Inspiring innovators in healthcare

Entrepreneurship is much more than people starting businesses. It is also about improving services, addressing market gaps, and even achieving earlier diagnosis and treating diseases in a new way. Here we profile people in the King's community who are developing exciting innovations in healthcare.

Vivum Health T1resources.uk

Dr Katy Sutherland Student Nurse Resources

Dr Miles Payling C the Signs

Dr Katy Sutherland, postgraduate taught student for Adult Nursing at King’s College London, is the mind behind Student Nurse Resources – a venture that aims to provide information, support and useful resources to student nurses. It includes a website and there will also be an app to complement academic studies and clinical practice.

Katy witnessed the fear and frustration student nurses experienced when interacting and caring for dying patients. She decided to bring the overwhelming amount of information available about care for dying patients together in one succinct location. In doing so she aims to build the confidence and knowledge levels of student nurses, and positively impact on the standards of care which terminal patients experience.

Katy launched a website on 15 May 2018 in time for national ‘Dying Matters’ awareness week, and will be making an app available soon. She hopes to be able to provide the app to NHS Trusts and universities to reach as many student nurses as possible.

YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGES

Time! Balancing postgraduate studies and organising Student Nurse Resources. Networking and knowing who to talk to to get help can also be difficult.

LESSONS FROM YOUR JOURNEY

A small seed of an idea can grow into something people find valuable.

Resilience and self-belief in what you are doing are key.

YOUR READING RECOMMENDATION

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande.

Follow @StNurseResource on Twitter and stay tuned for the launch of the app!

Dr Miles Payling, from the King’s20 Accelerator 2017 cohort, along with his co-founder Dr Bhavagaya Bakshi have come up with C the Signs, a tool that helps identify patients at risk of cancer at the earliest stages of the disease.

C the Signs is the first digital tool for clinicians that uses artificial intelligence mapped with the latest evidence to identify patients at risk of cancer at its earliest stages. The tool takes combinations of risk factors, signs, symptoms and investigation results to identify what type of cancer a patient is at risk of, as well as what tests, investigations or referrals a patient may need; all in under 30 seconds. The founders have been piloting the tool in three NHS Health Authorities since September 2017, covering a population of over one million patients. The team have received several awards including the AbilityNet Tech4Good People’s Award.

YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGES

Not perceiving ourselves as ‘conventional’ business people, but rather as doctors who are starting a business. We didn’t have the skillset to turn the idea we had into a fully-fledged, financially viable business. The King’s20 Accelerator programme gave us the mentorship that we needed to fill this skills gap.

LESSONS FROM YOUR JOURNEY

Don’t ever be afraid of failure; it can be your greatest asset. Businesses rarely talk about failure but this gives you something a book can never teach you – experience.

YOUR READING RECOMMENDATION

I think a reading list is no match for experience and mentorship. By plunging yourself in at the deep end, you’ll quickly identify your knowledge gaps and then you can target these specifically by reading articles on the internet.

Read more about Katy and Student Nurse Resources on page 13.

Follow @CtheSignsTool, and visit www.cthesigns.co.uk

Dr Maximilian Kerz Vivum Health

Dr Sophie Harris T1resources.uk

Dr Maximilian Kerz, Doctor of Philosophy in Biostatistics & Health Informatics from King’s, is trying to make patient information globally accessible through his venture Vivum Health.

Vivum Health provides a straightforward way to collect and share health data with your clinicians in real time. The app allows users to log symptoms and diagnostic measures while also linking with discharge letters and other documents. In real-time, every piece of information is translated into a clinically valuable format which can then be accessed by clinicians.

Currently, there is no easy way to share medical data effectively. Instead, patients suffering from multiple health conditions need to manage their recovery themselves. Clinicians are often forced to work with incomplete medical information and so make life-altering decisions for their patients based on an incomplete picture. This causes a tremendous burden on healthcare, accounting for every £7 per £10 spent on health-related expenditure.

YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGES

Healthcare is an entrenched and highly complex market. You are constantly dealing with various stakeholders, who have different interests and incentives at heart. Trying to build a company within this sector is a real challenge. Perseverance and a deep belief in your vision will keep you going.

LESSONS FROM YOUR JOURNEY

When you are working in a business to business (B2B) market with complex hierarchical structures and regulation, you won’t get very far without insider knowledge and champions who are able to push your ideas internally.

Dr Sophie Harris, Doctor of Philosophy in Medicine from King’s, has developed T1resources. uk, a website which supports Type 1 diabetes patients to get better access to information about their personal care.

T1resources.uk is a co-curated platform bringing together quality-assured online resources that have been tested for safety and usability by healthcare professionals for use by patients with Type 1 diabetes. Concerned by the overwhelming amount of information online, Sophie and her team set out to create a process through which these resources could be tested and tried out in order to provide users with reliable information. The site launched in September 2016, and already has 15,000 unique users. It provides access to over 300 available resources and this is growing.

YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGES

Time! Making good use of volunteer time without abusing their willingness to support you for free. Also ensuring deadlines are met.

LESSONS FROM YOUR JOURNEY

Lay the foundations of your business right. If you don’t, this will come back and haunt you when you are at pivotal decision-making points. Consider the different roles of people in your team and think carefully about funding and sustainability.

YOUR READING RECOMMENDATION

The Behavior Change Wheel by Lou Atkins, Robert West and Susan Michie.

YOUR READING RECOMMENDATION

The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz.

Follow @vivumhelath on Instagram and Twitter. Visit their website www.vivumhealth.com to learn more about their work.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

If you want to build entrepreneurial skills, participate in the King’s Enterprise Award, take part in our workshops, or compete in the Idea Factory, visit: www.kcl.ac.uk/ EntrepreneurshipInstitute

If you want to learn more about innovation in medicine visit the following websites: Health Make Space NHS Improvements NHS Horizons DigitalHealth.London Health Foundry Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity

Two alumni from King’s talk about a challenging decision they’ve faced as they developed their ventures. Think about what you would do in each of these situations, then see what they actually

did with a turn of the page!

Mark Corbett

CEO and founder, Edvent and King's Philosophy alumnus. Edvent transforms the student body of colleges and universities into highly employable young leaders, ready to shape the workforce of tomorrow.

Romina Calatayud

Founder of Girls United and King's Politics alumna. Girls United FA is a social enterprise which uses football to provide leadership training to girls in low-income areas around the world, initially in Mexico. Its aim is to give them more opportunities to succeed in education and employment.

THE DILEMMA I FACED

In July 2017, after many phone calls, we managed to enrol our under-16s team from Bacalar in Mexico into a major state tournament. It was the first time the municipality of Bacalar was represented in girls’ football. We complied with all the rules of the tournament. However, the team we faced did not adhere to the uniform rules. After a tough match, which we did not win, my team approached me questioning why the other team was not made to comply with the rules on uniform, while we had. I then had the dilemma of whether to make a formal complaint or just accept the defeat and move on.

ON THE ONE HAND…

My players had every right to demand that the rules were followed. Pursuing the complaint seemed like an opportunity to demonstrate that they had a right to stand up for what is fair.

ON THE OTHER HAND…

The opponents had played a good match and had been the better team on the pitch. It seemed unfair to the players who, probably through no fault of their own, had not had the proper support to wear the appropriate kit. Even if our complaint was upheld, we would then face a much stronger team whom we were very unlikely to beat.

THE DILEMMA I FACED

We were in the early stages of getting our business venture off the ground, and needed our MVP (Minimum Viable Product) built pronto! We brought in a friend offering cash plus equity, but ultimately he couldn’t turn our vision into hard code. This meant we had used up a lot of our financial runway but had little to show for it and we still needed to show to potential clients how our technology would develop their students’ soft skills. We desperately needed funding to build our prototype, so it made sense to raise capital. We were seeking £40,000 of investment for 4 per cent of our business (this meant we valued our business at £1 million). We were approached by a group of individual investors. They offered £50,000 in return for 8 per cent of the business valuing the business at £625,000.

ON THE ONE HAND…

As well as taking a greater percentage in the business and valuing the business for less than we did, there were also a lot of strings and stipulations attached to the investment. We felt the investors thought we were desperate for their money, so we could be starting a relationship where we were in a weak position.

ON THE OTHER HAND...

The investment would enable us to get the platform built to a high standard and quickly. We knew universities would want what we were creating, but needed to demonstrate how our platform would work. The investors had extensive experience in enterprise and so would bring valuable business knowledge as well as their credibility. People often take your venture a lot more seriously when you say that you have raised money.

You also don’t know how much someone might be willing to invest in total – it could start with £50,000 but there could be more money on the table at a later stage.

Mark Corbett

MY DECISION

Against the advice of several trusted friends and advisors, I turned down the offer. We believed our business was worth a lot more because we had traction and sales, even without a platform. The investors responded by saying they were prepared to negotiate. However, we said that we were not prepared to negotiate as we were busy winning clients, which we did, and turned the tables on our relationship. Now I’m going back to them at a considerably higher valuation.

THE RESULT

We went on to win some new business and also managed to secure £10,000 grant funding by being part of the King’s20 Accelerator. This provided us with the money to build a prototype. Young entrepreneurs starting out often think that it’s important to get investment and they enjoy being able to take a good salary early on. However, it’s important to remember that in doing so you are giving away some of your business. It’s also good to be lean and mean in your early stages.

We now intend to sit down with the same investors and show them the technology we’ve built, the clients we have secured and the number of users we have. We will ask them if they want to invest a much greater amount.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Girls United: girlsunitedfa.org

Edvent: edvent.life

Read about other entrepreneurs from King’s: www.kcl.ac.uk/ entrepreneurship-institute

Romina Calatayud

MY DECISION

I made a formal complaint. Ultimately, I felt it was more important to set a good example and to assure the girls that they have a right to fight for justice. While this case may seem trivial – not having matching uniforms – if ignored, the girls could go on to dismiss more serious equality issues and instances where laws are broken.

THE RESULT

The other team were dismissed and, as expected, we didn’t win our next match. Nevertheless, it fostered in our team a sense of determination and they were motivated to train harder and pursue more goals. While initially it broke my heart to see the other team walk away from the match they had earned, they were then able to approach their local government officials to get proper uniforms.