Gabe Hillegass is a distinguished professional whose career bridges the worlds of medicine, military service, and entrepreneurship. A graduate of the University of Richmond and the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Gabe’s professional journey was significantly shaped by the Armed Forces Health Professions Scholarship Program, which fully funded his medical education at Wake Forest and led to four years of active duty service as a physician in the United States Navy.
Following his military service, Gabe transitioned into the private sector as both a clinician and a forward-thinking entrepreneur. He is the founder of both Medi-Cogent, a medical-legal consulting firm, and Solverein, an innovative technology startup that leverages the 21st Century Cures Act and large language models to streamline medical record retrieval and analysis.
Driven by the Wake Forest University School of Law motto Pro Humanitate (For Humanity), Gabe earned his Master of Legal Studies (MLS) in Health Law and Policy in 2023 with the goal of bridging the gap between complex legal frameworks and patient care. He recognized that while medical expertise can heal a patient, legal literacy is often required to address the systemic inefficiencies that can hinder a patient’s experience.
In the Q&A below, Gabe discusses how his Wake Forest Law education impacted his approach to patient advocacy and provided strategic knowledge for his entrepreneurial venture.
What inspired you to return to school and pursue the MLS in Health Law and Policy after an already accomplished medical career?
My motivation was a mix of practical opportunity and professional curiosity. I had the GI Bill as a benefit from my military service and I didn’t want it to go to waste. As a pain management physician, I realized I was handling more and more medical-legal cases, ranging from injured workers to personal injury, and I recognized significant gaps in my knowledge regarding the legal side of medicine.
I was looking for a way to diversify my skill set and felt that a law degree would open doors for consulting work or starting a company. I consider myself a lifelong learner, and the Wake Forest Law program allowed me to create a customized learning plan focused on health and business courses that matched my interests.
How did you balance the academic workload with your responsibilities as a physician and entrepreneur?
It was really helpful that the Wake Forest Law program offers an asynchronous structure, so I didn’t have to log in to a lecture at a specific time. The flexibility allowed me to look at my upcoming week and figure out which nights were best to put in several hours of work after my four kids went to bed.
I typically spent two to three hours an evening, starting around 8:30 or 9 p.m., or I would spend some time on the weekend to get the work done. Having a supportive partner and a clear plan was essential. I usually paired a course I was familiar with, like a healthcare-focused one, with a new subject to keep the workload manageable.
How have you applied what you learned in the MLS program to your current roles in medicine and business?
The program provided granular subject matter expertise that I use consistently.
In starting my company, the small business literacy and advanced contracts courses were beneficial for reviewing vendor or supplier agreements as well as understanding how to formulate the business to mitigate risk.
On the health policy side, we covered HIPAA in much more granular detail than what was covered in medical school, which has been valuable since I am now managing health information through my company.
Can you share an example of how your understanding of health law or policy has influenced a recent decision?
Just recently, we were working on an independent contractor engagement agreement for my company. My employment law class was super helpful in ensuring we approached the contractor relationship correctly. I learned to define what the end result of the work should be without dictating exactly how the contractor gets there, which helps us avoid unintentionally creating an employer-employee situation.
If I hadn’t completed the MLS program, I would have had no clue about those considerations on the legal side of things.
Tell us about your venture, Solverein. What inspired it, and how does it reflect your background?
Solverein is the direct result of how I have leveraged my legal education to build a solution to a problem identified in my clinical practice. Health information management is a major pain point for legal teams. Law firms spend immense time and money trying to track down siloed medical records through traditional, slow channels.
Solverein is built to disrupt this by operating as an Individual Access Services (IAS) vendor. Under the 21st Century Cures Act, patients have the right to access and share their own health information on their own terms.
We engage individuals on behalf of law firms, verify their identity to a very high standard, and utilize new national networks to retrieve their health records almost instantaneously. Because medical records are often illegible or filled with jargon, we also use large language models to translate that data into layman’s terms.
This allows clients and legal teams to actually understand the medical narrative, democratizing access to health data and ensuring that legal decisions are based on the most accurate, accessible information available.
How do you see the relationship between medicine, law, and technology evolving in the next decade?
Information, particularly high-quality, accurate information, is becoming incredibly valuable, especially as AI takes off. The messiness of healthcare data will continue to improve and as a result of that, we are not too far off from precision medicine or “digital twins,” where you can test therapies on a virtual version of yourself before exposing your real body.
So much of law is about nuance and language and knowing what the laws are. The human brain is remarkable in how much it can learn and retain, but it’s not anywhere near the capacity of having a fine-tuned, legal-focused large language model that can source all published case law in seconds.
It’s an exciting future where technology reduces the burden of rote, repetitive tasks, freeing humans up for more creative and empathetic work.
What advice would you give to other healthcare professionals considering the MLS degree?
It can be very intimidating to commit to pursuing higher education when you have other responsibilities and obligations, but this program is relatively attainable since it’s structured to support working professionals.
Not a lot of people have master’s in law degrees, so it’s a strong differentiator, not only at your current employer, but if you’re looking to climb the ladder somewhere new or if you are starting your own company. It provides the subject matter expertise that sets you apart from the person sitting next to you.
The Wake Forest program allowed me to create a customized learning plan focused on health and business courses that matched my interests… it provides expertise that sets you apart from the person sitting next to you.
– Gabe Hillegass (MLS ’23)
Legal Skills for Highly Regulated Industries: Earn Your Online MLS
Wake Forest University School of Law delivers an online Master of Legal Studies (MLS) with a strong return on investment, combining academic rigor with real-world impact and purpose-driven leadership. Students customize their curriculum by choosing from five in-demand tracks:
Wake Forest students enjoy all the benefits of a prestigious law school, including access to tenured law school faculty and a more affordable tuition rate than comparable legal studies programs and MBA programs.
Download a brochure to learn more today, or get started on your application!
Request Information
To download a program brochure and learn more about the online Master of Legal Studies at the Wake Forest University School of Law, please fill out the form. You can also get in touch with an enrollment specialist directly by calling us at 336.863.8438.