A spot on a 30 Under 30 list tends to draw attention for a moment and then fade from view. For Justin Fulcher, the 2017 recognition from Forbes Asia in the Healthcare and Science category marked a point along a longer arc, one that started with a telemedicine company and later extended into government technology reform.

Fulcher earned the distinction for his work co-founding RingMD, a platform he helped launch in 2013 at age 21. RingMD linked patients across Asia with physicians remotely, addressing a gap that was common across the region: mobile connectivity had spread faster than reliable access to doctors and clinics.

Building Around Constraint

What set the work apart was not the idea of remote healthcare itself but the conditions it had to survive. Bandwidth was inconsistent. Infrastructure varied sharply from one country to the next. Traditional healthcare delivery was thin or absent in some of the areas RingMD served. Justin Fulcher‘s systems had to hold up under those pressures rather than assume the more stable environment a similar company might expect elsewhere.

He later reflected on the motivation behind the company in a 2020 interview with Charleston Digital Corridor, saying, “Healthcare is one of those things that affects everybody. Without the basic, fundamental healthcare access, it handicaps many parts of the world.”

From Recognition to Advisory Work

Years after the Forbes listing, Justin Fulcher moved into a different kind of institutional work, joining the U.S. Department of Defense in early 2025 as a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense. His focus shifted to acquisition reform and technology adoption, a domain with its own version of the constraints he had navigated at RingMD, though the stakes and scale looked nothing alike.

He remains a board member and minority shareholder at RingMD today, a reminder that the recognition he received years earlier was tied to work he never fully set aside. Read this article for additional information.

Follow for more about Justin Fulcher on https://www.instagram.com/justinfulcher/?hl=en