Growing with Fathom: Parth Doshi

From time to time, Fathom invites team members to reflect on their journey with Fathom. In this blog, Parth Doshi, Lead Software Engineer, shares the story of his experience at Fathom and how the DARPA Grand Challenge made him want to become an engineer.  

Growing up, I religiously watched the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge.

If you haven't heard of it, it's a series of autonomous vehicle competitions organized by DARPA. Picture cars revving, sand flying, and crowds of people cheering — I was mesmerized by it all. The challenges were originally designed to speed up the development of autonomous vehicle technology. Teams from across the country were invited to design and build vehicles that could navigate designated routes in a desert environment without human help.

Watching the DARPA 2005 Grand Challenge was the moment I realized I wanted to become an engineer. I wanted to be part of the magic that unfolded when a team of engineers worked together to guide their vehicles through seemingly insurmountable challenges. This eventually led me to pursue Computer Science and Machine Learning during high school and college.‍

From autonomous cars to advancing healthcare with AI

Before college, I interned at a startup and loved my experience there, mainly due to the tight-knit community. While pursuing my bachelor's, I also interned at larger companies like Microsoft. And though I loved working on a specific product and growing my knowledge of building features at scale to a large enterprise audience, I ultimately decided to work at a startup post-graduation for the opportunity to make a larger impact and have faster growth.

I joined Fathom because:
- It's an earlier-stage company with a small (but mighty) team!
- The product is ML-focused.
- I had a great chat with our CTO during the interview process and thought the business proposition made a ton of sense.
- As someone who has been to the hospital multiple times and waited months for my bill, I knew Fathom’s work could make a real impact.

Though Fathom was my first official job out of college, there are reasons why I've chosen to stay here for four years now as a Lead Software Engineer. I'm excited to come to work each day, tackling problems like serving more medical specialties and integrating LLMs with my teammates. There are massive opportunities for innovation and problem solving in healthcare, so if you're an engineer itching to get creative, give healthcare a try.

Amplifying healthcare with Fathom

The best part of working at Fathom has been the sense of ownership over my work. And because the team is still so concentrated and talented, everyone can see the individual impact of their work.

My ultimate goal for Fathom? To provide instant feedback for providers and patients on coded charts, and to bring in a whole new standard for healthcare efficiency.

I'm excited to see Fathom grow into a larger company, tackle more direct EHR integrations, and help the industry get their medical bills faster!