The thinking behind the practice.
Most digital health doesn't fall short because of bad technology. It falls short because it is built against the wrong definition of value, and I set up my practice to fix that.
Real clinical value doesn't have to be elusive.
People building and implementing digital health know that clinical outcomes matter. But those outcomes can feel far off, and hard to move directly.
So things drift. The commercial narrative pulls one way, the product roadmap another, and the evidence lands somewhere else entirely. Clinical value gets lost in translation, and teams move fast, just not towards what actually matters for people.
When users and buyers see bold claims with no evidence behind them, trust goes, and so do renewals and funding.
After years working alongside venture-backed digital health companies, healthcare systems and global institutions, I set up my advisory practice to change that: to bring sharp focus back to clinical outcomes, and to what really matters.
I've lived the challenges.
Senior clinical experience
- NHS primary and urgent care, UK
- Rural medicine, Australia
- Global health and primary care strengthening, Sierra Leone
Senior leadership in health tech
- Former Medical Director at Ada Health, with clinical leadership advisory for some of Europe's biggest health tech companies.
- Medical quality & AI evaluation. Built a regulatory-compliant medical quality function covering model evaluation, post-deployment monitoring, and clinical evaluation.
- Enterprise-grade clinical trust. Led cross-functional teams putting regulated clinical AI into health systems across the US, Europe, and Africa, earning lasting trust with clinical leaders through demonstrable outcomes.
- Business and clinical outcomes, aligned. Commercial, product, and clinical leadership that sharpened go-to-market and evidence generation, with narratives that won and retained multi-million-dollar partnerships.
Shaping policy and the last mile of care
- Former Co-chair, Clinical Evaluation Group, WHO initiative on AI for Health, developing global guidelines for evaluating AI in healthcare.
- Keynotes and talks at HLTH, HIMSS, WHO, the Wellcome Trust, Doctolib, and the Global Digital Health Forum.
- Guest Editor, Nature npj Digital Medicine, special collection on implementation in low-resource settings.
Think we might be a fit? I'd love to hear from you.
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Dr Shubs Upadhyay
I'm a physician and digital health strategist with fifteen years across clinical practice, health technology, and health system strategy, from frontline care in the NHS, Australia, and Sierra Leone to medical leadership inside venture-backed health tech.
As former Medical Director at Ada Health and co-chair of the WHO Clinical Evaluation Group for AI in healthcare, I've sat on both the clinical and the commercial side of the table. I set up independently to give digital health organisations the kind of senior clinical and strategic counsel they rarely have access to.
I host the GPODH podcast and write on Shubstack about digital health strategy, evidence, and equity.
“Digital health must be built around clinical reality, not around what is easy to build or easy to sell.”
- Moving fast is no excuse for cutting clinical corners.
- Evidence isn't a box you tick to keep the regulator happy.
- And doing right by patients doesn't have to fight with growing the business.
Have a conversation with Shubs.
Every engagement starts by understanding where you're trying to get to. No pitch, no hard sell. Just an honest conversation.
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