NHS Innovation Expo & Updates!

Sorry it’s been a bit quiet around here guys!  It’s been really busy for the last couple of weeks!

Essentially, I’ve got a lot of frogs in my bowl at the moment and I’m trying to make sure that nothing jumps out!

I’ve been studying for an exam I will be doing in October.  If I pass this one and another exam that I plan on doing in either December or January, then I will have pretty much finished my postgrad training!

My start up seems to be going really well at the moment as well.  The designs will be out tomorrow and so I think I’m one of the only entrepreneurs ever that is actually on time, which is absolutely fantastic.  If we keep going at this rate then we’ll be live in 8 weeks in our first General Practice Surgery.  I’m also giving a talk this Sunday to a group of doctors about the project.  I am sure they will be interested as what we’re working on really needs to happen!

And finally I just wanted to write about the NHS Innovation Expo that I went to a couple of weeks ago!  It was super exciting to have been invited to this event.  I got free entry and was given a “delegate badge” so that I could attend all the important talks and enjoy all the events!

The NHS Innovation Expo

As I’m starting a health tech company it was really fascinating seeing what all the other tech companies are up to and if there is any competition and if I can learn anything to help me get further ahead.

 

A lot of really important talks and discussions were given including by people such as Sir Bruce Keogh!

What I learnt was that getting a company started involved in healthcare is HARD!  I knew this already as I’ve been following some of the more interesting companies for a while.  But my insights that I previously had were really confirmed in this event.  Basically I think that if you are going to start a company it needs to scale!!!  The problem that most entrepreneurs in England seem to face is getting their products into different hospitals.  You may get something in one hospital, which is usually a long arduous process  anyway (we’re talking years here…), but then going to another hospital and trying to get something in there as well is an entirely different process which will also take years.  Scaling is near impossible in the hospital system.  However, scaling in primary care in the UK seems to be the way to go.  A much simpler process and if you make contact with individual practices you can really hustle your way in.  Also, plenty of companies have high market penetration in primary care which shows that it is possible to do.  The landscape/environment just doesn’t exist in the hospital at the time being or in the foreseeable future in my opinion…..

A talk by Robert Wachter about the current state of IT in the NHS

Another cool thing about the expo was meeting my mentors who have been assigned to me by NHS Innovation.

I’m really glad with the mentors I’ve been given.  My first mentor is a successful business lady called Maureen Anderson, who has a company which has screened over one million patients worldwide for cancer and she was also one of the founding members of the New York Bagel Company which is crazy!

Some of the mentors in the clinical entrepreneurship programme.  Including Maureen! 🙂

My second mentor is Ron Gutman who is a silicon valley entrepreneur and CEO of HealthTap.  I actually used his Ted Talk on smiling in a presentation I gave last year on cognitive behavioural therapy.

Ron Gutman sharing the stage with one of my idols – Prof Tony Young! :D!

So as you can see a lot has happened, but things are settling down again now, which is really good because I just want to really focus on my service and get things amazingly right for the GP practices and the actual users.  I think this is the key thing which may sway my 10% chance of success in my favour.