Risk Never Sleeps Podcast

Episode #162: From Ideas to Patients: The Mission of Physician Entrepreneurs
Host: Ed Gaudet
Guest: Dr. Arlen Meyers (Founder, Society of Physician Entrepreneurs)
Date: December 12, 2025

Overview

This episode explores the challenges, motivations, and impact of physician entrepreneurship through the journey and perspective of Dr. Arlen Meyers, founder of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs (SoPE). In a conversation marked by wit and candor, Dr. Meyers explains why clinicians often struggle to translate ideas into patient benefits, the importance of reconciling medical and entrepreneurial mindsets, and offers advice for new innovators in healthcare. He also shares personal stories of risk, change, and the lessons learned from both failure and success.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origins of Arlen Meyers and "SoPE"

• Dr. Meyers shares the family lore behind his name, drawing a whimsical link to the composer Harold Arlen ("Somewhere Over the Rainbow") ([01:01], [01:18]).
• Introduces SoPE—the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs:
  • "We are an international open nonprofit biomedical and clinical innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem." ([05:50])
  • Mission: "Members helping members get their ideas to patients." ([05:55])
• Memorable Quote: "Every white coat thinks they have a good idea. They don't. They have ideas. That goes down the shower and gets stuck with the hair in the strainer and you never see it again." — Arlen ([06:00])

2. Barriers to Physician Entrepreneurship

• Doctors and scientists lack training in innovation and entrepreneurship.
• "You probably, in your training, had not had innovation and entrepreneurship training... we don't teach that yet." ([07:18])
• Dr. Meyers' personal pivot: Developed a device for cancer detection but couldn't bring it to market due to ecosystem gaps for community clinicians.
• He founded SoPE to fill this void after observing consistent obstacles in getting ideas to patients ([08:08]).

3. On Career Change & Moral Injury in Medicine

• Dr. Meyers discusses his workshop on non-clinical careers and why many professionals leave practice:
  • Burnout, moral injury, systemic frustrations, and the intertwining of ego with identity ([09:38]).
  • "Moral injury? Well, that means that your values are being threatened because you're being made to do something... that you don't feel are in the patient's best interest, like order a bunch of tests so the person that hired you can make a lot of money." ([12:19])
• Moral injury is contrasted with burnout: "It's actually more powerful than burnout." ([13:29])

4. The Medicine-Business Culture Clash

• Reconciling medical ethics with entrepreneurial goals is a core tension.
  • "Peter Drucker has his famous line that the purpose of a business is to create a customer. That doesn't work in medicine. My job is not to create sick people." ([14:04])
  • "I'd rather pay you to be well than to be sick." — Arlen ([14:53])
• The solution is finding the overlap between the clinical and entrepreneurial mindsets: "There's a difference between skepticism and cynicism... I'm a healthy skeptic, which unfortunately, I don't think we have enough of." ([15:43])

5. Radical Candor and "Euthanators" for Bad Ideas

• Meyers acts as an "entrepreneurial attending," pushing innovators to challenge their own assumptions:
  • "Give me three reasons why this idea should never see the light of day."
• "We have too many accelerators; we really need more euthanators. So a euthanator is a place where your idea goes to die and give us both a merciful death." ([17:18])
• Describes "idea euthanator" workshops, where teams evaluate whether to persevere, pivot, or punt an idea. ([18:11])
• Questions the value of business plan competitions vs. value proposition contests: "I don't think that's terribly useful, frankly." ([19:27])

6. Skepticism, Optimism, and Generational Hope

• Dr. Meyers is bullish on the younger generation's curiosity and will to innovate:
  • "I'm optimistic. And the reason that I'm optimistic has to do with the younger generation." ([16:15])
  • Enjoys coaching students and residents, giving tough feedback but also empowering them.

7. Artificial Intelligence and Unpredictable Change

• On fears and hopes for AI in healthcare:
  • Uses the iPhone's transformative effect as an example:
  • "Would anyone, knowing then what was going to happen to the iPhone and the impact it would have on our life... No, it's impossible." ([21:19])
  • No one can fully predict AI’s impact, but adaptability is key.

8. Practical Nuggets & Humorous Asides

• On lost phones: Dr. Meyers puts a card with his wife's number on his phone to facilitate returns ([22:52]).
• On longevity: "I think this whole longevity thing is smoke. It's just silly. It's another scam to make money... It shouldn't be about life span, it should be about health span." ([24:16], [24:35])

9. Risks, Selling, and Advice to His Younger Self

• Riskiest thing: Selling newspapers as a child on Atlantic City beaches taught the value of taking risks and selling—skills key to entrepreneurship ([26:11]).
• "That's another thing we don't teach med students, which I think is a core skill, is how to sell." ([27:02])
• Advice to his 20-year-old self: "Make it personal, but don't take it personally... Because you will ultimately fail repetitively." ([27:43])
• "Don't let school get in the way of your education." — Mark Twain ([28:33])

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Moving from Idea to Innovation
  "How do you get an idea? And even if you had a good idea, you wouldn't know what to do with it." — Arlen ([06:46])

• On Moral Injury
  "If you are asked to do something to or for a patient that is not in the patient's best interest... then that inflicts moral injury." — Arlen ([12:57])

• On Business vs. Medicine
  "My job is not to create sick people... Some people would argue with that, that contemporary medicine is exactly about creating sick people and spending lots of money to make them better." — Arlen ([14:12])

• On Euthanators for Ideas
  "We have too many accelerators and we really need more euthanators. So a euthanator is a place where your idea goes to die and give us both a merciful death." — Arlen ([17:18])

• On Not Taking Failure Personally
  "Make it personal, but don't take it personally." — Arlen ([27:43])

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Origins of SoPE, Meaning, and Mission – [05:47]
• Barriers for Physicians to Innovation – [06:53]
• Pivoting from Practice: Frustrations and Moral Injury – [09:38], [11:55], [12:19]
• Reconciling Medicine & Business Cultures – [14:04], [14:49]
• Euthanators & Idea Pitches – [17:18], [18:11], [19:27]
• AI, iPhone Parallels, Unpredictable Future – [20:27], [21:19]
• Practical Problem-Solving, Lost Phones – [22:52]
• Views on Longevity, Healthy Life vs. Long Life – [24:16], [24:35]
• Risks, Selling Young, Entrepreneurial Skills – [26:11], [27:02]
• Advice to 20-Year-Old Self – [27:37]
• Plug for SoPE – [28:58]

Closing

Dr. Meyers’ journey from clinician to entrepreneur is a lesson in the value of candid self-reflection, practical education, and building supportive ecosystems for innovation. He combines healthy skepticism with hopefulness, encouraging health professionals to develop entrepreneurial skills, embrace failure as part of progress, and focus on making real-world patient impact.

If you’d like to learn more about the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs, Dr. Meyers recommends visiting sopenet.org — “It is dirt cheap and a really high value. It’s 80 bucks a year.” ([29:13])

For more resources, episodes, and patient safety insights, visit Censinet.com