Author’s note:

For the past six years, I’ve mentored healthcare founders through NYU accelerators and public workshops that I host in New York City. The thesis behind that work has been consistent:

Only new mistakes.

VC-backed healthtech has a pattern of new builders impaling themselves upon old failure modes. Research findings stay trapped in journals. Operational lessons stay trapped inside health plans and care teams who've done this work for decades.

These Field Guides exist to help close that gap.

The goal is effective digital health programs: interventions that survive their unit economics, improve the outcomes enterprise buyers renew contracts on, and most importantly reduce patient suffering.

Part of my unfair advantage as a mentor is that I have operators in my network who have built and delivered care at population scale. They've already learned many of the expensive lessons and have generously provided their feedback and comments both on my writing and teams that I mentor.

This field guide reviews lessons from the clinical, operational, regulatory, and behavioral literature surrounding healthcare communication systems. It is not clinical, legal, or compliance advice.

I use Claude Cowork + custom skills as my primary collaborator, with Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity providing redteam support. My use of AI is loud and proud. The arguments and conclusions are mine.

Vadim Gordin.
Only new mistakes