Making healthy living easy Digital technology can aid prevention in healthcare but uptake is key, Mona Hayat, CEO and Founder of Nexus Digital Technology tells Sarah Cartledge
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s digital healthcare solutions multiply as a result of the pandemic, it’s no surprise that many innovators have a background in the UK National Health Service or NHS. As the oldest free-at-thepoint-of-delivery state healthcare it has grown into a huge siloed organisation in its 80 plus years, and many clinicians have become frustrated at its lack of technology. “I saw so much inefficiency in my 25 years in the NHS,” says Nexus founder Mona Hayat. “Patients would have to give the same details over and over again, and there was no way to link information across systems. Like everyone who has
worked in the NHS I am a huge fan, but it needs to take up digital solutions rapidly to reduce clinical risk.” It’s for this reason that many clinicians are branching out on their own to produce solutions that make life easier for both patients and healthcare staff. Mona’s background is as a mental clinician, but she decided to pivot and go into commissioning. It was while she was working in West London as director of programmes that she was asked to commission the physical and mental health programmes following the shocking fire at Grenfell Tower in Kensington, when 72 people died in the 24 storey blaze and 70 others were injured.
As she spent time with this underprivileged community in one of London’s wealthiest boroughs, she began to pull together the concept of Nexus. “People are now in a position where they can realistically manage their own health and I wanted to give them a tool to do so,” she says. “At Nexus, we are one of the frontrunners that can demonstrate how, by giving citizens the opportunity, information, knowledge and understanding of how they can support their own health and well¬being, they are less likely to wait until such time that they get sick and subsequently go into the healthcare system. They are more likely to be able to fix an issue and start to look after their health in a meaningful way and one they can manage at their own pace.” Healthcare as an integrated whole Nexus has been designed as a platform where people can find the resources they need to keep them healthy. By partnering
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