Justin Fulcher’s career trajectory is unusual enough to deserve a close look. A South Carolina native who left Clemson University at nineteen to travel Southeast Asia, he returned with a clear problem in mind: healthcare access was thin in regions where smartphones were not. He spent the next several years building a platform to close that gap, and the experience shaped everything that followed.

Building RingMD

In 2012, Fulcher launched RingMD from Singapore. The platform connected patients with healthcare providers through digital channels, starting with a doctor-on-demand model and expanding into a fuller telehealth infrastructure. By its operational height, RingMD covered more than fifty countries, held 1.5 million patient records, and supported a network of 10,000 healthcare providers. Its clients included the US Indian Health Service, which used the platform to serve roughly 2.6 million American-Indian and Alaska Native individuals across 37 states, and India’s Digital India programme. RingMD earned FedRAMP authorization and maintained HIPAA and FISMA compliance throughout.

Forbes named Justin Fulcher to its 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2017, midway through the platform’s growth. He sold RingMD in 2018 and spent approximately a year assisting the transition, including relocating headquarters from Singapore to Boston. He formally stepped away in January 2025.

From Health Tech to National Security

After RingMD, Justin Fulcher moved into public service. He joined the Department of Government Efficiency initiative, worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and later served as DOGE Lead at the Department of Defense, focused on acquisition reform and IT modernization. He was promoted to Senior Advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth before departing in July 2025.

Fulcher has connected his experience building RingMD to the work of modernizing government institutions. In his framing, building companies teaches how systems scale: how engineering decisions shape what is possible, how incentive structures determine whether possibilities get used, and how infrastructure sets the ceiling on growth. Those same variables, he argues, apply inside government. He is now pursuing a doctorate in International Relations at Johns Hopkins SAIS and advises in defense technology, carrying that systems orientation forward. See related link for additional information.

Visit his page on https://www.facebook.com/JustinLFulcher/ to learn more.