SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome to Flight Path, the podcast where we explore the journeys behind bold leadership, innovation, and lasting impact. Each episode we sit down with leaders, innovators, and rule breakers who built their success by doing the work, learning the lessons, and sometimes ignoring the map altogether. Whether you're navigating leadership, healthcare, technology, entrepreneurship, or simply trying to figure out what's next without losing your mind, you're in the right place. Before we take flight, we'd like to thank our sponsor, EFAX. Helping businesses and professionals stay connected with secure, convenient document sharing. Facts online with eFAX. Now fasten your seatbelt, adjust your altitude, and get ready for stories, insights, and conversations that just might change your course. Welcome aboard. This is Flight Path.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of Flight Path Bluebird Leaders podcast. We are now sponsored by EFAX. So who's super excited to have them with us for the summer, all the way to SOAR 2026. Today we are interviewing, talking to the famous Dan Lowe. So welcome, Dan. How are you? Rebecca. Oh, great. Great. So you just came back from a sailing trip. We're gonna go right into it. Tell us about this sailing trip and how you were just telling me that right after it you said you would never do it again, but now it's been days, and so you're already planning your next one. What did you actually do?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Oh my gosh. Uh we took a crew on my boat to enter the Swift Shore Race uh 2026. And that's a very famous yacht race that goes from Victoria in British Columbia um all the way out to the Pacific Ocean and back in one day. Um, and we were the underdog crew because most of them are professional mariners, so most of us didn't know how to sell five years ago. So that was ambitious. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

I love the ambition. Okay, so that's like your fun creative. We'll talk about probably more about that. But what do you actually do that pays for the sailboat, right? What's your day job?

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Uh my day job, I have uh two hats. I'm the founder and the CEO of Adaptics, which is a tech company that I founded 10 years ago. And uh my other hat I wear is I am uh attending uh pediatric anesthesiologist uh and a professor at Seattle Children's University of Washington.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Which we just love and thank you so much for taking care of all of our babies. Yeah, that's a great job. Uh tell us though, what AdapEx actually does, because I've seen demos, it's pretty badass. So yeah, tell tell the world.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Oh my gosh. So we wanted to operationalize a concept that's been floating out there for about 20 years. So um about 2009, uh Friedman, Charles Friedman, a very famous bioinformaticist, said uh in his uh I'm just gonna condense into 30 seconds if you take a human being, a clinician, and some data or informatics, that human being will perform better than a human being by themselves. Now, so this was the concept. And then it's since then uh been that was published in 2009, and that seemed very obvious to me at the time. Uh, yes, with with some more data and some more inputs, I can perform better. But in 2010, when we, you know, just uh just before we founded Adaptics, it was it there was nothing on the market that let clinicians actually use the data we spend all day putting into the electronic medical record. So by 2010, we have 100% digitization of healthcare records essentially. It's like, well, what okay, so we're putting it in. What about what Friedman was talking about? How do we actually use it? And there was uh rather than kind of describing theorems, I wanted to build something that actually brought this to life, and that's what we have been doing for the last 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Yep, and I've seen demos, it's pretty fascinating what you can do and how you can really with data motivate clinicians to do better. Not that they're bad, right? Um, but but do better and putting it up against their peers, right? To see how one peer might have optimized the whole process and didn't tell anybody, and so now this puts it up against the peers, and they're like, Oh, you've been doing it, and it's actually easier to do it that way, and so it helps them learn as well.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

There is infinite variability, clinical variability. You can turn up to any hospital in this country or in the world, and your care is totally predicated on who happens to be working that evening or that day, and uh and we've normalized this clinical variation as in the we even give it a name, the art of medicine, right? So um I I I'd like to see less art and more math. And so can we now so would we as patients, actually? Right. These were unknowable when we were charting on pencil and paper. This was this this was unknowable. So you just had to trust anecdote and guts. Now you can apply math to it, and you have data and informatics to it. We should be able to see, hey, what actually works, and can we translate that to a system-wide um kind of standardization optimization? And it just it's not a one-off standardization, it's like, well, what's great today? Well, what how do you make it better tomorrow? So it actually embodies the complete essence of continuous improvement.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

I love it, I love it. All right, we're jumping over to some icebreakers. Are you ready? Are you nervous? You know how I get, you know I am. You're probably nervous. All right. Um, we want to know your summer personality, Mr. Dan. Is it beach, mountain, lake, or city? Uh ocean. Ocean? Oh, yeah, we don't have ocean in there, right? Beach, beach. We have beach, we have beach. Okay, yeah, yeah. Okay. Um, what song, especially as an anesthesiologist, I would I know you listen to music when you're in the moir. So what song would be your soundtrack to your leadership journey right now?

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Oh my gosh, you're gonna laugh and please don't uh ridicule me, but it's from the Moana movie, How Far I'll Go.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

And the line from it is exactly I see I see the line from the sky who meets the sea, it calls me. Um, I can't sing. Uh, but uh it's also the soundtrack going through my head when I'm kind of helming the boat, but uh it embodies the you know, if you know the Moana story, and I know you have daughters, so you've probably seen this uh movie. Um they are told by the whole village and her father, don't go beyond the reef. It's very, very safe inside the reef. And she wants to take her boat beyond the reef because there is something where in the distance, and if only she could get there. Yeah. So anyway, so that is uh you know, there's an entrepreneurship uh and a leadership and um a risk-taking um calling um that made that made her do that.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Absolutely. She would have been an entrepreneur in our world now, right? She would have totally had her own billion-dollar company, I'm sure. Yeah, and she rescues the village, it's awesome. So, what is one thing people would be surprised to learn about you? I already gave up your sailing, so you're gonna have to think of something else.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Oh, um, I'm a martial arts instructor and I've been uh training for 47, yeah, 46 years.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

So don't mess with you, is what you're saying. Well, we'd be it'll be fun. What what form or what kind? I know there's lots out there and nothing about martial arts.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Uh well, uh the last you know 15 years I've been practicing Aikido, and before that, uh for 20 years I've uh I was uh uh practicing judo. So I've blended and they're they're cousins of each other. So uh they have now six I think I'm still learning, but I've I think I've successfully blended the two arts.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Blended the two? Okay, okay. Um I want to know your very first job.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Sixteen years old. I was an uh untrained auxiliary nurse, uh uh assistants in a nursing home uh around Cambridge where I grew up. And this is at the time when I told my parents that I might want to go to med school, and my mum, who had trained as a nurse for a part of her life, said, Well, if you want to do that, you have to really um be okay with taking care of people. So go do this pretty difficult job.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Yeah, but the retirees, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Yeah, um and to date, um, that is the hardest job I've done. Uh, I think it's the toughest mentally and also physical job I've ever done. Um, and I did that for a couple years uh uh high school and also put myself, you know, help put myself through med school while I was doing that.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

And you stuck around, even after all the cheek pinchers you hung out with.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

I'm uh I'm in the process of getting my puppy certified to go into the retirement homes. And I'm like, you don't know about the cheek pinchers, buddy. They're gonna get you can like be covered in all the red lipstick, you know. All right, leadership and career. So we're switching over. What's one challenge that shaped you as a leader today?

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Um, I grew up in England. Uh I grew up in Cambridge, uh, and um my folks, my parents were immigrants um from Hong Kong and men in China from rural China. Um I think I was one of the I was in a minority. Um I was the only non-white um kid in my school, and my parents were the only non-professionals, yeah. Everyone else was in Cambridge, everyone else was an academic. My dad ran a restaurant. Um, so I had this kind of uh underdog story uh that kind of was pretty pervasive through my life um growing up, and I think that really shaped how I thought about myself and the world. Um my I credit my dad to a lot, he's passed away now, but he he was very much of the mindset, hey, you you can you should be able to do anything and you should be able to change the world because look where I've come and look where I came from, and you've got a much bigger step up than I had. And so I want you to finish school. We're the first in our generation to go to college, go go make something of your lives, go make the world a better place.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

And how long ago did he pass?

SPEAKER_01 10:24

About six years ago.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

So he's he saw what you're doing and what you accomplished. So he's very proud of you then. Yeah, yeah, he didn't. Yeah. Oh, that's good. I love that he got to see. Okay, um, let's see. What advice would you give your younger self when entering into healthcare or even onto the IT realm when you jumped over?

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Uh I think I would have done it um with more confidence. Um, you know, coming from this, you know, um you know, coming coming from the place I came from, um, I was told again from by my dad, and he was he was right. He said, You're gonna have to work twice as hard and be twice as good to get a seat at the table. Um and he he wasn't wrong. Um and that's part of the reason I I you know I I moved uh as a breath of fresh air when I moved from uh England over to the United States. Um sudden suddenly the the the breath of fresh air was moving to the Pacific Northwest. I'm suddenly in an operating room where um I'm not a cultural outlier anymore. There is the the highly trained Asian physician is not an anomaly.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Yeah, it makes a difference.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Uh and you know, and I think that was the it was a professional kind of like the calculated professional risk as it's gonna work. Uh it turns out to be the best possible thing I could have done. Um, I couldn't have imagined starting a spin-up, uh uh you know, spinning up a startup from scratch in the UK. Um that I don't think that would have happened in a million years, but here we are, and again, you know, the the startup uh ecosystem in the Pacific Northwest and also North America is just a very, very different place. And you have access to um, you know, um venture capital in a way that you don't really see in the UK.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Yeah, yeah. And I think there's a lot of bluebird leaders out there as females, right, feel very similar to having a seat at the table and being nervous to speak up, and you know, that's sort of what we're what we're all all about helping. Um all right, besides sailing, because we know that you love to sail, what else do you do outside of work that recharges you?

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Oh, I've already got into a couple of things. I uh got injured. I got injured in January. Um, and I was in in January, I was actually for almost two weeks, I was unable to walk and um lost my ability to stand or even sit. So I had a a disc turnation. You did something silly like walk. Yeah, no, I I did something on the boat. I actually uh hernia did a uh L5 S1 disc and um and I was determined to get better for this swift shore last weekend. So uh you know, huge credit to UW Medicine and huge credit to my physiotherapist who got me there and pretty much back. Um, but I in doing so, part of that recovery journey, I discovered flotation float tanks, like uh sensory deprivation float. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Um not just on a physical, but also on a emotional and um kind of like you know, self you know regulatory, calm down, healing, and yeah, lying in concentrated ebbs and salts is actually good for you as well. Uh acupuncture and um cupping. So I've I've had a various, I've had this regimen of uh complementary therapies, which uh I was pretty skeptical about, but um see I now I as an athlete go to them all the time.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

I buy into that woo. Um I also buy into um the just going and getting oxygen or ivy uh vitamins, but yeah, the acupuncture, the cupping. I have a guy here locally, um, and I literally will call him and I'm like, my right hip is killing me when I'm running. I need you to fix it. And I as I'm leaving a message, I'm like, but I know you're gonna tell me it's my left pinky toe. So can you just and it will? It's always like all this medicine that he's like studied, like he has saved me so many times. Um, so good. I'm glad you found. Uh and my husband gets a massage once a month, and he comes back with like looks like aliens just like got us back.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Um you've been wrestling with an octopus, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:51

So yeah, octopus. Yeah, definitely. Okay. Um, what does success look like for you this season?

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Oh my gosh. Uh this season, and I'm I presume you're referring to a season of life, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Um Yeah, well, like no, more like like this, like 2026, 2027. Like, what is success in the like you know, this in the future, like near future.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

I think of buckets. Uh I want to make sure my family's okay. I want to make sure so my k my youngest kid's about to go to college, so she she's uh she's about to launch to do a BFA in Merrimount, Manhattan, and study musical theater. I need to see her launched and happy and successful and do all the things from a professional point of view. Um, I just got promoted to full professor at University of Washington, so that's that's nice. It's been congratulations. Thank you, career aim for a while. Um, and then Adaptics, um, I just want to see that blossom. Um, we have, you know, we have a small but mighty team. Uh, we have incredibly um supportive um VCs who've kind of taken us from a fledgling company to where we are now. And we're at the cusp of um engaging with a couple of very large healthcare systems. I can't talk too much about them, but uh that that will come out. Don't check that uh when we do. And and I think that really puts us on the map, which is uh, and it's it's interesting. This year, 2026, is exactly 17 years after Charles Friedman published his theorem that informatics and and clinicians should perform better than clinicians. And what do we know about medicine? From knowing something at the bedside or publishing something to actually it actually happening is 17 years.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

So I think so slow, so ridiculously slow.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Yeah, everything takes 17 years from knowing something and concretely describing it to actually putting it into practice is 17 years in healthcare, and and we're we're at the end of a and now, you know, with a you know, I'm you know, a little older, a little bit more gray hair. I can I can see that I can zoom out and go, this is just a cycle that we're going through, and we're coming to the cycle where where we have developed technology and methodology that actually operationalizes what someone thought about 17 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

So what you're saying is you're gonna blow up now that you're at like this or close to the 17-year mark, and so we need to all know where to buy stock.

unknown 17:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Uh uh.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. You're a physician, but we've also been asking non-physicians, how do you handle burnout or when you're overwhelmed? What do you do that like brings you back to your center?

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Um, so burnout for physicians is uh a unique um phenomenon. I used to not I used to not believe in it, honestly. Um 10 years ago or 15 years ago, I didn't believe in it. It's like, what are you talking about? We work here, it's like the Disney World of Hospitals. We get to save babies' lives. I mean, like, is this the most fulfilling thing ever? Yeah. And what I didn't realize at the time, and it kind of is A, it creeps up on you. Um, and B, it's like a, and someone described it very accurately, like um, like a cell phone battery that doesn't quite charge up, right? So you plug it in at night, it charges up, but it but by 10 a.m. you're down to 60%. We go, well, I barely used it, right? And then you know, a few months later, by 9 a.m. you're down to 50%. So you charge up, but it depletes quicker. So that's and so I was experiencing that. My antidote for burnout um was two things. Number one is do less clinical work. Um, the clinical work is actually takes there's a human cost. I'm a uh I'm a huge fan of the the TV show The Pit, um, because that really, really speaks to the heart of you know what it's like to be a frontline provider at the sharp edge. Um and the human cost. There is a absolute, I I I fully I now fully acknowledge there's a human cost to it uh of doing this work. And so by doing a little less and finding uh, you know, I'm very f I feel I feel very fortunate that I have this other job that I've created that I can fill my time uh and energy with um and still continue to practice. Every time I halved the number of hours I did clinically, I felt twice as good about the work. Um one of the things about yeah, you're you are yeah, you yeah, you have to give yourself some breathing space. And so all this um all the other stuff is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, right? This wellness stuff, this going puppy yoga, you know, you know, you know, tea for the soul. I mean, they're all great, but it's really rearranging the deck chairs in the Titanic, and as you fundamentally change your life, um you will carry on down this path. Um so I think meaningful social connection, uh, the people are is what keeps you going, and the mission, uh being able to see that the work connecting the work. I mean, unfortunately in healthcare, it's pretty easy to connect those dots. You know, you I always you know came home, told my children, I said, you can have a good day, you can have a bad day. And some days are easier than others, but at the end of the day, you come home, you know you've done another human being or a bunch of human beings some good. You've shown kindness and empathy and compassion, and don't take that for granted. Most many jobs don't give you that many opportunities to to those acts of service. Um, and I think that's sometimes we lose uh the forest from the trees.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Yeah, yeah. It's hard to teach the little ones to not take things for granted right now, right? Like I feel like they're just spoiled. Like don't so what I actually did this year is my oldest is going into eighth grade. I'm sending her to Girl Scout camp where there's no tech allowed for a whole week. I'm like, you need to go hug some trees, like just like zen out and enjoy being 13 because I wish I was 13 again. Oh, yeah. Um, okay. What is it about the bluebird leaders community that means something to you? How has it maybe changed you? I know you spoke on our stage at SOAR last year and you got to see the conference. Yeah. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Well, uh well, first of all, thank you for inviting me last year. And I I didn't I went in not really knowing what to expect, and thank you for inviting me back uh this year. And um it was a breath of fresh air. I go to a lot of conferences. Uh I have been to many, and uh and Blueboes was different. And I think what was different was um well, just walking in the warmth and energy of the room as you walk in is just different. The level of connection um and the depth of the conversations, they go much more. You know, I'm I you can't tell, maybe you can't tell from this podcast. I have a little ADHD and uh I I don't You're an entrepreneur, of course you do. I'm quite scurable. And the the this kind of superficial chit chat, hi, how are you? I'm doing fine, busy. I I just find it Exhausting. Um and and what struck me about the conversations we had at Bluebirds, just you know, in between the sessions, during the sessions, you know, in the you know, in the networking events, um it was uh quantitatively different. And they went the conversations went deeper and more authentic and than um I've ever experienced. And it wasn't just one or two, it was a whole bunch. And I thought, wow. And then also the intent, um, the intent it wasn't about you know, you you go to many conferences and it's all about look how brilliant I am and uh look what um I've done or my company or my team is doing, and can I sell you this thing? And it it wasn't it was very little of that. It was hey, what do you do? Genuinely curious, how can I help you? And it was like Wow, so Rebecca, you created a community of people who actually want to lift people up um rather than compete against them. And I think, wow, and that that's what makes the world go round, and we need to see more of that. And it's no coincidence that the vast majority of the audience in the leadership are women. I think that's the magic ingredient.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Um yeah, it was lonely at the top being, you know, uh, you know, a very young CIO and now a you know, uh entrepreneur and females. It's lonely, but how do we just I feel like I tell people I just set the tone for bluebird leaders, like be authentic, like I tackle hug everybody, you know that, and and like just be yourself. And there's enough food at the table for everybody to be successful. Um, and and I also I still handpick everybody that goes on my stage. And so you know I was at a different event having dinner with you right next to it at the table. Two hours later, I loved your energy, your everything you were giving off. And I'm like, and I need you to speak on my stage. And that's how it happens. Like, you know, some people call me and like, I want to speak on your stage, and it's gonna cost you 20 grand because I'm so great. And I'm like, you're not for bluebird. You're just you're not for bluebird. I need to feel what energy and vibe you're giving off to make sure you're the right, the right fit. So you're a perfect fit as a male ally, and we're so happy to have you.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Well, thank you. I'm uh honored to be there again this year. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Yeah, wait, black and gold gala. So get ready. Get ready.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Don't wear your pink dress, it's black and gold this year.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Black and gold. Um I might need your tips on the PJ party.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Oh, actually, so we have PJ pants for sale on our swag store, and there's black, black, black and white ones too. Um, you're able to buy the pink ones, but then we actually have a sponsor that's um sponsoring kimonos for everybody. Okay. We have fun, you know that. We don't just like do this boring conference shit. Like, we've got to have fun. So the reception isn't isn't a rep cocktail reception, it's a PJ party. Like we're yeah. Um, all right, we're gonna end with some summer rapid fire questions. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Hear me.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Coffee or tea?

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Coffee.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Sunrise or sunset?

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Sunset.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Sunset. Your favorite summer snack.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Uh okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Oh, good choice. Uh tuna, tuna or salmon. Salmon. And trees. Oh, you like both. Oh, yeah. Okay. What is the last thing that you binge watched?

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Uh the pit season two.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

The pit season two. I need to start. All right, I'm gonna start that one. When you are flying, are you a window seat or an aisle seat? Oh, aisle seat all the way. Everyone's aisle so far. Okay. One word, one word that describes your leadership style.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Uh uh hyphenated feedback loops.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Feedback, okay. Um, and your favorite vacation that you've ever taken?

SPEAKER_01 26:01

Uh oh, um, tough one. Uh, I think I was uh 22 and I took a month off at the end of medical school, and I had a thousand-mile bike ride over 30 days that took me from uh to Wassen. And I I rode over to Vancouver Island and ended in Tefino. And then when I got there, I had to ride back uh through Vancouver, up to Whistler, through the interior, uh back to Chemloops and then so that was uh a life-changing bike ride. It was 31 days and about a thousand miles solo um before we had cell phones, so no one knew where I was.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

So I love it. You're such a breath of fresh air and so fun to talk to. I could talk to you forever, but I am coming on your boat sometime. I am taking you up on that because that will be so much fun.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

You have an open invite and it won't be anything um um life-threatening, I promise. We'll do laps around the lake, have a cocktail, eat a hot dog.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

All right, sounds good. All right, thank you so much for being on our bluebird leaders flight path brought to you by efex.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Thank you very much, Rebecca.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Thank you.