About me
See the board
Most health companies run telehealth, diagnostics, pharmacy, and distribution as four separate machines that barely talk to each other. I start by mapping the whole board (where the handoffs break, where a patient slips through, where margin quietly leaks). The seam between those domains, where operations meets compliance meets revenue, is where the real leverage lives, and it's the part most people never think to look at.
Invent the system
Seeing the gap is the easy part. The work is designing the system that closes it (SOPs, KPI dashboards, intake, escalation, and the guardrails that keep it honest) so a protocol on paper turns into adherence in real life. I design the guardrails first, because in healthcare the system should never guess. A 50mg dose is 50mg, not 25, not 100.
Build it
A plan that stays a slide deck is worthless. I build the machine and get it running in production (at HelixVM, a patient-operations engine scaled to 100K+ encounters over roughly 18 months. At Fenix, a live AI agent on Claude API and our ERP working the sales channel). The test I hold myself to is simple: the system should run so cleanly it eventually doesn't need me.
Meet Hugo Acurio
Healthcare Operations Leader | Fractional or Full-Time COO for integrated health companies (telehealth + labs + pharmacy fulfillment, run as one DTC system) | Turns protocols into adherence and P&L | Ex-Omron LATAM
I build the operating layer that lets health companies actually run (the integrated flow of telehealth, diagnostics, and pharmacy fulfillment, all working as one system instead of four disconnected ones). Fifteen years in, across consumer health, telehealth, and regulated pharma, that seam is where I live: operations, compliance, and AI, connected in one head.
The through-line is simple. I don't advise on operations, I build the machine that runs them, then I build the team that runs the machine. At HelixVM I built the patient-operations engine for an AI telehealth platform (SOPs, KPI dashboards, intake, escalation) and scaled it to 100K+ patient encounters over roughly 18 months. At Omron LATAM I drove 300% regional growth and a #1 category position. As founder and operator of Fenix and IRIS in Ecuador, I run the P&L and a regulated pharmaceutical supply chain, now with a production AI agent (built on Claude API and our ERP) working the sales channel.
But systems don't scale alone, they scale with people. I've coached commercial teams to nearly 1,800 monthly physician engagements, built a merchandising team that doubled demand in under eight months, and run the cross-functional cadence that keeps product, clinical, marketing, and ops accountable to the same number. The teams I've built have a habit I'm proud of: they outgrow the scaffolding I put up (at HelixVM, the operation I designed eventually ran so cleanly the platform itself could carry it).
On the personal side, I'm blessed with a family that keeps me grounded and a competitive streak I burn off at the racetrack (turns out a race car is just an ops dashboard doing 120mph). Both teach the same lesson: preparation, guardrails, and a calm head under pressure.
Let's compare notes.