Digital Doctor
When Bronwyn Uber Harris, MD, enrolled at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 2006, she knew she wouldn’t be following a conventional path. Instead, she would use her degree for her true passion — innovating how medical care is provided, which at the time she thought was new medical devices.
Harris, who was recently named vice president for clinical product for Carbon Health, began thinking about her career trajectory as an undergraduate at Brown University when she thought she would become a bioengineer.
She pursued a PhD in bioengineering from the University of Pittsburgh, but realized that although she enjoyed learning about clinical support systems and designing ventricular assist devices for children, she most enjoyed the patient care meetings where she would wonder about the stories behind each case.
“It became clear to me I was drawn to the patient and the patient side of care delivery. It gave me a reason to veer from the path of purely engineering. I knew if I went to medical school, I would be close to the patient and understand firsthand how care is delivered,” she said.
After medical school Harris went to Stanford School of Medicine for a residency and fellowship in pediatric cardiology, which included a fellowship in Stanford’s 10-month Biodesign Innovation program.
She then co-founded and served as CEO of Tueo Health, a digital health company that created a digital tool to help parents monitor the symptoms, environment and treatment of their children who had asthma.
Apple acquired Tueo Health in 2018, and Harris and her team joined Apple where she worked on projects ranging from features within the Apple Watch to an asthma digital tool for adults in partnership with Anthem. She helped define clinical requirements at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic for the exposure notification project, a partnership between Apple and Google.
In November 2021, Harris left to join Carbon Health, a national health care provider with a mission to make high-quality health care accessible to everyone. She said she is excited about building digital tools and programs that can be closely integrated with care.
She also has a clinical appointment at Stanford where she sees patients in the general pediatric cardiology clinic a few days a month.
Although she always planned on having an unconventional career path in medicine, “I had no idea it would turn out quite like this,” she said.
“Digital health was relatively immature and not something I was aware of in medical school. Now I’m very staunchly planted in digital health, and I love it. There’s so much power in what you can do digitally, and it’s so scalable, once you build the right experience.”