Writing on software, systems, and hard-won lessons.
Writing on developer experience, systems thinking, and the mistakes behind both - covering AI workflows, continuous improvement, and the mental models that drive better decisions.
Writing on developer experience, systems thinking, and the mistakes behind both - covering AI workflows, continuous improvement, and the mental models that drive better decisions.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a doctor.
Not because I had a burning passion for medicine. Not because I dreamed of saving lives.
It was only because my name is MD Hansen, and I wanted MD Hansen MD on my office door.
That's it. That was the entire plan. I was maybe eight years old, and I'd already solved my career: become a doctor, get the symmetrical nameplate, mission accomplished.
Then I discovered programming.
At age 5, my parents got a Commodore 64, and a family friend showed me the basics of BASIC. Within two years, I was writing text-based adventure games - choose your own adventure style, complete with branching storylines and death traps.
The medical dream didn't stand a chance!
By high school, I knew I was going to be a programmer. My name would just have to remain tragically un-decorated.
Fast forward to 2007. I'd been running my own software development business for five years, doing contract work across New Zealand. A client needed someone to expand a healthcare portal. Then a pet insurance platform. Then a medical recruitment management system.
Without planning it, I'd stumbled into health tech.
My childhood dream had found a backdoor.
Here's what I didn't realize: health tech in 2007 wasn't the industry it is today. There were no "digital health startups" dominating headlines. It was just software that happened to be for healthcare.
But I loved it.
There's something different about building systems where the end user is trying to help someone heal. Every feature request has weight. The software isn't just convenient - it's part of someone's care journey.
I kept working on healthcare projects. Then more. Then exclusively.
Six years later, I was still contracting, and I'd never applied for an employee tech job in my life.
That was about to change.
Around 2010-2011 Christchurch had been shaken by earthquakes. My wife and I moved to Melbourne in 2013 with the plan to stay for one year, then travel to another city for one year. I could code from anywhere.
One night, I was browsing job listings - mostly just to see what skills were in demand. Not job hunting. Just curious.
Then I saw it.
A health tech company called Halaxy. Full Stack Application Developer. The requirements read like someone had copied my resume. PHP MVC frameworks. MySQL. JavaScript. Healthcare experience.
It felt too perfect to ignore.
So I created a custom email address: yourehired@mattyhansen.com
Then I applied.
This was my first employee tech job application. Ever.
The interview was great. Honestly, my favourite part was just talking programming with another person IRL instead of the usual WFH.
It worked. I got the job!
I thought I'd stay for two years. I've been there for 12.
When I started, we were in a co-working space. We had a small group of early adopters, and I sat right next to the founders - Alison and Lachlan - which was new for someone used to CEOs being behind closed doors.
Today? The platform has grown beyond anything I imagined in 2013, supporting patients and practitioners all over the world.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped being a contractor who happened to work in healthcare. I became someone who understands practitioner workflows, regulatory requirements, and the specific challenges of building software that practitioners trust with their patient data.
18 years of health tech. The longest commitment of my career.
After 18 years, a few patterns have become clear:
Healthcare practitioners are busy in ways most software users aren't. They're between patients. They have 30 seconds to complete a task. Every unnecessary click is a crime.
Trust takes years to build and seconds to lose. When someone stores patient data in your system, they're trusting you with their license, their reputation, their patients' privacy. You don't earn that trust with marketing. You earn it by not screwing up, year after year.
The best features remove work, not add options. Practitioners don't want more features. They want less admin. If your feature adds a button, it better remove two decisions.
Longevity is a competitive advantage. New entrants might try to have better UIs, fresher branding, or newer tech stacks. What they don't have is over a decade of production battle scars and institutional knowledge about why that legacy code exists.
In tech, the average tenure is 2-3 years. 12+ years at one company puts me in rare territory.
The honest answer? Compounding knowledge.
Health tech complexity compounds. You don't learn the nuances of compliance and privacy in a sprint. You learn it by navigating edge cases for a decade. That accumulated knowledge can't be fast-tracked or documented. It's only accessible to the people who stayed.
I used to think my time was the product. Now I know the deep context I hold - knowing the why behind 12 years of decisions - is the product.
My business card doesn't say "MD Hansen MD." It says "Technical Delivery Manager."
But I realized that 8-year-old me didn't actually want the title. I wanted the impact. Doctors help patients one at a time; we build the systems that help them do it by the thousands.
I never got those double MD letters on my door. But after 18 years, I found the purpose I was looking for.
For me, programming + healthcare is the best of both worlds.