There is a quiet problem sitting inside allied health and healthcare more broadly.
Most of us know it exists.
We assess.
We educate.
We demonstrate.
We coach.
We prescribe strategies, exercises, routines, home programs, behavioural supports, sensory supports, communication strategies, rehabilitation plans.
Then people leave the session.
And somewhere between:
- school pick-up,
- medication schedules,
- work,
- dinner,
- fatigue,
- paperwork,
- life stress,
- overwhelm,
- parenting,
- disability,
- burnout,
- appointments,
- and simply trying to survive the day…
the therapy plan often falls apart.
Not because people do not care.
Not because clients are “non-compliant.”
But because real life is complicated.
In my recent conversation on The Entrepreneurial Clinician with occupational therapist and Theratrak founder Laura Simmons, we explored a question I believe healthcare needs to take much more seriously:
What if clinicians are some of the best people to redesign healthcare systems?
And honestly?
I think Laura’s story demonstrates exactly why the answer may be yes.
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The Real Work of Therapy Often Happens Outside the Session Room
Laura described a frustration many clinicians immediately recognise.
You spend a therapy session:
- teaching,
- supporting,
- coaching,
- demonstrating,
- problem solving,
only to return the following week and discover very little carried over into everyday life.
Not because the therapy was ineffective.
But because implementation is hard.
Particularly for:
- overwhelmed families,
- busy carers,
- people managing chronic illness,
- neurodivergent children,
- exhausted parents,
- people juggling multiple systems at once.
Laura explained that as an occupational therapist working in paediatrics, she became increasingly aware that meaningful change rarely came from the 45-minute session alone.
The “magic” happened when strategies became embedded into real life.
And that changed how she viewed the problem entirely.
Instead of asking:
“Why aren’t people doing the therapy?”
she began asking:
“How do we design support that actually fits real human life?”
That is a systems-thinking question.
And healthcare desperately needs more of them.
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Allied Health Professionals Are Already Problem Solvers
One of the most interesting parts of this conversation was hearing Laura describe herself as an “accidental tech founder.”
She did not start with:
“I want to work in tech.”
She started with:
“There is a problem here.”
That distinction matters.
Because allied health professionals — particularly occupational therapists — are trained to:
- analyse environments,
- identify barriers,
- improve participation,
- increase function,
- adapt systems,
- and solve practical problems.
In other words:
Many clinicians already think like designers.
Laura spoke about discovering the world of UX (user experience) design and realising how naturally occupational therapy thinking aligned with designing digital experiences.
Understanding:
- how people move through systems,
- where friction occurs,
- what creates overwhelm,
- what supports participation,
- what improves usability,
is deeply aligned with allied health thinking.
And I suspect many clinicians underestimate just how transferable those skills truly are.
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Healthcare Technology Should Support Humans — Not Replace Them
One of the reasons I appreciated this conversation so much is because it was not driven by fear-based narratives around technology replacing healthcare professionals.
Instead, Laura’s work through Theratrak focuses on supporting:
- continuity,
- communication,
- participation,
- implementation,
- and connection between sessions.
The platform allows therapists and families to:
- track activities,
- share videos,
- provide feedback,
- send reminders,
- journal progress,
- and support therapy implementation in real-world settings.
What stood out most to me was this:
The technology only works because it was designed by someone who deeply understands people.
This is not technology trying to remove clinicians.
It is technology attempting to extend clinical support into daily life.
That is a very different conversation.
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The Future of Healthcare Cannot Depend on Clinicians Over-Functioning Forever
Another important thread running underneath this episode was sustainability.
Laura spoke honestly about startup life.
About still working clinically while building a company.
About reinvesting revenue back into growth.
About the reality that innovation often takes longer than people expect.
I appreciated that honesty enormously.
Because healthcare already contains enough pressure to:
- perform,
- over-function,
- over-give,
- self-sacrifice,
- and “push through.”
This season of The Entrepreneurial Clinician has intentionally explored:
- capacity,
- sustainability,
- psychosocial risk,
- moral injury,
- identity strain,
- and the systems clinicians are working inside of.
And this conversation fits beautifully within that larger discussion.
Because innovation should not simply become another way clinicians exhaust themselves.
The goal is not:
“Do more.”
The goal is:
“Build better.”
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Could More Clinicians Become Innovators?
I think one of the most powerful takeaways from this conversation is this:
Clinicians are allowed to contribute beyond traditional service delivery models.
Not every health professional needs to:
- become a founder,
- build an app,
- create a startup,
- or enter the tech industry.
But many clinicians do have:
- ideas,
- observations,
- insights,
- frustrations,
- and solutions
that deserve to be explored.
Especially by the people living inside these systems every day.
Because the people closest to healthcare problems are often the people most capable of designing meaningful solutions.
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What Happens Between Sessions Matters
This may ultimately be the central message of this episode.
What happens:
- between therapy sessions,
- between appointments,
- between reviews,
- between interventions,
often determines whether meaningful change actually occurs.
And perhaps healthcare systems of the future need to pay much more attention to that reality.
Not just:
- the appointment itself,
- the billable hour,
- the intervention code,
- the assessment report,
but the human experience that unfolds in everyday life afterwards.
Because that is where participation happens.
That is where habits form.
That is where confidence grows.
That is where therapy either integrates into life — or disappears beneath the weight of it.
And maybe clinicians are exactly the people capable of helping redesign systems that better support that reality.
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🎧 Listen to the full episode of The Entrepreneurial Clinician featuring Laura Simmons:
Could Clinicians Build Better Healthcare Systems? What Happens Between Sessions Matters Most