My ‘Risky’ Digital Health Career Pays 3x My Hospital Job
“You’re giving up a secure job with benefits for… what exactly? Some tech startup that could disappear tomorrow?”
My family’s concern was genuine. My friends thought I was having a quarter-life crisis. Even my colleagues at the hospital looked at me with a mixture of pity and confusion when I announced I was leaving bedside nursing for a digital health consulting role.
The narrative everyone believed was simple and compelling: hospital employment equals security, and anything else equals risk. Traditional healthcare jobs offer steady paychecks, predictable schedules, comprehensive benefits, and the professional legitimacy that comes from working in an established institution. Digital health, on the other hand, seemed like the Wild West—unstable, unproven, and likely to vanish when the next healthcare trend came along.
Here’s what actually happened: within three years of leaving my “secure” hospital position, I was earning three times my nursing salary. But the real revelation wasn’t the money—it was discovering that everything I’d been told about security and risk in healthcare careers was completely backwards.
The Illusion of Employment Security
Let’s examine what “security” actually meant in my hospital job:
I was completely dependent on one employer’s financial health, management decisions, and staffing priorities. If the hospital decided to restructure, I could lose my job regardless of my performance. If budget cuts came down, my department could be eliminated. If I disagreed with management or workplace conditions became intolerable, my only option was to find another hospital job with the exact same vulnerabilities.
My salary was predetermined by pay scales that had nothing to do with the value I created. No matter how much expertise I developed or how exceptional my patient outcomes were, my compensation was capped by organizational structures designed to limit costs rather than reward excellence.
My career advancement required waiting for positions to open above me, then competing with colleagues for promotions that might never come. Geographic location limited my options—I could only work where hospitals existed, and moving meant starting over in a new system.
That’s what we call “security” in traditional healthcare employment. It’s actually constrained dependency disguised as stability.
The Real Security of Digital Health Careers
Now let me describe what “risky” digital health has actually provided:
My income depends on my skills and the value I create, not my employer’s arbitrary pay scales. If one client relationship ends, I have multiple others. If an entire healthcare organization stops using my services, I have the freedom to immediately pursue new opportunities without job gaps or career interruptions.
My earning potential is limited only by the problems I can solve and the value I deliver. When I help a healthcare system successfully implement AI-powered patient monitoring that prevents complications and saves lives, I’m compensated based on that impact rather than predetermined hourly rates.
My career advancement happens whenever I develop new expertise or expand my capabilities. I don’t wait for promotions—I create new opportunities by identifying emerging needs and positioning myself to address them.
My geographic flexibility is complete. I can work with healthcare organizations anywhere in the world while living wherever I choose. My “risky” career actually provides the security of not being tied to any single location or labor market.
The Money Nobody Talks About
Let’s get specific about what digital health careers actually pay, because the numbers tell a story that traditional healthcare employment doesn’t want you to hear.
Dr. Nate Favini left his internal medicine practice to become Chief Medical Officer at Forward, a digital health company. While exact compensation isn’t public, CMO roles at health tech startups typically range from $200,000 to $400,000 annually, plus equity that can multiply that compensation significantly if the company succeeds. That’s compared to the median internal medicine physician salary of around $230,000—but without the call schedules, hospital politics, or documentation burden.
The £100,000 EPIC nurse role advertised by a London hospital represents five to six times typical NHS nursing salaries of £20,000-£35,000. This isn’t an anomaly—it’s market recognition that clinical professionals with digital health expertise command premium compensation because they’re rare and valuable.
Healthcare consulting rates for clinical professionals with informatics expertise typically range from $150 to $300 per hour. At the conservative end, that’s $312,000 annually for full-time consulting work—significantly more than most clinical roles pay. And unlike hospital employment, consultants can choose their hours, clients, and project types.
But here’s what makes digital health compensation truly different from traditional employment: multiple revenue streams.
The Financial Architecture That Changes Everything
In my hospital job, I had one source of income: my salary. If I wanted to earn more, I could pick up extra shifts, but that meant trading more time for marginally more money within the same constrained pay structure.
In digital health, my income architecture looks completely different:
Consulting Projects: Healthcare organizations pay premium rates for strategic advisory work on digital transformation, AI implementation, and clinical workflow optimization.
Retainer Agreements: Long-term relationships with healthcare technology companies provide predictable monthly income for ongoing guidance and expertise.
Training and Education: Developing and delivering courses on digital health topics creates revenue while building reputation and authority.
Speaking Engagements: Conferences and industry events pay for presentations about digital health trends and clinical technology implementation.
Advisory Board Positions: Health tech startups compensate clinical advisors with both fees and equity for strategic guidance.
This isn’t theoretical—these are actual revenue streams that many clinical professionals in digital health leverage simultaneously. When one stream fluctuates, others remain stable. When opportunities expand in one area, you have the freedom to pursue them without abandoning other income sources.
The “risky” multiple-income model turns out to be far more secure than complete dependence on a single employer’s paycheck.
The Global Opportunity That Traditional Employment Limits
The digital health market isn’t constrained by local labor conditions or regional healthcare budgets. It’s a global marketplace where expertise commands premium compensation regardless of geographic location.
Rock Health reported that U.S. digital health startups raised $9.9 billion in the first three quarters of 2025, surpassing the previous year’s funding levels. This investment creates jobs, consulting opportunities, and advisory roles that didn’t exist in traditional healthcare settings. Healthcare technology companies are competing globally for clinical talent, driving compensation upward.
Australia’s Digital Health Agency appointed both a Chief Clinical Adviser for Medicine and a Chief Clinical Adviser for Nursing in 2024, recognizing that clinical leadership is essential for national digital health strategy. These aren’t local hospital jobs—they’re positions that influence healthcare technology policy and implementation across an entire nation.
New Zealand restructured its entire health system in 2022-2023, creating Health NZ with digital innovation as a core pillar. When Dr. Dale Bramley, a public health physician, was appointed CEO in 2025, he brought clinical credibility to technology-driven health system transformation. His medical training didn’t limit his career options—it enabled leadership at the highest level of a national healthcare system.
The geographical and organizational scope of digital health careers creates opportunities that traditional clinical employment simply cannot match.
The Investment Climate That Validates Your Transition
One concern my family had was legitimate: what if digital health really was just a fad that would disappear, leaving me stranded without traditional healthcare credentials?
The market has answered that question definitively. After a dip in 2022-2023, venture capital funding in digital health rebounded strongly in 2025. Investors are particularly backing solutions that streamline clinical workflows and leverage AI in care delivery—exactly the areas where clinical professionals with digital health expertise provide the most value.
This isn’t speculative investment in unproven concepts. Healthcare organizations worldwide face workforce shortages, budget pressures, and demands for improved outcomes. Technology solutions that address these challenges while maintaining patient safety require clinical expertise for successful implementation. The market is paying premium prices for professionals who can bridge clinical needs and technological capabilities.
Policy support reinforces the investment climate. The NHS’s plan to achieve foundational electronic records across providers by March 2025, Australia’s 10-year Digital Health Blueprint extending through 2033, and similar initiatives across Canada, New Zealand, and throughout Europe all signal that digital health transformation is permanent infrastructure investment, not temporary experimentation.
When governments commit to decade-long digital health strategies and venture capital deploys billions in funding, that’s not a fad—that’s fundamental healthcare transformation.
The Professional Who Proved Everyone Wrong
Let me introduce you to someone whose story mirrors the journey many clinical professionals are taking into digital health.
The “EPIC nurse” role advertised in London isn’t just about one position—it represents a fundamental shift in how healthcare values clinical expertise combined with technology skills. This role pays £100,000 because healthcare organizations have learned an expensive lesson: implementing electronic health records without deep clinical knowledge leads to failed projects, wasted investments, and dangerous workflow disruptions.
The nurse who fills this role isn’t abandoning patient care—they’re protecting thousands of patients by ensuring that technology serves clinical needs rather than creating new risks. They’re not giving up nursing for a “risky” tech job—they’re applying nursing expertise to create safer, more efficient healthcare systems.
And they’re earning five times what traditional nursing pays because the market recognizes the real value of their clinical credibility combined with technology understanding.
This pattern repeats across digital health. Physicians become startup CMOs and earn more while working fewer clinical hours. Nurses transition to Chief Nursing Information Officers and influence care delivery across entire health systems. Pharmacists with digital health expertise command premium salaries for optimizing medication management technology.
The “risky” career moves consistently result in higher compensation, better work-life balance, and greater professional impact than the “secure” traditional roles everyone insisted we should keep.
What Security Actually Means in Modern Healthcare
The healthcare industry is transforming whether we participate or not. Electronic health records are now mandatory infrastructure. Telemedicine has permanently replaced many in-person visits. AI is beginning to augment clinical decision-making across specialties.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about “secure” traditional healthcare employment: it’s becoming increasingly dependent on digital health capabilities that many clinical professionals don’t possess.
The secure hospital job requires EHR proficiency. The stable clinical role now includes telehealth responsibilities. The traditional medical practice is adopting AI diagnostic tools. Every “secure” healthcare position is being transformed by the very digital health skills that seemed “risky” to develop.
Real security in modern healthcare comes from having expertise that’s in high demand and limited supply. It comes from skills that transfer across organizations, geographies, and healthcare sectors. It comes from the ability to create value that healthcare systems desperately need and will pay premium rates to obtain.
That’s not the traditional employment model—that’s the digital health professional model.
The Choice Nobody Prepared Me For
When I was deciding whether to leave my hospital job for digital health consulting, I thought I was choosing between security and risk. Everyone in my life reinforced that narrative with genuine concern for my wellbeing.
What I was actually choosing between was limited dependence and unlimited opportunity.
The hospital job offered the comfort of knowing exactly what I would earn, where I would work, and what my career progression might look like. That predictability felt like security, but it was actually limitation disguised as safety.
Digital health offered the discomfort of uncertainty about exactly how my career would unfold. That uncertainty felt risky, but it was actually freedom disguised as instability.
Three years later, earning three times my hospital salary while working on projects that improve healthcare for populations rather than individual patients, the choice seems obvious. But it didn’t feel obvious when I was making it, surrounded by people insisting I was making a terrible mistake.
The Security You’re Actually Seeking
If you’re reading this while contemplating a transition from traditional healthcare to digital health, you’re probably experiencing the same fear I felt. The narrative about security and risk is powerful because it’s been reinforced throughout our entire professional lives.
But consider what security actually means to you:
Is it knowing you’ll receive the same paycheck regardless of the value you create? Or is it confidence that your skills will be valued and compensated appropriately?
Is it dependence on one employer’s decisions about your career progression? Or is it the freedom to create opportunities based on your expertise and interests?
Is it geographic limitation to wherever healthcare facilities exist? Or is it the flexibility to live and work anywhere while serving healthcare globally?
Is it accepting predetermined salary caps that ignore your true value? Or is it earning compensation that reflects the impact you create?
The answers to these questions reveal that what we call “security” in traditional healthcare employment is actually a collection of constraints that limit both your earning potential and your professional growth.
Your Financial Future in Digital Health
The path I took from hospital nursing to digital health consulting wasn’t unique—it’s becoming the standard trajectory for clinical professionals who recognize that healthcare transformation creates unprecedented opportunities for those with both clinical expertise and digital health understanding.
The “risky” decision to leave traditional employment has consistently resulted in higher compensation, greater professional autonomy, and more meaningful impact for clinical professionals who make the transition strategically.
Your clinical credibility is worth far more than traditional healthcare employment suggests. The question isn’t whether digital health careers are risky—it’s whether you’re ready to discover what your expertise is actually worth in a marketplace that’s desperate for professionals who understand both patient care and healthcare technology.
If you’re wondering whether your clinical expertise could translate into the kind of financial growth and professional freedom that digital health enables, let’s explore what that transition might look like for you. The “secure” path might actually be the one that’s limiting your potential.
References
[1] Rock Health (2025). Digital health funding report Q3 2025. MedTech Dive. https://www.medtechdive.com/news/digital-health-funding-outpacing-last-year
[2] Business Insider (2025). Burned-out physicians reinventing careers as CMOs and digital health leaders. https://www.businessinsider.com/burned-out-doctors-reinventing-careers-tech-cmo-roles
[3] HealthManagement.org (2021). Why all healthcare organizations need digital health leaders. https://healthmanagement.org/c/digital/issuearticle/why-all-healthcare-organisations-need-digital-health-leaders
[4] Australian Digital Health Agency (2024). Agency appoints first Chief Clinical Adviser (Nursing). https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/news-and-events/news/agency-appoints-first-chief-clinical-adviser-nursing
[5] NZ Herald (2025). Dr Dale Bramley named Health NZ chief executive. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/dr-dale-bramley-named-health-nz-chief-executive
[6] NHS England (2022). Plan for Digital Health and Social Care. https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/a-plan-for-digital-health-and-social-care/
[7] Wolters Kluwer Expert Insights (2024). What does Australia’s digital health vision mean for nurses? https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en-au/expert-insights/what-does-australias-digital-health-vision-mean-for-nurses
