Company leader
Piotr Orzechowski
Founder and CEO
Infermedica
Piotr Orzechowski is the founder and chief executive of Infermedica, a Wrocław, Poland company whose AI software triages patients by their symptoms for health systems, insurers, and nurse lines in more than 35 countries. He has led it since 2012, when he turned a guessing game into a symptom checker.
Programming From Childhood
His father, a chemistry professor, brought old computers home, and Orzechowski was programming by the time he was seven. He wanted to build games, wrote mobile games for long-gone phone operating systems, and studied computer science and management at Wrocław University of Technology.
Leading Technology at a File-Sync Startup
His first real company role was chief technology officer of a Polish rival to Dropbox, where he co-developed the file sync algorithm. The company was bought by the largest web portal in Poland, and he went looking for his next project.
From a Guessing Game to Triage
In 2012 he played 20 Questions, the Akinator version, with Ania, a friend who is a doctor, and the two set out to adapt the game to medicine. He recalled how they built it: "Ania started building a medical database, I programmed everything, and that’s how we created a working prototype of Infermedica, by simply asking questions about disease symptoms."
They launched the Doktor-Medi website in September 2012. Early user interest faded, and they had no clear way to make money from it.
Finding a Business Model
Selling to consumers failed, and a salesman hired from the clothing trade sold two subscriptions in a month. On a trip to Silicon Valley, a large American company asked for an API it could buy for its hospital product, and Infermedica switched to licensing its engine to other companies. Through the leanest stretch he paid wages with his own credit card, until a half-million-dollar contract turned the company around.
Steering Infermedica
Infermedica raised about $50 million in total, far less than rivals such as Babylon, and he credits that restraint with keeping it alive: "Our funding history, I think, saved the company." Under him it has published 26 peer-reviewed papers and earned Class IIb medical device certification in the European Union.
He has also argued that the standalone consumer symptom checker is finished, now that people ask general AI chatbots instead. In his words, "I almost think that this category of a symptom checker is literally dead."
Music and Tennis Outside Work
Orzechowski plays tennis and guitar in his free time. He shares his name with the Polish jazz pianist Piotr Orzechowski, known as Pianohooligan, and after meeting him at a concert he half-jokingly proposed a duo, with himself on guitar.