VIDEO. “The prospect of being a doctor was not too exciting” – he finished Medicine, and now he helps Romanian tech startups to innovate in health. List of Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai

Romanian health startups do not aim to sell “miracle solutions”, but at the same time, neither patients nor doctors in Romania are generally very open to innovative technologies, explained Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai, co-founder of Fresh Blood, an organization supporting innovation in the health field, on the StartupCafe Idei&Antrepreneuri podcast.

He finished Medicine in Cluj, almost 3 decades ago, but did not practice as a doctor, preferring to work for private pharmaceutical companies, which paid much better. He has built a career spanning medical business aspects and now uses his experience to support health-tech startups.

“I finished Medicine in Cluj, in 1998 (…) At that time, the prospect of being a doctor was not too exciting. And now it is still quite difficult to be a young doctor, without support. I see that my eldest daughter is in the fifth year of medicine, and we are thinking about what her path will look like. But at that time it was much more difficult.

And then, on the other hand, I discovered that there was an area where my medical knowledge was useful and that was looking for open-minded and dynamic people, and I entered the pharmaceutical industry. And, after a while, like many others, I said: I stay a few years to make a little clot and then I see what I do. I started to like it. And others saw that I was good at what I was doing.

As such, a 15-year career in the pharmaceutical industry followed, in several companies, in which I understood, first and foremost, how innovation develops starting from the idea stage and I understood what exactly is necessary in order to get from that idea to the solution that the doctor can actually use” – told Ion-Gheorghe Petrovai how he came to deal with health-tech startups.

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