Where Healthcare Meets Technology: Expanding Career Possibilities for Clinicians
By Marina Badillo-Diaz, DSW, LCSW & Elyse Samuels, LCSW
Healthcare and Mental Healthcare are changing rapidly. Artificial intelligence is entering clinical workflows, digital mental health platforms continue to expand, and technology is reshaping how we deliver care, communicate with clients, document services, and make decisions. For many clinicians, these changes can feel exciting, overwhelming, or even intimidating.
For this month's blog collaboration, private therapist Elyse Samuels, LCSW, and Dr. Marina Badillo-Diaz, LCSW, came together to reflect on how our careers have evolved at the intersection of clinical practice, technology, and innovation. While our professional journeys have taken different paths, we share a common belief: clinicians are uniquely positioned to shape the future of healthcare. Technology does not replace clinical expertise. It depends on it. Through this article, we hope to encourage fellow clinicians to see technology as an opportunity to expand the impact of their expertise and explore new possibilities for meaningful work.
Our experiences look different on paper. Elyse transitioned from school-based and integrated behavioral health into digital health, where she worked at startups providing direct care and at an AI platform supporting therapists' workflows, before returning to private practice. Marina started her career in clinical mental health, transitioned to school social work, then higher education, while simultaneously moving into AI training initiatives and consulting. Although our careers unfolded differently, we arrived at the same conclusion: technology doesn't replace clinical expertise. It amplifies it.
Clinical experience becomes even more valuable as healthcare evolves. Whether you remain in full-time clinical work, pursue consulting, collaborate with technology companies, or create a hybrid career, your clinical knowledge has tremendous value beyond the therapy room.
Our hope is simply to expand what you imagine is possible.
Elyse's Journey: Expanding Practice Through Technology
Elyse's career began in school-based and integrated behavioral health, where she worked directly with children, adults, and families. Those experiences shaped her identity as a clinician and reinforced that relationships, trust, and empathy are at the center of effective care. She also experienced firsthand how rewarding—and demanding—the profession can be, recognizing the importance of supporting clinicians so they can continue doing meaningful work.
Curious about how technology could improve mental healthcare, Elyse transitioned into digital health. She worked at behavioral health startups providing direct care, managing a team of clinicians, and later at an AI platform designed to help therapists deliver high-quality, evidence-based care. Collaborating with product, engineering, and design teams, she helped ensure technology reflected the realities of clinical practice and supported—not replaced—the work therapists do every day.
Today, Elyse brings together both clinical and technology experience in her private practice. She believes technology is most impactful when it reduces administrative burden, improves workflows, and allows clinicians to spend more time focused on their clients. She believes clinicians must be at the table to ensure technology truly serves the needs of the clinicians who utilize these tools.
Marina's Journey: Building a Portfolio Career
While Elyse’s and Marina’s careers intersect in school-based mental health supports, Marina’s career expanded to higher education. Over the years, her career in higher education provided opportunities for consulting, research, digital mental health, and artificial intelligence. Rather than choosing one professional identity, she’s found fulfillment in combining multiple roles that all draw upon the same clinical foundation.
Working across these settings has reinforced an important lesson: the skills we develop as clinicians are remarkably transferable. Whether teaching graduate students, advising organizations on responsible AI implementation, consulting with healthcare leaders, or helping social workers build AI literacy, these roles rely on the same core competencies that guide clinical work every day, including critical thinking, ethical decision-making, relationship-building, assessment, communication, and systems thinking.
Technology has not diminished the importance of clinical expertise. If anything, it has highlighted how essential clinicians are in shaping responsible innovation. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into healthcare, clinicians have an opportunity, and arguably a responsibility, to help ensure these technologies remain ethical, evidence-informed, equitable, and centered on the people they are designed to serve.
Why Technology Needs Clinicians
When people hear "technology," they often imagine software developers writing code or engineers building algorithms. While those roles are certainly important, healthcare technology also depends on professionals who understand clinical care.
Today's healthcare landscape includes a wide range of technologies. Some tools incorporate artificial intelligence, while others do not. Digital mental health platforms, electronic health records, virtual care systems, AI documentation assistants, ambient clinical note generators, clinical decision support tools, chatbots, scheduling systems, patient engagement platforms, and remote monitoring technologies all require thoughtful design and implementation.
Not every digital health product uses AI, and not every AI application is designed to replace clinical work. Many tools are intended to reduce administrative burden, improve efficiency, or support, not substitute, clinical decision-making.
This distinction matters because technology cannot determine whether a recommendation is ethically appropriate, culturally responsive, trauma-informed, or clinically sound.
Clinicians bring expertise that technology companies cannot easily replicate. We understand therapeutic relationships, client engagement, crisis intervention, risk assessment, confidentiality, informed consent, cultural humility, workflow realities, and the emotional complexity of healthcare.
When clinicians participate in product development, implementation, research, or governance, technology becomes more practical, more ethical, and more responsive to the needs of both providers and the people they serve.
Innovation works best when clinical expertise is part of the conversation from the very beginning.
Expanding Career Possibilities
One of the biggest misconceptions about healthcare technology is that clinicians must completely step away from practice to become involved. In reality, many professionals create hybrid careers that combine clinical work with innovation.
Opportunities continue to expand across digital mental health companies, artificial intelligence, product development, user experience research, implementation science, clinical consulting, education, workforce development, healthcare operations, research, entrepreneurship, and private practice innovation.
Some clinicians serve as product advisors or implementation specialists. Others consult on AI governance, train healthcare organizations, participate in user testing, develop educational content, or join clinician advisory boards. Many continue seeing clients while exploring these opportunities on a part-time or contract basis.
Rather than choosing between clinical work and technology, many professionals are discovering that the most rewarding careers combine both.
The Skills You Already Have
Many clinicians underestimate how valuable their existing skills are outside traditional practice settings.
Clinical assessment teaches us how to gather information, recognize patterns, and make thoughtful decisions despite uncertainty.
Therapeutic communication prepares us to collaborate across interdisciplinary teams, facilitate conversations, and build trust with diverse stakeholders.
Ethical decision-making helps organizations navigate complex questions about privacy, safety, equity, and responsible innovation.
Crisis intervention develops calm leadership under pressure.
Systems thinking allows us to understand how individuals interact within larger organizational and community contexts.
Supervision, teaching, and consultation prepare us to lead change, support implementation, and coach others through new processes.
Perhaps most importantly, clinicians are lifelong learners. We continuously adapt to new evidence, changing policies, evolving client needs, and emerging best practices. That adaptability is one of the greatest assets in today's rapidly changing healthcare landscape.
Navigating the Transition
Career transitions rarely happen all at once. Many clinicians assume they need another degree or a perfectly planned roadmap before exploring new opportunities. In reality, most career shifts begin with curiosity and small experiments.
Building digital health and AI literacy is an excellent starting point. Understanding how these tools work, and equally important, understanding their limitations, helps clinicians participate confidently in conversations about healthcare innovation.
Networking is equally valuable. Speaking with professionals already working in health technology can provide insights that no job description ever could. Learning to translate clinical experience into language that resonates with technology and business teams is also an important part of the process.
It's equally normal to experience imposter syndrome. Many clinicians entering technology wonder whether they belong in rooms filled with engineers, designers, executives, and data scientists. Ironically, those teams are often looking for exactly what clinicians bring: real-world understanding of patient care, workflow, ethics, and human behavior.
Perhaps the most important lesson is recognizing that careers are rarely linear. You don't have to choose between being a clinician and working in technology. You can continue seeing clients while consulting. You can teach while advising startups. You can supervise clinicians while contributing to AI implementation. The possibilities are far more flexible than many people realize.
Create Your Own Career Exposures
Elyse learned throughout her transition that career changes rarely happen with a single major decision. Often, they begin with small experiments. A volunteer opportunity to improve a clinician workflow became an opportunity to collaborate more closely with technology teams. A short-term contract role became a pathway into deeper work within digital health. Small exposures can create visibility, build confidence, and reveal possibilities you may not have considered.
You do not need to know your entire next chapter before taking the first step. Sometimes curiosity is enough to open the door.
One of the best ways to explore new career possibilities is to intentionally create small experiences before making major career decisions.
Think of these as "career exposure exercises." Rather than committing to an entirely new role, experiment with opportunities that help you learn what genuinely interests you.
This month, consider trying one or two of the following:
Attend a digital health or AI webinar.
Reach out to someone working in healthcare technology for an informational conversation.
Volunteer for a workflow improvement or innovation project within your organization.
Join a clinician advisory board.
Explore an AI documentation assistant to understand how it supports, not replaces, clinical work.
Write about a healthcare challenge you're passionate about and imagine how technology might help address it.
Take on a small consulting or contract project.
Ask your supervisor if you can participate in innovation or implementation initiatives.
Shadow someone working in product management, implementation, or customer success within a healthcare technology company.
Small experiences often create the clarity that long-term planning cannot.
Looking Ahead
Artificial intelligence and digital health will continue transforming healthcare. The question is no longer whether technology will become part of clinical practice—it already has. The more important question is who will help shape that future. We believe clinicians belong at the table.
Our profession brings something that technology alone cannot provide: ethical judgment, empathy, relationship-centered care, cultural responsiveness, critical thinking, and a deep understanding of human behavior. Those qualities are becoming increasingly valuable, not less as technology advances.
There is no single "right" career path. Some clinicians will remain in full-time practice. Others will transition into leadership, consulting, education, research, entrepreneurship, or technology. Many will combine several of these roles throughout their careers.
The common thread is this: your clinical expertise is portable.
As you think about your own professional journey, we encourage you to remain curious. Continue learning. Stay open to opportunities that align with your values and interests. You don't need to abandon the profession you love to participate in innovation. You can help lead it.
The future of healthcare will not be shaped by technology alone. It will be shaped by clinicians who are willing to bring their expertise into new spaces. So this month, challenge yourself to take one small step. You may discover that the next chapter of your career isn't about leaving healthcare at all. It's about expanding the ways your expertise can make a difference.
The content in this blog was created with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and reviewed and edited by Dr. Marina Badillo-Diaz, LCSW, and Elyse Samuels, LCSW, to ensure accuracy, relevance, and integrity. Dr. Badillo-Diaz's and Elyse’s expertise and insightful oversight have been incorporated to ensure the content in this blog meets the standards of professional social work practice.