1.What is FPT Software?
FPT Software is the global technology and digital transformation arm of FPT Corporation, headquartered in Vietnam, with roughly $1 billion in revenue and more than 30,000 employees working across 30 countries. It serves over 1,000 clients worldwide, including 91 Fortune Global 500 companies, with deep capability in AI, cloud, data platforms, and hyperautomation. In healthcare specifically, FPT holds the certifications that matter most: HITRUST, HIPAA, ISO 13485, HL7, DICOM which is a big part of why I’ve trusted them with real patient-facing work rather than treating them as a generic offshore vendor. My relationship with FPT is as a mentor and advisor to their healthcare IT and innovation practice, where I’ve worked alongside their teams and they’ve built software for two of my own companies in AI data extraction, medical record and payer system integration as well as highly secure smart controller system for a cardiac pump device.
2. What about FPT’s work and impact makes you the most proud?
What I’m proudest of isn’t a single deliverable, it’s how FPT shows up. Their teams are integrated, communicative, and genuinely empathetic to the client’s position, which is rare in technology partners at their scale. They put the client first from the initial conversation through final delivery, and they have consistently been there when we needed them most, especially during the inevitable challenges every healthcare startup faces with bugs and protocols. FPT has been there with exemplary solutions, integration work, and support. That combination of technical excellence and a collaborative, client-first culture is what makes them a strategic partner rather than a vendor.
3.What is on the horizon for FPT? What’s something exciting people can expect to see from the organization in the near future?
FPT has been explicit that its healthcare focus going forward centers on three areas: smart medical devices, digital health data platforms, and autonomous AI systems. That roadmap lines up exactly with where I think the market is going. As an advisor, what excites me most is watching them push deeper into embedded intelligence at the device level and interoperable data platforms, rather than staying purely in the systems-integration lane. That’s the shift from “IT vendor” to genuine innovation partner, and I think the next couple of years will show real proof points of that.
4.Tell us about your professional journey in the healthcare industry — how did you first get involved, and what led you to mentoring FPT?
I trained as a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist. I spent years doing basic science and clinical research before moving into medical device entrepreneurship. I’ve had three medical technologies that I have built from inception successfully acquired by Medtronic, J&J, and BrainLab. I have taught at some of the leading innovation institutes such as Stanford, Duke, and the University of Melbourne.
Now, I’m focused on running Validare Capital, an early-stage fund focused on AI-native companies in digital health, learning systems, and robotics. That path of clinician, builder, investor is what became the introduction with FPT leadership. As I build companies that need a technology partner capable of moving at startup speed while meeting real regulatory and clinical bars, FPT was the team that could do both.
The mentorship relationship grew out of that: helping their healthcare practice sharpen how it engages with founders and portfolio companies like mine and explore the growing new world of intelligence imbedded systems.
5. What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a leader and how did you navigate it?
Navigating the tension between surgical practice and building companies has been the defining challenge of my career and it’s not the tension people assume. It isn’t a scheduling problem, or even a bandwidth problem, though there’s plenty of that. It’s that surgery and company-building demand two different relationships with certainty. In the OR, you act on what you know, precisely and immediately, because a patient is in front of you. Building a company asks you to act for years on what you don’t yet know, and to keep revising it as you learn. Living in both worlds at once means constantly recalibrating which mode you’re in.
I learned that asking the right question is not something that happens in a boardroom or a brainstorming session. It’s not a whiteboard exercise where you argue your way to clarity. It’s an experience. You get it from being in the room the OR, the ICU, the clinic hallway, the engineer’s bench at 11pm watching what actually happens versus what everyone assumes happens. That gap is where the real question lives and needs multiple perspectives to uncover.
The hardest part of any project, clinical or commercial, was never solving the stated problem. It was translating field data and firsthand perspective into the right problem in the first place. I stopped asking people, “what’s the problem?” That question invites a rehearsed answer, usually the symptom someone’s already decided to blame. Instead, I learned to look at the goal for the patient, for the surgeon, for the team and construct the question that reframes the practical issue underneath it. Not “why does this device fail in 20% of cases,” but “what does the surgeon need to trust it in the other 80%, and what’s actually standing between them and that trust.” That’s a different question, and it points you toward a different, and disruptive answer.
6. What advice would you give to aspiring healthcare leaders who are looking to make a lasting impact?
Get as close to the actual clinical problem as you possibly can before you get close to the technology. The founders and leaders I respect most, along with partners like FPT who serve them effectively, begin with a deep understanding of the patient, the clinician, and the workflow. Only then do they turn to engineering.Impact in healthcare doesn’t come from being the most sophisticated technically; it comes from being the most honest about what the problem actually requires. The future belongs to domain experts and people asking the right questions.
7. Outside of your career, what are some of the favorite ways to spend your time?
Travel, culinary culture and the bagpipes. People mingle for all sorts of reasons and exploring those experiences is key to understanding our world and the vast tapestry of culture and perspective. Always learning something new.
8. What do you appreciate most about being part of the Medical Alley community?
The density of the ecosystem: having device makers, health systems, investors, and technology partners like FPT in close enough proximity that real collaboration happens faster and deep discussion creates new friends and colleagues than it would anywhere else.
9. How do you see the healthcare industry evolving over the next 5-10 years?
The biggest opportunity is embedding intelligence at the point of care rather than bolting analytics on after the fact. AI-native devices and platforms that sense, process, and act in the same loop, instead of generating data that a separate system has to interpret later. That’s the thesis I invest behind at Validare, and it’s exactly the kind of work I’d like to see FPT lean further into: less “integrate this system,” more “build the intelligent layer that makes the system worth having.” Discovering new nuanced intelligence to drive ecosystem shifts with greater impact is the goal.
10. How can the Medical Alley community rise to face those changes and challenges?
By treating technology partners like FPT as innovation collaborators rather than downstream vendors, brought in early enough to shape the product instead of just building it. The community’s strength is its density of expertise across clinical, regulatory, and technical domains and the opportunity is to make sure those groups are actually in the room together from day one, not handing off a spec sheet as marketing collateral.
