Boutique digital health practice

Digital health,
engineered with medical fluency.

Palo Alto Health Labs is a senior consulting practice for organizations building serious digital health infrastructure — from startups defining a category to pharma and health systems modernizing how they generate evidence. We bridge the gap between clinical intent and shipped software.

Built & led at
  • Stanford
  • Stanford Medicine — TDS
  • CardinalKit
  • CS342
  • EPI 270
  • PHENOMS Platform
Why us

A CTO who can read the protocol.

Most digital health work falls into a gap. Engineers ship software that doesn't survive contact with clinicians, regulators, or patients. Clinicians design studies that cannot be implemented. We are a single, senior counterpart fluent in both worlds.

i.

Engineering, at depth

Production mobile health apps, regulated data pipelines, EHR integrations, wearable ingestion, and the platform architecture beneath them. Built and shipped — not whiteboarded.

ii.

Science, at the bench

A Stanford PhD in computational epidemiology with a neurology focus. Study design, eCOA validation, biostatistics, and a working understanding of how clinical evidence is actually built.

iii.

One senior counterpart

You don't have to translate between vendors. We hold the technical architecture, the scientific design, and the regulatory posture in the same head — and write the spec accordingly.

Practice

How we engage.

Four ways to bring Palo Alto Health Labs into your organization. Most relationships start in one mode and extend into another as scope clarifies.

01 — Leadership

Fractional CTO

Embedded technical leadership for digital health startups — architecture decisions, hiring, vendor selection, regulatory posture, and a credible engineering voice in front of investors, partners, and clinical collaborators.

  • Architecture
  • Hiring
  • Roadmap
  • Investor diligence
02 — Science

Scientific Collaborator

Co-investigator-grade input on digital endpoint design, eCOA implementation, wearable signal processing, and the analysis pipelines that turn collected data into defensible evidence.

  • Study design
  • Digital endpoints
  • eCOA
  • Biostatistics
03 — Strategy

Architecture & Strategy

Technical due diligence, platform architecture, and roadmap design for pharma innovation groups and health systems. Short, structured engagements that leave a written artifact your team can execute on.

  • Tech due diligence
  • Platform architecture
  • Vendor evaluation
  • Roadmaps
04 — Build

Build Engagement

Senior engineering team delivering production-grade mobile health apps, clinician-facing dashboards, and the data infrastructure to link wearables, ePRO, and EHR data into something a biostatistician can actually use.

  • iOS / Android
  • Dashboards
  • EHR integration
  • Data pipelines
Selected work

A track record at the frontier.

Built, founded, and led at Stanford and Stanford Medicine. The shape of the practice today is the work below at scale, on behalf of new partners.

mHealth Platform 2.0

Re-architected Stanford Medicine's digital health infrastructure as part of TDS — the platform powering remote, multi-site clinical studies across the school of medicine.

Lead architect Stanford Medicine · TDS Platform · iOS · Cloud

CardinalKit

Founded CardinalKit, an open-source starting point for digital health applications. Now a foundation used across academic and industry programs to bootstrap regulated mobile health software.

Founder Open source Swift · iOS · ResearchKit

PHENOMS Platform

Designed and built an eCOA platform — a clinician-facing dashboard paired with a participant mobile app — that connects wearable data to EHR data for clinical analysis.

Architect & lead engineer Neurology · eCOA Mobile · Web · EHR

CS342 — Building for Digital Health

Created and launched Stanford's CS342, a project-based course training the next cohort of engineers to ship software that meets the clinical bar. Curriculum, infrastructure, and instruction.

Founding instructor Stanford CS Curriculum · Engineering

EPI 270 — Digital Health

Taught at the Stanford School of Medicine. Bridges epidemiologic method with applied digital health practice — the same translation work the consulting practice does for clients.

Instructor Stanford Medicine Epidemiology · Digital health
Who we work with

Counterparts, not vendors.

We engage where the work is technically serious and the buyer is senior — typically a founder, head of innovation, CMIO, or program sponsor.

i.

Digital health startups

Seed through Series B. Pre-launch architecture, fractional CTO leadership, and senior build capacity when the first hire isn't enough.

ii.

Pharma & biotech

Innovation groups and digital health teams. Decentralized trial infrastructure, digital endpoints, and platform strategy that can clear regulatory review.

iii.

Health systems

Academic medical centers and integrated delivery networks. Patient-facing platforms, remote monitoring, and the data infrastructure beneath them.

iv.

Research consortia

Multi-site studies, sponsors, and foundations. Shared digital infrastructure, eCOA design, and the engineering rigor research-grade data demands.

Engagement models

Three ways to start.

Most engagements begin with a short scoping call. We propose the smallest engagement that produces real value, and grow from there.

Monthly retainer

Advisory

A standing seat on your technical leadership. Architecture review, hiring input, vendor selection, and regulatory orientation.

  • Two strategic sessions per month
  • Async architecture & design review
  • Investor / partner diligence support
  • 30-day notice, no minimum term
Scoped delivery

Build

A senior team delivers a defined platform or application. We hold the architecture, the science, and the timeline through release.

  • Mobile health apps, dashboards, pipelines
  • Fixed scope, fixed timeline
  • Senior engineers only — no offshoring
  • Optional handoff plan to your team
Founder

Built by a CTO with a Stanford PhD.

The practice is led by its founder — both as the senior technical counterpart on every engagement and as the person responsible for the work delivered.

“The work I care about lives in a narrow band — software that actually clears the clinical bar and science that actually ships. Palo Alto Health Labs exists to do that work for partners who need a counterpart who has done it before.”

[Founder Name] is finishing a PhD at Stanford in computational epidemiology with a focus on neurology. The shape of the work since arriving at Stanford has been to re-engineer how digital health gets built: re-architecting Stanford Medicine's mHealth Platform 2.0 inside TDS, founding CardinalKit as an open-source starting point now used across academic and industry programs, designing and shipping the PHENOMS platform to link wearable and EHR data into research-grade evidence, and creating Stanford's CS342 to train the next cohort of engineers to that bar.

The unusual profile — a senior engineering leader with first-hand medical and epidemiologic depth — is what Palo Alto Health Labs offers its partners.

Contact

Tell us what you're building.

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