The physician entrepreneur in 2026: What's working and what isn't

Four in 10 U.S. doctors now have some kind of side gig, according to the 2025 Medscape Physician Compensation Report. The entrepreneurial impulse in medicine is real, growing and, by some measures, well-timed.

Building a company requires skills that medical training has never covered, including financial modeling, marketing and customer acquisition. And the habits physicians develop over the years in clinical practice don't always transfer cleanly to building something new. But the barriers are increasingly well understood, and the advantages physicians bring are ones pure-tech founders can't easily replicate.

Clinical expertise is a real advantage in a market full of products built without it. The question is whether the time and energy required to deploy it are available.

The American Medical Association (AMA) Physician Entrepreneur Forum is scheduled for Aug. 7-8, 2026, at AMA headquarters in Chicago, open to physicians, residents, fellows and medical students interested in building companies or taking on business leadership roles in health care.