FITM Extended Interview: Charles Lawrie (FIOS Health)

Send us Fan MailCharles Lawrie, MD — president of the Anterior Hip Foundation and a high-volume anterior approach hip and robotic knee surgeon in Miami — walks us through how a frustration in his own clinic became FIOS Health, an AI-powered patient communication platform now used in orthopaedic practices across the United States. This is an extended From Idea to Market conversation about the often lonely process of turning a clinical observation into a commercialized med-tech product, and what surgeons should know before they try.Most surgeons see the same pattern every week: a flood of routine post-op questions about swelling, walking, showering, and driving that consumes clinic staff and amplifies patient anxiety. Lawrie's argument is that the bottleneck isn't surgical expertise — it's access to timely, trusted information, and that scaling that information is a fundamentally different problem than scaling clinical capacity.We get into why he chose an AI-first product layered on familiar SMS and WhatsApp instead of yet another app, how he found a complementary co-founder in engineer and serial entrepreneur Andrew McDaid, what he had to unlearn to translate clinical expertise into product-market fit, and where FIOS Health is heading next — from answering patient questions to acting as an intelligence layer for the entire clinic.If you're a surgeon thinking about innovation, this is a candid look at what it actually involves: starting with a problem you live every day, resisting the urge to build alone, defining a minimum viable product, and sitting with the daily self-doubt that comes with taking an idea to market.https://fioshealth.com/⏱️ Chapters:00:00 Introducing Charles Lawrie and FIOS Health01:14 Why patients struggle with information access after surgery03:26 Solving staff scarcity and patient anxiety at the same time05:43 Why AI plus SMS beats yet another patient app08:53 Turning a clinical observation into a startup13:07 The mahogany desk vision for patient care18:21 Finding product market fit in a busy clinic22:41 How FIOS becomes a surgeon's digital twin26:50 Advice for surgeons who want to build a company29:43 The intelligence layer for the entire clinicListen to the AHF Podcast on your preferred platform:Buzzsprout: https://ahfpodcast.buzzsprout.comApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ahf-podcast/id1749521487Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5CrGJyvRiQFTCU3FFFVvHcLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/ahf-podcastYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@anteriorhipfoundationHomepage: https://anteriorhipfoundation.comThis podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only.The content discussed does not constitute medical advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional judgment. Clinicians should rely on their own training, experience, and clinical decision-making when applying information from this discussion.#AnteriorHipFoundation #AHFPodcast #FIOSHealth #CharlesLawrie #FromIdeaToMarket #MedTechStartup #OrthopaedicInnovation #AIinHealthcare #PatientEngagement #HipArthroplasty #SurgeonEntrepreneur #DigitalHealth #ClinicalWorkflow