Yin Ho, MD ’96, MBA, has carved a fluid career path as an executive, entrepreneur, and advisor in health IT since her days as a student and emergency medicine resident at Yale School of Medicine (YSM). “I have worked for everything from a startup to a publicly traded company, as its CEO,” she says.
Throughout her career, she has strived to improve the nation’s flawed health IT infrastructure. Her goal: to shape health IT solutions that are more effective in assisting physicians, researchers, and patients, and enhancing patient outcomes. Ho is now intensely focused on AI and ensuring its responsible application in health and medicine. Her recently released book, Rushing Headlong: Health IT’s Legacy and the Road to Responsible AI, is a call to action for physicians, executives, entrepreneurs, and patients to help reorient health IT.
Profound impacts of YSM
Personally and professionally, YSM has had a profound impact on Ho. It is where she met her husband, Henry Hsia, MD ’96, RES ’02, today a YSM professor of surgery (plastics) and biomedical engineering and the founding director of the Yale Regenerative Wound Healing Program, along with some of her closest, lifelong friends. She says, “Many of them had a different career before coming to YSM. They gave me a wider perspective, and for that I’m forever grateful.”
Ho recalls one friend, a former Wall Street trader, showing her how to use data to frame an argument even when challenging authority, a valuable lesson that has stayed with her.
“YSM also offered a certain freedom that enabled me to look at a question in many ways and believe that anything was possible,” says Ho. “That was probably the greatest impact of all. YSM shaped a lot of the way I think about medicine, the players inside of medicine, and where medicine fits in the world.”
Pivot to effect change
Two forces influenced Ho’s pivot from practicing medicine to advancing health IT. First, she was bothered that physicians did not hold prominent roles in policy discussions about health and medicine.
Second, when Ho was a third-year student, she realized that, due to the emergence of the Internet, the asymmetry in health information available to physicians versus the public was closing. She thought, “I really need to be a part of this … be on the side of trying to figure out what the new system in the world is going to be.” That’s when she decided to pivot.
At the end of her second year of residency, Ho sat for her boards, took the GMAT, and applied to business school. She then headed to Harvard Business School. “I stepped in [to the business world] a hundred percent and never looked back. My philosophy was that if you’re going to change the system, you go in a hundred percent.”
Motivated by her desire to support physicians, researchers, and patients, she set out to shape and improve health IT. She says, “It’s not that I walked away from medicine, it’s just that I chose to go a different pathway around it.”
Path post-MBA
For multiple reasons, Ho joined a startup after earning her MBA. She says, “I was very excited about what the startup was trying to do—help patients find clinical trials—and what was possible.”
Also, she was concerned that if she joined a traditional company, she would be pigeonholed. “Most companies had no idea what to do with a physician who had an MBA,” she notes. Ho recalls that a pharma HR representative told her that she could become a medical director, a role that would never rise to the executive level, or start in sales and marketing and perhaps work her way to the top. Either way, she would be on a set path.
In contrast, she says, “What made the startup world so fabulous was that if you were a smart person and were going to roll up your sleeves and get to work, that’s all that really mattered.”
After her first job, Ho stayed flexible, diving into diverse roles at both small and large companies and later becoming an entrepreneur herself. She led eHealth at Pfizer, was interim CEO of Veradigm (MDRX), founded and led Context Matters (acquired by Decision Resources Group), and held executive roles at Aetion and Medidata. She now serves on the board of Segmed and as an advisor to Lighten AI and Novellia.
Reflecting on her career journey, Ho says, “I think the thing I have found the most fulfilling is just how many amazing people I have worked with and met who are really mission driven. These problem solvers have come from many different fields and have come together to build in this [health IT] space.”
Excitement about AI
AI has captivated Ho, who describes herself as an “AI humanist.” She believes that we must apply AI to make life better for human beings, particularly within the health space, where humanism is the driving principle.
She says, “My interest in AI had a lot to do with my disappointment with what had happened with health IT, which ended up being the worst for physicians and patients even though it was supposed to help them. It was optimized for transactions and has made physicians the most expensive documenters of care. Their judgement is not valued as much as their ability to document. The result has been physician burnout and an infrastructure that is not patient-centric.”
Ho was excited about AI not only because it was a technology leap but also because “it could rebalance the game for physicians and patients,” empowering them.
Feeling an urgency to communicate to physicians, business leaders, and patients that now is the time for them to push for change and ensure AI’s responsible use in health and medicine, Ho has written and released the book Rushing Headlong: Health IT’s Legacy and the Road to Responsible AI.
She describes it as “a historical book about the disastrous health IT adventure we’ve been on and sort of a roadmap for the future.” She conveys that physicians and executives must think about what they want to accomplish with AI, ask the hard questions, and not rush into implementation. She says, “It was important to me to get this book out now because this is the moment when the conversations have to happen and the only chance to reclaim any kind of agency.”
In promoting her book, she says, “I particularly like talking with physicians because I think that for so long they have felt so helpless inside of the health care system, forced to use EHR (electronic health record) systems that do not take into account their user preferences. I wouldn’t be surprised if a group of physicians decide to build the next company, the next product. The tools exist, the speed is there. Why not use AI to build a mock-up of what the next EHR could be—say, ‘This is what I’d like to see.’”
Devoted Yalie
Ho cherishes her time at YSM. “The education I received at YSM is still one of the highlights of my life,” she says. YSM is also where she formed deep friendships.
Because of her fondness for YSM and her class, she has been immersed in the school’s community—early on, as a class president and student council president, and later as a class agent, reunion co-chair, AYAM board member, and alumni participant in admitted student and other events.
She says proudly, “I have to brag a little bit. I have the distinction of being part of the class that has had some of the largest reunion attendances. We’re very excited about this. I’m hoping we can break records at our upcoming 30th reunion, a good one to bring everyone together, in person. You don’t get those moments back.”