On this episode, we have CEO Bruce Elliot from Memory Lane games. It all started as a chat in a humble pub with his co-founder, where they began to discuss their own mothers and how much joy they gained from reminiscing over old photos. Recognising the value of conversation for those with dementia and cognitive decline, they have utilised a gamification model with photos and images in an app.

Learn about the journey to over 50k downloads and users in 100 countries, how they can utilise digital biomarkers in neurological conditions, how working with the Mayo clinic in the USA is helping to scale the platform and the story behind their popular game about the iconic London underground.

Discover:

• How Bruce’s wisdom was developed during the dot.com boom
• How visual, cognitive, and emotional stimuli is connected to fine motor skills
• How stimulating memories on Vancouver and Sheffield, led to over 3000 games for those with dementia
• How users can search for recognisable cities from across the world to use the app
• How their premium service uses family photos and data
• How collaborating with the Alzheimer Association helped them test and modify the app
• How the games are designed to encourage conversation, not high scores
• How an elderly patient was able to overcome a traumatic experience using the app
• How the app can maintain or reduce the severity of symptoms in patients
• How collaborations with Mayo Clinic and Arizona State University is scaling their product
• How the app can track deteriorations in users with 7 clinical data points
• How their game play data has the potential to serve as healthcare data for early interventions
• How hyper-personalisation is what keeps the app competitive

Guest: Bruce Elliot
LinkedIn: Memory Lane Games
Website: https://memorylanegamesdirect.com/

Host: Dr Vinay Shankar
Website: https://www.oncedaily.co
Podcast: 15 Minutes With The Doctor

On this episode, CEO and co-founder Kelly Klifa joins the show to discuss Ally Health. It’s a company that uses digital scheduling with a track and trace type system to bring clinical care to the home. No stranger to entrepreneurship, she is the founder of Testing for All, a company with an annual turnover of £29 million, which became the leading Covid-19 platform for connecting laboratories and home testing. They started with just one partner, and ended with eight labs processing between 8K and 10K tests a day.

Ally Health utilises a similar tech to ensure that community nursing workflow is optimised replacing traditional systems that meet demand with less efficiently. It also brings the ability for patients to have real-time updates about their nursing visits.

Discover:

• How Kelly developed her first successful venture, Testing for All through the pandemic
• How her mission to make Testing for All accessible and affordable succeeded
• How they built real-time integrations across the logistical journey for transparency
• How the development of Testing for All and the experience of Covid-19 led to the creation of Ally Health
• How the limits of remote healthcare and the importance of nursing led them to Ally Health
• How Ally Health can replace an inefficient paper-based system for mobile and community nursing
• How they created a platform to aggregate nurses and create an on-demand scheduling system
• How their solution can help support nurses with their workload by helping to get nurses in the right places which suit their competences
• How homebound patients are now able to track their nurse visits with up-to-date visibility
• How for agency nurses the platform creates a ‘gig economy’ to improve their access to work
• How the platform is reducing admin work in the NHS
• How their current pathways include preventative medicine and preoperative care
• How they’re moving towards offering a supply-based resource search for nursing

Guest: Kelly Klifa
LinkedIn: Ally Health
Website: Ally Health

Host: Dr Vinay Shankar
Website: https://www.oncedaily.co
Podcast: 15 Minutes With The Doctor

On this episode Dr Patrick Hart joins the show, he is the clinical operations lead at Concentric Health. We delve into how Concentric is pioneering change in surgical operations and procedures. It streamlines how patients and clinicians navigate the consent process, reducing errors and delays in operations, integrating with electronic health record systems, and ultimately leading to better informed patients. The company is the market leader for digital consent in the UK, offering standardised consent forms for over 2000 operations across various NHS hospitals.

Discover:

• How Patrick pivoted from medical training to health technology
• How he became a ‘founder associate’ at Concentric and what responsibilities and opportunities it has offered
• How Concentric Health was developed by surgeons frustrated with archaic paper-based patient forms
• How this digital solution prevents basic errors in information that can cause delays and cancellations
• How increased medical-legal cases over the last 15 years have prompted a discussion on the field of consent in medicine
• How the current organisational structure of colour coding consent forms often leaves clinicians stressed and overworked
• How junior doctors and staff have praised the platform for providing standardised information at their fingertips
• How a medical professional uses the platform and the customisable options they have available
• How enhancing patient conversations not replacing them is the focus of digitalisation
• How their internal monitoring continues to make the product more efficient for users
• How their biggest competitor became the status quo, not a competing product
• How Concentric are using several access touchpoints to make integration as seamless as possible

Guest: Dr Patrick Hart
Website: https://concentric.health/

Host: Dr Vinay Shankar
Website: https://www.oncedaily.co
Podcast: 15 Minutes With The Doctor

On this episode, Vinay is joined by co-founder Umaima Ahmad, to discuss their startup 52North and their ambitious tech that powers a life-saving product. Neutrocheck is device for those undergoing chemotherapy and who are at risk of neutropenic sepsis. With a background in financial law, Umaima and her team of co-founders were inspired to solve a problem that is a serious side-effect for those needing crucial treatment for cancer. Hear all about their journey to creating the product and how it all took off after a small grant of only ten thousand pounds.

Discover:

• How Umaima’s mid-career Masters led to the development of 52North
• How her background as a financial lawyer gave her the transferable skills to become an entrepreneur
• How a Cambridge University mentorship programme offered them their first investment
• How they developed a product to diagnose neutropenic sepsis, a common side effect of chemotherapy without unnecessary A&E visits
• How Neutrocheck, their product and app, can save time, money, and lives in cancer care
• How using COVID-19 lateral flow kits as a stimulus helped them brainstorm a solution for diagnosing Neutropenic Sepsis
• How branching out into digital and AI is being tempered by targets for accessibility and health equity
• How patient feedback and input from medical professionals has been essential in building the solution
• How they became the first product to be fully endorsed by the MacMillan Cancer Trust in 100 years
• How Neutrocheck could reduce costs to the NHS by around £70 million
• How they are beginning to explore new avenues for detecting disease using their portable low-cost device

Guest: Umaima Ahmad
Website: https://52north.health/

Host: Dr Vinay Shankar
Website: https://www.oncedaily.co
Podcast: 15 Minutes With The Doctor

On this episode, Adam Robinson joins the show to share how his diverse background including working with Tesco and Spotify, led him to found Surgery Hero. The company was developed to tackle mental and physical issues that can reduce the effectiveness of surgery due to various aspects such as anxiety, weight management, alcohol use and more. They provide their patients with education, coaching and digital tools that can reduce cancellations, hospital stays, and rehabilitation times. With the evidence showing that good perioperative care can improve patient outcomes by more than 50%, their goal is to have 100 million people have successful surgeries. Adam takes us through the targets for the business, their vision for the expansion of the product, and how his own experience impacted the development of the product.

Discover::

• How working with Tesco became one of the most creative times of his career
• His thoughts on what companies understand about the necessity of UX/UI
• His impressions on digital transformation in healthcare & the NHS
• How they noticed a gap in the market for supporting surgical procedures
• How they connected perioperative care and lifestyle changes with patient outcomes
• How Surgery Hero is delivered as a ‘B to B to C’ model through their app
• What you’d expect to find on the Surgery Hero app if you were facing a surgical procedure
• How Wayne Rooney and Brad Pitt fit into their user design!
• How they’re using behavioural change methods to foster lifestyle changes in the app
• How they’ve built a market in the UK across 12 NHS sites

Guest: Adam Robinson
Website: https://www.surgeryhero.com/

Host: Dr Vinay Shankar
Website: https://www.oncedaily.co
Podcast: 15 Minutes With The Doctor

On this episode, Vinay Shankar is joined by Athena Doshi, founder of Celeste, a medication diagnostic tool. The company aims to tackle the gender gap in health, to provide prescriptions that fit physiology to improve outcomes in women’s health. Celeste aims not only to bridge the gap, but decrease wastage and eliminate the time it takes to treat a patient with the optimal drug. The platform works seamlessly with healthcare systems to provide a holistic approach to diagnostics and prescriptions. Learn all about it, and why Athena believes the ExactRx platform is a crucial infrastructure piece for healthcare systems.

Learn about:

• How she began her first company at college as a response to a medical mission trip in Tanzania
• How she is using the principle of co-design to develop Celeste as a holistic standard of care
• How Celeste is addressing the gender data health gap and its disproportionate impact on women
• How Celeste’s diagnostic tool called ExactRx, is addressing the experiences patients have with medication to produce better health outcomes
• How the tool automates existing guidelines
• How the underpinning research for Celeste is pharmacometabolomics, an area the co-founder specialises in
• How Celeste can be used by clinicians to better inform their prescriptions
• How Athena is focussed on pitching Celeste as an infrastructure system for healthcare systems

Guest: Athena Doshi
Website: Celeste

Host: Dr Vinay Shankar
Website: https://www.oncedaily.co
Podcast: 15 Minutes With The Doctor

On this episode we have Louise O’Mahony, who is the head of customer success at EXI. She shares her transformative journey from managing exercise referral services to working with the National Diabetes Prevention Program and now working on the EXI platform. EXI has been built to integrate with existing technologies to create a seamless pathway to prescribing exercise and holistic fitness. The app simplifies the task of prescribing exercise for people, including those with long-term conditions, acknowledging all achievements. The data leveraged from the app is designed to help medical professionals review exercise regimes easily while continually refining the AI in the platform for better outcomes.

On the show, you will discover::

• Louise’s background in exercise and nutrition
• How the EXI platform works and its approach to prescription-based fitness
• How the word ‘prescription’ is influencing the role that exercise plays in health
• How market research plays a crucial role in patient engagement
• Louise discusses EXI’s decision to become a Class 1 medical device
• How rewards on the EXI platform are used to promote healthy behaviours
• How employers using the platform are exploring new opportunities for their employees
• Louise touches on the benefits of human connection to improve health outcomes
• How setting achievable goals is an essential part of healthy lifestyle changes

Guest: Louise O’Mahony
Website: https://www.exi.life/

Host: Dr Vinay Shankar
Website: https://www.oncedaily.co

On this episode, we welcome Alastair Murray who is the chief pharmacist at Phlo. He was started his healthtech journey at Echo, the digital pharmacy that was later acquired by Lloyds Pharmacy. Phlo aims to provide a safer, error-free prescriptions-based system. Its API creates seamless connections with existing client’s software and the distinctive Phlo Connect system uses AI to track availability, stock, and price. Learn all about Alistair’s journey, the experiences he gained scaling Echo, how Phlo works and their unique tech, and their ambitious plans to transform medication dispensing.

On the show, you will discover::

• How Alastair began working in the pharmacy world
• His insights on Phlo, a digital prescribing platform
• How utilising modern technology is an essential part of modernising healthcare
• The key differences between Phlo’s proprietary Phlo Connect data system and paper-based methods
• How the API system and safety protocols they’ve developed ensure consumer safety
• How finding a team of like-minded has been a challenge for Phlo
• How Phlo has developed various points of contact for patients
• And much more…

Guest: Alastair Murray
Website: https://wearephlo.com/

Host: Dr Vinay Shankar
Website: https://www.oncedaily.co

On this episode, Dr Peter Fish, the CEO of Mendelian joins the show. Their mission is to make it easier for clinicians to diagnose rare diseases. Their AI based platform can sift through medical records to discover more than 100 rare conditions. As a serial entrepreneur, he has built and invested in various tech companies, combining his medical background with his passion for the tech industry. Learn about his investment experience starting at the age of 18, why they created the product, how it works, their journey to development, and their ambitious plans for addressing rare diseases, which seem to be not as rare as we think.

On the show, you’ll find out:

• Peter’s background and experience in molecular genetics
• How he became a serial entrepreneur in South Africa at just 18
• What Peter learnt from failures and success in entrepreneurship
• How optimism and a can-do attitude are essential attributes for entrepreneurs
• How Mendelian began life in California with a few software engineers and a clinician
• How they decided to tackle the ‘diagnostic odyssey’ affecting those with rare diseases
• How research into disease and genetics mean that rare diseases may become more prevalent in the future
• How MendelScan is identifying patients with patterns of symptoms to provide better diagnosis and/or treatment
• How all their algorithms use deep clinical data in their iterations
• How their NHS pilots have allowed them to scan 700 000 patient files records so far
• How their work earned them the NHS AI Award 2023

Guest: Dr Peter Fish
Website: https://www.mendelian.co/

Host: Dr Vinay Shankar
Website: https://www.oncedaily.co

On this episode we have Dom Raban, the CEO of Xploro, a digital therapeutics platform. As a result of his daughter developing and then beating cancer as a child, he was inspired to create the company to help young people better understand their health condition. The platform uses augmented reality, games, chatbots, and AI to deliver health content to children and young adults in a more meaningful way. This improves satisfaction and health outcomes. Learn about his design background, developing the product, the key features and research, expanding into world markets, and how they plan to bring the product to adults.

On the show, you’ll find out:

• How Dom began his career in design and UX in the 80s
• How his daughter’s cancer diagnosis inspired the development of Xploro
• How noticing his daughter’s resistance to treatment was a consequence of little to no age-appropriate information
• How Xploro’s uses 3D avatars to improve a child’s care & understanding
• How games, gamification and AR can help a children’s familiarity with their diagnosis and treatment
• How Xploro’s content is based on research into improved prognosis based on informed patients
• How content is created in partnership with children and medical professionals
• How their subscription fee is based on content configuration and not number of users
• The differences between the US and the UK market in patient care
• The future of the product for both children and young adults into 2024

Guest: Dom Raban
Website: https://www.xploro.health/

Host: Dr Vinay Shankar
Website: https://www.oncedaily.co

In this episode, Vinay talks to Brian Plackis Cheng, CEO of OpenRad, a teleradiology service. The company brings radiology reporting services to the cloud. It enables all medical imaging interpretation to happen remotely, allows easier collaboration with clinical colleagues and patients can access their scans through the patient portal. Brian is a specialist in scaling tech companies, with a deep passion for defining the future of radiology. As a serial entrepreneur, he has brought his expertise in AI, the cloud and online media to OpenRad. On the show you’ll find out: What is OpenRad? How OpenRad was designed to tackle the growing shortage of radiologists The need to improve access to radiologists remotely and across the world How traditional reporting is moving to the cloud to aid collaboration How patient portals can lead to empowerment How automation and AI can help the healthcare workforce How solutions like OpenRad can decrease burnout and increase workload distribution Brian’s experience in developing cloud-based apps and elderly care How AI is becoming an important tool in diagnostics How OpenRad has the capacity to create huge savings for hospitals Brian Plackis Cheng: Brian Plackis Cheng: Website: https://www.openrad.com/ Host: Dr Vinay Shankar Website: https://www.oncedaily.co iTunes: 15 Minutes With The Doctor Spotify: 15 Minutes With The Doctor