Vienna  ·  Chronically ill  ·  Building anyway

Find what the system made unsayable. Say it.

I have POTS. I spent seven years in bed while doctors looked for a different answer. I found it myself. Now I write, speak, and build things — mostly for people the system still can't see.

Roi Shternin — patient expert, author, keynote speaker
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Who I Am
Roi Shternin — patient expert and keynote speaker
Roi Shternin
Based Vienna, Austria
Countries Spoken in 27
Taught 15,000 people · 20,000 HCPs
Books 7 published
Counseling LSB License 2026
Languages English · Hebrew · German

I was sick for ten years. Seven of them bedridden.

The medical system didn't know what to do with me. So it did what systems do with things they can't categorize: it made me invisible.

I became obsessed with that. Not bitterly — curiously. Why do people with something real to say go unheard? What actually happens in the gap between what someone feels and what they can say out loud in a room that has power over them?

That's not my backstory. That's my qualification.

I've spent fifteen years inside that question. Training 20,000 healthcare professionals. Teaching 15,000 people — most of them sick, exhausted, dismissed — how to speak when everything is working against them. Advising pharma companies. Speaking in 27 countries. Writing seven books. Being the first patient ever placed inside a medical research institute not as a subject but as a voice.

I still have ME/CFS. I still have POTS. I still know what it is to perform wellness you don't feel, in rooms that need you to be fine.

I work with spoonies who need to advocate for themselves. Carers who've become invisible in the room. Healthcare professionals who went into medicine to connect and ended up somewhere else.

The work is always the same: find what the system made unsayable. Say it.

I run intensives in Vienna. I write at Chronically when I have something real to say. I teach when people are ready to learn.

Online Learning

The ABC of Speaking

Learn to speak when your body won't cooperate. For people with chronic illness, healthcare professionals, patient advocates, or anyone speaking from a place of vulnerability.

📚
Self-Paced
Complete modules at your own pace. Lifetime access. No schedule, no deadlines.
🎯
Practical & Applied
Not theory. Real techniques for speaking when everything works against you.
👥
15,000+ Students
Proven methods. Tested by thousands of speakers worldwide.
What you'll learn:
  • Finding your voice when illness makes it feel impossible
  • Structuring talks that work with limited energy
  • Advocacy communication for medical settings
  • Public speaking fundamentals adapted for chronic illness
  • Telling your story without performing wellness you don't feel
Complete Course
€97
One-time payment · Lifetime access
Enroll Now →
30-day money-back guarantee. No questions asked.
What Rooms Say
Not like a stranger. Like a brother. He said what I have been living but could never articulate.
LinkedIn — following a post on chronic illness and performance
I've been performing recovery for ten years. I didn't have a name for it until this talk.
Audience member — organizational empathy conference
I thought this wasn't going to be relevant to me. It was the most relevant talk of the day. I left thinking about three people I manage differently.
Senior Leader — Healthcare organization
He touched something that most speakers are paid to leave alone. The room was completely still.
Conference organizer — European patient advocacy summit
Speaking

When I have
something real to say.

I only speak when the talk feels true and the room feels right. If you're looking for a speaker who will tell your audience what they want to hear, I'm the wrong person.

The Invisible Patient
What actually happens when the person in front of you is performing wellness they don't feel — and what it costs everyone in the room when that goes unnamed.
Signature Keynote 45–60 min Any audience
The Narrative Body
For medical and clinical audiences. How the stories patients are allowed to tell — and the ones they are not — become measurable biological reality. Narrative medicine meets lived experience.
Medical / Clinical 30–60 min
Voice Recovery
What it actually takes to speak when everything is working against you — illness, dismissal, exhaustion, systems that weren't built for the full human inside them.
Workshop Half-day Patient / HCP audiences
The Algorithm Will See You Now
AI in healthcare from the one perspective most AI builders haven't heard: the patient who watched their body become data. What artificial intelligence gets wrong about human illness — and what it might get right.
AI & Healthcare TEDx Format 45 min
Spoken in 27 countries across healthcare, pharma, tech & education
Past clients Boehringer Ingelheim · Takeda · Novartis · Google · IBM
Format Keynote · Workshop · Panel · Medical Grand Rounds
Languages English · Hebrew
Patient-in-Residence Ludwig Boltzmann Institute · Sheba Medical Center
The Books

Seven books.
One unflinching voice.

Spanning chronic illness, patient rights, healthcare AI, and the body's hidden architecture. An eighth is in progress.

Building

Products built from
constraint, for people who know it.

Making the invisible visible through technology. Every product here is built by and for people the mainstream forgot to design for.

01
Spooniversity
Online community and learning platform for chronically ill people. Not inspiration. Not positivity porn. Patient-centered learning, built by someone who actually lives this. Courses, community, real tools for real constraints.
Visit Spooniversity →
02
Bedcoders
Supporting developers with chronic illness. Learning to code when your body won't cooperate. A track within Spooniversity specifically for people who want to build things from their bed, their couch, their bad days.
Join Bedcoders →
03
Centric.MBA
Constraint-based entrepreneurship. A platform for building when you can't build the traditional way — because your body, your resources, your reality won't cooperate. Business thinking for the both/and.
Explore Centric.MBA →
04
Spoons World
Patient voice as data. A community platform where chronic illness experience becomes structured, useful, and heard — not just vented. Building the infrastructure for patients to be more than their symptoms.
Visit Spoons World →
Watch

TEDx Talks

What Patients Want
TEDxShanghai · Patient Innovation & Healthcare Systems
The Algorithm Will See You Now
TEDxShenkarCollege · AI, Healthcare Data & Patient Agency
Chronically
Writing without
performing it.

Essays about illness, voice, body narrative, and the gap between what we feel and what we can say. No content calendar. No algorithm. Just honest writing when there's something honest to say.

Read Chronically →
He said what I have been living but could never articulate.
Reader — Chronically
Get in Touch
If something here
resonates — write to me.

No contact form. No discovery call booking system. No automated response. If something on this page felt true, write to me directly. I read everything.

hello@roishternin.com
Legal Notice

Impressum

Medieninhaber & Herausgeber
Roi Shternin
1180 Wien, Austria
Unternehmensgegenstand
Unternehmensberatung einschließlich der Unternehmensorganisation
(Business Consulting including Organizational Development)
Gewerbeberechtigung
GISA-Zahl: 38626050
Behörde: Magistrat der Stadt Wien
Haftungsausschluss
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