In their established careers, Mr. Nick Mitilenes (MBA, MS ’21) and Dr. Arun Rai (MBA, MS ‘21) recognized the challenges that persist for various stakeholders in the health care system. Patients are often scheduled to see physicians who do not specialize in their specific condition, leading to physician burnout, re-referral, and ultimately delayed patient care. Health care administration is overburdened with tasks and has limited resources, which further delays patient processing. Mr. Mitilenes and Dr. Rai met while completing the Executive MBA/MS in Healthcare Leadership program and discovered they had similar motivations for modernizing these workflows. Since graduating, they have co-founded a company aimed at improving care outcomes.
Before starting the program, Mr. Mitilenes was transitioning to roles in corporate environments, having scaled entrepreneurial clinical diagnostic ventures for most of his career. Dr. Rai is a urologist with a specific research focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve patient care. Given his long-term entrepreneurial goals, he wanted to pursue an MBA focused on health care.
“The rules that apply on Wall Street do not apply in hospitals,” Dr. Rai explained. “A non-specialty focused MBA may not have applied as effectively to someone who expects to continue working in a clinical setting. With the program at Cornell, there was a clear slant on operationalizing lessons learned in business for health care.”
“The fact that the program was anchored in NYC was important to me because it drew such a diverse group of professionals from various disciplines,” Mr. Mitilenes added. “NYC is a major health care hub, and hearing from healthcare professionals embedded in their roles is very valuable.”
Though their in-person experience was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the cohort and coursework were equally impactful in informing Mr. Mitilenes’ and Dr. Rai’s trajectories. They valued the business strategy course taught by Dr. Vrinda Kadiyali, Nicholas H. Noyes Professor of Management and professor of marketing and economics at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. They also appreciated courses that allowed them to differentiate between marketing and branding and their applications in defining product design.
“The MS component was a highlight as well,” Mr. Mitilenes emphasized. They particularly enjoyed the health policy and economics course formerly taught by Dr. Lawrence Casalino, professor of population health sciences, and the health care negotiations course taught by Stuart Diamond, lecturer in population health sciences. “Our professors were often doctoral researchers or practicing physicians with extensive real-world experience. It was incredible to learn from those who could speak practically about the frameworks they have implemented.”
Having maintained relationships with their professors since graduating, they stress the importance of the human element of the program. It was foundational in the evolution of their company, Hatchleaf, which is focused on navigating patients to the right care at the right time using artificial intelligence processing of real-world evidence. Relaunched in 2021, the company offers patient navigation tools to health care institutions, private practices, and medical device companies. To reduce waste in health care, prevent leakage, and improve satisfaction for all stakeholders, they are leveraging generative artificial intelligence and machine learning models in a consensus framework to match patients with the specialists best suited to care for them, and triage based on patient acuity and the performance goals of the practice.
For Mr. Mitilenes, keeping an open mind was central to shifting into this phase of his career. “Through the lessons learned both inside and outside the classroom, I came to appreciate the different facets of health care much more. It challenged my perspective on how I could be part of a solution and has inspired me to facilitate change at an even greater scale.”
“We’re trying to solve a problem felt by the patient, providers, and even payers,” said Dr. Rai. He believes that the larger entrepreneurial community in NYC, especially fostered by the program, is crucial to fulfilling that goal. “We need smart, motivated people to shake up the system. Consider how you can take what you’re learning back to your workplace. Think about how you can make a difference.”