Team: Heather Campbell (Stern M.B.A. ’97), Steve Birnhak (Stern M.B.A. ’95)
About the Venture: Ready Set Recover is a digital wellness platform designed to improve surgical outcomes by enhancing patient engagement, reducing stress, and increasing adherence to recovery plans through science-backed tools.
Surgery is one of the most stressful experiences a person can go through, yet most healthcare systems focus only on the clinical side, leaving patients feeling overwhelmed, unprepared, and non-compliant with pre- and post-operative instructions. This leads to higher stress, complications, readmissions, and extended recovery times, impacting both patients and hospitals.
Ready Set Recover is a digital platform that empowers surgical patients with science-backed tools to reduce stress, improve adherence, and actively participate in their recovery. By integrating CBT, mindfulness, movement, journaling, and logistical planning, we bridge the gap between clinical care and patient-centered wellness. Hospitals benefit from better patient compliance, reduced readmissions, and lower costs, creating a win-win for both patients and providers.
Heather Campbell founded Ready Set Recover after her own experience preparing for surgery. She felt anxious, uncertain, and unsupported beyond the clinical aspects. After developing her own structured approach and hearing from her surgeon that he wished all patients could be like her, she realized the gap in perioperative patient support was universal.
She partnered with Steve Birnhak, a serial entrepreneur with two successful exits, including a $123M acquisition by Symantec, to scale the idea into a digital platform. Daniel Paul, an experienced full-stack developer and UI/UX expert, joined as CTO to build a seamless, engaging experience. Together, the team blends healthcare insights, technology expertise, and business acumen to create a scalable, transformative solution for surgical patients.
Unlike most preoperative patient education or single-modality wellness apps, Ready Set Recover is a fully integrated, multimodal platform that combines meditation, care coordination, exercise, sleep tracking, journaling, and logistics planning into one seamless, structured experience.
Our solution is easy to implement, requires no changes to hospital workflows, and engages patients with interactive, step-by-step guidance rather than passive education. Many existing tools are fragmented, focusing on only one aspect of recovery—education, mindfulness, or tracking—while RSR unites all of these elements into a structured, holistic approach that empowers both patients and healthcare providers.
We applied because we recognize the immense value of mentorship, strategic insights, and connections that come from being part of a highly competitive program like the NYU Entrepreneurs Challenge. NYU has a world-class ecosystem for startups, and we wanted to surround ourselves with experts who can help accelerate our path to commercialization.
We’re looking to gain expert feedback on refining our business model, strengthening our go-to-market strategy, and developing the right partnerships to expand Ready Set Recover’s adoption. The opportunity to learn from NYU’s network of investors, healthcare leaders, and fellow entrepreneurs is invaluable, and we’re excited to leverage this experience to bring RSR to more patients and hospitals.
The biggest turning point was securing our first clinical study with Assuta Hospital in Israel. This validated that major healthcare institutions recognize the need for a solution like Ready Set Recover and gave us the opportunity to collect real-world data on patient engagement, compliance, and outcomes.
This milestone not only strengthened our credibility but also opened doors for additional partnerships, including pilots with Northwell Health and FNHK in the Czech Republic. Seeing hospitals actively engage with our platform as a solution to real challenges reinforced our belief in the impact Ready Set Recover can have on both patients and healthcare systems.
One of our biggest challenges has been hospital adoption. Healthcare systems are often slow to implement new solutions, especially if they aren’t immediately reimbursable. We overcame this by focusing on building evidence through pilots and clinical studies, demonstrating the ROI in reducing complications, readmissions, and provider workload.
Another challenge has been differentiating ourselves in a crowded healthtech space. We addressed this by emphasizing our holistic, patient-centered approach and our ability to integrate seamlessly into hospital workflows without disrupting clinical operations. By staying laser-focused on real patient and provider pain points, we’re steadily gaining traction.
Recent milestones include:
Each milestone has been the result of strategic persistence, validation from key stakeholders, and continued iteration on our product. Seeing Ready Set Recover transition from concept to real-world application has been both challenging and incredibly rewarding.
Building a startup is an endurance race, not a sprint, but staying focused on impact and execution is what makes the journey worthwhile.
