We recently sat down with Dr. Dave Whitehead, an emergency medicine physician and Clinical Product Lead at Counsel. In this Q&A, Dave shares what inspired him to become a physician, why he joined Counsel, and how virtual care is breaking down barriers to timely, high-quality medical advice. He also debunks common misconceptions about telemedicine and offers insights into the future of digital health.

Read on for the full conversation.

Hi Dave, tell us about yourself!

I’m Dr. Dave Whitehead, an emergency medicine physician and Clinical Product Lead at Counsel Health. I’m passionate about improving healthcare access and quality through innovative care models. Before joining Counsel, I helped develop and evaluate tech-enabled solutions for asynchronous care, virtual urgent care, and hospital-at-home programs. I still practice emergency medicine at both an academic medical center and a critical access hospital. Outside of work, I love traveling, snowboarding, and spending time with family and friends.

What inspired you to become an emergency medicine and virtual urgent care physician? Was there a specific moment that shaped your career path?

Emergency medicine drew me in during medical school with its fast-paced, team-oriented environment and strong social mission. There's nothing more rewarding than caring for patients—often on what could possibly be their worst day—and helping to immediately alleviate uncomfortable symptoms, while providing definitive and sometimes life-saving care. The ER also serves as a critical safety net for those without access to regular medical care, and connecting these patients to much-needed resources is incredibly meaningful.

As I practiced, I saw firsthand how many ER visits could be avoided with earlier intervention. I started working in virtual urgent care, realizing its power to bridge access to care gaps. While no single moment shaped my career path, I was inspired to become a physician after reading Mountains Beyond Mountains in college, which tells the story of Dr. Paul Farmer's work bringing high-quality care to underserved populations. It reinforced my belief that physicians can shape not only individual lives, but also systems of care.

How did you come across Counsel, and what made you want to join?

Counsel's mission to multiply the world’s healthcare capacity by leveraging async care and AI immediately resonated with me. Having built an async care program for emergency department patients at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, I saw firsthand how scalable and impactful it could be. I had also met Muthu (Counsel's CEO) and Rishi (Counsel's Medical Director) before Counsel’s launch and shared their vision for using technology to solve healthcare's biggest challenges. When the opportunity came up to join as the Clinical Product Lead, I jumped at it. The chance to work with such a great team while tackling one of medicine's biggest problems—access to care—has been very rewarding.

Since joining Counsel as the Clinical Product Lead, what has been the most unexpected challenge of transitioning from full-time clinical work to a role that blends medicine with product development?

In many ways the two roles are similar. Both require constant reprioritization, teamwork, and strong intuition. In the ER, you quickly assess whether a patient is "sick" or "not sick." In product development, you're evaluating whether a feature is "useful" or "unnecessary." Coming from an engineering and design-thinking background, I’ve enjoyed building products alongside an incredibly talented team. The biggest challenge? Finding the perfect balance that incorporates the latest AI progress into clinician-facing tools and with the need to ensure patient safety. We're constantly evaluating our AI outputs as we iterate to improve performance.

What’s a common misconception patients have about virtual care (or async care), and how does Counsel address it?

Virtual care, especially with the plethora of direct-to-consumer telemedicine offerings, can be accused of increasing care fragmentation, or providing unnecessary and low quality care. For example, some research suggests a higher antibiotic prescribing rate for Upper Respiratory Infection symptoms in virtual settings than in-person settings.

But virtual care is evolving. I think we’re entering a new era marked by tighter integration and coordination with the brick-and-mortar healthcare delivery system.

At Counsel, we’re constantly thinking of ways to improve care coordination and evidence-based care plans.

We document every patient interaction and share that with health information exchanges and EMRs, so the rest of the patient's care team, whether they're within Counsel or not, can stay informed. Our physicians use custom-built clinical decision support tools, ensuring medical advice aligns with the latest evidence. Plus, because we offer unlimited access at no cost to the patient, we can monitor symptoms over time, reducing unnecessary downstream acute care visits.

What’s one thing you wish every employer or health plan knew about async care that could make a real difference in how they support their employees and members?

I would just emphasize how robust async care is as a care modality. In addition to in-depth history taking, Counsel physicians can also review photos and videos, check prior medical records, prescribe medications, and provide referrals—whenever and wherever it's most convenient for patients. This allows us to resolve the majority of medical concerns quickly and accurately. If in-person care is needed, we ensure patients go to the right place the first time, reducing unnecessary visits and improving overall healthcare efficiency.

If you weren’t in medicine, what other career do you think you’d have pursued?

Great question! Do I have to pick just one?

As a child, I wanted to be an astronaut. Before med school, I was an agtech entrepreneur, helping farmers improve production and food security.

If I had to choose now, I’d probably be an outdoor educator with a program like NOLS. Teaching leadership and survival skills in the wilderness sounds like an incredibly rewarding way to combine my love of the outdoors, education, and adventure!