A Chat with Pronoy Saha, Founder of Health Tech Forum

I first met Pronoy Saha about three years ago after making the painful trek (during rush hour) from Marin in the SF Bay Area’s “North Bay” to Palo Alto in the “South Bay” to attend a Meet-Up called the Health Technology Forum.  At the time, I was making a conscious effort to transition out of the world I had been working in for the past 15 years – the world of health insurance, health plans, and managed care –  and into the nascent, but effervescent arena of digital (or mobile) health.

After attending a number of meetings and getting to know Pronoy well enough to complain, I started to whine about the white-knuckle, bumper-to-bumper drive and asking if he couldn’t hold a just a few meetings in San Francisco instead.  It turns out I wasn’t the only one making the request and eventually Pronoy was able to hold every other meeting at the San Francisco offices of Pillsbury Law, a welcome venue change for those of us in the northern part of the Bay Area.

Fast forward to today.  The Health Techology Forum now has 4500 members with 13 chapters in 5 different countries:  San Francisco, Dallas/Fort Worth, San Diego, New York City, Atlanta, Washington DC, Austin, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, London, Bangalore, and Manila.  They have held close to 100 events world-wide, and some of them, like the upcoming Innovation Conference have become “must attend” events in the health tech space.

A Chat on TDWI Radio

I had a chance to chat with Pronoy on my radio show today, so I asked him about his passion.  He said he wanted to use technology to drive improved access to health care globally.  He used his personal experiences living in a 3rd world country for his first 21 years combined with his 20+ years of experience in the US working in technology.  He believed that applying technology to the health care domain could improve care for the underserved.

He felt if he could create a platform that would marry clinicians with researchers and technologists, the service providers and entrepreneurs would also come to innovate.  This past weekend, the Health Technology Forum organized a Hackathon that did just that in the difficult but critically important arena of Mental Health.  I had a chance to attend as a judge.  Even though it was Mothers Day Weekend, there were 11 teams competing for the $15,000 prize and a chance to incubate at San Francisco General Hospital

Here are the winning teams:

1st Place Winners: Only One