In an industry where administrative burdens continue to take valuable time away from patient care, Mocingbird is leading the charge to simplify and automate licensing and compliance management for both healthcare professionals and organizations. In a recent interview with Startup Health TV, Mocingbird’s CEO and Co-Founder, Dr. Ian Madom, shared how the platform is revolutionizing the way clinicians and healthcare systems manage professional requirements.
For clinicians, Mocingbird streamlines license renewals and education tracking, reducing the time spent on administrative tasks and ensuring they stay compliant with minimal effort. For organizations, the platform helps manage workforce compliance, mitigate risks, and support operational efficiency—particularly in telemedicine and multi-state practice. By eliminating inefficiencies, Mocingbird empowers both individuals and institutions to focus on what matters most—delivering high-quality patient care. Read on to learn how Dr. Madom and Mocingbird are reshaping the future of medical compliance in the interview below.
Watch the full interview:
Read the full transcript below:
Logan: Welcome to Startup Health TV, where we celebrate the entrepreneurs and the innovators who are transforming health. I’m Logan Plaster, here with Dr. Ian Madom, CEO & Co-Founder of Mocingbird. Ian, great to see you.
Ian: Thanks. Thanks for having us Logan.
Logan: I love getting these annual check-ins of what you’ve built. I always say this, but I partially love it because my father struggled with credentialing. He was credentialed in like 30 states as an emergency physician and so you have made life better for folks as they maintain their certification, but its a lot more than that so tell me about the platform.
Ian: Yeah. One of the things that we love to talk about these days is how you know people are in this credentialing mindset right, but we take care of one specific part. We take care of that initial licensing and that initial certification through the ongoing maintenance and then to the renewal, right. Credentialing, think of credentialing as how am I going to verify “Dr. Madom that you are who you say you are, you went to the schools you said you do.” What we’re taking care of is, okay you want to be licensed in these states, well that’s going to take a certain amount of work and a certain amount of education to keep on and then once you’ve done all of that, lets go ahead and do the process of renewing it and ultimately it’s just taking all of this manual work that’s put on our backs, whether it be a doc, an NP, a PA, and putting it into an automated process so that we’re just doing the education. I mean, there’s just too much time that my colleagues are spending on nights and weekends away from their families doing more and more administrative work, where we can automate this stuff.
Logan: Now you were a physician who is dealing with this problem
Ian: Yeah
Logan: A lot of doctors they come against a frustration like this and they just kinda moan about it, but what was the spark that made you decide, you know what I’m going to actually go through the pain and suffering of starting a startup and try to fix this problem?
Ian: Yeah, so George Fernaine who’s our co-founder, he’s an interventional cardiologist. He and I both know the favorite pastime of physicians is to complain, right as you’re saying, since you’re related to one you know. We said well wouldn’t it be interesting if we could solve some of these problems. We happened to be in business school at the time, back in 2016 when we started talking about it.
Logan: So that was part of the spark, you’re in business school
Ian: Yeah
Logan: Let’s do something.
Ian: Well everybody’s solving problems and we’re like wait we can solve problems too. There was somebody I met with recently, an investor, who used this term “founder market fin” and I thought it was really cool. I hadn’t heard it until recently but that’s kinda what we had. We said we know the problem better than everybody else, we’re living this. Now, fast forward a number of years, you know we started out okay we got to solve this for clinicians they have to engage they have to be on this platform. Then we started to say why are we doing that, we’re just replacing one amount of work for another. Everybody wants to know about how much does everyone engage with your platform, the goal is for them not to. The goal is for them to do the education and have it in the background
Logan: And go take care of patients!
Ian: Go take care of patients, go home and hangout with your family, or go on a vacation. So over the past 18 months we brought in some folks with a real deep experience in the licensing and credentialing space. Our current COO, who you met with last year, Sarah Bishop, she you know she cut her teeth at NIghthawk, she spent a bunch of time at Babylon at Medallion. She’s coming to us saying this is what other folks are doing, and maybe not doing great, we can do it better and automate this stuff to help out not only the clinician but also the administrators that support them.
Logan: Yeah
Ian: So now we’re really filling up that whole lifecycle and the whole ecosystem supporting both the clinicians and the admins that are supporting them
Logan: Yeah. So, there’s a side of this business that’s very logical. You’re like taking a system that used to be like phone calls and paperwork and you’re digitizing it all, makes sense. And there’s another side that intrigues me where you’re also finding yourself at the center of a whole sort of revolution because we’ve got telemedicine causing people to be credentialed in multiple states and the digitization of education in general so like how is that playing out as you grow Mocingbird and then you see the market shifting around you?
Ian: That’s actually an awesome question, it’s something that we’re talking about right now about telemedicine because our tool has really resonated with digital health telemedicine companies. It’s where we have grown the fastest, it’s where we see the most traction, it’s where we can really help the quickest with those companies. We believe that telemedicine should expand and that there should be fewer barriers because what it’s doing it’s providing access to patients at the end of the day that’s what it is. Access is hard, talk to your friends and family, how hard it is to get in to see their doc. It used to be, “Oh, I could just get an appointment with the NP or the PA.” That’s getting hard, right. People are leaving states that are more challenging to practice in. Access is a real issue, having telemedicine available to people, there’s a ton of literature in our peer review literature about how to examine somebody over a cam, you could do a lot without actually touching them. Don’t get me wrong I still am a strong believer in person to person contact and seeing patients, but if access is an issue then why aren’t we doing this in a way, why aren’t we setting up an ecosystem that makes it easier for people to become licensed.
Ian: So Mocingbird won the RFP for the interstate medical licensure compact last year, we are building them their own portal so that they can license people in a more modernized way, but then they’re also using our tools on their portal, Mocingbird tools, to track those imlc issued licenses, that is something we are really involved in. We are really involved in trying to advocate for clinicians to be licensed in multiple states because it opens up their opportunity to practice but it also opens up access. We believe that telemedicine is still very much the future, and everybody‘s starting to agree with us. We’re starting to see the health systems put their hat into this as well and say “Oh, we have this set of clinicians that are really valuable throughout our whole health system we need them licensed in multiple states. We don’t have a way of managing it.” So that is an exciting thing to see. Okay yeah there’s the blocking and tackling that we’re really good at but can we be a part of the movement that really empowers clinicians to open up their practice across the country but then empower the patients to get access wherever they need.
Logan: Where do you think we are in the innovation cycle in terms of being licensed in every state, telemedicine availability, opening up access in that way that you’re (describing).
Ian: We’re trying to cross that initial chasm right, it’s really the infrastructure still isn’t there. We don’t even know who is appropriate to get licensed or what are the tools that I need. I currently have a license in Rhode Island where I practice primarily but Connecticut, Massachusetts right next to me, New York, Florida. A lot of my patients go down to Florida for the winter. Wouldn’t it be interesting if I had a tool that said “Ian you’re already doing these requirements , you already have these things done, you can be licensed in these 3 or 4 other states very easily.”
Logan: And taking virtual health referrals tomorrow, yeah.
Ian: And through the interstate medial licensure compact that thing has become faster but the tools that we’re creating through a non imlc track we also believe will speed up that process. You can’t go get credential until you have a license, until you start with that basic piece, until you’ve gone and done the education to start out. So, we’re trying to build that foundation and then we want to build on top of that as a true platform. So, our next, next step in this journey is how do we take the education that’s really compliance driven and really make it more specific to the clinician so that they’re delivering the care based on the most up to date education that they can have that’s relevant to their practice.
Logan: That leads into the question I was thinking which was have you found yourself able to push the CME industry towards better education, not just just tracking what’s happening, but actually kind of flowing back towards the source. I’ve heard plenty of physicians complain about “Oh my maintenance of basic life support” whatever it is like, “Oh I didn’t need this, I didn’t need this but I had to get it.” Are you putting yourself in a position where you can actually give feedback to what’s useful?
Ian: Yes, we have made zero impact so far, right, and that’s just honest because they’re just hatching on to the idea, “Oh our learners want to track what they’re doing.” We’re like we’ve been talking about that for 5 years guys. So a lot of the big CME providers are out there, they’re providing tracking tools now, they’re not detailed, they’re very basic, they don’t really fit the needs of the clinician. But it checks a box for them to say to the organization who’s buying their product, “Hey we do it.” At least they’re having the conversation right.
Logan: Yeah, the market is getting defined
Ian: I’m not here to say, “Oh youre not doing it right,” I’m here to say, “Thank you for joining the party.” Now we’re all doing this, but the next step is us giving that more dialed in education, something that’s specific. When I go into clinic and see my spine patients as a surgeon who’s been doing it for 15 years, based on my panel that day I have different needs then my partner who’s been only in practice for 5 years, who has a different set of types of patients. Why are we not getting specific tuneups in the morning based on what I’m going to see that day, not something in the EMR that goes bonk and tells me I can’t put that order in, and I get frustrated because now a machine is telling me how to do my job. Let the machines enable me to make the best clinical decisions possible, that’s where Mocingbird wants to go and is in the process of.
Logan: That’s exciting, that’s exciting. Alright Ian, always exciting to get an update. Feels like we’re at a critical moment here, I mean your company is at an interesting inflection point
Ian: We are.
Logan: As is the industry so it’s going to be exciting to see what you do next.
Ian: Thank you so much
Logan: Thanks for coming by
Ian: Appreciate the time.
At Mocingbird, we are dedicated to supporting clinicians by simplifying the management of their continuing medical education and licensing requirements. Our goal is to free up valuable time for healthcare professionals, allowing them to focus on what truly matters—patient care. Stay tuned for more insights and innovations from Mocingbird as we continue to transform the landscape of CME and healthcare technology.
About Mocingbird
Mocingbird is a SOC 2 and HIPAA-compliant, physician-founded, cloud-based platform revolutionizing the way healthcare professionals and organizations manage medical licensing and Continuing Medical Education (CME) requirements. By automating the entire licensing process—from initial applications to renewals and CME tracking—Mocingbird helps clinicians stay compliant and focus on patient care while reducing administrative burdens. With a team of licensing experts and a comprehensive, user-friendly dashboard, Mocingbird ensures that clinicians and healthcare organizations meet all regulatory requirements with ease. Trusted by medical professionals nationwide, Mocingbird is committed to improving clinician well-being and operational efficiency across the healthcare industry. For more information, visit www.mocingbird.com.
