We sat down with Angela Ha, former Head of Product at Oma Robotics, an early stage startup focused on innovation in the IVF, and fertility space. Angela shared some really great wisdom about how to successfully lead products and a new health tech startup.
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For the full YouTube video: https://youtu.be/31q4zC3LSNg
Chris Hoyd 0:07
Welcome back to Product in Healthtech, a community for product leaders by product leaders. I'm Chris Hoyd, the director of product management and Vynyl. Today I sat down with Angela Ha, from Oma Robotics, an early stage startup focused on innovation in the IVF, and fertility space. Angela shared some really great wisdom about how to successfully lead products and a new health tech startup. So let's jump into that conversation.
Hey, Angela, good to see you again.
Angela Ha 0:35
Hey, Chris.
Chris Hoyd 0:36
It's been I think, a couple of years since we last since we last caught up in the interim, you had moved to a new position. So you're leading product at a at a new company?
Angela Ha 0:45
I did. Yes, yes, that has changed. And that is part of the nature and being an earlier stage, you know, it's one year two years can make a big difference at times.
Chris Hoyd 0:56
And it sounds like an incredibly cool company, you're tackling some big problems with some, I think, really cool, really cool tech, both hardware and software, it sounds like so I wonder if you could just kind of take a minute and tell us about the company, you're at now Oma Robotics, and what your role is at the company.
So yes, just a quick background on myself. My name is Angela, I am currently Head of Product at Oma Robotics. We're also called OMA fertility, because we have a chain of fertility clinics. But the company was started by our three co founders, you know, really with the mission of making, you know, fertility care are more effective, and also more accessible to anyone who would like to start a family. And so the company was really started, when our co founder, or co founders visited a fertility clinic, they actually had a close friend or acquaintance of theirs who you know, spent, you know, 10s of 1000s, on six IVF cycles, ended up having to declare bankruptcy, and actually did not have a child to show for that. And, you know, it became a really question of wow, you know, in this modern age, like IVF, has been around for 30-40 years at this point in time. And it was really just surprising that there wasn't really a lot of innovation, you know, the fact that IVF exists is quite an innovation in itself, but in terms of, you know, what is being done in the laboratory, you know, it is still very, very much a manual process, you know, that doesn't really, really hasn't been, I would say, innovated upon in the last, like, 30-40 years in many aspects of that. And so when they decided to start the company, you know, there was definitely a focus in terms of, you know, what are you doing in the lab to really help increase, you know, efficacy of IVF? How do we make it more efficient, so that, you know, there's less reliance on, you know, having to have a really big footprint or needing to have, you know, really highly skilled, people that are hard and, you know, are in demand, such as embryologist, like what are some things that we could do to make all of that, you know, again, more accessible, more efficient, more effective, so that more and more people can access this type of care. Now, with that being said, you know, we also did stand up a number of fertility clinics, we also acquired a clinic. And a really important piece of that is understanding our the patient journey of you know, people that do come to get fertility care services, you know, understanding how we can provide not only right, good outcomes, but this whole process, it's actually quite an emotional journey for the people that do come and seek fertility care. And it's a very long journey. So for some people, they might have to go through one round, some people may have to go through multiple, some people may, you know, wonder if they need to get care over the course of many years before finally, you know, you know, going down the path, again, it is a very expensive procedure. You know, as we began to stand up for clinics, that became a big challenge, really, to understand, you know, yes, we are building product in the laboratory, and, you know, doing research there to really figure out what are ways to improve outcomes, but the truth is to make this care more accessible to make it easier to also just make it a more pleasant experience, there's a whole aspect of it that is patient facing that deals with the actual clinics themselves, how they are operated, how do we do it in a you know, scalable fashion so that it is a sustainable business, etc. And so, you know, we do have a series of clinics that are in different locations throughout the United States. And you know, it is in many ways, you know, both are kind of needed to really help us not only you know, have continued the research and development the lab but also to, you know, really understand what that end to end journey is like for people that are going through this type of care and need a product like this to help you know, bring IVF to more people that you know, really need it. So, that's just a little bit of background on what Oma Fertility is doing. My role as head of product. It varies depending on, I would say which phase of our growth we are in. So I'm happy to dive more into that. But it's really, you know, being in an earlier stage, you know, right now, it's just me, I have, you know, I'm working really closely in conjunction with our performance marketing. So I do have one person on my team that's focused on growth, anything from let's make sure we're measuring our customer or patient satisfaction to another day, it could be, you know, what are some of the ways that we can improve conversion, you know, from the different channels that we are marketing to, because, again fertility care is a lot of it is self pay, it is a little bit different than other areas in the healthcare space, where there's a lot of, you know, reliance on insurance, or payer relationships and things like that. So, you know, really just trying to find ways to help us grow, but also making sure that we are creating a good experience for our patients. So it varies, it's kind of runs the gamut. But it is also fun to be involved with different aspects of it,
An unbelievably complex and thorny, and difficult challenge to undertake as an organization. And as a head of product. I mean, just from, you know, the biological complexity to, as you said, the sort of emotional weight of what the patients are going through to having to kind of marry the clinic experience with, you know, where the tech fits into it. That's an incredibly bold project to tackle. Maybe, because it's still kind of early stage and you are in this leadership role in the organization has evolved over the last, you know, year plus, can you walk us through a little bit, you know, kind of a, give the other sort of product leaders or startup product leaders out there a sense of, of what it's been like for you to where all the different hats and how that just kind of as part of the of the roll?
Angela Ha 6:49
Sure. So I think when I first joined, we were just in the process, we had one clinic, and we were in the process of, you know, standing up our other ones. So I think a big aspect around that was really understanding how we can provide a great patient experience and also in a way that is replicable. And what are some of the things that we could do to make sure that there is some standardization, or at least some standard way of measuring success. And again, this was still in progress. So these clinics, we're still not yet seeing patients, we had one that was seeing patients, but everything else, it was still in the process of building out everything from the actual like buildings themselves, the actual clinics themselves to staffing to, you know, getting the EMRs configured and things like that. And so, in coming in, I think one of the first things I wanted to tackle was as a product person, there's, you always want to measure to some extent. So a very simple, basic way to do that is through some definitive measurement of patient satisfaction. And so, you know, just a small example of one of the things we tackled in the very beginning was just, let's just get a way to measure NPS out the door. You know, we don't have to overcomplicate it and so, you know, again, just threw together some quick requirements, using the existing tooling that we had our existing CRM tool, we quickly figured out, you know, we're in the patient journey, again, there's like different challenges, because the patient journey is very long. You know, even from the beginning of perhaps, like, being interested in something like this to the point at which you're actually going through the procedure and going through a cycle of IVF could take as long as you know, four to five months, right? And so where do we ask the patient what their experiences. So we decided to kind of take it at two different points in that patient journey, we launched it, and we actually have a really high response rate. So like, anywhere, depending on the clinic, between 15 to 20% of our patients actually respond. And a lot of them give detailed feedback. And you know, and our NPS at our existing clinics are all above the 80 mark, like it's above 70, many above 80. And so it was really nice that we were able to record that from the get go, so we could see, you know, how the different clinics are doing. And again, that's just one example of a definitive measure of how are we actually providing the care of and of course, there's always going to be areas that we feel, are maybe not coming together in the background operationally. But it was nice to find ways to measure things as quickly as possible so that we know in the grand scheme, like I think our patients are really loving our doctors, they're liking the care that we provide. And of course, in the cases where it's not perfect, like we would know how to target it and how to fix it. So that's just one example. So I would say the first half, like probably two quarters of my time at Oma was spent not only trying to measure some definitive, like as definitively as we can in terms of what the patient experiences but really understanding the end to end journey which as I mentioned is very long. There is a heavy operational component I will say for I think which could be challenging sometimes for a product person, because there's, it does sometimes does feel like there's only so much you can influence, you can basically say, like, hey, we kind of wrote out what this SOP would look like. But we do need to make sure that, you know, people are trained appropriately. So there's, you know, that aspect as well. But you know, from my perspective, it really understanding it and mapping it out as best as we can writing out the documentation on what we think this journey should look like, is at least something that a product person can really help drive that process, if you will. But you know, has to be working very closely in conjunction with our operational teams or clinic teams to see what is possible, what is not. A lot of times when people think product management, like my background is I built software and a lot of other companies where, as you know, at Oma is a little bit different, where, you know, yes, there was definitely a desire to build some tech, you know, there's tech in the lab, but then there's also the patient facing side. You know, there was definitely some temptations to want to be like, oh, you know, should we, you know, build something that is patient facing? And, you know, so there was definitely a good bit of work to understand, you know, technically, you know, build or buy decision again, in this space of like, you know, does it make sense, it really makes sense to build your own EMR? So it's like, okay, is the EMR that we're using, you know, like, tailored to our needs? Is it sufficient? Is the patient portal experience, you know, you know, on brand, is it you know, what we'd like it to be, is there something to be desired? Is there some way we could build something to fill that gap? So there was definitely some analysis there as well to understand our tech stack in terms of the patient facing side. And, you know, making some decisions on what would be best for what we would like to deliver in terms of the patient experience,
Chris Hoyd 11:49
Right, you feel like that laid a great foundation for for Oma to, to continue to grow, and that you understand that deeply, you've sort of documented and circulated it well, within the organization, like surely that, you know, will be a good investment.
Angela Ha 12:03
I think there's certainly challenges like we have, you know, documented things, but at the same time, we have five different clinics, you know, they were all ramping up very quickly. We had to work closely in conjunction with them, and, you know, identify what are the things that we can and cannot Institute? Where does it make sense to give the clinic some leeway to kind of do things that works best for their patient population, it was certainly helpful, but it was only honestly, the first step, I think there is a lot of things that would need to be, you know, further operationalized. And that's kind of a constant, I would say, relationship that needs to be established with the clinics, and also really understanding what are you know, prioritizing? What are the key things, so there's always going to be things that could be better. But there's always going to be like a few things that float to the top, like, whether it's like patient communication, you know, how do we make it easier for them to communicate with the clinic? That's just one example. Then, frankly, you know, in the health tech space, I think a huge part of it is always going to be the EMR, you're not going to want to introduce a ton of different tools to your clinics, right? You're not going to you know, your medical assistants, your nurses, like they're already running around, like I visited all of our clinics, it is it gets busy. People are, you know, doing a ton of things already. So one of the challenges like how do you not put more tech on them more processes, more tools that they need to use. So ideally, you'd find an EMR that satisfies a lot of those needs, you're not really making them do much else on top of it. You know, I think in health care, especially, I feel like the, the temptation of paper is always very strong. And so if you don't, if either A, your tool doesn't satisfy what you needed to do, or B, it hasn't with the tool itself wasn't configured or the staff wasn't trained. Then you have these gaps, where you have a lot of things that are lost in heaps of paper. We're always trying to get away from paper, but it feels like that never ending I've been at other companies, other healthcare companies as well, it's like facts. Like, I feel like sometimes it feels like the uphill battle is like, Is this ever gonna go away? You know, and I think that is a very real thing at any health care, like at least health care, at least when it comes to like clinics, when it comes to any kind of medical delivery. That's a really, really huge piece. And, you know, even if the temptation is there to maybe change EMRs to build something, I think one of my learnings is that like a big part of it, you know, as not glamorous as it is, is just to make sure your existing setup is like consistent, and also that the staff is like well trained, so that there is appropriate training and documentation on how to use what you already have. Again, it doesn't feel very, you know, someone who likes to build things. It's like, you know, it feels not necessarily as like, exciting sometimes but hands down, it's one of the most important Things to ensure that, you know, you have a smoothly running operation because that at the end of the day, it does two things, right? It's, it's for the patient experience, yes. Like, at the end of the day, if everyone is clear on who needs to be communicated with, and like, you know, how to reach out to the patient, et cetera, et cetera, like that affects their experience, oftentimes, when they have a bad experience, it's because something was miscommunicated, right? So that if I look into our data, if I look into our responses, if anything ever kind of went sideways, as always, because Oh, so and so told me this, but then so and so said something different, or, you know, and so those are all things that could be addressed, if you had appropriate like, Hey, this is the one place you look, right, or this is the one place you document something about a patient. But of course, also just operationally, you're not wasting time of your staff who could be always better utilized, if they're not spending time transcribing something that was written into the EMR after the fact, as an example.
Chris Hoyd 15:56
So a lot of sounds like hard won sort of lessons there about, about how to how to do this well, and how to honor the patient journey, especially as they're going through something as sensitive as this, it sounds like, you know, you've talked about sort of finding a tool that can be a single source of truth, sort of honoring the norms of the various disciplines that that do get busy and you know, have to kind of respond to things in real time with patients. That's like, so much of your your job is and has been really, you know, kind of connective tissue of these different departments, whether it's growth or clinical or the ops team. Do you have an approach to that? Or is it just you've got the experience, and you kind of have developed, you know, the muscle memory of how to do that?
Angela Ha 16:43
Ah, that's a great question. I think any leader, but as a product person, I think it's really important. Maybe the most important skill that I'm trying to hone is just to listen. I like talking like, we're in a podcast, I love talking. But, but I think I feel you can learn so much about your business, just by speaking with the various leaders and stakeholders, and that they don't have to be leaders in fact, like the most I learned oftentimes is from customer success, because they're like, hey, and obviously talking to the patients as well. But that's kind of a given, I feel like as a product person, you need to talk to your customers. So go talk to your customers, you know, learn about what they're looking for. But I think like your patient experience is, yes, there's different pieces, oftentimes, maybe there is a technological piece, maybe they have a portal, and maybe there's a website, maybe there is something that they have to interact with digitally. But 90% of what is in the background? Yes, there's some tech, but there is a lot of people there is likely a provider there are other health care professionals, there are, you know, clinic staff, it's such a big part of how you deliver that experience. So the tech piece, in many ways is like it's a tool and helps. But a huge part is really understanding like, How does everyone kind of in the background run? How does that business run? What are their priorities and pain points and goals? And so, I think this is especially true in health tech, but I think in my own experience, I've been in a lot of companies, I guess, maybe less SAS, right, these are more companies that have a heavy, I would say, like operational component to it as well to deliver some kind of experience. So like I was previous that DoorDash, for example, where, you know, yes, there's an app that you use to order the food, but there are people driving, there are merchants that need to know when they need to make the food, and there's a huge operational component behind it. And you need to really be partnered up closely with those that are managing that. Of course, the techniques to work, but that's almost like a given.
Chris Hoyd 18:47
Right.
Angela Ha 18:48
And so, I feel like what I've learned in my time at these different companies is, you know, really understanding, you know, how are these different teams, let's say operation, let's say maybe marketing, like, what are they really trying to drive and, like product can be a really great partner and all of these aspects. So, you know, in addition to listening, I often like to ask, How can I make your life easier, because everyone's lives already hard, we all have a lot of stuff on our plate. So, you know, in order for product to partner with any of these, I would say, you know, these stakeholders it's like, yeah, how can we help them achieve their goals because you know, if in a good organization, your goal should generally be fairly aligned, like we're trying to build a good business. And so hopefully, it's not like completely different so by helping them I'm helping myself as well right as as a product person, like, Okay, what do we need to build if I'm working with marketing, like, you know, which of the customers we're trying to attract right now? What are the channels? Okay, cool. We're trying to attract more people via Google search like that is giving us a better let's say, you know, return on investment? Cool. That means I need to maybe help you guys make it easier to experiment with different search landing pages. And so I think it's actually super important to know, like, what are the priorities? Right? So it's a lot of listening and trying to figure out, okay, how can I align the things that product can do to help move things in the right direction,
Chris Hoyd 20:16
I love that - I love thinking about, you know, because product is often they are in the in the best position to be that connective tissue. And so to to give yourself the space to listen, and, as you said, kind of distill your inputs and turn it into, you know, a, an opinion, right? Maybe a weakly held point of view about something that the company should do. That's really cool about it. And not to get too technical on that. But I think a lot of PMS can, you know, the calendars can get get full, right. So it's meeting after meeting after meeting, you're managing stakeholders across the board, and maybe end up sacrificing some of the time or just kind of internal space that might be required to to develop that point of view, effectively. So have you run into that? Or are you just good enough at that at this point, that you don't need to, to intentionally protect your time?
Angela Ha 21:15
That's always going to be a journey. And I think it also depends on the company culture as well. I've been in meeting heavy cultures, I always block my calendar, I do that I will make sure that on a weekly basis, I have a few 2-3 hour chunks of time, I just put it as focus block. And yes, people in theory can look over it. But you know, so that's kind of tried how I tried to protect my time. And selfishly, I tried to initiate all the meetings, you know, if it's like, like I tried to. So there's, there's a little bit of that, too, but I think one thing I've gotten better with over the years is just to be honest with like, do you actually need me here? Or if it's even if it's my like any recurring meetings being very, I would say like, like, not shy of being like, do we still need to do this today? Like, I just cancelled the meeting right? Before this one, I told my two stakeholders, you know, like, I don't think we have anything to talk about today, I'm going to cancel it. If something changes, we'll revisit I'll schedule something else. And I was I feel like 8 out of 10 times, you know, you do that. No one's going to be like, Oh, wait, hold up, we actually had this thing, you know, and then it ends up? And if it does, that's fine. We'll put something back on the calendar. So I've gotten better about chopping my own meetings. And if there isn't a clear agenda, chop it, get rid of it. And then if my presence is ever kind of question like, do I really need to be there, I do try to pop in here and there just to get context. But again, I feel like the time that you get if you can carve out a good chunk to whether it is to run some reports and dive into the data, all of that always takes time, or like setting up time to talk to customers, all of that takes time. So I feel like it's just being a little bit ruthless about it. And I know that's like talked about like a lot, but it's, it's true. And so I don't feel bad about not going to meetings, especially if it's clear that I don't have a clear role in it. I decline. And if I have, my goal is to have meetings, if it doesn't have an agenda, it's gone. Like, you know, yes, even for recurring meetings, if there isn't anything specific, I delete it.
Chris Hoyd 23:14
I just want to take just a minute here and give you a chance to share if there's anything that you know, your team or Oma generally has has shipped recently that you're proud of
Angela Ha 23:24
So something that we recently shipped, which sounds simple, sounds basic, but anyone that's worked in this space will understand the nuance that it took. So I'll preface it with that. So we recently, very recently, launched the ability for patients to schedule their own first appointment. Now, I know it sounds super basic, in many ways, because you're like, okay, yeah, if I'm trying to buy movie tickets, I could just go and like, you know, pay and then have it be done. But in the healthcare context, it's actually not that straightforward. There are a few different things that come into play, whether, you know, for one, information and integration with EMR, it is honestly a bit of a struggle at least with the current options that we have today to create a very user friendly workflow that allows a patient to put themselves on our clinician schedule and show up in our EMR in an integrated fashion. So I'll just leave it at that. So there's some challenges there that has, I think, historically made it a little difficult, especially if you don't own the tech pieces, and you're trying to work with / against, you know, what tools you have in place, especially on the EMR side. And then secondly, there's an operational piece of you know, I think as you're preparing a patient for a visit, there's actually a lot of different things you need to do to prep them. So there's the question of like, you know, what are the different pieces of information whether it's insurance, whether it's making sure they sign their HIPAA, you know, notice and things like that, and to make sure that they're actually prepared for their very first visit. And so a lot of times, you know, I think clinics or companies even shy away from letting someone scheduled their own appointment. I know, from a consumer standpoint, it sounds very straightforward. But you know, it's actually not that frequent, like, there are other companies out there where you can do this, right, very maybe like direct consumer specific companies where you can schedule your own visit with a provider of some sort. But in the fertility space, it's, you know, there's actually a lot of different components that need to come together. And so we recently launched this capability, and it's very new. So we're like, we're, we have still yet to see the results. But we're really proud that we launched this capability where patients can then come through, and it's only open to some of our clinics right now. But they can again, pay, get on our calendar, and, you know, reserve a appointment with our physician. And then there are still some pieces that we need to do to make sure that they're ready for it and all that stuff. But, you know, again, the goal of this is to help improve our patient conversion. You know, I think some patients don't mind speaking to someone and making sure they're like, comfortable before they move forward. But our hypothesis is, if we, there's definitely a cohort of people out there, that would just be like, you know, what, I think I know what I want, I just want to speak with the doctor, let me just put in my availability, let me just pay for this appointment, and let me just show up and then go from there. So that's something that you know, the most recent thing that we launched that took us a bit of time to kind of figure out technically and operationally but that's as much as I can share for the time being.
Chris Hoyd 26:35
Very cool, extremely impressive. I feel like I could kind of talk to you about this all day. But I think we are at time here. So I will just close by asking if you have any sort of preferred ways, if anyone in the community wants to reach out to you and connect. Maybe LinkedIn or email?
Angela Ha 26:51
Yeah, I think LinkedIn is always good. I feel like yeah, I feel like the last like few jobs that I've like, you know, companies that I ended up going to is like a LinkedIn reach out. So I feel like LinkedIn is the great equalizer. I'm happy to connect with anyone. And I actually do love talking to other folks in the product space. Because everyone's I think experiences are so different. There's like some trends and key things of like, you know, of being an early product leader, especially only product person, you know, like, I think there's a lot of unique struggles at different challenges at different companies. But in many ways, the themes are very similar, and it's really nice to connect with other people that are going through that as well. So I'm always happy to connect.
Chris Hoyd 27:36
Thank you so much, Angela. Really enjoyed it.
Angela Ha 27:39
Awesome. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me.
Chris Hoyd 27:42
Thank you so much for joining us. You can also connect with us on LinkedIn, YouTube, or on our website at productinhealthtech.com. If you have ideas or suggestions on what you'd like to hear on a future episode, or if you'd like to be a guest, please just shoot us an email at info@productinhealthtech.com