Kara Hartl

About Kara Hartl

Educated at Harvard University and trained at the world-renowned Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, Dr. Kara Hartl has dedicated her career to expanding access to high-quality medical care in underserved communities. In Alaska, she built a multispecialty medical center from the ground up, transforming it into one of the most technologically advanced medical and surgical facilities in the state. After a successful exit from her first company, Dr. Hartl relocated to Austin and shifted her focus to rural health innovation, medical technology, and scalable care-delivery models.She is the founder and CEO of Troy Medical and creator of the Rural Health Hub, a new generation of healthcare infrastructure designed to bring advanced medicine and cutting-edge technology directly into rural communities. Rather than relying solely on telehealth, Troy Medical designs the systems that connect on-the-ground clinical infrastructure with remotely located specialists and provides the specialty connectivity and comprehensive consulting services needed for rural hospitals and clinics to stand up sustainable programs. These services include site development, workflow design, technology integration, staff training, and ongoing operational support—ensuring each community can launch, maintain, and grow high-impact specialty services.Through the Rural Health Hub, advanced diagnostic and therapeutic technologies—including the latest AI-enabled innovations—are deployed to complement specialty providers and elevate the standard of care delivered in rural communities. This modern integration of clinical expertise with state-of-the-art tools allows specialists to evaluate, monitor, and treat patients remotely with accuracy and sophistication that rivals major medical centers, bringing world-class care to places where it has never been available before.By combining world-class clinical expertise, innovative technology, and practical, community-guided implementation, Dr. Hartl is setting a new standard for how advanced medical care can be delivered to rural America—and how lasting, meaningful change can be achieved.

Experience

1. Founder & CEO

   Troy Medical

   Apr 2021 — Present · Austin, TX, US

   Troy Medical was born from the ashes of covid by Dr. Kara Hartl, an ophthalmologist who has been practicing medicine in rural Alaska for 15 years. One silver lining of the pandemic was the growth of telehealth, which became validated as a way to practice medicine and accepted by the medical community and patients alike. Because of this adoption, rural communities suddenly had access to medical experts from anywhere in the country. As telemedicine grew and expanded, one sector of medicine was left virtually untouched: long-term outpatient management of chronic disease. The model needed to treat this sector of medicine is different because the problem is different. Troy Medical was founded in 2021 to solve this exact problem by solving for how medicine needs to be delivered to this population. We provide a dedicated medical assistant on the ground in the patient\'s community to help them navigate the technology and complex medical system. We utilize local resources at the community clinics and local hospitals, guided by the medical assistant, to provide all of the necessary medical diagnostics and treatments. Our remote back office navigates the medical insurance on behalf of the patient just like any regular medical clinic. The medical knowledge from the specialist is delivered via telehealth. This medical know-how is the rate-limiting step for treatment. Specialists just aren\'t moving to rural communities, but their expertise can still be delivered with this novel model. Just 18 months after starting our first clinic and expanding into Texas, Troy Medical is now ready to expand to as many communities as possible, as fast as our resources will allow. The need, our market, is every small-town America and every underserved community. These communities need medical care and we know how to help them.

Education

• UC San Diego School of Medicine

  Doctor of Medicine (MD), Medicine

  1999 — 2003

• Harvard University

  Bachelor's degree (AB), Biology

  1994 — 1998