What happens when an "average medical student" co-founds the Topol Programme, becomes an AI professor without a PhD, and rises to run a health innovation network while still seeing patients every Friday?

In this episode, we speak with Dr Hatim Abdulhussein, a GP who became CEO of Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex and Honorary Professor of Innovation and AI at the University of Surrey — one of the UK's leading clinician-innovators working inside the system.

• 🧑 How a foundation doctor in Bedford who "didn't think being an entrepreneur was an option" learned to make change from within the NHS

• 🎓 Co-founding the Topol Programme for Digital Health Fellows — the "gift of time" that's now run through six or seven cohorts of digital health leaders

• 🤖 Getting into AI before it was cool — building the subject-matter expertise that let him advise ministers before the ChatGPT explosion

• 🏛️ Why he chose to change the NHS from within rather than leave it, and the value of an entrepreneurial mindset inside organisations

• 🎓 Becoming an Honorary Professor of Innovation and AI without a PhD — the clinical teaching track and the power of "say yes and learn by doing"

• 🏥 Rising from Medical Director to CEO of a Health Innovation Network — and why he still protects his Friday GP clinic

Hatim's story is a masterclass in experiential leadership — building a portfolio career on the clinical teaching track, saying yes to opportunity, and proving you don't need to leave the NHS to have a national impact.

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What happens when a surgical trainee and former parliamentary candidate pivots into pharmaceutical medicine, rises to global VP, and then walks away to found his own consultancy on his own terms?

In this episode, we speak with Dr David Montgomery, a consultant in pharmaceutical medicine, former global VP at Pfizer, and co-founder of PM Life Sciences, a pharmaceutical advisory firm and consultancy.

• 🏗️ The freedom of founding his own consultancy — starting from scratch and the liberation of building something entirely his own

• 🔬 Leaving surgery after eight years during the chaos of modernising medical careers

• 🚀 The meteoric rise — medical director within 2.5 years of leaving medicine, global VP before 40 — and the candour about the VP role he "didn't nail"

• 🏛️ Running as a Conservative parliamentary candidate in the bruising 2015 election, and the politics of healthcare learned up close

• 💼 Why the world outside medicine is far less meritocratic — and what "saying yes even when terrifying" actually looks like

David's story is a candid, unvarnished look at navigating pharma, politics and career reinvention — and the freedom that comes from building something your own.

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What happens when a South African anaesthetist survives cerebral oedema on Everest, bootstraps an NHS appraisal platform with no external funding, and sells it to one of the UK's fastest-growing health tech companies?

In this episode, we speak with Dr Patrick Doyle, a consultant anaesthetist who founded L2P — the leading platform for job planning, appraisals and revalidation — which was acquired by Patchwork Health after 15 years of growth.

• 🏔️ Surviving Everest — getting cerebral oedema at Camp 3, being unconscious overnight, and walking down the next day before the team even started the clinical research
• 💼 How a "pain point" — endlessly emailing regulatory paperwork to different organisations — became L2P, born in 2009 and initially 10 years ahead of the market
• 🚀 Bootstrapping the whole way — bank loans, a mortgage extension and a bounce-back loan instead of VC, and watching every single penny

• 🔁 Life after acquisition — handing over the mundane stuff, getting back to research, and writing up his Everest paper with AI in half an hour

Patrick's story is a masterclass in bootstrapping a niche NHS product to a successful exit — and knowing when the time is right to hand it over.

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What happens when a South African surgeon gets plucked out by Lord Darzi, builds the first machine-readable BNF, and spins a company out of Imperial that reduces prescribing errors by 83%?

In this episode, we speak with Dr Nick Appelbaum, a surgeon turned entrepreneur who went from inventing spreadsheet-based prescribing safety tools in South Africa to completing a PhD with Lord Ara Darzi at Imperial, leading clinical research at the Helix Centre, and founding Dosium — a company now integrating the BNF into NHS prescribing systems.

• 🔬 How a "self-help program that grew out of hand" — inventing medication safety tools in South Africa's trauma centres — landed him a meeting with Lord Darzi

• 🏛️ Why Lord Darzi laughed at his plan to do an immunology PhD at Oxford and instead put him on the 10th floor at St Mary's to build something real

• 📚 The seven-year journey to create the first machine-readable British National Formulary, working with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society

• 🏥 Founding Dosium and integrating the BNF into NHS electronic prescribing — reducing the odds of a medication error by 83% across deployed trusts

• 💡 Why "academic projects die without putting the infrastructure in place upfront" — and how the NIHR I4I grant forced the spinout decision

• 🎯 The advice he wishes he'd had earlier: "find the suits, speak to the CFO, validate the economic proposition early — don't leave it to the last minute"

Nick's story is a masterclass in turning a clinical frustration into a national infrastructure play, with the right mentorship and institutional backing.

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What happens when a doctor trained in experimental psychology leaves medicine in F2, builds products in Silicon Valley, runs a £10M/day COVID testing programme, and becomes Chief Product Officer of the UK's largest health research study?

In this episode, we speak with Dr Cosima Gretton, a medical doctor who left clinical practice to pursue product management in the US, served as Deputy Director at NHS Test & Trace during the pandemic, and is now Chief Product Officer at Our Future Health — a research programme that has recruited over 2.5 million participants across the UK.

• 🧠 Why studying human factors design and cross-modal integration at Oxford made her see clinical systems as fundamentally flawed — and why she couldn't unsee it

• 🎨 Founding AXNS Collective as a medical student — bringing together artists, neuroscientists, and an LSD research project at Imperial College London

• 🌉 How a friend's persistent invitation to apply for Singularity University in Silicon Valley changed the entire trajectory of her career

• 🦠 Leading LAMP testing at NHS Test & Trace — the pressure of a 10-million-tests-per-day Christmas target and what it's like when government actually works at startup pace

• 📊 Becoming CPO at Our Future Health and building the infrastructure to recontact 2.5 million participants for clinical research — and return their data back to them

Cosima's story is a rare window into what happens when a clinician fully commits to the product discipline — and why the two mindsets are harder to reconcile than most people think.

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What happens when a medical student sells a surgical robotics startup before finishing FY1 — and then spends the next decade inventing devices he deliberately never runs?

In this episode, we speak with Dr Alastair Darwood, a medical doctor with a bioengineering PhD who has built a career as an inventor and entrepreneur across medical devices, consumer hardware, and cycling technology. From orthopaedic robotics to analgesic masks to e-bikes, Alastair's playbook is always the same: invent, validate, license — then move on to the next problem.

• 🔬 How he founded Prometheus Surgical as a medical student, raised £170k, and sold it to De Souter Medical in FY1 — the robot is now in use on patients as the Solito

• 🫁 Building a low-cost ventilator during COVID with Red Bull Advanced Technologies — and why the project was shut down just as it started working

• 🚴 Co-founding Scarpa, an e-bike electrification company with £14M raised and products now stocked in 70 UK shops — without touching the business side

• 😷 Licensing an analgesic mask to Intersurgical that is currently in clinical trials at St Mary's — patient-controlled inhalational anaesthesia for procedures that don't need a GA

• 🤖 Why AI has turned invention into Lego bricks — and how a project that would have taken a year now takes three weeks

Alastair's story is a masterclass in finding your unfair advantage, building a playbook around it, and having the discipline to hand everything else to someone else.

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What happens when a Consultant Psychiatrist, NHS Digital Exemplar leader, and GIRFT national lead decides the only way to truly fix children's mental health services is to leave the NHS and build an AI startup?

In this episode, we speak with Dr Guy Northover, Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Chief Clinical Information Officer at Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, and co-founder of Anathem — an AI company that has reduced frontline mental health admin burden by 61%.

• 🚗 Why he quit A&E, bought a Land Rover, and drove to Ghana to work out what he actually wanted from medicine

• 🏥 How Berkshire Healthcare became one of only seven mental health trusts to achieve Global Digital Exemplar status — and was already COVID-ready before the pandemic hit

• 📊 His work as GIRFT National Clinical Lead for CAMHS, and how data alone helped halve the number of children admitted to inpatient units nationwide

• 🤖 Co-founding Anathem with a chance conversation at a children's hockey match — and why a 61% reduction in admin burden is changing whether clinicians stay or leave the NHS

• ⚖️ The uncomfortable reality of managing conflict of interest as a senior NHS leader running a startup in your own specialty — and why it's worth navigating anyway

• 💡 Why senior clinicians make the best founders — and how vibe coding with Lovable has made him a one-man product team

Guy's story is a compelling case for why the NHS needs its most experienced leaders to take the entrepreneurial leap — not despite their seniority, but because of it.

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What happens when a GP trainee with zero finance knowledge decides to break into healthcare VC — and ends up co-founding a clinician-led angel syndicate?

In this episode, we speak with Dr Meenakshi Jhala, NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow at King's College London, Chief of Staff at Syntax, and co-founder of Tiny Ventures and DX Capital — a clinician-led angel syndicate dedicated to funding the innovations healthcare actually needs.

• 🩺 Why guideline-driven medicine felt like being a tomato in a greenhouse — and what made her look beyond clinical training

• 📈 How she broke into healthcare VC as a fifth-year medical student with no finance background, conducting due diligence at Rise Asset Management

• 🤝 The relationship-building philosophy that unlocked every role she's ever had — and why 100% of her work has come through connections

• 🚀 Building Tiny Ventures as an accelerator for aspiring investors and launching DX Capital to fund what clinicians know actually matters

• 🧠 Why doctors can't just be badge collectors — and the difference between execution and ambition

• 💡 How she balances clinical practice, research, a startup, and an angel syndicate without attaching emotion to any of it

Meenakshi's story is a masterclass in curiosity, execution, and building a career that's genuinely yours — not the one the system designed for you.

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What happens when a cardiologist realises NHS IT is failing patients — and decides to build an AI clinician that actually listens?

In this episode, we speak with Dr Dom Pimenta, a former NHS cardiologist who left clinical practice to co-found Tortus AI, an intelligent ambient voice interface for clinicians backed by Entrepreneur First and Khosla Ventures.

• 🏥 Why Dom's Catholic upbringing and childhood obsession with death led him to medicine — and why he eventually left

• 🧠 The frustration of watching NHS IT systems fail clinicians and patients, and the moment he decided to build something better

• 🔧 How Entrepreneur First helped him pivot from doctor to founder, and the reality of raising venture capital as a clinician

• ⚖️ The ethics of AI in healthcare — why "human-in-the-loop" matters and what Dom learned from deploying AI in live clinical environments

• 📈 What Tortus AI actually does, how it works, and why ambient voice interfaces might be the future of clinical documentation

• 🎯 Dom's advice for clinicians considering the leap into healthtech entrepreneurship — and what he'd do differently

Dom's story is a candid exploration of what it takes to leave a secure clinical career, bet on yourself, and build technology that might actually fix the system you left behind.

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What happens when a doctor spends a decade at McKinsey, returns to the NHS, and creates a Chief Innovation Officer role from scratch?

In this episode, we speak with Dr Rishi Das-Gupta, former Chief Innovation Officer at Royal Brompton Hospital and now CEO of Health Innovation Network South London and DigitalHealth.London.

He shares how he went from covering the whole hospital overnight as a junior doctor to reshaping how the NHS adopts technology at scale.

• 🏥 The one-in-four on-call rota that showed him what the NHS was getting wrong

• 🧮 Why he left medicine for McKinsey — and why two years became ten

• 🧠 Building a US healthcare practice and lessons from data-rich industries

• 🔧 Returning to the NHS after a decade away and creating a Chief Innovation Officer role

• ⚖️ Why implementation beats strategy — and making change happen inside hospital systems

• 📈 The future of NHS digital transformation and why he's optimistic about what's next

Rishi's story is a masterclass in leaving medicine, gaining industry perspective, and returning to transform the system from within.

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