Palo Alto Health Labs is a senior consulting practice for teams building serious digital health software — Stanford-trained in both engineering and clinical epidemiology, so your product clears the regulatory bar and your evidence actually ships. Fractional CTO leadership, SaMD architecture, digital endpoints, and senior build teams for startups, pharma, and health systems.
What teams bring us in for
Embedded technical leadership for healthtech startups — architecture, hiring, roadmap, and regulatory posture.
How we engage 02Software as a Medical Device and clinical-grade platforms built to clear regulatory review.
Explore 03eCOA, digital biomarkers, and decentralized-trial infrastructure linking wearable and EHR data into evidence.
See the work 04HIPAA-compliant mobile health apps, clinician dashboards, and FHIR/EHR pipelines — shipped by senior engineers.
Engagement modelsMost 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.
Production mobile health apps, regulated data pipelines, EHR integrations, wearable ingestion, and the platform architecture beneath them. Built and shipped — not whiteboarded.
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.
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.
Track record you can check
Stanford Medicine
Lead architect of mHealth Platform 2.0 (TDS) — the infrastructure powering remote, multi-site clinical studies.
CardinalKit
Founder of the open-source foundation for digital health apps, used across academic and industry programs.
PHENOMS
Architect of the eCOA platform linking wearable and EHR data into research-grade evidence.
CS342 · EPI 270
Created and taught digital health at Stanford — to computer scientists and to the school of medicine.
Stanford PhD
Computational epidemiology with a neurology focus — study design, eCOA validation, and biostatistics.
Four ways to bring Palo Alto Health Labs into your organization. Most relationships start in one mode and extend into another as scope clarifies.
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.
Co-investigator-grade input on digital endpoint design, eCOA implementation, wearable signal processing, and the analysis pipelines that turn collected data into defensible evidence.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bring the architecture, the science, and the regulatory posture to one senior counterpart. Start with a 30-minute scoping call — we'll tell you the smallest engagement that moves you forward.
We engage where the work is technically serious and the buyer is senior — typically a founder, head of innovation, CMIO, or program sponsor.
Seed through Series B. Pre-launch architecture, fractional CTO leadership, and senior build capacity when the first hire isn't enough.
Innovation groups and digital health teams. Decentralized trial infrastructure, digital endpoints, and platform strategy that can clear regulatory review.
Academic medical centers and integrated delivery networks. Patient-facing platforms, remote monitoring, and the data infrastructure beneath them.
Multi-site studies, sponsors, and foundations. Shared digital infrastructure, eCOA design, and the engineering rigor research-grade data demands.
Most engagements begin with a short scoping call. We propose the smallest engagement that produces real value, and grow from there.
A standing seat on your technical leadership. Architecture review, hiring input, vendor selection, and regulatory orientation.
Embedded leadership through a defined arc — from architecture through hiring through first production release. The most common engagement for funded startups.
A senior team delivers a defined platform or application. We hold the architecture, the science, and the timeline through release.
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.
The 60-point checklist we use to pressure-test a digital health product before a line of code is committed — spanning regulatory intent, architecture, interoperability, evidence, security, and quality. Built from shipping regulated platforms at Stanford Medicine.
The questions founders, pharma innovation leads, and health-system teams ask before a first engagement.
Book a 30-minute scoping call, or send a short note — we respond personally within two business days. For sensitive material, ask for our PGP key or a signed NDA before sharing detail.