Report finds Houston is short on health care workers

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A report found that Houston has only 3.35 health care workers for every 100 residents. Getty Images

Houston may be home to the world's largest medical center, but a new study indicates the region is also home to one of the lowest rates of health care workers among major U.S. metro areas.

The study, released by credit-building loan platform Self, shows the Houston metro area has 3.35 health care workers for every 100 residents. That places Houston at No. 10 on the study's list of the major metro areas (at least 1 million residents) with the lowest share of health care workers per capita, including doctors, nurses, and therapists.

The only other major metro area in Texas sitting toward the bottom rung of the ladder is Austin, with 3.17 health care workers per 100 residents. That puts Austin at No. 4 for the lowest rate of health care workers among major metro areas.

Houston's ranking in the Self study is juxtaposed with the city's status as a world-famous health care hub. Over 106,000 people work at the more than 60 institutions within the Texas Medical Center, which includes the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Texas Children's Hospital, and the Baylor College of Medicine.

The 1,345-acre medical complex pumps an estimated $25 billion a year into the regional economy.

Despite Houston's stature as a medical magnet, the metro area is witnessing an escalating shortage of doctors and nurses.

A 2016 report from the Texas Department of State Health Services envisions the supply of registered nurses (RNs) — the largest group of nursing professionals — will climb 38 percent from 2015 to 2030 in the Gulf Coast public health region, compared with a 60.5 percent surge in demand. That equates to a projected shortage of 13,877 RNs in 2030. The Gulf Coast region includes the Houston area.

From 2017 to 2030, the supply of primary care physicians in the Gulf Coast region will increase 19.8 percent while demand will spike 27.5 percent, according to a 2018 report from the Texas Department of State Health Services. Ten years from now, the region will suffer a shortage of 694 primary care physicians, the report predicts.

In a 2019 survey commissioned by the Texas Medical Center Health Policy Institute, about 90 percent of primary care physicians across the country predicted a shortage in their field within five years. Seventy-eight of specialty physicians anticipated a shortage of specialists.

On the consumer side, the survey found 19 percent of patients reported difficulty scheduling an initial visit with a primary care physician, and 15 percent ran into trouble setting up a new visit with a specialist.

"The best way to tell if we have a doctor shortage is by asking patients whether they can easily get an appointment," Dr. Arthur "Tim" Garson Jr., director of the Texas Medical Center Health Policy Institute in Houston, said in a 2019 release. "For now, they overwhelmingly say 'yes.'"

By 2030, Texas will experience the third largest shortage of physicians among the states (20,420 jobs), according to a study published in 2020 in the journal Human Resources for Health. Only California and Florida will see worse shortages, the study predicts. The physician shortage in Texas is being driven by a growing population, an aging population and an aging pool of doctors, according to the study.

Noting the country's growing and aging population, a study published in 2019 by the Association of American Medical Colleges predicts the U.S. confronts a shortage of up to 121,900 physicians by 2032.

The looming national shortage of RNs is also acute.

The country's RN workforce is projected to grow from 2.9 million in 2016 to 3.4 million in 2026, or 15 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, the bureau predicts the need for another 203,700 RNs each year from 2016 through 2026 to fill newly created positions and to replace retiring nurses.

"With patient care growing more complex, ensuring a sufficient RN workforce is not merely a matter of how many nurses are needed, but rather an issue of preparing an adequate number of nurses with the right level of education to meet health care demands," Ann Cary, dean of the Marieb College of Health and Human Services at Florida Gulf Coast University, said in a 2019 release

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Saranas Inc. is testing its technology that can detect and track internal bleeding complications. Getty Images

Houston medical device company heads to clinical trials following recent $2.8 million raise

HEalth tech

A Houston-based medical device startup is on a twofold mission to reduce healthcare costs and improve the safety of complex medical procedures involving blood vessels.

Saranas Inc. currently is testing its Early Bird Bleed Monitoring System, which is designed to detect and track bleeding complications related to endovascular procedures. These medical procedures treat problems, such as aneurysms, that affect blood vessels.

"What attracted me to Saranas is that our solution has the potential to meaningfully reduce serious bleeding complications that worsen clinical outcomes and drive up healthcare costs," says Zaffer Syed, president and CEO of Saranas. "In addition, our device may support access of important minimally invasive cardiac procedures by allowing them to be performed more safely."

Dr. Mehdi Razavi, a cardiologist with the Texas Heart Institute at Houston's Texas Medical Center, invented the device. It's being tested by the institute and other medical facilities in the U.S. As many as 100 patients will participate in the clinical trial, which is expected to last several months.

If all goes well, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will approve Early Bird in 2019, Syed says. Then, the device would be made widely available to medical facilities across the country.

In May, Saranas said it received $2.8 million in funding from investors to enable testing of Early Bird. In all, the startup has collected $12 million from investors. A month after the funding announcement, Saranas was one of 50 startups chosen for the MedTech Innovator program, which nurtures medical technology companies.

As explained by the Texas Heart Institute, the Early Bird employs a sheath — a plastic tube that helps keep arteries and vessels open — embedded with sensors that measure the electrical resistance across a blood vessel. When the Early Bird senses a change in the electrical resistance, medical professionals get audible and visual notifications about potential internal bleeding. If detected early, this bleeding can be halted or prevented.

"There is a risk of bleeding that occurs when some of these coronary interventions are performed through the femoral artery, which is in the upper thigh," Syed says.

In a release, Texas Heart Institute cardiologist Dr. Joggy George says internal bleeding "remains the Achilles' heel" of advances in noninvasive endovascular procedures.

Syed says there's an underappreciation for how often bleeding occurs during nonsurgical procedures that provide access to a patient's blood vessels. Each year, doctors perform these procedures on more than 20 million patients in the U.S.; of those, about 1 million experience severe complications from bleeding. Those complications can lead to longer, more expensive hospital stays along with a higher risk of death.

Initially, Saranas is targeting high-risk endovascular procedures done with large sheaths, rather than endovascular procedures performed with sheaths of all sizes, Syed says.

Syed took the helm of Saranas in February 2017. He's spent nearly 20 years in the medical device industry, including four years at Bellaire-based OrthoAccel Technologies Inc.

For the time being, Syed is one of just a handful of employees at Saranas, which was founded in 2013 and has benefited from its affiliation with the Texas Medical Center Innovation Institute. Syed expects to grow the Saranas team in 2019 once the Early Bird gains clearance from the FDA.

During his tenure in the medical device sector, Syed has been "keenly interested" in bringing impactful innovations to the market, such as the Early Bird device.

"It is especially important to me that such innovation not only improves health outcomes but also aims to drive down healthcare costs," he says. "We are in a healthcare environment where if you don't have a health economic benefit coupled with a clinical outcome, it is very challenging to get adoption of new technology."

Efficient referrals from doctor to doctor could save a life, so this Houston company is setting out to create a network of medical professionals all accessible in an app. Getty Images

Houston-based company is connecting the dots on patient referrals

Diagnosing doctors

When your doctor recommends that you visit another practitioner, it's only natural that you trust the suggestion. But it's one case in which your physician isn't always an expert. Married doctors Justin Bird, an orthopedic surgeon, and Terri-Ann Samuels, a specialist in female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery, have long noted that patients are often referred incorrectly.

No big deal, right? Just go to another doctor. But not everyone has that luxury. Bird and Samuels never intended to start their own company. But when Bird lost a patient due to faulty referrals, they knew something had to be done.

"He believes that if she hadn't been bounced around from doctor to doctor, they could have saved her life," says Chris E. Staffel, chief operating officer of Patients We Share, the app that the couple created to fix the broken aspect of the health care system.

In 2015, Bird and Samuels began their company when they were shocked to realize that such an app didn't already exist.

"They started working with physicians around the country who said, 'We really, really need this,' and they also invested in it," recounts Staffel. From those friends, they built a physician advisory board of 15 investors.

Prescribing growth
The project was accepted into Johnson & Johnson's incubator, JLABS in 2016, then TMCx's digital startup program in the spring of 2018.

"They started realizing it was gaining momentum and realized they needed to have business people on board," says Staffel.

They hired Michael Antonoff, a Rice University M.B.A., as CEO. He invited former classmate Staffel to join as COO. Having come from a background in oil and gas, Staffel jumped at the chance to try her hand in a different industry.

With new business clout behind PWS, the company is growing quickly. Currently, PWS is entering its next seed round of $2.5 million that will allow the company to pay salaries of new team members and bring some tech development in-house. Until now, the making of the app itself has been outsourced to Mobisoft Infotech, a company based in Houston and India, which has worked on many projects at the Texas Medical Center. Local Black + Grey Studio is responsible for the design.

PWS has been working with both those teams in recent months to get a prototype app ready for launch. Currently, 100 physicians around the country are part of an invite-only pilot program. Soon, Staffel hopes to allow early adopter doctors who haven't been invited to enroll in the program for free. It will likely be in 2020 that patients will start joining the community, too.

How it works
An index of all the providers on the app allows doctors to easily find practitioners in a particular specialty. But there's more to it. Detailed profiles contribute to machine learning that assures the optimal match every time. Patient reviews will also play a role.

Though referrals were the impetus for the creation of PWS, it may be even more important as a communication tool between doctors, fellow clinicians (anyone from nurse practitioners to physical therapists may be invited to join), and patients. Staffel says participants in the pilot program are already using the messaging system to compare notes on cases, even sending photos from surgery to consult on patient issues.

The app's encryption means that it's HIPAA-compliant. Patients provide permission to discuss their cases via the app. And they can be confident of the quality of care they'll receive. Likely, the app will remain largely invite-only, and everyone who joins will share their National Provider Identifier licenses to be vetted against the federal database.

Doctors will communicate directly with patients through the app, but will also share resources digitally. Instead of making copy after copy of information about post-surgical care, for instance, the physician need only press a button to share a link.

Eventually, the goal is for PWS to be used not just nationally, but internationally, not just by individuals, but by whole hospital systems. A world in which doctors can compare notes around globe could be a little safer for us all.

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Experts: Houston's VC ecosystem has set the foundation — now we need scale

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Fervo Energy went public earlier this summer. The Houston geothermal company priced its IPO at $27 per share, raised $1.89 billion, and opened the next morning at a market capitalization north of $10 billion. By most measures, it is the largest venture-backed cleantech IPO in history and an unambiguous win for Houston. It’s also a useful moment to look at where Houston's venture ecosystem stands and where it can go. The highlight: Houston's venture ecosystem has real foundations and, with increased company formation activity, can grow into the scale our city's ambitions deserve.

A Houston energy story in the national recovery

The recent uptick in Houston venture activity follows national trends. U.S. venture deal count contracted roughly 22 percent from its 2021 peak through 2024 before rebounding to about 16,700 rounds in 2025. Houston's 23 percent increase in VC funding from 2023 to 2024 is part of a national recovery of comparable magnitude over the same time window.

The energy sector is where Houston exhibits unique trends—and where the story turns clearly positive. (Houston's strong health and space sectors deserve their own separate consideration.) By deal count, energy-related rounds have accounted for 15 to 20 percent of Houston activity, roughly consistent over the past few years.

By capital, energy's share surged from about 14 percent in 2023 to over 60 percent in 2025, driven by a small number of large Houston-headquartered rounds, primarily in geothermal and related technologies. Fervo is the obvious anchor, but Sage Geosystems, Quaise Energy, Zeta Energy, Vaulted Deep, Applied Carbon and Mariana Minerals have all closed meaningful rounds. Houston is concentrated and accelerating as an energy capital market, an invaluable position to build upon.

From foundation to scale

The institutional pieces are in place. Greentown Labs, Activate, the Ion and others have built sector-specialized infrastructure most cities would struggle to assemble. Fervo itself is an alum of both Activate and Greentown Labs. Mercury Fund closed its $160 million Fund V, its largest ever. Houston Angel Network, GOOSE Capital, Fathom Fund, and broader pre-seed and seed capital coverage are here. The Houston $10 million-plus Series A list now includes 40 rounds since 2021, which break roughly into two eras. While 2021 to 2022 was biotech-heavy, with companies like Sporos Bioventures, RadioMedix, Cellenkos and Coya Therapeutics, 2024 to 2025 has tilted clearly toward energy, climate, and critical minerals, with Vaulted Deep, Applied Carbon, Mariana Minerals, Sage Geosystems and Ignis H2 Energy among them.

What’s less developed is the volume of seed-stage companies flowing into that capital. Imagine a dozen more Fervos coming out of that infrastructure over the next decade, each generating jobs, recycled founder capital, and the next wave of operators and angel investors. That is the kind of opportunity Houston has within reach if we build the company-formation pipeline to feed it. To be relevant on the national stage as a venture market, and to drive an economy the size of Houston's into the 2030s, the city needs to be doing closer to 20 Series A rounds per month rather than per year. That throughput implies roughly 1,000 seed rounds per year, feeding the funnel at a 20 percent to 30 percent graduation rate. Reaching such throughput depends on how many new founders Houston produces and how quickly our innovation ecosystem can help them achieve lift-off.

Houston in context

The comparative picture brings the scaling challenge into focus. Between 2021 and 2024, Houston-area startups closed between 126 and 153 disclosed venture rounds per year, against a national count between 9,854 and 14,125. That places Houston at a little over 1 percent of the U.S. deal count. For comparison, Austin ran about three times Houston's deal count each year.

At the Series A level, Houston closed between 12 and 24 rounds in any given year. The median Houston Series A across the period was about $10.7 million, compared with $15.4 million in San Francisco. Houston founders are raising fewer and smaller Series A rounds than founders in peer metros, which points directly to where Houston has the most room to grow.

The unicorn picture tells the same story. From 2021 through 2025, the U.S. produced 590 venture-backed unicorns. Four were Houston-based: Solugen and Axiom Space in 2021, Cart.com in 2023, and Fervo Energy in 2024. Adding HighRadius from 2020 brings Houston's all-time total to five. Austin added 19 over the same five-year window. The path from here is to make Houston's entries on lists like these less the exception and more the rule.

Where this leads

Houston has a real opportunity to become the deepest, most credible energy and climate capital market in the country, with the company formation, talent and operator density to support it. The data shows the foundation is already in place. Fervo, Solugen and the growing roster of energy-adjacent Series A graduates are proof. Fervo's IPO is the first of what should be many. Houston has not had a venture-backed cleantech liquidity event of this scale before, and the city now has one to reference, recruit against and build on. With increased company formation at the seed and pre-seed stages, a Fervo-scale outcome need not be a generational event in Houston, but instead, it can become part of a chain reaction powering the city's economy.

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Stephanie T. Schmidt, PhD, is the founder of a stealth startup, a Venture Fellow at Energy Transition Ventures, and an Executive MBA candidate at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business. Lawson Gow is the Chief Operating Officer of Greentown Labs. The full Houston VC landscape report is available at Energy Transition Ventures and CleanTech.Org.

Sources: Crunchbase, PitchBook-NVCA, Carta

8 can't-miss Houston business and innovation events for July

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Editor's note: Summer is in full swing in Houston, but the city's innovation ecosystem isn't slowing down. This month brings AI workshops, energy and manufacturing discussions, entrepreneur-focused networking, and opportunities to connect with investors and industry leaders. Here’s what not to miss and how to register. Please note: this article may be updated to add more events.

July 7 — How Oil and Gas Professionals are Building Wealth Smarter

Hear from oil and gas professionals on how to preserve wealth at this event put on by Financial Advice Center. The conversation will touch on topics like investing, taxes and retirement planning.

This event is Tuesday, July 7, from noon-1 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

July 7 — What AI, Cybersecurity, and Tequila Have in Common.

Join Blue People and Alpfa Houston for this engaging presentation on the advantages and risks associated with AI at the latest installment of Tech + Tequila Talk. Cybersecurity veteran Reynaldo Gonzalez will lead the conversation.

This event is Tuesday, July 7, from 5-7 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

July 7 — Speed to Market: Houston’s Advanced Manufacturing Edge

The Greater Houston Partnership presents a forum that explores what allows advanced manufacturing projects in Houston to move from concept to operation, where delays and bottlenecks occur, and more. Industry leaders Jennifer Clement from CliftonLarsonAllen LLP and Sarah Janes from San Jacinto College will lead the discussion.

This event is Tuesday, July 7, from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Partnership Tower. Register here.

July 9 — Capital Connections Summit

Houston City College Center for Entrepreneurship will host the Capital Connections Summit this month, with a panel discussion focused on access to capital and technical assistance for small businesses and entrepreneurs. The event will be moderated by the U.S. Small Business Administration Houston District Office and will feature lenders, nonprofit microlenders, business advisors, and entrepreneurial support organizations. A live Q&A will follow the panel.

This event is Thursday, July 9, from 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. at Houston City College Central Campus. Register here.

July 9 — Upstream: Digital Tech Meetup at Second Draught

Join Timbergrove at this month's gathering of energy, operations and technology professionals from across the upstream ecosystem. Discuss challenges, explore new ideas and network over pizza and beer at Second Draught.

This event is Thursday, July 9, from 5:30–8 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

July 14 — Why Networking Isn’t Turning Into Deals, And What To Do Instead

Jada Powell, founder of Powell Consulting Group, will break down why networking often fails to convert into deals and what companies can do differently to turn conversations into qualified opportunities. Powell works with oil and gas, energy, and industrial companies on business development solutions. This session is part of the monthly Pipeline Series: How Oil & Gas Companies Actually Grow Revenue.

This event is Tuesday, July 14, from noon-1 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

July 15 — From Pilot to Performance: Building Your AI Procurement Roadmap

It's not too late to join in on the GHP's two-part AI series on moving from experimentation to implementation. In session two, explore how procurement and supply chain leaders can scale AI responsibly to create long-term business value. This event will be led by Cassye Cook Provost, founder and principal of RossGrigsby Consultancy.

This virtual event is Wednesday, July 15, from 8:30-10 a.m. Register here.

July 30 — Rice University Summer Engineering Innovation Program - Demo Day 2026

Meet the young minds and see the final team project presentations from Rice University’s Summer Engineering Innovation Program. The 10-week program challenges Rice students to solve real-world challenges using AI, digital engineering, model-based systems engineering and Industry 4.0 technologies.

This event is Thursday, July 30, from 6-8 p.m. at the Ion. Find more information here.

5 must-read innovation headlines: Houston rises among America's best cities

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Editor's note: The local innovation scene was busy in June with exciting news, from Rice's first Pew Scholar to a monumental gift for Houston Methodist. Plus, Houston is rising in the ranks of America's best cities. Here are the five most-read InnovationMap stories published June 16-30, 2026:

1. Report: Houston reclaims top 10 ranking among America's best cities

Houston skyline

Houston has made a triumphant return to America's 10 best cities for 2026, certifying the city is a cornerstone of the country's growth and economic prosperity. Houston ranks No. 9 nationwide in the annual "America's Best Cities" report from Canada-based real estate and tourism marketing firm Resonance Consultancy. Each year, the report ranks the relative qualities of livability, cultural "lovability," and economic prosperity in 393 American cities with metropolitan populations of 500,000 or more. Continue reading.

2. Houston Methodist receives record $110M gift, names future tower

Houston Methodist has received the largest gift in the health system's history to establish new funds for neurological, neuroscience, and women’s health research and treatment. The $110 million gift comes from Houston-based The Brockman Medical Research Foundation, which supports education and research in the science, medicine and healthcare fields. In response, Houston Methodist announced that it will name its forthcoming 26-story hospital facility the Brockman Centennial Tower. Continue reading.

3. Houston scientist wins prestigious Pew Scholar award for brain cancer research

Christina Tringides, an assistant professor of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice University, is one of 21 scientists to win a prestigious Pew Biomedical Scholar award. She is the first faculty member from Rice to win the distinction, which provides $300,000 over four years for advances in biomedicine. The awards are granted to researchers who are in the first few years at the assistant professor level. Continue reading.

4. Rice student startup lands $1.85M to launch medical drone network

Students at Rice University have developed a medical cargo drone transport system to help deliver sensitive medical supplies and improve mobile healthcare efforts. Haast Autonomous is the brainchild of graduating seniors Ege Halac, Jason Chen and Santiago Brent, who got their venture idea off the ground with help from the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie) Summer Venture Studio. The founders have developed the prototype at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) with fellow Rice researchers. Continue reading.

5. Intuitive Machines lands $1M grant to expand robotics operations

Houston-based Intuitive Machines is expanding its operations around the country. The space tech company—which has offices and labs in Texas, California, Arizona, Colorado and Maryland—announced that it has received a $1 million grant from Maryland Gov. Wes Moore through the state's Build Our Future Grant. The funding will go toward expanding Intuitive Machines’ Super Cislunar Robotics Assembly Building (Supa-CRAB) Mechanisms and Robotics Center of Excellence in Anne Arundel County. Continue reading.

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