I spent years as a medical doctor thinking my only option was to keep climbing the clinical ladder.

Then I started building things on the side. Then I co-founded BiteLabs. Then I watched hundreds of clinicians do what I did, take the leap into healthtech, and most of them were terrified before they did it and fine after.

I've been on both sides of this. I'm still a clinical radiology registrar in the NHS. Prior to that, I scaled BiteMedicine to 250,000+ users and now as co-founder of BiteLabs, I’ve helped 20+ clinicians move into roles at companies like Flo Health, Accurx, Skin Analytics, Numan, Doccla and Heidi. One of our fellows just had his company acquired. Others have raised over £10M in funding. Most just wanted a job that felt worth getting up for.

So here is what actually works, based on what I have seen.

Here is the thing most clinicians get wrong before they even apply for anything. They assume companies want them for their clinical knowledge. And yes, that is part of it. But that is not the main reason.

The main reason is that clinicians understand the problem from the inside.

A doctor who has spent years frustrated by a broken referral pathway, a clunky EPR system, or a ward round that runs two hours late because of admin failures understands that problem at a depth no product manager without clinical experience ever will. And when you are trying to build something that fixes it, that understanding is worth a lot.

The companies hiring the most clinicians right now are building clinical AI tools, ambient scribing products, clinical decision support systems, patient communication platforms, workforce technology and remote monitoring. Most of them are still trying to build for users they do not fully understand.

You are that user. That is the advantage. Yes, being a clinician ‘alone’ may not be enough. Added experience in building and shipping products, validating problems, or a data or start-up background would all be valuable as adjuncts. But ultimately, a combination of your clinical and subject matter expertise, alongside your understanding of the problem, are the foundations of your career in tech.

One of the most common things I hear from clinicians thinking about this move is that they assume the only way in is through a clinical advisory role. This is wrong, and it can actually hold you back.

Advisory roles are often relatively poorly paid (in the UK), or even worse, unpaid(!) They keep you on the edge of a company rather than embedded in it. They can of course get your foot in the door, but only if you can really leverage it and ensure you don’t undersell yourself.

Here are the roles where I’ve seen clinicians build strong careers as employees. Remember, most hiring managers and ATS systems are looking for candidates that can be ‘pigeon-holed’ easily into specific roles. Whilst clinicians are fantastic generalists, but the earlier you decide which direction you see yourself going - product, operations, commercial, partnerships - the better.

Clinical Product Manager

This is the role most BiteLabs alumni end up in, and it has the clearest career trajectory of any role in the sector. A clinical PM owns a product or feature. They work with engineering, design and commercial teams to decide what gets built and why. Your clinical background is directly useful because you understand the user and the workflow better than anyone else in the room. Your experience managing and communicating with patients, contributing to MDTs and breaking bad news to relatives means that your ability to break down complex concepts into simple, digestible ones is second to none. And that’s remarkably valuable as a PM.

You do not need a technical background. You need to be able to think clearly about problems, communicate across teams and understand what a clinician (or any user) actually needs when they are using a product.

Clinical Operations

A clinical operations role in digital health bridges clinical workflows with technology, focusing on implementing digital tools, such as telehealth platforms, remote monitoring devices, and software as a medical devices (SaMD), into clinical practice. You manage the deployment, adoption, and regulatory compliance of digital tools to improve patient care, workflow efficiency, and data collection. Most clinicians are diligent and organised individuals with a keen eye for detail, skills that are paramount for an ops role.

Clinical Safety Officer

Most digital health companies involve (or should involve) a Clinical Safety Officer in the work that they do when developing a clinical product, particularly if it is a SaMD. There is a significant shortage of qualified CSOs, and the demand is growing fast as AI products enter the NHS at scale. If you are UK-based, this is one of the most in-demand roles in the market right now. One of our alums, Dr Tom Bradshaw, has actually gone on to develop one of the UK’s most successful CSO consulting firms, BMS Digital Safety, directly due to this demand.

Commercial and Sales

Selling a clinical product to clinicians is much easier if you are one. Several alumni have moved into commercial roles and found their background gave them immediate credibility in customer conversations that colleagues without clinical training simply did not have. In the US especially, this is a well-trodden path.

Consulting

Many clinicians go freelance or consulting before committing to a full-time role. This can mean advising startups on clinical validity, supporting regulatory submissions, or acting as a subject matter expert for a product team. Our Clinic to Consulting session covers exactly how this works in practice from clinicians who have done it.

Founder

An increasing number of clinicians are not joining healthtech companies. They are starting them. Dr Ben Turner was a surgical trainee completing a PhD at Imperial when he built Automedica. Two years after joining BiteLabs, his company was acquired by Heidi, a clinical AI platform valued at approximately £500 million. Read his full story here.

If you look at job listings for clinical roles, a few things come up repeatedly.

The ability to communicate across disciplines. Explaining a clinical problem clearly to an engineer who has never worked in a hospital is a skill. Most clinicians have it but do not realise they have it, because they have never been asked to use it that way. As Jason Spinney, Ex-Head of Talent at HeliosX and now Head of Talent at BiteLabs, put it in our recruiter's playbook session: "Having clinicians that bring [their communication skills] really is what this space right now is starving for."

Some comfort around data. You do not need to be a data scientist. Understanding what a dataset can and cannot tell you, knowing how to read basic statistics, and being willing to learn some Python or SQL at a basic level will make you significantly more hireable than a clinician who has avoided all of this. Or a clinician who simply has no desire to lean; that’s always a red flag for any hire.

Evidence of challenging the status quo. Quality improvement projects. Research paperS. Side projects. App prototypes. Anything that shows you have thought about problems outside of direct patient care and done something about it. After training hundreds of fellows, we know that the biggest positive predictor of success as a clinician transitioning into tech is ‘evidence of challenging the status quo’. The wackier the idea, the better. I refer to this as the ‘season of the idea person’. Remember the time when people would say ‘ideas are cheap’? Well, for the first time in history, building is cheaper and faster than ever. You can spin-up an MVP over a week. Ideas are everything. Just go out and build something, post it on LinkedIn, share it on Reddit, place it on ProductHunt. Show that you have a bias towards action, rather than cold applying to hundreds of roles on LinkedIn. This proactiveness, alongside building a brand for yourself on Linkedin, will make you stand out so much. Before you know it, recruiters and hiring managers will start reaching out to you. I’ve seen this play out dozens of times.

Adaptability. Healthtech companies move fast. Priorities change week to week. The NHS does not work that way, and some clinicians find the shift difficult. Companies know this and screen for it. Going in with an honest understanding of how different the environment is will work in your favour. Therefore, being comfortable with ambiguity is key. You won’t know all the answers, you won’t have an evidence-base to necessarily rely on and there won’t be a protocol or nice flowchart for what you’re building. If that sounds scary, I get it. If it sounds scary but insanely exciting, better.

Waiting until they feel ready.

There is no point at which you will feel ready. The clinicians who make this move successfully are almost universally the ones who started before they felt qualified to. Ben describes building his first app as just messing around with GPT-4 and a surgeon who still used paper forms. It was not polished. It did not need to be.

Undervaluing clinical experience.

Many clinicians assume they need to completely retrain before they are worth anything to a healthtech company. The opposite is usually true. Your clinical years are the thing that makes you genuinely useful. The basic technical skills are learnable quickly. The clinical judgment is not.

> Lauren Curtis, a pharmacist turned Senior Product Manager at Parachute Health, said it well in our HealthTech Roles for Clinicians session: "Having experience and having had the title before are not necessarily the same thing. Clinicians are doing project management every day."

Not building anything.

You do not need to build a company. But building something - a prototype, a tool, even a spreadsheet that automates something annoying - demonstrates that you can validate a problem and translate a problem into a solution. That is the fundamental skill every healthtech company is looking for.

Networking without a specific ask.

Reaching out to people at healthtech companies with a vague message about being interested in the space rarely leads anywhere. Reaching out with a specific question, a specific problem you have spotted, or a specific role you have seen advertised is much more likely to get a response.

In my experience, you do not need to ask for permission to do things. You just need to do them.

Step 1: Decide which role you actually want.

Product management, clinical partnerships, safety, commercial and founding are all different paths with different skill requirements. Explore videos in the BiteLabs library or on YouTube to gain an understanding of what these various roles involve and whether they meet your skillsets and interests. Pick one to focus on first. Diffuse applications to everything lead nowhere.

Step 2: Build something or get involved in something real.

A fellowship, a side project, a vibe-coded and shipped MVP, a volunteer advisory role at a startup. It does not have to be impressive. It has to be real, specific and quantifiable. Every interviewer at a healthtech company will ask "tell me about a time you worked outside of clinical medicine" and you need an answer.

Our 8-week fellowship is designed specifically for this. You get hands-on project work with real companies, mentorship from 250+ industry leaders, and access to the network that leads to roles. You do not need to take time out of clinical work to do it.

Step 3: Learn the language.

Product thinking, agile methodology, user research, clinical safety standards, NHS procurement. You do not need to be an expert. You need to know enough to have a credible conversation. Most of this is learnable in a few weeks.

Step 4: Get in the room.

Healthtech hiring at the junior to mid level is heavily network-driven. As Derek Khor, founder of the Medical Consulting Group, noted in our healthtech consulting session: "80% of the healthtech roles are never really advertised. They actually go through internal referrals."

Events, fellowships, communities and accelerators exist to create the connections that lead to jobs. The BiteLabs alumni network includes people at most of the significant UK and US digital health companies. One warm introduction is worth fifty cold applications.

Step 5: Apply before you feel ready.

The job description for a clinical PM role will list fifteen requirements. You will meet eight of them. Apply anyway. Most healthtech companies are hiring for potential and clinical background, not a complete skills match.

Honestly, it varies. Some BiteLabs alumni moved into healthtech roles within weeks of finishing the programme. Others took six to twelve months. A small number built companies that took longer.

The things that speed it up are consistent: having a specific role type in mind, having built something tangible, having a warm introduction into a company, building a brand and network on platforms like Linkedin, and being willing to take a role that is not perfect as a first step.

The thing that slows people down most reliably is waiting for certainty before acting.

Most clinicians who make this move do not leave medicine entirely, at least not at first. The majority of BiteLabs alumni continue some clinical work alongside their healthtech role, particularly early on. This is practically useful because it maintains your clinical credibility, which is part of what makes you valuable to companies.

The identity shift is the harder part. Medicine is one of the few professions that becomes core to who you are. Stepping back from it, even partially, requires a real reckoning with what you valued about clinical work and whether you can find those things elsewhere.

> Dr CK Wang, Chief Medical Officer at Cota Health, described it well in our Physician to CMO session: "I think that's what's on my mind: who are you if you don't practise or exist in that clinical space? I had to answer all those questions for myself."

The clinicians who thrive in healthtech tend to be the ones drawn to medicine by problem solving, learning and impact rather than by the clinical relationship itself. Dr Yath Prem, now a Product Lead at Flo Health after coming through BiteLabs, put it simply in our Built to Scale UK session: "The beauty of being uncomfortable is that when you're uncomfortable, you're going to learn."

And Dr James Foxlee, who went from medical school to building an organisation in the Caribbean focused on healthcare data and trust, probably said it best in the same session: "Being a doctor is your floor, not your ceiling."

No. Most digital health hiring managers will tell you the same thing.

The more nuanced answer is that an MBA provides a structured way to think about business problems and a useful alumni network. But the knowledge it teaches is increasingly available through other means, and the opportunity cost in time and money is significant.

The clinicians who succeed without an MBA tend to be the ones who proactively fill the gaps another way: through fellowships, by working closely with commercial and product colleagues, by building and shipping independently, and by being genuinely curious about parts of the business they do not understand.

If you want structured support for making this move, our UK fellowship and US fellowships are a great place to gain hands-on experience, providing you with a network, practical skills, and experience. Both are part-time and designed to fit around clinical work. You do not need to quit your job to do either.

And if you already know what you want and just need help getting there, our career coaching service works with clinicians one-to-one on exactly this.

How do I get a job in healthtech as a doctor with no industry experience?

Start with a specific role in mind rather than applying broadly. Build something tangible, even if it is small. Get into a room with people already working in the space through a fellowship, event or community. Most healthtech companies hire for clinical background and potential, not a full industry track record.

Do I need to leave clinical medicine to work in healthtech?

No. Most BiteLabs alumni continue some clinical work when they first make the move. Many healthtech companies actively want clinicians who are still practising because it keeps their clinical credibility current.

What is the best way to get into clinical product management as a doctor?

The clearest path is through a fellowship, building and shipping something independently, or hands-on programme that gives you real project experience. Clinical PM roles ask for evidence of product thinking, not just a medical degree. You need to be able to talk about a real problem you worked on and how you approached it.

How long does it take to get a job in healthtech after completing a fellowship?

It varies. Some BiteLabs alumni moved into roles within weeks of finishing the programme. Others took six to twelve months. Having a specific role in mind and a warm introduction into a company are the two biggest factors that speed it up.

Can nurses, pharmacists and AHPs work in healthtech, not just doctors?

Yes. BiteLabs has supported nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists and other allied health professionals to move into healthtech roles. A clinical background from any regulated healthcare profession is valued by companies building products for the NHS and other health systems.

Is the BiteLabs fellowship worth it?

That really depends on what you are looking for. If you want structured exposure to the healthtech industry, real-world project experience with a mentor, weekly workshops teaching you the foundations of digital health as a clinician, access to a network of 250+ people already in the sector, and a pathway into a role or a startup, then yes. It takes time, hard work and commitment; it is not a passive programme. If you simply want to learn about healthtech conceptually, there are definitely cheaper ways to do that. We have written an honest comparison of BiteLabs against other programmes here if it helps.

What companies hire clinicians in healthtech in the UK?

BiteLabs alumni work at companies including Flo Health, Accurx, Skin Analytics, Numan, Doccla, Sanome, Ufonia, Visiba Care, Heidi, AIBODY and many others. The range spans consumer health, clinical AI, workforce technology, remote monitoring and digital therapeutics.

What companies hire clinicians in healthtech in the US?

BiteLabs US alumni have moved into roles at companies including Parachute Health, Candu Health, Bruin Health and others across clinical AI, digital therapeutics, telehealth and health data platforms.

Dr Azeem Alam BEM is a clinical radiology registrar, co-founder of BiteWorld (BiteLabs, BiteMedicine and BitePACES), and Honorary Clinical Research Fellow at Imperial College London. He has trained 200,000+ students through BiteMedicine, and supported 250+ clinicians moving into healthtech roles. He was recognised by His Majesty the Queen with a British Empire Medal for services to healthcare education. He is also a Board Advisor at King's Health Partners Digital Health Hub, Venture Scout at EWOR and on the Investment Committee at Proximo Ventures.

BiteLabs runs digital health fellowships in the UK and US. Applications are open now. Explore the UK fellowship or the US fellowship.