talked to who knew how to do this? Now we're ready. And then.

that can turn into opportunity. So the networking and the even cold, outreach and conversations that might not go somewhere like in the immediate future, they're all still valuable. And it probably helped you continue to craft what your value proposition was for the company you ended up working with.

Darren Klugman (17:53.647)
absolutely. Right. And that's, that is the key is that everything builds upon itself and everything provides you additional opportunity. Those growth moments, right. should make you better when you land, right. And if they don't, you're doing something wrong.

Alison Curfman (18:14.076)
Well, and it sounds like this started as more of a consulting opportunity and then grew from there. Can you describe a little bit about what the company was and what sort of things you did for them? Because for some doctors, they hear about this and they're like, it just still seems so nebulous. What does it mean to be a consultant for an AI company? What did you actually do?

Darren Klugman (18:30.766)
Okay.

Well, that's exactly right. So when I first met the company, the company was conceived as a way to reduce alarm fatigue and reduce nurse burnout and attrition. Because when you read the literature about nursing attrition and nurse burnout, lot of the literature describes alarm fatigue in ICUs and ERs as one of the big drivers. And our founder and a lot of our engineers and data scientists came from industry where

They came from a leading company doing enterprise IT for Fortune 100 companies. And so the management of data streams and alarms was right in their wheelhouse. When I first learned about the company, the first thing I said to our founder was this is incredibly cool technology. But I'm going to say something that I don't want to offend you.

Part of the reason we have a nursing crisis in healthcare is because healthcare hasn't invested in nursing the way that it needs to. And having lived in an ICU for nearly two decades, the noise is sort of, people perceive it as part of the landscape. It's just there. You don't even notice it, right? But what they, what this platform does, this is a patient safety and operations platform. And, you know, now coming up on, you know, eight months with the company.

we're in the midst of an entire rebrand and our customers are telling us this is a powerful patient safety tool, right? So right off the bat, you know, without knowing anything about healthcare AI, I've since gone on and taken a certificate course at Harvard on AI and healthcare. I had no idea about UX interfaces in healthcare. I had no idea.

Alison Curfman (20:26.812)
You probably also didn't have a lot of background on how to market and position a product or service, but it was your real life lived experience that actually contributed to a shift that will probably be very valuable to the company.

Darren Klugman (20:34.347)
Nah. No.

Darren Klugman (20:44.046)
Absolutely. you know, the willingness to go into these situations and not come in there like a bull in a china shop and say, is ridiculous. How are you doing? This is broken. No, I could be very wrong. I still might be wrong. Right. And I also totally was blown away by the idea that a bunch of incredibly smart people got to this point where we had customers. We've got

We've been through a number of very successful funding rounds without a huge amount of physician engagement. I mean, that's unbelievable, right? And it's really exciting where we're headed. And yet, you know, we have to go into this with the willingness to say every single interaction, every moment, like this may be right or might be wrong. And if it's wrong, we'll pivot, right? That's what you got. You have to be flexible and you got to be humble.

Alison Curfman (21:24.294)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (21:42.043)
Yeah, you said something when we were getting ready for this call that I really liked. said, is a competitive advantage, which I really like that phrase because I think that sometimes as physicians, we of course need to own our expertise and our knowledge and be able to contribute in a way that recognizes that we are the experts in some of these really specific clinical things. But also there's still so much

Darren Klugman (21:49.966)
yeah.

Alison Curfman (22:10.466)
need to learn. And if you're able to go in without that hubris and be willing to consider other perspectives and have curiosity and this growth mindset, you can set yourself up for so many more opportunities by gaining more skills from learning from the people around you that are not clinicians.

Darren Klugman (22:32.014)
No question about it. I've thought a lot about this because I used to talk about this on rounds all the time with fellows and trainees and nurses. I remember when I was deeply involved in patient safety and I would have to sit with families, you know, during a risk investigation or malpractice investigation or what have you, and sit in front of them and say, hey, look, we screwed up, right? And all the literature bears it out. If you admit it, you'd almost never get sued, right? It's the same thing. that's one extreme, but the other part of it is

The willingness to say, don't know, doesn't mean you're stupid. It means you're welcome to learning. And when you think fundamentally about medical education in many ways, we're not taught to do that, right? If you take any board exam, they'll always tell you, if you have an answer that says, we're get a consult, it's always wrong, right? And when you think just fundamentally, what is that telling you? It's telling you to not say, I need help in a very simple way, right? Like, why should that answer always be wrong? But you're right.

The ability to just say, don't know, and also be willing to offer advice and realize that your advice might be wrong, or somebody might not be interested in taking it. And it doesn't mean they dislike you or anything. It's really, it's a refreshing thing and it really goes a long way.

Alison Curfman (23:46.161)
I think it's also important to like almost stack rank your recommendations. So like, you're trying to be like, okay, here's all the things I can think of as a clinician to improve your product or your service. here are, this is the one that like, if you don't do this, you could kill someone. Like this is the one that I am going to advocate for this every single step of the way.

Darren Klugman (24:05.838)
Right?

Alison Curfman (24:13.434)
And then these other ones, like this could make it better. And this is like totally optional and is partially, you know, just from my perspective. But if you don't take these ones, that's fine. Like I don't care where you put a button on an app. Like I could tell you where I think it goes better. but I, and I've done a lot of co-development of software and technology that, there, those sorts of things that, you know, are, if it screws up, like nothing horrible is going to happen, but you know, I think it should be a certain way.

but being willing to be a contributor, but not the end all be all, but then the thing that is like truly about safety or protecting the company or protecting the patient, being very clear on like, this is the one that I feel like is the most important. I don't think we can do it any other way and do it safely. And I've never had any, you know, any clients or partners or companies that I work with that didn't.

take that really, really seriously. But I also fully recognize that I'm not an expert in all these other things.

Darren Klugman (25:18.766)
Oh yeah. And that's part of the invent taking that self inventory, right? So that you know where you bring the most expertise, right? I feel very confident in my understanding of patient safety, quality improvement, hospital operations, very, very comfortable. So if I look at a ranked order list of things that I think a particular company may do better, you don't have to go in there and be the hero and fix all of them, right? But if you're going to be very, very

you know, sort of forceful in your recommendation about one thing. It helps if it aligns with your expertise as well. Right. Because then you can speak deeply to it and you can be a resource, right? But if you come in and you say a bunch of different things and yet you're not an expert in many of them, it sort of rings shallow and it's not going to set you up or the company up very well.

Alison Curfman (25:52.529)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (26:07.708)
Yeah.

So how did you transition from being a consultant to being employed by this company?

Darren Klugman (26:16.27)
land and expand. You know, I think that really, I went into this with, honestly, with complete humility and I just wanted an opportunity. I went into it and when I talked to friends, I said, listen, I just need a couple people to answer an email, answer a LinkedIn message, you know, respond to a connection via text or email from a colleague, you know, a mutual connection.

And when I have that opportunity, I know there's going to be a couple out there. They're going to be like, this guy's super smart and can bring value. Right. And so when that happens, I'm not going to go in there and ask for the moon. I'm going to go in there and say, look, I really believe I can bring some value here. And if you agree, let's talk about what that would look like. And that's exactly what I did. And I actually wanted personally to start in the consulting role because I wanted to prove to myself that I can do this. Right.

Alison Curfman (27:12.028)
And it sets you up for getting the right long-term agreement, understanding what sort of role you can provide, understanding the company and the people at the company better from being kind of like an external contractor to then becoming part of the fold.

Darren Klugman (27:12.718)
And I, one, sorry.

Darren Klugman (27:19.406)
100%.

Darren Klugman (27:32.578)
Right. And I said to our, to my CEO who I deeply respect and become very close with, I could tell from the very first conversation that we were, that we got along well, we were like-minded. And I said, you're making an investment in me as a consultant. Right. And I want to make sure that you, that I show you why you're doing this. Right. I'm a results, I'm a very results oriented person. And if at the end of this, it's not a good fit, that's totally cool. And, and

you know, selfishly for Darren Cloudman, nothing beats data, right? And so if you land somewhere as a consultant and you prove value, most likely you're going to get additional opportunities, right? Whether it's an extension of the contract, a full-time role, et cetera. And, and so that's what, that's what, that's how it started. you know, it's, it's been an incredibly gratifying experience and super exciting. And I continue to do other work as well on it, you know, similar, exactly the same.

Alison Curfman (28:14.14)
Absolutely.

Darren Klugman (28:32.086)
approach, right? Same exact approach. Let me start as you need some help. I'm glad to help you. What are you looking for? You know, what would our relationship look like?

Alison Curfman (28:41.99)
I think that that is exactly the right approach for someone looking to explore things outside of clinical medicine. I love the way you've been able to kind of demonstrate how your story just followed this arc of success of being able to identify your strengths, identify things that you could do that would be translatable, what you're interested in, do a ton of outreach, make a lot of network connections, start in a consulting role, expand.

And I think that that's gonna be really inspiring for people that are listening. Any last thoughts that you'd like to share?

Darren Klugman (29:20.136)
no, I would, I would just end by saying that this is an incredibly exciting time to be in this space. And there's so many physicians out there. Before we started, I was telling you that in the last few weeks, I must've sent four or five physicians to your website, to your podcast, to all of the offerings you have. And, know, super grateful for what you're doing because it's really providing a service. And when you start to talk to people and people start to reach out to you and say, Clugman, how'd you do this? I would just say that.

If you approach it the right way and you're thoughtful about it, the industry needs you, right? These companies need smart physician input in the right way. And we can provide a tremendous service to healthcare, right? In a very different way than clinical care. And it doesn't mean you have to leave clinical care entirely. There's so many different ways to do this. But don't sell yourself short, go into it with humility, be nimble.

And it's a hell of a ride. It's a really exciting time to be a part of this.

Alison Curfman (30:20.326)
thank you so much and thank you for sharing your inspiring story. For anyone that wants to connect with Darren, we will put his LinkedIn in the show notes. But thank you all for joining us and I hope that this has helped spark some interest in you of things that you could do in the healthcare industry outside of traditional clinical work. So thanks again, Darren.

Darren Klugman (30:43.438)
Thanks, Alison. It's been a pleasure.