Tech Tonics: Molly Coye’s 360 View of the Healthcare System
Dr. Molly Coye comes from a family who was obsessed with innovation and had a high tolerance for risk. They also had a history of commitment to anything that would disrupt unjust social paradigms and passed that down through the generations. Molly has packed all of these qualities and more into a healthcare career marked by making real change, not just talking about it.
In fact, Molly has worked on all sides of the healthcare system. She has spent many years in governmental leadership roles, been on both the payer and provider side of the table, and in both academic and commercial environments. But Molly has had a consistent theme throughout her career – to make healthcare accessible and relevant for underserved populations and to use technology and data to accelerate that outcome. Today Molly is actively engaged with numerous companies serving the underserved populations about which she has long-cared and she is also a 15-year board member of Aetna and an entrepreneur-in-residence at Avia. But mainly she is the healthcare whisperer, helping entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate executives figure out what actually matters.
Few have the healthcare pedigree that Molly has, with joint public health and medical degrees from Johns Hopkins, and a career that spans health systems such as SF General Hospital, Good Samaritan and UCLA, where she was Chief Innovation Officer; governmental leadership roles such as Commissioner of Health in New Jersey and Director of the California Department of Health and a gig at the CDC in the 1970’s where she was among the first to lug around a massive Osborne portable computer into the field in Asia. She tells a story about the helicopter pilots who ferried her around saying that they “love to see a little lady flying with her sewing machine.” Molly has also been an entrepreneur in the health technology field, first at HealthDesk and then as the founder of HealthTech, which was established in 2000 to help health systems figure out how to deal with rapidly evolving technology. Molly is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and also serves on the newly created Founder’s Council of United States of Care.
In addition to all this, Molly is a fluent Chinese speaker and has published two books about Chinese history. She also is a member of the board of directors of San Francisco Jazz (SFJAZZ), and has scuba dived all over the world.
We are so thrilled to have Molly on Tech Tonics today!
We are grateful to GE Ventures for sponsorship of today’s episode. GE Ventures: Multiple Paths to Big Impact.
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Audio Podcast, Healthcare, Tech Tonics, Technology
