Hello, AR Community. I’m looking for advice on whether my idea and career goals are realistic and achievable. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. About Me: I’m a medical doctor with 4 years of hospital experience in emergency medicine, hold an MBA, and have 1 year of experience as a manager in the pharmaceutical industry. Currently, I’m pursuing an MSc in Biomedical Engineering in the UK. While the program focuses on implantables and tissue engineering, which isn’t my primary interest, it was the only option available for my MSc. My true passion lies in the IT side of healthcare. I’ve always enjoyed finding practical solutions to challenges and improving the way things work. For years, I’ve dreamed of moving to California to work in the tech industry, developing cutting-edge healthcare solutions. Now that I have more time, I’ve started learning Arduino, C#, and Unity to build hands-on experience and work toward this goal. The Idea: I’m currently collaborating with my university’s startup team on an idea to integrate augmented reality (AR) into healthcare workflows. The goal is to improve diagnostics and clinical efficiency using innovative hardware-software solutions. While the patent search isn’t complete yet, I believe the concept is niche enough to be patentable. My plan includes building a low-level, functional prototype using existing parts to demonstrate its potential impact. The Strategy: I’m hoping to leverage my MD and 4 years of hospital experience, my MBA and 1 year of management experience, a potential pending patent with a working prototype, and a junior level of Unity knowledge. The Goal: Land a job in Silicon Valley, ideally in R&D for healthcare solutions. The Question: Given my background and approach, how realistic do you think my chances are? Are there any steps I should take to strengthen my position or any pitfalls I should be aware of? Thank you for reading this far. I’d love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, or insights. Cheers
Whenever someone asks me about how I got established in AR, I tell them it’s a much better path to be a highly trained subject matter expert in a niche field and then adding AR on top of it. I find that it’s much harder to go as an AR generalist because then it’s a constant fight to find niche use cases. So I think you’re in a great position with your MD and MBA. Not everyone can just decide to get those credentials compared to picking up AR dev proficiency from the large volume of training materials online.
That makes total sense. I appreciate the insight about focusing on my strengths. What other suggestions do you have?
Just keep staying up to date on AR tech since the hardware and software change fast. Personally, I’d stick with Unity for now when it comes to developing for clinical and industrial use cases.
Start with the most basic question. What is the problem you’re trying to solve?
Great question. I’m looking to improve diagnostics and efficiency in healthcare workflows. I think AR can help visualize complex data better.
Ahh, thanks a lot. Some great pieces of advice—especially the last one, really helpful.
If you’ve got something patentable, I’d market it as much as possible, like through press releases and white papers, even if your proof of concept is still rough. It’s a good way to get your name out there and potentially catch investor interest.
That sounds smart. I hadn’t thought about marketing it early on. I’ll definitely consider that.
Pitfalls: If you’ve got a solid patent or use case, be wary of AR people offering to ‘collaborate.’ You should be looking for developers who can work under you instead.
Noted. I’ll keep that in mind when networking. Thanks for the heads up.