Physician Builder Spotlight: Kathy Chae

We’re shining light on MD-entrepreneurs! Each week, we feature an entrepreneurial doctor who’s building a cool product, company, or working on a big idea that you definitely want to know about. This week, meet Kathy Chae, Chief Executive Officer of CyrenCare (more on the company’s mission below!). You can connect further with Kathy on LinkedIn.

1. Kathy, what inspired you to become a physician entrepreneur? I’m an EM physician with 11 years of experience and a former professor at an academic medical center in Korea. During my time there, I led the development of a text consultation system to replace the constant phone tag between the ED and specialists. It took two years to launch, and the hardest part was the change management required to persuade all stakeholders. But once it went live, it was a game-changer. Communication became faster, more transparent, and less frustrating. There was no going back.

This experience opened my eyes to a similar problem with inefficient verbal communication in patient and clinician communication. In the ED, I constantly saw patients grow frustrated from having to repeat their story. It’s ironic that patients are waiting for hours while clinicians are overwhelmed, yet we still run them through an inefficient, conveyor belt-like process of multiple bottlenecks and redundant verbal communication. This became a problem I wanted to solve.

I have always been a problem solver, and I’ve often found myself on an unconventional path: architecture school after medical school, running a Korean BBQ restaurant while holding a tenure-track position, quitting that job, moving to the United States, and now becoming a full-time founder. I never chose to be unconventional nor wanted to be an entrepreneur, but being interdisciplinary, adaptable, and focused on solving problems naturally led me here.

You can read more about my full story here.

2. What does your company do and what problem are you solving? CyrenCare was founded by an Emergency Medicine physician who firsthand experienced the systemic inefficiencies and provider burnout that compromise patient care. Our mission is to streamline clinical and social workflows by inviting patients to become active participants in their own care journey.

Our platform is the “Starbucks mobile order” for healthcare. From the waiting room, patients use their own devices to answer questions in their native language. This data integrates directly into the EHR to initiate triage, jumpstart their HPI, and complete risk and social needs screenings. CyrenCare includes a no-code builder with robust clinical content, allowing sites to tailor workflows without a heavy IT lift. The platform is highly adaptable and can be used in primary care, urgent care, virtual care, emergency departments, and entire health systems.

We also streamline social workflows for Community Health Workers with auto-translation, helping them assess needs, receive notifications, and initiate interventions for patients who need connection to community-based resources.

While we are a clinical communication assistant for many healthcare scenarios, our core mission is to solve the challenges in the emergency department. We believe that patients themselves are the key to the solution. The ED is the front porch to healthcare, but has immense operational and financial challenges that impact everyone. We dive into the core of these problems by streamlining the front door and empowering patients to facilitate their own patient flow. This helps solve the "revolving door" of the ED by transforming high-cost hospital visits into high-value interventions. Ultimately, we enable patients to self-identify social and financial needs in the waiting room and connect them to verified resources in their community.

3. What’s your advice for those considering entrepreneurship or a nontraditional career in Medicine? First, give yourself grace. We come from a world where we're conditioned to excel and have the right answers. Think back to your first day as an intern. We learned by doing, by facing situations that scared us and figuring them out. The same principle applies here. Before you even begin building, start with the problem, not your idea for a solution. It's incredibly easy to fall in love with the solution and into the trap of creating a "Solution in Search of a Problem" (SISP). The most crucial validation for any business is answering two questions: Who pays for this, and are they truly willing to pay? Be skeptical and diligent here. Reading The Mom Test is essential homework for learning how to get honest answers.

As you start to build, let one principle guide you: form follows function. Whether it's your product, your team, or your process, the structure must serve the core purpose. Finally, don't build using yesterday's playbook. Technology, especially AI, has fundamentally transformed how we run and scale companies. Embrace these tools from the start to build smarter and faster.

4. How can others get over the “start” problem? Redefine your definition of failure. The worst thing that can happen is that you embark on an incredible learning experience. You will acquire skills you never knew you needed and gain a perspective that gives you entirely new capabilities. It's a path that, win or lose, will take you to new and interesting places. You have to accept that you will never feel 100% ready to start. There is no single ‘right’ answer because every startup, idea, and industry is different.

Entrepreneurship is not about having all the answers; it's about figuring things out as you go and moving forward despite uncertainty. You learn by practice, experience, and execution. Today, that process is easier than ever. We have AI to help us research, plan, and execute, making the journey of discovery faster and more effective.

The ultimate question that pushed me to start was thinking about what my future self, ten years from now, would think when looking back on this decision. Do I have a good excuse not to start? I realized that when I had little to lose, the worst decision was not to make a decision at all.

5. What’s the number one lesson learned since building your company? The most important lesson I’ve learned, and am still learning, is what it truly means to sell. Or, to put it more accurately, what it means to be adopted. Coming from an academic background, my first instinct was to treat selling like a presentation. I thought I could simply lecture on why our solution was the right answer, lay out the information, and get a fast decision. But I quickly learned that earning adoption is the opposite of delivering a lecture. It demanded listening first. Deeply understanding the pains and needs of my stakeholders. This was critical, even in a field I thought I knew inside and out. I also learned that you can’t just win over the leadership signing the check or just the clinicians using the tool. To succeed, you must earn full adoption from all stakeholders.

In healthtech, the technology is only a fraction of the solution. The real work is in the empathy required to lead an organization through change, to anticipate and address the very human anxieties that arise, both in how you communicate and in the very DNA of your product.

6. What are some top resources that helped you get started?

• The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick: Absolutely essential for customer discovery. It teaches you how to ask questions that reveal if your idea is a real need and if people will actually pay for it.
• YC Startup School: The best free resource for learning the fundamentals of building a company, finding a co-founder, from product development to finding your first users.
• Lenny's Podcast: In-depth interviews with world-class product and growth leaders, offering actionable advice on how to build and scale a successful business.
• Health Tech Nerds: A great slack community for sharp answers to your questions about everything around health tech.
• Joshua Liu's LinkedIn Posts: Provides a practical, real-world perspective from a physician-founder, offering invaluable advice for anyone navigating the unique challenges of healthtech.
• Health-tech happy hours or events in the community: I know some good ones in NYC and Portland, Oregon.

7. How can other physicians support you? The financial strains on our hospitals and EDs, especially with the impact of policies like the OBBBA, are deeply concerning. If this is on your mind, reach out. Let’s vent, brainstorm.

For Health Systems & Practices: If you’re living with the daily reality of a crowded waiting room, we can help. Our platform creates a better patient experience while amplifying your team’s capacity by inviting patients to our operations. I also welcome any connections, introductions, or feedback you might have.

For Investors: If you are an investor who shares our vision for a more sustainable system, I would welcome a conversation.

For Researchers: If you're a researcher whose work is aligned with ours, I’d be excited to explore a potential collaboration. Email me at: kathychae@cyrencare.com.

Bonus! Just for Offcall's Members: Tips on Using AI in Medicine

We're making a few of Kathy's answers about how she uses AI in medicine available exclusively for Offcall's community. For example, what Kathy's top AI use cases to get going as a physician that others could benefit from.

Read below.

Referenced below:

Open Evidence: https://www.openevidence.com/

Vera Health: https://www.verahealth.ai/

Lovable: https://lovable.dev/

Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/app

Elion: https://elion.health/