A Personal Journey to Improve Patient Care: From Oxygen Therapy to Vision Innovation

By Ali Bauerlein

When my grandmother was prescribed oxygen therapy in 2001, it changed her life in all the wrong ways. Immediately, her world got smaller. She felt trapped at home, worrying over her oxygen tank. She calculated the best days to schedule a new supply of oxygen, but still constantly feared she’d run out. Every car ride, shopping trip, and event required a calculation. Even encountering slow traffic on the way back from the supermarket could mean running out of oxygen.

It was hard for my family to see her so worried and discouraged. I was just 19 years old, a college freshman studying economics and math, but I wanted to help. Then my grandmother asked a question that launched my journey into healthcare, “Everything else has gotten smaller, better, and easier—why hasn’t my oxygen therapy?”

My grandmother’s experience showed me how the quality of patient care has a very deep, personal impact. Elevating that quality is the purpose behind everything we do in healthcare. Founders often start with a close personal connection like mine that drives us to improve outcomes, satisfaction, or safety. By maintaining a focus on patient care, we align the efforts of all constituents—patients, doctors, health systems, and industry—to make a positive impact on the world.

From one patient to millions

Opportunities to improve healthcare often reside in unmet needs. The most exciting of those needs offer a chance to achieve the triple aim—improve patient care, health outcomes, and costs—so everyone benefits. The pain and frustration of an unmet need are never more motivating than when the patient is someone we know.

At first, I didn’t know there was an unmet need for oxygen therapy. I started looking around, thinking I’d find a better solution for my grandmother, but I came up empty. It didn’t exist. Along with two college friends, I researched oxygen technology and the industry. Convinced we could help, we wrote a business plan, secured funding, and founded a company called Inogen while still in college. Our single goal: Bring a portable oxygen concentrator to market to improve the lives of my grandmother and millions like her who relied on oxygen therapy.

After years of development, fundraising, and building a great team, we got FDA clearance for the first device. My grandmother got the company’s first portable oxygen concentrator off the production line, and she got her life back. Carrying a small device that produced its own oxygen, she could live like she did before her diagnosis, without worrying about running out. She lived and even traveled like before—I have wonderful memories of the cruise we took together as a family.

In over 20 years since then, more than 1 million patients in 60-plus countries have used Inogen portable oxygen concentrators. They sent letters telling us about the trips they took, the weddings they attended, the holidays they enjoyed, and the freedom they felt. In some rural places, patients had access to oxygen therapy for the first time. These stories grounded us, providing a focus as we worked hard every day to keep making a difference.

Reimagining eye care with transformative technology

Once I saw I could improve patient care, the drive to keep doing so became ingrained. When I left Inogen after over 20 years, I was soon itching to get back to working with great people and solving big problems. After talking to many companies, I found that I felt right at home with Sight Sciences (Menlo Park, California). This is my kind of team, where everyone is highly energized around making patients’ lives better through better patient care, grounded in strong clinical efficacy.

Our mantra is, “We all deserve to see our lives unfold,” and that message resonates at all levels of the organization. Nothing is more important to people than their eyesight, and impaired vision makes patients feel like my grandmother did—fearful and desolate as their world gets smaller. With every innovative interventional technology that Sight Sciences develops, the goal is to elevate the standard of care. This emphasizes the need to reimagine eyecare with transformative technologies that enable earlier intervention for conditions like glaucoma and dry eye. We aim to preserve healthy eye function through clinically proven therapies at Sight Sciences and ultimately enhance patient outcomes.

As a CFO working with partners to analyze data and evaluate investments, I am always mindful that every number is tied to empowering people to keep seeing. We focus on meeting patients’ needs with the knowledge that business success will follow. As I help Sight Sciences navigate the journey through high growth med-tech challenges and make the most significant impact we can, I’m proud that patient care is a passion for all of us, and we continue making a difference in patients’ lives.

Ali Bauerlein is CFO at Sight Sciences. Previously, she was the founder and CFO of Inogen.