It was the four crushed metatarsals in his left foot that first made Andrew Dold consider a career in Orthopaedics. And the dislocation of his right shoulder - twice - and a broken hand and jaw that made him begin “thinking to myself that it would be a rewarding profession to be in, to help young athletes like myself at the time, get back to the things that they love to do.” Dold, a keen rugby and ice hockey player in his teens, found himself struck by the skill of the physicians who returned him to the sports pitches in his native Ontario, Canada (one of whom he kept in touch with after being discharged). Throughout the most severe of his scrapes, “to this day [I] remember the interaction I had with the orthopaedic surgeon” - a relationship he too hopes to imprint on his patients.
Since his teenage sporting days, “my training has taken me to different places” - from an undergraduate biology degree at the University of Western Ontario to medical school at Trinity College, Dublin, a Fellowship at New York University, a surgical leadership diploma at Harvard Medical School and his current role as director of sports medicine and arthroscopy at Star Orthopedics and Sports Medicine in Frisco,Texas. Along the way he has racked up a series of accolades, including a Top Doctor Award from the International Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons in 2018, being named among the Top 40 Under 40 by USA Top 100 Magazine in 2018, and D-Magazine Best Doctor Award for the past five years.
Whilst at NYU Dold, now 40, “became more aware and familiar with excess inventory” - the reams of medical stock that is bought in bulk and shunted to the back of hospital store-rooms, often expiring without ever being used. It became apparent “that this was a big, big problem,” Dold recalls - one that currently costs some $800bn each year. Never was that brought into focus more sharply than when he asked for some suture anchors to practice with - and was handed “about 10 boxes of the supplies that I was after," worth around $1,000 a pop. “I sort of looked at them, and said, aren't these needed here?” Far from it; they were a small part of the mountain of overstock clogging up cupboard space that staff were only too keen to offload.
Finding himself confronted with the same issue in the posts that followed, it became clear that “there's not really a great solution to this problem… [so] it seemed like it would be a good opportunity to come up with some sort of an alternative idea for wasted inventory.” The end result is RevMed - a service he describes as “a niche eBay for hospitals and ambulatory surgery centres to interact.” Medical outfits can list stock that is sure to go unused on the platform, with others who are in need able to purchase it (and in far smaller numbers than the bulk often required to get reasonable prices) without contributing to the mass overbuying that’s creating a needless stock mountain in the first place. “It creates more of a niche, boutique option for the buyer,” Dold says - adding that, while “we’re a work in progress,” the ultimate ambition is to “hopefully reach every hospital in the United States, and then eventually the rest of the world.” It’s a considerable task. But Dold is spurred on by the desire to boost sustainability in healthcare (the environmental toll “appears to me to be a significant one”), prevent waste, and lower the cost of supplies for both the providers and, ultimately, the patients.
The name RevMed was inspired by the revision procedure used to correct orthopaedic surgeries; Dold realising that here was a problem in need of revising, too. The venture taps into both his medical experience, and his business interests: “I recognise this is a big problem and a big opportunity at the same time," he explains. "I feel like I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm always looking for things that can be done better. And this was certainly a glaring opportunity in the healthcare world.”
His public platform will no doubt help spread RevMed’s reach; Dold has a YouTube channel and podcast detailing his work, along with 50,000 followers on Instagram, where his feed is a mix of x-rays, theatre shots and smiling portraits with national sports stars he’s worked on, from American footballers with the Dallas Cowboys, Tennessee Titans and Minnesota Vikings to basketball players from the Utah Jazz and Philadelphia 76ers. He has been a physician and consultant for the men’s and women’s Canadian rugby teams, the Mississauga Steelheads of the Ontario Hockey League, and the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis; the hallway of his Texas surgery is lined with signed sports jerseys, tributes scrawled in black Sharpie to ‘the best in the biz.’
Will he ultimately switch to working on RevMed fulltime? “I can't, to be honest, imagine doing anything else as a profession; I really, really love what I do. So I'm certainly not going to abandon my orthopaedic and sports medicine career. That's something that I would always like to keep going.” As well as driving his career for two decades, it provides the kind of stability that enables plenty of time with his wife and sons, four-year-old Jack, Sam, two, and newborn Rowan. "My top priority is my family and my children and being as involved with their lives as I possibly can be,” he says. Outside of family and clinical practice, he is a keen golfer (Dold played on the university team at Trinity), and reviews courses across the US for Golf Digest magazine to rank the “aesthetics and upkeep” of various clubs (Cypress Point in California remains a favourite). He also plays in amateur events at home in Texas, as part of the US Golf Association. The state has now been his home for seven years and, after a peripatetic few decades, he is content to stay in one place, and focus on one clinical area, using his research into stem cell and platelet-rich therapies for management of injured joints along with the numerous reconstructions he carries out each year. Retaining a tight lens on one area naturally means “you become more familiar with the individual operations that you can focus on and they become more and more comfortable for you as you advance.” But complicated reconstructions - no matter how many have come before - still “keep you on your toes,” Dold says. With two careers, three kids and a sideline in golf analysis, no doubt that’s how he likes it.
Interview by Charlotte Lytton.
