welcome to the Talking Health Tech podcast my name is Peter Burch i'm here at Digital Health Festival 2025 and I'm here with Dr jamie Phillips from UPDoc good day Jamie how you going yeah very good Pete thank you mate it's great to be here and look if by way of any of this pre-con conversation we've had has any indication on how this episode's going to go I'm I'm excited for this discussion so with that preamble I'd love to hear more about your background uh and uh a little bit about you and what you do yeah so as we chat just chated Paul before uh Dr jamie Phillips you can tell my accent I'm originally a Pommy y uh now a very proud Australian um I'm a rural and remote doctor with subsp specialty training in emergency medicine so what does that mean i'm a country rural doctor but I specialize in ED i look after anything that comes through the door but in a low resource remote environment um bit of a circuitous route getting there never planned to do that at all um they're always the best journeys I think well they're the most fun aren't they we never you know best best laid plans never survive do they um but yeah I spent 20 years in the military um 17 of those in the British military as a commando so working within uh elite military units deployed on operations and providing remote medicine as a GP but also providing that emergency medicine retrieval and resuscitation um did that for 17 years and had a life-changing experience to be frank brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant uh real opportunities to disrupt try things differently we always say that war is the is a crucible for innovation and health is no different yeah i I need some help bridging this gap between that world the military world and then here at digital health festival with updoc and then what's that that middle i can I can bridge that in my mind but like there's they feel like two quite different worlds that we're talking about yeah they do i mean the beards there's a lot of beards here so there's always a lot of beards around we are in Melbourne like it is the coffee is better here definitely than it is at war fighting um you'd think the two worlds are totally different but actually the reality the longer I spend in health tech and digital health the similarities are huge i mean it's all about having a bold mission so like I said to you before the real turning point for us in Afghanistan because to be frank from a clinical perspective we were losing the war people were dying not because we did anything wrong but we were unaware of where we could do things better we didn't have a culture of failure and we didn't have a culture of embracing failure and then around 2008 2009 we started seeing lots of IEDs go off and that totally changed the battle that we were fighting we were seeing injury patterns we've never seen before casually rates we just couldn't contemplate to be frank and we realized we what we were doing was not working and these were people's lives and their disabilities were were in the balance so we had a very bold leader and he turned around he said right 6 months I want zero preventable deaths in Afghanistan and we all looked quite shocking said and I'm happy for you to fail in that but we have to have this growth mindset we have to be willing to fail if we're going to do something remarkable and save some lives and he held us to account and so I was surrounded by a very remarkable group of people with great leadership and a demand and a need that needed to happen and we took chances and we took risks and we looked at a systemsbased problem to solving a complex problem and we were doing that in a huge geographical area using technology that nobody had ever been used before in healthcare repurposing technology using the beginnings of data analysis and machine learning and the key thing was underpinning it with audit and governance and and people always think oh you know military and particularly the commander world the beards it's not very well governed it's the most highly governed part of the military because without governance you can't take risks well I was just saying when you say you know take risks and it's okay to fail it they're not phrases you hear generally in healthcare because sometimes failure can mean death but I guess there's a lot of different lenses you can take on on that approach to things and I guess failure in the right areas but but then you know you were talking about the importance of uh governance underpinning all of that to so you you can do both the innovative paving new paths while also keeping that strong governance pathway yeah spot on i mean I'm a bit old and gray now and as a result I think when you look being experienced and being a specialist is just making lots of mistakes in a very narrow area that's the reality of what is that's how you become experienced and as you get gray like me you realize that governance equates with freedom i I talk about a you know big paddics but with high fences and if we put in a governance framework around what we're doing in digital health it's robust it's auditable it's dynamic and it's owned by us but also owned by the patients and potentially by the regulator it means you can be remarkable you can innovate safely within a robust governance system the problem I think and everybody's passionately agreeing with it here we have no digital health governance system at the moment in Australia there isn't one and all of us are passionately asking to be regulated which I think is a fascinating area to be in when you're in an innovative space like this but the conversations I'm sure you've had and I've had is everybody is saying we want to be regulated but we want to be regulated in a way that has governance that is fit for purpose but fit for the rate of acceleration that's happening and we'll cover all of those future eventualities we're going to have tell me more about that the yearning the desire to be uh governed because um is that the inherent uh desire for patient safety or and or is it more about organizations can innovate if they know the direction they need to go and if we're continually kind of circling and not have clear guard rails on which directions to invest in you could go down a particular path and invest in infrastructure and capability and all of this and then you might find out in 6 8 12 months that well that's all right but technically it's not aligned with the correct standards and process like what's the what drives that yearning for really strong governance in telly health i I don't want to give a politician's answer i actually want to give you a real answer but it's two parts the first part 100% is patient safety nobody gets into health care to harm people hypocratic oath isn't it do no harm and that's where we start is we must keep patients safe that's physically but also morally we need to think about having a clear moral compass about what we're doing and that's part of patient safety just because we can do something doesn't mean we should and then if you're happy that you're keeping patients safe you then focus on quality and I'm really keen to work with consumers patients regulatory bodies to understand what good looks like in virtual care in 2025 2026 2027 how do we measure good how do we measure high quality because then if you know what good looks like you know what not good looks like as well and once you've sorted that then yes you're spot on it's then about saying we're keeping people safe we're delivering high quality excellent care we can now really innovate and push the envelope and really ch try to do something different because you see it in war fighting the main reason people get harmed is they have decision paralysis yes yeah yeah they're in a situation where they're overwhelmed and they freeze m and what I when I first came to Australia in 2025 I thought great retiring from British military was in the Australian army for 3 years and as I started to work in rural and remote medicine in Australia i realized that we had decision paralysis and I suddenly started to get this odd sensation in my I think I've seen this before different environment different context uniforms are a bit different but I realized that we were suffering from decision paralysis in digital health as a rural doc digital health is part of what we do used to be on the radio then it was on the phone and now with Starlink it's on video but we just have to care not to swear but there's a phrase which is JFD yes yeah yeah just do it i like that one yeah and that's almost where we need to be if we can have really safe governance that keeps patients protected morally protects us and the patients as well we can just JFD it let's fail fast and just give it a go cuz what's the worst you can do fail and you said failure is not embraced in healthcare but that's in tech it is yes i work for a business the reason I joined them was because I knew the two founders Cliff and Dylan they'd come from Uber and they had this growth mindset innately they'd come from Uber where it was all about failing and we I spend most of my time with the leadership team working out how we failed how we can fail faster and what we've learned from that and that's the driver that I have every week with the executive is right let's go fail let's go and find out how we fail and fail more because we know we can do that because it's so well govern we're not going to harm patients love that the And so it has been I'm reflecting on the last conversation I had with uh Greg from UPDoc and it's been a bit over 12 months ago I think it was uh we learned a little bit more about the the work that's that's being done there in terms of those that that might have only seen on the periphery what does that dayto-day that the services you provide to patients just give more context to to to the conversation as well uh in terms of what Updoc does particularly nowadays in 2025 and what patients are asking for as well yeah I mean UPDoc's got phenomenal growth i mean I joined them just over six months ago uh I joined them because they I I was actually a customer of theirs uh I was a customer of theirs and I thought wow this is something special and I had that little thing where I thought this is quite a remarkable business the product they were delivering simple unscheduled primary care in the virtual care environment but what I loved was the absolute focus on doing something different and doing it safely and being willing to take measured risks uh and so when Cliff and Dylan approached me and said do you want to join as chief medical officer I bit the hand off i jumped at it um after having promised my wife I would never do a startup again i what did I do straight back into startup but it's a brilliant business and and we're on a very clear path to create a AI native digital health platform primarily focused on unscheduled primary care but maybe in other areas in the future um and try and close that access gap that I see every single day in my practice as a rural generalist and an ED because I see so many people come into my ED and the first thing to do is apologize i say "Dr jamie I'm so sorry I'm here i have a great GP i just can't get to see them." And I want to close that access gap but I also want to close it for all Australians and as a rural doc we all know you go two hours outside a capital city healthcare is a different thing yeah and we've got these pockets of excellence in the capital cities but we also got pockets of clinical excellence in the country and traditionally it's been the country people are supported by the city doctors i actually want to flip it with UPDOC and say we've got these brilliant rural physicians out there as well and I want the city people to be sorted by these brilliant rural physicians that they don't even know exist well it unlocks so much potential and I I've spoken to so many clinicians who I think you were saying before especially someone who's failed many times in a really particular area and there are remarkable clinicians globally that I guess in theoret theory that if you you had that network of you know the access to every um every expert in every part of healthcare and you know in the pocket of your hand then the the the concept is um remarkable and I guess the technology exists to do that and there's there's the willing few trying to band those people together so um exciting future there um something we were talking about and touched on earlier as well is applying that model to different parts as well um I think you spoke a little bit uh earlier to me before around uh updoc for business tell me a little bit more about what that is well that's I mean that's it's it's similar to a role I was doing before which is a pure B2B business in tech and there is a real appetite I think in Australian business to give their employees a meaningful benefits program yes and certainly one of the key things that I hear all the time and we actually get really responsible businesses coming to us at UDOC and saying we would love to give our people access to virtual general practice because they're at work they can't access care when they're at work and we're going to lose some time from them if they have to go to a facetoface appointment they will lose them they'll be taking sick days is there a way we can facilitate that where we can keep them in work as long as they're healthy but give them access to virtual care funded by a responsible employer and because we don't build Medicare it's casting costing the taxpayer nothing and funded by a responsible citizen so for me that's a win uh and I think it's also an opportunity for businesses to take a bigger role in solving this complex access block problem we have uh and you'd be surprised the businesses that are keen to do it really really forwardthinking leaders and forward thinking businesses that are keen to look at could we obtain access to your service for our employees and or their families so they can actually focus on being effective at work rather than trying to schedule a face to face appointment it's dangerous for me to hazard a guess without having any prompting but I typically think about those types of programs with the very large enterprise institutions perhaps in finance and uh other areas is that the types of organizations that would look to then partner around the UPDoc for business yeah I mean that's a natural fit but there's also businesses you'll be surprised you know quick service restaurants etc are very interested um and and it's also businesses where they have a young cohort who really haven't had the opportunity to take their health care seriously and haven't engaged with healthare but still have health needs and feel slightly disenfranchised with the existing system you know they're native they they you know I talk my children I I can't ring my children i just have to chat with them they're not going to take a phone call from their dad um and that's what he's trying to do is break down access block for people but for all Australians yeah i'm really passionate because I think if you live in a capital city you you do all right uh and we're very we we've seen patients in over 90% of postcodes now in Australia and we've driven that a real focus for us is reducing the waiting times for all Australians but particularly for our rural and remote communities yeah you know I'm super interested to know as we're closing out Digital Health Festival and I guess this conversation too given your unique perspective and the lens that you've taken and your experience and the I guess the parallels that you can draw from one industry to another you know we you've heard you've been up on stages and you've spoken to other um innovators and clinicians and everyone here at Digital Health Festival where do you see the ball going in terms of um healthcare because historically as you've seen too in the past there's a lot of talk about what we could potentially do in healthcare but often the day-to-day kind of feels about the same i regularly talk about how I wear my health tech innovation hat you know here for the podcast then I go into my GP clinic who still doesn't do online appointment bookings and all this kind of stuff they're just the the chasm is huge sometimes but there are pockets where it's it's starting to close but there is this I'm not sure if it's um Stockholm syndrome or whether it's something else where it it does feel like within healthcare right now the all the kind of stars are aligning and we are seeing real kind of direction and and excitement in terms of innovation and and innovative care so where do you see the ball going uh in terms of health care technology and how that ties in with virtual care and all the other bits and pieces um I think it will go back to the military experience thing really uh as I said war was a brilliant accelerator for health tech and health innovation and digital health and that was great right up until the war ended and we forget those lessons really really quickly and I draw those parallels with the COVID pandemic covid pandemic was fantastic for accelerating digital health removing unnecessary governance and unnecessary red tape but also driving the introduction of rapidly of technologies the adoption of them but governing them as well my biggest fear is now we don't have the impetus for change i.e the covid pandemic the rate will slow the desire to change will slow when you said yeah on the panels it's brilliant yes there's people who agree but there's also really passionate detractors you know I took incoming up on the stage and that's brilliant because just cuz I say it doesn't mean it's true and I want to be robustly questioned I want to be redustly challenged and we need to be having those conversations but we need to be having them in public and we need to be transparent and we need to have those relationships faithfully I think my number one priority is we need to start talking to each other within the traditional face to face model as you said with your GP within the innovative digital AIdriven models like UPDoc but we also need to be talking with the regulator and the patient because we need that patient voice at the table you said you know you said as a patient I want this and I can't get it you should be empowered to be able to get that so that would be my first thing the second thing is governance we need a robust digital health governance system in Australia that is agile and fit for purpose we don't have it so we can't innovate because we don't have the high fences we've got the big paddocks country big is big country isn't it but we haven't got the high paddocks uh and then I think the final thing is just developing a growth mindset you said it we've got to be willing to fail fail safely because that's why you get governance in there but we've got to be willing to fail we've got to give it a go and just JFD i No I feel like that should be the the subtitle for this uh episode is just JFD so um Jamie I've loved this conversation we should be be talking a lot more and I'm sure we we'll hear you on future episodes of the Talking Health Tech podcast um make sure you check out the UPDoc listing on our website to learn more and check out previous episodes m I really appreciate your time appreciate it Pete thanks mate [Music]