Career options for clinicians outside the NHS — Dr Hardeep Lotay

At BiteLabs, we teach healthcare professionals the skills required to build impactful careers in healthtech. We have been sharing experiences and exclusive tips from some of the amazing clinicians who already work in the field. For those of you new to BiteLabs interested in making a career change, be sure to look over our other posts. In this article, we are exploring Dr. Hardeep Lotay’s journey to his current roles outside of the NHS as a Clinical Development Manager at Re:course AI and a medical content writer. 

Tell us about your role in healthtech. 

I work for an early stage SaaS (software-as-a-service) startup in the growing world of healthtech, and am transitioning into a more formal product management role. Currently, my responsibilities involve:

• Providing a clinical steer to the product (AI simulated patients)
• Product marketing
• Communicating with developers and designers

How and why did you get into it (your current role)?

I had been thinking of pivoting out of clinical medicine, and my engagement with medical writing eventually brought me down a path that lead me to my current role: 

1. I started to guest post on blogs 
2. Built my own website to host a placement diary
3. Engaged with other freelance jobs, one of which was with my current company

How is it related to medicine/nursing/pharmacy etc — why were you suitable?

Healthtech products need clinical expertise. Working with educational products, my experience in medical school, medical teaching, and healthcare environment becomes valuable. Other than my clinical experiences, key skills from medicine aid in my current role: 

• Communication
• Attention-to-detail
• Empathy
• Ability to learn quickly

If you were starting out without any tech experience, how would you go about getting into the field?

I think the best way to do this is to network: I wouldn’t suggest going straight for the CTO of major corporations, but there’s a huge network of healthtech professionals on places like LinkedIn. In short: 

1. Reach out
2. Ask questions
3. Act on the advice

Anything else you’d like to add?

Remember your underlying values and empathy and fight hard to keep hold of that. Ultimately it will benefit you, the business and the users.

Dr. Lotay’s journey into healthtech shows the value of a broad range of experiences (with some luck from serendipitous events). If you’re a clinician (current or former) doing something interesting outside of a traditional career — please get in touch! We’d love to feature you in our next blog.

If you’re looking to start your journey in healthtech, visit bitelabs.io to check out our latest cohorts.