THE OPERATOR
Robert Piedra.22 years in healthcare.Now building for the outside of it.
RN BSN · CT Scan Technologist · Senior Pharmacy Technician · Currently travel nursing · Hexidus Labs founder
THE PATH
I didn't plan a career in healthcare. I planned a job in pharmacy while I figured out what came next. Twenty-two years later, I've been on the floor for most of the big shifts in how American healthcare actually runs — from paper MARs and film-based CT to PACS, modern EHRs, and the digital systems independent practices run on today. Every step taught me something a builder working on healthcare from the outside wouldn't know.
9 YEARS · PHARMACY
I started in pharmacy.
Nine years as a Senior Certified Pharmacy Technician, mostly in high-volume retail and hospital settings. It's where I learned the real shape of medication error — not the dramatic kind the news talks about, but the quiet kind. A patient's grandmother reading a label she can't parse. A prescription that doesn't match what the doctor meant. A refill denial that doesn't make sense to anyone involved.
Pharmacy taught me that the paper matters. The form matters. The way information is presented to a patient is the difference between compliance and confusion. It also taught me that the systems pharmacies run on are almost always older than the pharmacists using them.
6 YEARS · CT IMAGING
Then six years in imaging.
I went back to school for a Bachelor's of Science in Radiologic Science and Imaging. Six years as a CT Scan Technologist.
Different rhythm from pharmacy. In imaging, you're the person a frightened patient meets right before they go into a machine that sounds like a jet engine. You have about ninety seconds to explain the scan, position the patient, and make them trust that you'll keep them safe.
Imaging taught me workflow. The way a patient moves through a hospital visit is engineered whether you realize it or not. Bad engineering means late reads, repeat scans, and patients leaving without answers. Good engineering means everyone knows what happens next — the radiologist, the referring doctor, the patient, the front desk. When it works, the patient doesn't see it. When it breaks, the patient pays for it. I worked on GE and Philips PACS — same lesson as pharmacy systems: the tool you're handed shapes the care you're able to give.
7 YEARS · NURSING · CURRENT
Then nursing school. And travel.
I went back to school again, this time for a Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing. Three-plus years in the ICU through COVID — trauma critical care at one of the busiest county hospitals in the country, then radiology nursing, and travel ICU since early 2025.
Travel is the view I never had at one bedside in one hospital. Four EHRs in real depth — Epic, Cerner, Meditech, and Practice Better on the functional medicine side. The same patient problem solved four different ways, by four engineering teams that never spoke to each other. I've watched which workflows actually hold up when someone's in pain at 3am and the software is the only thing standing between them and the right answer.
Nursing is where I learned that the intake form isn't a form. It's the first conversation a practice has with a patient — and how that conversation is engineered decides whether anything that follows works. That's the line that runs through every Hexidus build. The site, the intake, the booking, the chatbot, the email, the payments — they're not marketing. They're the operating layer of a practice. Build them right and the medicine has a chance to land. Build them wrong and the best practitioner in the building spends the day fighting their own systems.
THE BUILD YEAR
In late 2024 I started building. Next.js, Tailwind, Supabase, and modern tools. Not because I wanted to leave clinical work — I still travel nurse on 12-hour night shifts three nights a week. I built because I kept seeing the same problem from the outside.
Practices are spending $150 to $500 a month on marketing software that doesn't understand their workflow. Agencies are charging $15,000 for websites written by people who've never taken a patient history. AI tools are generating “healthcare” content that any practitioner can spot in two seconds.
The gap between what clinics need and what the market gives them is wide. And it's wide specifically because almost nobody building in this space has actually worked the floor. You can tell — the copy sounds like a consulting deck, the forms ask for things no real practitioner would ask for, and the “patient journey” was designed in a Notion doc by someone who's never held a patient's hand.
“Almost nobody building in this space has actually worked the floor. You can tell.”
Hexidus Labs is what I build in that gap. Not a full-time agency. Not a generalist builder. One practitioner, one stack, one focus: websites, intake, online booking, AI tools, payments, and ops for independent healthcare and wellness practices, built by someone who knows the work from inside.
WHY DPC
Direct Primary Care is having a moment in 2026. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act made DPC memberships HSA-eligible starting January 1, 2026 — up to $150 per month for individuals and $300 per month for families. Roughly 61 million Americans with high-deductible health plans can now pay DPC fees with pre-tax dollars.
Employers are catching on: over 7,200 US companies now sponsor DPC memberships as a benefit. The DPC Coalition calls this “an inflection point.” Hint Health, the dominant membership-billing platform, said the old HSA barrier “is now gone.”
Practical translation: a 24-month demand pulse for new DPC practices and modernization of existing ones. The practices winning that market are the ones with modern systems ready the day HSA-eligible patients start shopping. Most DPC practices I've audited are running 2019 websites that load in 6 to 8 seconds on mobile and have intake forms designed by someone who's never taken a history. I fix that. Practice systems first. Care workflow stays with the EHR.
- 61M
- Americans with
HSA-eligible DPC access - 7,200+
- US employers offering
DPC as a benefit - $150–300
- Monthly HSA limit
per person or family
HONEST LIMITATIONS
Most agency About pages pretend the agency can do anything. Mine won't. The limits below aren't bugs to work around — they're how I stay fast, honest, and worth hiring. If any of these are dealbreakers, we're not a fit, and that's a clean outcome for both of us.
No team. No subcontractors. No account managers.
You talk to me, always. That means direct access on every project — and it means I can only take 6 to 8 builds a year. If you need a bench of designers, developers, and project managers, you need an agency. I'm not that.
Your EHR does HIPAA. My site doesn't.
I route everything clinical to your EHR. If you need a patient portal, telehealth video, prescription workflow, or anything that stores Protected Health Information on my infrastructure, I'm not the right vendor for that. That's deliberate — it's how I keep builds fast and prices honest.
Link-redirect, not API integration.
Hint Health, Atlas.md, Elation, Jane — all handled via clean link-redirect, not custom integration. If you need deep API integration with your EHR, I'll refer you to specialists who do that work.
California and New York clients are out of scope.
State AI law complications in CA and NY create unclear compliance obligations for small studios. Rather than hire a lawyer to interpret ambiguous requirements for every build, I've opted out of both markets for 2026. DPC, functional medicine, wellness, chiropractic, PT, health coaches, nutritionists, herbalists — all welcome outside CA/NY.
I travel nurse on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday nights.
Hexidus work happens Monday afternoons, full Tuesdays, Wednesdays before 6pm, Saturday afternoons, and Sunday mornings. If you need 24/7 availability or traditional office hours, I'm not the right operator. If you want someone who's been at the bedside six hours before he writes your site's intake flow, I probably am.
These are features, not bugs. If they're a fit, let's talk.
NEXT STEP
If this sounds like the right fit, let's talk.
A 20-minute call. No slides. No sales pitch. We talk about your practice, your timeline, your EHR, and whether Hexidus is a fit. If it's not, I'll point you somewhere better. Either way you leave with a clearer plan.
Or email robert@hexiduslabs.com