How a move from neonatal intensive care to healthtech has allowed Dr. Andras Meczner, medical director for accuracy and safety, to achieve career satisfaction with far less stress
As a paediatrician with a special interest in neonatology, I have spent many night shifts in intensive care units. While this work is undeniably rewarding, it doesn’t permit you to have much control over your life. Working in healthtech, while also retaining some clinical practice, has allowed me to find a balance that suits me. Here, I describe how, for my life circumstances, expertise and interests, working for Flo is a satisfying and rewarding choice.
Interviewed by Laura Potter.
What attracted you to working at Flo?
One reason was the people; I’d been advising Anna Klepchukova, the chief medical officer, on a freelance basis for two years before I joined, so I had a good connection with her. Also, Flo has such a big user base, and if you join a successful company like Flo, you learn a lot, which attracted me.
What are the biggest differences between clinical hospital-based work and working in healthtech, and is balance one of them?
Definitely. As a neonatologist in the intensive care unit, you work 13-hour shifts, including a lot of night shifts, which is very intense, whereas at Flo, it’s wonderful to have flexibility. Everybody works hard, so I say to my team, “Go out for a walk. Finish whenever you want as long as the work is done.” In an intensive care setting, you might just sit down to eat lunch, and the crash bleep goes off, so you have to drop everything. I still do a bit of clinical practice, but I very rarely work a night shift, and that makes my life much better from a work/life balance perspective. It makes me happy to have both. Being a full-time medic was a stressful life, whereas now, when I get the chance to go into the hospital, I just get the positive aspects.
What does a good work/life balance look like for you?
My partner lives abroad, so it’s great that I can work from any location. Of course, there are weeks where you need to meet people face to face, and it’s great that we have the London office, so there’s the opportunity to do that, but for my life circumstances, that flexibility to work from anywhere is the most important part.
Is there anything you tried that didn’t work while trying to find the balance?
I started working from home during the pandemic, when I was at another company, and because everything had shut down, I just worked constantly. As life started to go back to normal, it was easier to find that balance. Sometimes I work out of hours now, but at the same time, if I need to sort something out during work hours, and it’s not compromising my team, I can. I think that’s a fair deal.
I’m also not very good at taking breaks. I often work through my lunch break, but I think that’s probably a habit from working in the hospital. I inhale my lunch because I never knew when the bleep would take away that opportunity. I know that’s unhealthy, but it’s become ingrained.
Working from home, how do you make a distinction between life and work?
It is super important for me to have my own personal laptop. I don’t put personal things on my Flo laptop, and I don’t put Flo things on my personal laptop, because it’s important to separate those two lives. I also never work from bed! I don’t sit at my desk all day. I move around a lot to my beanbag, the couch, the table, but I never work from bed.
What has been the biggest challenge of being in a senior role at Flo?
Getting across why certain things are important from a medical perspective to people who don’t come from a health background. There are various aspects to take into consideration when a product comes alive: the design, the content, the technical aspects. And sometimes to ensure users receive accurate guidance, you need to make compromises on maybe the design or the content. We need to achieve a balance where we all feel we’re giving the best possible experience to the users, but at the same time we’re keeping the product safe. As a doctor, that’s always my first priority.
How do stress levels compare between clinical work and your work at Flo?
They’re incomparable. When you’re in a hospital and you have to incubate a baby, it has to succeed, which is incredibly intense, whereas at Flo there’s time to think before making decisions. I sometimes see other non-medical people stressing about something that I wouldn’t consider stressful. I’m not being condescending about that; their stress is real. It’s just that we have had different experiences and therefore different thresholds.
How often do you see colleagues face to face?
Most of my team works outside of the UK, so we aim to meet once a quarter, but I only joined Flo three-and-a-half months ago, so we met in January, and we’ll meet again in May. I also want to go into the London office a bit more because every time I go in, I really enjoy it. The Tube journey puts me off, so once the weather gets better, I’ll cycle in once or twice a week. Even just grabbing a coffee and saying two sentences to a colleague is beneficial; you don’t have to be in a full meeting. I like the hybrid approach, where you have your liberty to work from home, you can go for a workcation, but you also meet people in the flesh.
How different is it working with AI experts, product managers, business strategists, and developers as opposed to medics and patients in a hospital?
It’s more opinion-based. There are a lot of guidelines in hospitals, and everybody has a clear role assigned to them. Particularly in an intensive care setting, everybody knows what the rules and boundaries are, whereas in healthtech those boundaries aren’t as clear. I enjoy that multidisciplinary approach because you look at things from multiple perspectives. People have a different history, whereas in a hospital everyone is trained in a similar way. Whether you’re a nurse, a nurse practitioner or a doctor, in key aspects of your job, you all have a similar perspective. Handled correctly, the multiple perspectives in healthtech can be very positive.
How do you balance the needs of various departments and stakeholders?
That’s challenging and very important, but again, it comes back to safety. We have to steward safety as doctors, and we have to be very clear on what’s a priority. If a feature cannot go live because it’s unsafe, we have to get that across. If something doesn’t work, we don’t say “no.” We work together to come up with something else. That’s the beauty of it.
How do you prioritise?
If I can see that something could go wrong or potentially cause harm, that’s my priority. Beyond that, revenue and features that benefit the users are always the priority for the company. Solutions that would improve our processes would be less of a priority but something to work on because they improve efficiency in the long term, even if you don’t see the results immediately. It’s about finding that balance.
Tech start-ups can be fast paced, challenging environments. How do you manage stress?
I do a lot of sports, which gives me a release. Pottery and tennis are the two things that totally switch my mind off. I don’t think of anything else when I do those activities. There is also so much culture in London, so I visit a lot of exhibitions, theatres and cultural events, and of course meeting friends allows me to talk about silly things, rather than work.
Who do you go to when you need support or advice at work?
Anna, our chief medical officer, would be my natural choice, but I could talk to anyone on my team. At the moment, I’m carrying out an assessment of a new feature, and I asked some of my team members to brainstorm with me. I don’t think it has to be a hierarchical thing. I’ll speak to anyone who has some knowledge if I feel that it’s appropriate.
What brings you the most satisfaction at work?
Solving a challenging problem. After three months, I’m just at the stage where I’ve picked up all the features and how they all work at Flo. It’s a very complex product, so when you first join, you just need to sit back, study and listen. So I’m waiting for my first big eureka moment.
How did you get to grips with Flo?
Talking to people. One of my team members has been around almost since the beginning, so he knows everything, and I ask a lot of questions. Often doctors don’t like asking questions, because usually we’re in the role where we give the answer, so in a way it’s uncomfortable, but I’ve got used to asking.
What advice would you give to someone building their career in femtech now?
There’s no such thing as a stupid question. Keep asking. Also, show that you’re interested. A lot of doctors are thinking of changing careers, and sometimes people have approached me on social media to ask what they should do, and I think as long as they are genuinely interested, and they really care, that’s a good start.
