Women Clinicians Reshaping Healthcare

Some of that change will be driven by a growing force in frontline care: female clinicians. This blog explains their role and how women clinician leaders are shaping healthcare innovation. We also spotlight some venture-backed healthtech innovators and hear from some female clinicians who have become healthcare leaders about their transition.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

The Role of Women Clinicians in Healthcare

Telemedicine is re-inventing how patients access care, including via remote consultations and monitoring, while AI and data analytics are impacting how healthcare providers diagnose diseases, personalize treatments, and improve outcomes. This revolution is not only reshaping how healthcare is delivered but also empowering patients to take control of their health like never before. As the healthcare ecosystem evolves — driven by a shared commitment to improving quality, access, and affordability — we foresee a new era of innovation, collaboration, and patient-centered care.

Clinicians play a pivotal role in the healthcare revolution. As frontline caregivers, staff such as physicians and nurses possess invaluable insights into the complexities of patient care, healthcare delivery, and clinical workflows. Their leadership is essential for implementing innovative practices, embracing tech advancements, and fostering continuous improvement. Clinicians are uniquely positioned to advocate for patient-centered care, promote interdisciplinary collaboration, and champion evidence-based practices that enhance quality and safety.

In significant numbers, women clinicians will at the forefront of change. Today 77% of the U.S. healthcare workforce is female.

These 16 million women excel in clinical roles, accounting for 83% of nurses, 76% of therapists, and 37% of physicians.

However, despite their contributions to healthcare, women are underrepresented in leadership roles. A recent study found that women hold only 25% of leadership positions in the healthcare industry. Even though they are a minority, that 25% includes women clinicians leading innovation at some of the most influential healthcare organizations in the county, including:

• Airica Steed, former nurse, and current CEO of MetroHealth System
• Dr. Toyin Ajayi, family medicine physician and co-founder of CityBlock Health
• Colleen Lindholz, former pharmacist, and current president of Kroger Health, and
• Karen DeSalvo, internal medicine physician serving as the current Chief Health Officer at Google.

Furthermore, women clinicians are venturing into adjacent industries such as consulting and venture capital, leveraging their clinical expertise to drive innovation. Examples include:

• Kulleni Gebreyes serves as the US Consulting Health Sector Leaders and Director of the Health Equity Institute at Deloitte Consulting
• Pooja Kumar serves as the global leader for McKinsey’s Health Institute, and
• Alice Zhang serves as principal for RH Capital.

At AV, we have long recognized and backed female leaders in healthcare. These women were what inspired AV’s newly launched Women’s Fund, where we will increase our support in both female leaders and their ventures. Read on to learn more about some of AV’s portcos founded by women clinicians.

Spotlight on AV’s Clinician-Led Portfolio Companies

Clinician to Entrepreneur

For more perspective on the clinician’s role in innovation, we interviewed Caralynn Collens of Dimension Inx and Colleen Hilton of Alli Connect about their motivations for transitioning from clinician to entrepreneur, plus their obstacles, achievements, and advice for other aspiring clinician-entrepreneurs.

Q: Can you share your journey from being a bedside clinician to becoming the CEO of a healthcare startup?

Caralynn Collens, Dimension Inx

I got the entrepreneurial bug during medical school. I had taken a year sabbatical to get my MBA when I took a course on commercializing technology. I was hooked. I saw an opportunity to have an outsized impact on patients by bringing novel treatments to market, and so I started my first company — a gene therapy company in oncology. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it through the 2008 financial crisis, but the experience taught me a great deal and put me on the path I am on today.

Colleen Hilton, Alli Connect

If you had asked me when I became a clinician if I would be in business, I would have never guessed, but now I am a 2x founder in mental health. My career was purely clinical for the first 10+ years, working in private practice and providing organizational consulting to police and fire departments around first responder mental health, trauma, and critical incident response.

In 2016, I made my move into business when I bootstrapped my first company, Acuity Counseling, following a divorce that left me financially unable to support my young children on a clinician’s wages. That company was successfully acquired in 2021 and at the time had scaled to be the largest privately held, out-patient group of clinics in Washington state.

Before Acuity was acquired, I started what would become Alli Connect. Driven by the learnings and innovation that made my first company a success, I sought to infuse manual processes into technology to again create greater impact at scale. We developed the first intelligent patient-provider matching, leveraging machine learning and proprietary processes to focus on patient outcomes (rather than availability), resulting in improved matching from 19% to 88% success!

Q: Was there a particular moment or experience during your clinical practice that inspired your startup?

Colleen Hilton, Alli Connect

It was really a combination of things, centering around the ability to use data for good to improve clinical outcomes for patients, allow providers to have a greater impact for people they are best suited to serve, and compensate providers more equitability as compared to other medical professionals. Mental health specifically has been behind the curve in the use of measurement-based care and data.

As a result, it’s difficult to track effectiveness in treatment, and all providers get normalized to the lowest common denominator. Continuing this thread, it leads to fewer and fewer people moving into the profession (it’s not financially feasible). That contributes to the provider shortage — causing heavier caseloads for those that are in the profession, which negatively impacts patient outcomes….and on and on it goes.

By using data to track outcomes and effectiveness, then feeding that back into the front end of the system (at patient-provider match), we can create a flywheel of positive impacts that acts as a rising tide for everyone involved. Patients get better outcomes, providers lean into the passion populations and are more effective, compensation can be based on the real value a provider brings (not time), and so on. You can easily see how this shift could have a tremendous ripple effect on our whole system and society.

What were some of the initial hurdles you faced when transitioning from a clinician to an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome them?

Caralynn Collens, Dimension Inx

The initial challenges stemmed from the fact that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. However, I think this is where being a clinician became an advantage; my training taught me how to ask questions and problem solve. So that’s what I did. I spoke with anyone who would talk with me about starting a biotech company — entrepreneurs, executives, investors, lawyers, other service providers. I was fortunate to benefit from the generosity of so many people who were willing to share their experiences and help me on my journey.

Colleen Hilton, Alli Connect

Knowledge and education were initially huge hurdles. Despite having a graduate degree and many years of experience, the mental health field has historically largely been based on ‘feels’ not business strategy. A perfect illustration of this is how grad school teaches the clinical skills needed but not a single class focuses on the business side of running a practice ,despite this being the goal for the vast majority of students.

I was fortunate to have mentors that were successful in various areas of business, who shared their expertise with me and who pointed me to other experts I could learn from. I read books, listened to podcasts, and generally soaked up as much information about marketing, product, sales, and entrepreneurship as I could — making many mistakes along the way but always focusing on the end goal and my own resilience.

Q: How do you balance the clinical aspects of your background with the business side of running a startup?

Colleen Hilton, Alli Connect

I believe these two aspects are well aligned in a healthcare startup. Doing the right thing from a provider perspective often begets the best outcomes for the business. Some people think we should not make money in healthcare, but I believe building a healthy business allows us to do more good.

Q. Can you share a success story or milestone that your startup has achieved in improving healthcare outcomes or patient experiences?

Caralynn Collens, Dimension Inx

We just launched our first product last fall: a 3D-printed regenerative bone graft for facial reconstruction. It has now been used in nearly 50 patients to treat bony defects in the lower face due to congenital malformations, trauma, or aging. In addition to forming new bone, a key characteristic of this product is its unique handling and surgical friendliness. We are pleased that the feedback from our launch surgeons has been very encouraging so far.

Colleen Hilton, Alli Connect

Alli Connect went live with a new fire department just before Labor Day weekend last year. Less than 24 hours after launch, we provided intervention to a firefighter whose wife was suicidal. The family had been struggling for four years with depression and suicidal ideation. The firefighter had never engaged with the department resources as he didn’t want anyone to know. Additionally, he had lost his brother to suicide three years prior. He reached out to us, and within 2 hours on a holiday weekend, we got them directed to the right care. Our technology and team is literally saving lives!

Q: What advice would you give to other clinicians who are considering starting their own healthcare-focused companies?

Colleen Hilton, Alli Connect

Startups are not for the faint of heart, and having the right co-founder makes all the difference. Find a co-founder who complements your clinical skill sets, someone who brings something entirely different to the team. From my own experience, partnering with my co-founder Richard Kasperowski, who is a technical expert, was the inflection point for our company.

Supporting Women Clinicians Re-inventing Healthcare

The healthcare industry stands at the threshold of a transformative era, propelled by technological innovation and a commitment to patient-centered care. Women clinicians, comprising a significant majority of the healthcare workforce, are poised to lead this revolution, leveraging their expertise to drive innovation and shape the future of healthcare delivery.

Despite excelling in clinical roles, women remain underrepresented in leadership positions. However, a cohort of visionary women are now leading innovation in prominent healthcare organizations, driving change across sectors from mental health support for first responders to regenerative medicine. At AV, we recognize the immense potential of ventures led by women clinicians and are dedicated to supporting and amplifying their voices in healthcare innovation.

This communication is from Alumni Ventures, a for-profit venture capital company that is not affiliated with or endorsed by any school. It is not personalized advice, and AV only provides advice to its client funds. This communication is neither an offer to sell, nor a solicitation of an offer to purchase, any security. Such offers are made only pursuant to the formal offering documents for the fund(s) concerned, and describe significant risks and other material information that should be carefully considered before investing. For additional information, please see here. Venture capital investing involves substantial risk, including risk of loss of all capital invested. This communication includes forward-looking statements, generally consisting of any statement pertaining to any issue other than historical fact, including without limitation predictions, financial projections, the anticipated results of the execution of any plan or strategy, the expectation or belief of the speaker, or other events or circumstances to exist in the future. Forward-looking statements are not representations of actual fact, depend on certain assumptions that may not be realized, and are not guaranteed to occur. Any forward-looking statements included in this communication speak only as of the date of the communication. AV and its affiliates disclaim any obligation to update, amend, or alter such forward-looking statements, whether due to subsequent events, new information, or otherwise.