V.K. Vinod Nair: The Vision Behind PracticeSuite and the Shift from ‘Disease Care’ to True Healthcare

PracticeSuite was driven to meet the ever-evolving needs of private practices.

1. Growing up in Kerala and Mumbai, how did your early environment influence your perspective on business and technology?

I grew up in Mumbai in a middle-class family. During my final years of graduation, I was influenced by some of my professors and the teaching profession, and I wanted to become a professor of Economics. At the time, a master’s degree was the required qualification to become a professor, so I enrolled in the master’s program while working a full-time job after graduation.

While studying for my master’s, I also enrolled in a computer diploma program (which was the trend back then) and began my career in Mumbai (Bombay then), which included software training and programming.

Since the age of 16, I had started numerous small endeavours-contract work in plumbing, construction, coconut wholesale, etc. Somehow, the inner drive to start a business was innate in me. More so, I had a purpose-to support my mother. I did whatever it took to lend a hand.

After completing my diploma, I relentlessly tried to start a school-based training program, but it was in vain. I scored 59% on my master’s, falling short by 1% of the threshold required to apply for a professor's job. I dropped that idea and pursued technology, as it was booming in the early 1990s.

2. What motivated you to pursue software engineering, and how did your career evolve from there?

In my initial job in the software field, I performed exceptionally well. My company provided me with training in advanced Oracle skills, which significantly elevated my career. Soon after, I received an offer for a two-year Oracle project in Dubai.

At the same time, an unexpected opportunity arose-a three-month assignment in the U.S. to learn aircraft maintenance system software. My role was to learn the software and implement it for East West Airlines in Mumbai. I had to make a choice. The Dubai project was long-term and stable, but I decided to turn it down and instead accepted the U.S. assignment.

Three months later, after completing my training, I returned to India to resume work at my Mumbai-based company, which had the East West Airlines project. However, just two months after my return, my company received a call from the U.S. company requesting that I be sent back.

Back in the U.S., I came across a job posting for Oracle. I applied, and they sponsored me to work in the U.S. That marked the beginning of my journey in the United States.

I had the opportunity to work on high-profile, complex projects, which took my career to another level. But over time, I started to realize that I wasn’t cut out for corporate America-I simply didn’t belong there.

During the dotcom boom, while being at the heart of Silicon Valley, I became fascinated by the startup world. I was constantly internalizing my next move, thinking about what I truly wanted to do. Around that time, my former boss had joined Juniper Networks and wanted me to join him-so I did.

3. What was the turning point that led you to start PracticeSuite?

The inspiration for PracticeSuite stemmed from a deeply personal experience. In 2000, I was diagnosed with complications from a neuromuscular condition, requiring frequent visits to multiple hospitals-often in opposite directions. Each visit meant carrying stacks of medical records, X-rays, and undergoing repeated tests simply because previous records weren’t readily available. The entire process was frustrating, inefficient, and exposed glaring gaps in healthcare coordination, particularly in the lack of technology.

At the time (2001), the internet was still in its infancy, with limited application in healthcare. The industry relied entirely on paper-based processes, leading to redundancy, errors, excessive costs, and even fatalities.

Concurrently, I was leading a business process engineering project at Oracle, optimizing their sales compensation system. This project-critical to Oracle’s leadership-taught me the value of technology-driven solutions in eliminating manual inefficiencies. Seeing how automation improved business workflows, I began to wonder: Why couldn’t healthcare operate the same way?

This professional insight, combined with my first-hand struggles as a patient, sparked a vision: technology could revolutionize the patient experience.

Through market research, I discovered that no existing platform facilitated seamless information-sharing between patients and private medical practices (clinics). At the time, smartphones didn’t exist, internet adoption was limited, and e-commerce was still in its early days, with Amazon just beginning to take off.

In 2004, I left Juniper Networks to pursue my vision of building a healthcare tech startup. I conceptualized and branded "eClinics"-a patient portal that allowed individuals to log in, manage their healthcare information, and share it across systems.

This was a disruptive idea. Enabling patients and doctors to interact digitally was unprecedented in healthcare. However, the industry was a laggard in technology adoption and wasn’t ready for such a transformation. Widespread acceptance of digital healthcare solutions only came two decades later.

Though the eClinics idea was ahead of its time, we pivoted to other areas of healthcare technology that aligned with the industry’s current needs. Fast forward 21 years, the original vision took shape as PracticeSuite, a cloud-based solution tailored for private medical practices.

Today, we:

• Serve 25,000 providers nationwide
• Cover 360+ specialties and subspecialties
• Touch 5% of the U.S. population
• Rank among the top 5 cloud platforms for ambulatory care practices

We have not only transformed healthcare operations but also influenced the job market. Candidates now list "PracticeSuite Billing Software" as a marketable skill set on their résumés-a testament to the platform’s impact in the industry.

4. What were some key challenges you faced during the initial years of PracticeSuite, and how did you overcome them?

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Great ideas don’t make great companies. It is the workmanship, craftsmanship, leadership, and being a good steward of a businessman that truly matter. Entrepreneurship is a lonely journey. You have to be able to keep working even when everything looks hopeless, when you have every reason to quit, yet you keep marching forward.

I knew nothing about the healthcare domain. No one in my family had ever been in business, and none of my friends were businessmen. Companies like WebMD, Healtheon, and others had already burned a lot of money in health tech. It was considered a bad sector to enter. People advised me against it. I had no mentor, no guide, and no one I could rely on.

But the drive to succeed was so intense that I figured it out, learned along the way, made mistakes, and kept moving forward. I was unable to raise any external capital. I invested everything I had. I sold my stocks, my second home, and put everything on the line. From there, I learned the market, adjusted the vision, and positioned ourselves in alignment with what the industry needed.

To support the business, I took on consulting work to provide for my family and fund the company. In 2009, I left all my consulting work to focus full-time on PracticeSuite. By 2011, we had turned it into a profitable company.

5. India has a vast healthcare landscape with significant gaps in affordability and accessibility. Based on your experience, what approaches could help improve healthcare access in India?

We call it healthcare, but in reality, it is “disease care.” The current system is designed in such a way that you only become part of it when you fall sick. The moment you are labeled a "patient," you are inherently considered unwell, with little to no active role in your own health journey.

The system is controlled by insurance companies and pharmaceutical giants, whose primary mandate is not to create a healthy population. Their business model thrives only when people fall sick, which leads to a lack of incentives for those at the top to keep people healthy.

Healthcare systems are designed to serve patients, and while this is critical for acute care and disease management, it is not a system that can be relied upon to keep people healthy. The most important stakeholder-the individual-is left out of the equation. Patients have little say in their healthcare outcomes, yet they bear the consequences of the decisions made by doctors, insurance companies, and policymakers.

So, the real question is:

1. Who takes care of healthy individuals who have no medical problems?
2. How do we ensure they stay healthy and do not develop chronic conditions?

For the past 20 years, I have watched the U.S. healthcare system evolve through regulations, best practices, guidelines, technology, drugs, procedures, and medical devices. While these advancements have certainly improved healthcare, they have not created a healthier population. The real solution lies in shifting the system itself.

My vision, which began in 2004 with the e-clinics initiative, was to empower individuals to take charge of their health and become active participants in their well-being. Now, 20 years later, the time has come to put patients in control of their own health.

To realize this vision, I acquired Hello Health with the goal of building a platform that empowers individuals to take charge of their health-before they become patients.

6. What impact have acquisitions like Hello Health and Micro MD had on your business and the industry?

PracticeSuite was driven to meet the ever-evolving needs of private practices. Despite the detour, I never lost sight of my original vision of consumer-driven healthcare. Deep within me, I knew that a paradigm shift-where people took ownership of their health-was necessary to transform healthcare outcomes.

During COVID, we launched a telehealth app and offered it to the world for free. With the shift to touchless interactions and safe distancing, I witnessed firsthand how healthcare desperately needed a renewed form of technology. People began taking control of their health, relying on available information on the web to find ways to survive COVID. Telehealth became a vital tool, allowing patients and providers (doctors) to collaborate, connect, and deliver care remotely. It was coming full circle-almost 17 years later, I was once again building on my vision of consumer-driven healthcare.

In 2021, I came across Hello Health, a company that shared a similar vision but had burned through $40 million in investor money without succeeding. I acquired the brand, its customers, and its product. We scrapped the existing product and began building a state-of-the-art health app that connects healthcare facilities with their patients. More importantly, we are creating a platform for consumers who have no medical problems. The key question is: How do we keep them healthy, so they don’t fall into the trap of a sedentary lifestyle, poor diet, and stress?

We are rebuilding Hello Health with the goal of creating a platform that empowers both patients and non-patients to take charge of their health, manage or delay chronic conditions, and live as we were originally meant to live. Health is not a mission to be accomplished-it is a natural state of harmony. Of course, healthcare facilities, doctors, and medical intervention are essential for acute episodes, but true healthcare is about preventing disease rather than simply treating it. Through Hello Health, my vision is to shift the focus from disease care to true healthcare.

Recently, we acquired MicroMD, which was previously owned by Henry Schein, a Fortune 500 company. The acquisition was a strategic move to bridge the gap in our own product portfolio in the EHR (Electronic Health Records) space. Our focus had been on practice management and billing, partnering with EHR companies to fill that gap. However, as the market evolved, it became clear that our customers wanted a single solution provider that offered a comprehensive suite of services.

Our existing EHR was falling behind, leading to customer frustration. With almost 40 years in business, MicroMD’s EHR technology had a long maturity curve that perfectly addressed the market's needs. Currently, our practice management and billing software, along with MicroMD’s EHR, exist as separate products. However, our long-term goal is to merge them into a single, unified solution. This integration will allow us to offer a more seamless and efficient experience for our customers, strengthening our position in the healthcare technology space.

7. Beyond healthcare, what drove you to start ventures like Dooth and Tukxi?

I am a very privacy-conscious person. Snooping on or tracking people's and families' personal lives, movements, and conversations for targeted marketing campaigns to make money should be a crime, yet it is allowed as a business model. I realized a decade ago that if white-collar crime was allowed to permeate for too long, it would harm society.

Fast forward 10 years to 2025-mental illness is on the rise, families are breaking apart, loneliness is increasing, and "roommate couples" have become common. This is primarily due to being boxed into a certain type of information overload-personalized experiences. Such experiences limit imagination, intuition, and perception, reinforcing repeated impressions until they become reality. People become emotionally attached to these impressions, believing them to be the truth. Everything outside of this bubble-things they don’t know or rarely hear about-becomes untrue, less valuable, or even wrong.

This phenomenon has contributed to the rise of Wokeism.

In a marketplace where all sellers know everything about all buyers, what do you think happens? The sellers manipulate the market, and prices go up. One of the reasons for inflation is the lack of online privacy.

I built Dooth (a royal messenger) with the vision that whatever happens on the internet between two parties should be protected-just as a Dooth once protected messages delivered from one king to another. However, competing with big online companies that lure consumers with free products in exchange for their data has been extremely difficult. The business has not yet succeeded in the way I envisioned, but we continue to work on it.

I have even written to the President urging action against large tech companies to stop data abuse. I am beginning to think this is not just a business problem but a multi-layered societal issue that requires broader solutions.

During a trip to India, I noticed that auto-rickshaws were still waiting in long queues for passengers, while some companies had made taxi services seamless. However, the high commission model wasn’t feasible for auto-rickshaws. Seeing a business opportunity, I launched Tukxi-a more sustainable solution tailored for auto-rickshaws.

8. What links all your ventures under a common vision?

In both my personal and professional life, I focus on people. People don’t buy product, people buy people.  If you like the product but not the people behind the company, you may not buy it. That means our people, who are the faces of the company, have to be very service-oriented and customer-focus. We are all about customers and their experience. To create better customer experience, we must create better people experience. We empower people to be themselves. We create a culture where you can be yourself-just focus on doing a job. Do it freely, express your disagreement, do what is the right for the company, and take care of our customers. These people turn around and make relentless efforts to serve our customers.

I know every aspect of my business; I am hands on. I know that I am only as good as the people around me. I surround myself with people that are smarter than me, bring depth, breadth, and expertise that may be necessary to get the job done.  Taking care of customers also means taking care of the people around you.  All of us have a deep psychological, innate need to be heard, see our ideas being taken into consideration, be recognized, and respected. More importantly, people cannot be on guard, polite and professional. There are moments of insanity. People will have aspects of their personality that I may not like. I don’t use those isolated incidents against them. I dearly incorporate the Team of Rivals of Abraham Lincoln in my management. 

9. How does Vedanta philosophy influence your approach to leadership and decision-making?

I carry deep interest in religion, philosophy and psychology. The very little I could grasp through the scriptures of Vedanta gave me an understanding of what is life, its nuances and its rhythm. My field of research is “Human Agony”.  There is too much to say on this subject, but I will stick to Vedanta. Vedanta’s influence will lead to an unlearning process. A lot of the things we all observe, listen, and learn are all wrong. We are living life without understanding life.

Let me pick one aspect of Vedanta that is most applicable to business – KARMA YOGA

I would summarize it as the Joy of Journey – celebrate the path of success, don’t wait for the success. Whatever happens around us, including our success and failure, is not solely due to our efforts. There is higher cosmic energy acting to bring a certain rhythm around us, keeping the journey moving. Sometimes you get exactly what you want, sometimes a little different, and sometimes you get nothing. Therefore, if you succeed, it is not due to your efforts only, (you are not the doer) therefore, if you lose, it is not your fault.  This may sound too superficial to you, but I can substantiate this to you in an untenable way. In essence, immerse in the deed, cherish the joy of the journey, you are not doing it, it is done through you, the result of the deed is not fully dependent on your deed, so don’t worry about it. If you pay attention to highly effective people, one of their biggest attributes is the ability to laser shar focus on the work.

Wrong lesson #1: I grew up learning that you are the master of your fate, you can do anything if you put your heart and soul into it.

One of the problems with this lesson being taught in schools is that people will take ownership of their life. We will put our best efforts yet fail. Take for eg: Elon Musk, if you did everything that he did the same, you would not become Musk. There is more to success than the art and science of success we are trained on.  There is more to success beyond our sphere of influence. Whatever happens to us good or bad, what we achieve and don’t achieve, win or lose., is part of a grand cosmic rhythm- most of which is beyond our imagination, and understanding, let alone being able to affect it to our advantage to win.  Therefore, successful people are often very humble, for they know some mysterious/superstitious forces are playing into it.

Wrong lesson #2: Success is a business objective or personal goal to be achieved

 success to be achieved to feel fulfilled, you will be disheartened. If you have no money, to you, success will mean $1MM.  But as soon as you have $1MM, you will now thrive for $10MM. This target will keep on moving. Success is personal, subjective and is a moving target because human desire is always after things you don’t have, which are always in the future. Success is running after the desire to be fulfilled in the future, but your life is here and now. This reveals two truths: a) you will never enjoy your life and will miss on life in the present, because you are in chase mode b) When you become successful, your mind is trained to run after a target and will continue to chase the next target instead of celebrating your present(then). People who save money for retirement to enjoy life are making a mistake. In India, there is Rs. 140,000 crores in unclaimed retirement accounts. Similar statistics in the US show that number to be more than $1.7T

Wrong lesson #3 Success will bring happiness. Successful people are happy, or success brings happiness-this is a mistaken belief because not all successful people are truly happy. If that were the case, all highly rich and powerful individuals would be happy. The idea of thinking, "Let me achieve this, and then I will be happy," is a flawed notion.

We put kids in school on a treadmill of pursuit, always running. When they finally get what they want, they lack the personality to enjoy it because they are so used to being in pursuit mode.

Secondly, you do not need to wait until you are successful to be happy. Instead, you learn to accept whatever life presents to you-whether good, bad, or ugly. Embracing it all allows you to find peace, comfort, and harmony. This understanding creates a sense of stability, reassuring you that it’s okay. It may not be what you want, but that’s okay.

10. What future trends in technology or business excite you the most?

There are some complex socio-economic problems in society that affect people's ability to lead a quality life. The excessive influence of a fast-paced world, coupled with information overload, has created voids in human quality of life, leaving people living like robots. Loneliness, broken families, fragmented communities, and a lack of connectedness have become widespread, reducing life to nothing more than a race to accumulate wealth as quickly as possible.

On the economic side, the way the system functions today has created a vast imbalance, widening the gap between those who have a lot and those who have very little. Those at the bottom of the pyramid have almost lost hope. This raises an important question-what can be done to solve this problem?

Can the latest technologies be leveraged to address these challenges? I began to think about whether AI has the potential to tie these issues together and provide a solution to such a socio-economic crisis. Could AI, taken to the next level, be the key?

AI today is nothing but data and algorithms. However, humans do not operate in a predictable, algorithmic manner. To truly solve these problems, AI must be blended with gut intuition, natural instincts, and emotional intelligence. I believe that by integrating these elements, we can develop solutions that address both the social and economic aspects of the issue.

I am currently working on two projects in this space: Urja Foundation, which aims to tackle the first problem, and Equilibrium Capital, which seeks to address the second.

11. Many young professionals in the medical field are moving abroad for education and job opportunities. What is your take on this trend, and what advice would you give to those looking to build a career in healthcare, whether in India or internationally?

If you look at the West, particularly the United States, Europe, and Canada, these countries have an acute shortage of medical professionals to treat patients. This shortage creates opportunities for aspiring medical professionals to build a career in high-tech countries like the United States, where technology is far superior, and the healthcare system is highly organized. The prospect of success in such a system drives migration.

One statistic I found is that 5% of doctors in the USA are Indians, and 10-12% of medical students are of Indian origin. I believe this is simply because of the opportunities available to them.

Having worked in healthcare for two decades and having observed it closely-from acute care and inpatient care to outpatient care and the overall functioning of the healthcare system-I believe the next generation of doctors must go beyond the modern medicine approach. They need to look at the population as a whole and not just focus on treating illnesses but also on keeping people healthy.

Imagine going to see a doctor not because you are sick but because that doctor becomes a champion of your health-helping you maintain it. Until we shift healthcare to this level, the system will continue to struggle.

The influx of patients has already broken the US healthcare system. The average wait time for an appointment is one month, and for a specialist, it takes three to four months. COVID-19 further exposed these flaws. The current doctor-to-patient ratio is insufficient, both in public health crises and in general.

The solution is not simply to bring more doctors into the equation. The real solution lies in figuring out how to keep the population healthy in the first place.

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