Episode Transcript
Host: You're listening to the Levy Inspiration Grant Program podcast where we share stories of business students following their entrepreneurial passions to every corner of the world. I'm your host, Tyler Seybold. Through the program, students at the Kellogg School of Management can travel to any country of their choosing to immerse themselves in a particular topic. When they return, they sit down with me to reflect on the experience and share what they learned along the way.
From an early age, Sherry Zhuang remembers hearing stories about the healthcare industry from her parents, both of whom are healthcare professionals. As she got older and began her career, healthcare was still a major focus, and more than anything, she became interested in what she considered the most fundamental stage of the health care journey: access.
Sherry: So I think, if we think the whole healthcare journey is a funnel, like getting access to care is the first step. That's why I want to focus on that part.
Host: Sherry was already familiar with some current issues in healthcare from her prior roles in consulting and pharmaceuticals, and from that experience, digital- and telehealth- based solutions felt like a clear strategy to provide access to the people who need it most, and for good reason:
An American Medical Association study on digital health published in 2022 found that the percentage of physicians utilizing telehealth or virtual visits grew from 14 percent in 2016 to 80 percent in 2022, not that surprising of a jump given the limitations of physical contact due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Advances in technology also provide more opportunity for innovation around access to healthcare, but it's never quite that simple, is it? While increasing access to care in any capacity feels like a net-positive, the counterquestion that needs to be asked is: who is still being left behind, and how do we reach them?
Harkening back to her childhood and the stories she heard from her parents, Sherry knew that she needed to see the problem for herself, so for her Inspiration Grant trip, she traveled to Mexico to speak with physicians and startup founders, and observe different types of clinics to see how they're innovating within a complex healthcare system, with the ultimate goal of making it easier for patients to get the care that they deserve.
This is her Inspiration Grant story.
Sherry: My name is Sherry Zhuang, I'm originally from Shanghai, China and prior to Kellogg, I was working in the healthcare industry, first as a consultant, and then I transitioned to working for a pharmaceutical company. I actually came from a family of doctors, both of my parents work in the hospital for a long time. So healthcare is always something that is on the top of my mind and something that really interests me. I wanted to become a doctor when I was in high school. It didn't happen for various reasons, but I always find myself trying to find different ways to make an impact in the industry.
I still like fundamentally I believe like healthcare should be a right for everyone. Coming from China, I also see from my own eyes, like how sometimes difficult it could be for people to get high-quality care. I think I was lucky because both my parents are healthcare professionals, I never had a lot of challenges or problems getting the care that I need to get. But through the process, through lot of the stories told by my parents, I did realize from a very long time ago that there are a lot of people who were not lucky like me to have the access to care and it is really devastating for them and their family.
Sherry: Although there are still a lot of other issues in the industry, I think access to care is the first door for us to kind of crack. Like just the fundemental care, we are not talking about any like very specialized care. I think that's another level, but even for like primary care for like very basic, chronic diseases, I think these are really important.
So the place I travel to is Mexico. Mexico similar to China is also facing a lot of challenges in terms of healthcare access and health equity. I went to two cities, Mexico City and Oaxaca. Mexico City as a capital city is very well-developed access to healthcare is relative easier, while Oaxaca is one of the poorest province in Mexico, and I want to see like, what does the healthcare look like there. So I think that's the first kind of question I had in mind.
And second is I want to talk to business leaders in the healthcare space, specifically in telehealth and mobile health, and learn about what are the challenges they're seeing and what are the lessons learned that I can kind of take away from their experience for my future entrepreneurship journey.
I think one thing that surprised me a little bit is before the trip, when I was thinking about healthcare equity and access, I was thinking about, "Oh, are there innovative solutions that are related to digital?" because I think digital health is a hot topic. But when I was in Mexico, I actually saw a lot of other forms of innovations that solve the issue of healthcare access and equity.
One example is a pharmacy. So in Mexico, I saw a lot of the pharmacies, they do not only have the kind of store part where you shop for over-the-counter drugs, they also are equipped with a smaller consultation room.
When I was talking to the people there, I realized that, actually really similar to China, like going to hospital is not an easy thing in Mexico. If you want to go to let's say a big hospital in Mexico City, the amount of time you need to spend is quite large like you need to wait in line, you need to do this and do that. As a result, the pharmacies there think about this very innovative way to have like a little consultation room next to the pharmacy. And if people don't have very serious conditions, they can just go to the pharmacy, sit with a doctor for 10 to 20 minutes and then get their prescription.
I think this is a very effective way to make access easier for patients, because maybe some patients are also not comfortable with using digital solutions. So having that in-person interaction with a doctor next to a pharmacy is actually a great way to let them like get very easy and quick access. That was something that I found really interesting and it surprises me because I didn't know that form of care existed in Mexico.
Sherry: When I was talking to the hospital director of the clinic I visit in Oaxaca, I asked her, "What about telehealth?Do you feel like telehealth can actually work in Oaxaca in solving the access issues?" She thought about the question for quite a while, she said, "Yes, but there are challenges..."
The internet connectivity is a big issue in Oaxaca. A lot of the people there don't actually have access to Internet, and as a result it was really difficult for the people there to use telehealth because of this tech issue that we sometimes take for granted. But when I was chatting with a startup founder in Mexico, I think one of the solutions he proposed could actually solve the problem. Instead of trying to bring telehealth solutions to individuals, what they are trying to do is they are trying to bring the telehealth stations in the clinic, trying to leverage the expertise from bigger cities like Mexico City and have the doctors dial in from there to the clinics in Oaxaca through telehealth platforms.
So I think it's maybe not the most easy and the most convenient solution that we would think, but I think it's a really great and very innovative middle step before the internet connectivity issue is finally resolved. All the learnings I had around this piece made me realize that there's no one-size-fits-all solution, and we need to be really creative about what kind of like, what is our angle and like what are the other creative ways for us to reach that goal.
Sherry: Thinking about like how I'm going to start my own venture in the future, I think it is really important to think about ways that would make it sustainable. During the trip, I actually had the opportunity to chat with another telehealth founder in Mexico.
He struggled a lot. I think his mission was really great, he wanted to provide free telehealth services to everyone, just through a simple, like, tap on the phone, you can get access to a doctor. I think while the mission is really great, he struggled to make this business sustainable in terms of getting the revenue streams that he needed to support the business operation.
It's easy to have a great mission and think that I'm going to help everyone, but in the end, if you don't have like a continuous stream of money to support the business, the business is gonna die eventually. I think especially in the space of healthcare, where everyone is trying to make an impact, I think what really differentiates is whether that impact can be more long-lasting and more self-sustaining.
I think this whole process makes me feel like I'm an entrepreneur-to-be, because this is exactly how entrepreneurs do their market research and how they test their ideas in the market before they actually start to work on it. And I think from mid- to long- term, I was thinking about launching my own startup within the digital health space, and I think with all the learnings, I do hope that I can think about a solution that is self-sustaining and also is able to really make impact in different markets, not only in China or Mexico, but like more emerging markets to help people. That being said, I think this trip really gave me a lot of great learnings that I can take to kind of further crystallize my ideas.
Visiting Oaxaca and seeing the clinic really makes me feel more grateful for where I am now. When I went to the clinic, it was like 2 p. m. in the afternoon. It was like a working day, but there were no patients. So I asked, "Where are the patients?" The hospital director told me that because a lot of the patients live really far from the clinic and the weather is really hot, most of them visit the clinic in the morning. They probably, like, reach there, like, 6, 7 a. m. and finish their visit, before noon and then go back home. Most of the morning, they're busy with seeing patients, but in the afternoon, they're busy with more administrative stuff.
I think that also shocked me a little bit because to see your primary doctor, you need to wake up, maybe 4 or 5 a. m. in the morning and travel, two, three hours. Compared to where I'm here, like if I want to see a primary doctor, it's a 10-minute walk and then I can probably book an appointment for tomorrow. So I think the experience actually seeing what people's experience look like in the cities in Mexico just make me feel more grateful about where I am at, and also, I think it gives me more motivation in trying to think about solutions that can help them and make an impact.
Host: The Levy Inspiration Grant Program is made possible through the generous support of Larry and Carol Levy and is managed by the Entrepreneurship program at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. To learn more about the Levy Inspiration Grant Program and other ways we support student entrepreneurs, visit our website at kell.gg/entrepreneurship. That's kell.gg/entrepreneurship. I'm your host, Tyler Seybold. Thanks for listening.
