This week’s Founder Friday, we sat down with Dr Hosen Kiat, Professor of Cardiology and co-founder of TAIK Health
Trust takes years to earn and seconds to lose. I believe trust will always outlast hype.”
Dr Hosen Kiat, Professor of Cardiology and Co-founder, TAIK Health
Dr Hosen Kiat has treated more than 100,000 patients across four decades. He ranks in the top 1% of most-cited clinical medicine researchers worldwide. And yet the problem that ultimately pulled him out of the consulting room and into founding a health platform wasn’t a gap in medical knowledge. It was a gap in trust.
“Never have we known more about preventing disease and living longer, yet never have so many people been so confused about healthy living,” Kiat says. The reason, as he sees it, isn’t a shortage of information. “Information is no longer the problem, discernment is. Social media has given everyone a microphone, regardless of qualifications or expertise. Algorithms reward confidence, controversy and certainty, not accuracy.”
He’d watched this play out for years, one patient conversation at a time. “Every day in my consulting rooms, I found myself dispelling myths and misinformation picked up online. My patients were spending hundreds of hours each year consuming health content, where popularity too often outweighed expertise. The loudest voices were rarely the most qualified.”
That, Kiat says, was his turning point. “I realised that if evidence-based medicine remained confined to scientific journals, conferences and consulting rooms, we would lose the public conversation on health. Medical science needed to become more accessible, more understandable and more relevant to everyday life.”
A calling that started far from medicine
Kiat’s path into cardiology wasn’t an inevitable one. He arrived in Australia as a teenager from Jakarta with no expectation that medicine would define his life. “As a teenager arriving in Australia from Indonesia, I could never have imagined that medicine would become my life’s work. Yet, serendipitously, I found not only a profession, but my calling.”
What kept him in it, he says, is that it was never just one job. “Medicine has never been just one career, it has been three. I have always remained in clinical practice because nothing is more rewarding than helping patients, one on one, directly. I love research because it is the most reliable way to answer important questions and generate discoveries that improve countless lives. And I love teaching because knowledge only fulfils its purpose when it is shared.”
That combination carried him from Monash University to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and UCLA, before he returned to Australia to lead a cardiac imaging research program developing techniques for measuring myocardial blood flow, technology still used today to diagnose and manage heart disease. He later helped establish Macquarie University’s medical school and Australia’s first university-based teaching hospital on campus.
But success in the lab and the clinic didn’t resolve the paradox that was building around him. “Scientific knowledge was advancing at an unprecedented pace, while public understanding seemed to be moving in the opposite direction.” That conviction, he says, “became the foundation for everything that followed,” eventually leading to TAIK Health, a platform built on the idea that credible, expert-delivered health information shouldn’t have to compete for attention with hype.
“Our mission is simple,” Kiat explains, “to create a trusted platform where people know the health information they receive here is credible, evidence-based and delivered by recognised experts, not social media influencers or self-proclaimed health gurus.” He built it deliberately as a collective effort rather than a solo venture. “I have been privileged to bring together many of my colleagues, internationally recognised experts in their respective fields, who have generously embraced our vision.”
Simplifying the message, not the science
Ask Kiat what makes TAIK Health different, and he doesn’t point to technology or growth numbers. He points to a philosophy. “Healthcare doesn’t suffer from a lack of information. It suffers from a lack of trustworthy information. At TAIK Health, we don’t create content for clicks, we create content people can trust. We don’t simplify the science, we simplify its communication.”
That philosophy led him to build PRIME, a framework standing for Purpose, Rest, Interaction, Movement and Eating. “It isn’t another health trend. It’s a practical framework built around the lifestyle habits with the strongest evidence for improving both lifespan and healthspan.” PRIME later became the backbone of his book, Wisdom from Two Worlds: A Scientific Journey into Longevity, which he says “explains not only why these principles work, but, more importantly, how to make them part of everyday life.”
The hardest part of building TAIK Health, Kiat admits, wasn’t the business side. “The biggest challenge wasn’t learning entrepreneurship. It was learning how to communicate science without compromising it. Medicine values evidence, nuance and uncertainty. Social media rewards certainty, controversy and simplicity. Those worlds don’t naturally coexist.”
He says there were plenty of easier paths available, and he turned them down. “There were countless opportunities to chase trends, exaggerate findings or promise quick fixes. We chose not to. Trust takes years to earn and seconds to lose. Once credibility is compromised, rebuilding it is exceptionally difficult.” What looked like a slower, harder road, he says, turned into TAIK Health’s biggest asset. “In an increasingly noisy world, people are looking less for louder voices and more for trusted ones. I believe trust will always outlast hype.”
What thirty years in medicine taught him about business
Long before TAIK Health, Kiat built one of Sydney’s most respected multisite cardiology practices, and the lessons from that experience shaped how he approached this venture too.
“Purpose comes before profit,” he says. “We never chased size, we pursued excellence. By consistently putting patients first and maintaining uncompromising clinical standards, the practice grew organically. That experience taught me that sustainable growth is built on trust, not transactions.”
He also learned, the hard way, that reputation is cumulative but fragile. “Every patient, every lecture, every research paper and every conversation either strengthens or weakens my reputation. Trust is earned one interaction at a time, but it can be lost in an instant.”
And innovation, in his experience, rarely means starting from scratch. “Innovation doesn’t always mean inventing something new. More often, it means making something important simpler. Modern science didn’t discover a new secret, it rediscovered an old one. My role has been to translate the best available evidence into practical habits that people can understand, remember and, most importantly, incorporate into their daily lives.”
If there’s a single thread running through everything Kiat has built, it’s patience over speed. “Consistency beats intensity. Whether building a medical practice, growing TAIK Health or improving your health, lasting success rarely comes from one breakthrough. It comes from following sound advice and turning it into small, consistent habits, practised day after day, year after year.”
His advice for other founders
Kiat’s advice to anyone starting out doesn’t lean on tactics or growth hacks. It starts with why.
“Start with a problem you are deeply passionate about solving, and be absolutely clear why it matters to you,” he says. “Purpose gives you direction. Passion gives you perseverance. Resilience keeps you moving when setbacks inevitably come. If your work genuinely improves people’s lives, success has a way of finding you.”
Next, he says, resist the pull to build a following before you’ve built the substance behind it. “Build expertise before you build a brand. In today’s digital world, attention is easy to gain, but trust is difficult to earn. Expertise creates credibility. Credibility builds trust. Trust creates lasting value.”
And finally, expect the setbacks, and don’t mistake them for a signal to quit. “Play the long game. Every meaningful journey, whether in business, medicine or life, comes with setbacks, disappointments and failures. They are not signs to stop, they are opportunities to learn, adapt and grow. Passion doesn’t remove obstacles, it simply makes quitting no longer an option.”
It’s a philosophy he says has held steady across every chapter of his career, from cardiology to publishing to building TAIK Health. As he puts it: “Knowledge informs. Habits transform.”
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