As doctors battle to fix a healthcare system wrecked with crises, they are taking a radical approach to provide efficient treatment—by creating their own startups with ingenious technology. This surge of ‘doctorpreneurs’ is expected to see massive growth as more and more clinicians take up the dual role of physician and entrepreneur.
An entrepreneurial sparkle hit 21-year-old medical student of neuroscience at Imperial College London—Hamzah Selim—in 2017. As he was witnessing a lecture on eye movements and its role in accurately diagnosing neurologic conditions, he used a popular Snapchat filter to make a selfie to ease his boredom. The filter accurately tracked his eye movements and this made him ponder on the efficiency of applying a technology like automated eye-tracking to medical processes such as the H test. Lucky for us, he acted on his thought to develop Mindstep, an AI-driven app with a similar eye-tracking technology to efficiently detect Mental Health and Neurologic conditions and create tailored at-home care plans. It has now secured $3 million in funding.
The problem of efficiently providing care to more and more people lies in the heart of the National Health Service (NHS). There aren’t enough doctors to match the level of care required due to the increased demand of patients. NHS is actively encouraging clinicians to take the entrepreneurial route with its Clinical Entrepreneurial Program, resulting in an energetic healthtech startup scene in UK with more than $6 billion invested in VC funds in 2022 as per PitchBook data. Even Dr. Owain Hughes—an Ear, Nose, and Throat surgeon for over 15 years—was moved by his medical experience to innovate and thus, he founded Cinapsis. This smart referral system allows specialists at hospitals to advise primary care physicians through instant communication tools.
Reconstructive Plastic Surgeon and the founder of Proximie—Dr. Nadine Hachach-Haram— thought otherwise to curbing the staff shortage and consequent problems in healthcare. Her startup provides augmented-reality smart glasses to surgeons, enabling them to see the operation (from their first-person view) and get quick expert access while operating.
Doctor duo of London founded Patchwork to get to the root of why healthcare systems may struggle to efficiently provide care. It helps to overcome the issues of clinician burnouts and lack of alternatives by providing a digital platform to employers to advertise vacancies, manage admin and doctors to book a shift as per their convenience, and get paid through Patchwork’s app.
To support the ‘doctorpreneur’ trend, incubators such as Medtech Accelerator and Digital Health London are emerging in the UK to bring in more digital health technologies into NHS. Even UK-based startups have joined European and US based Accelerator programs to expand their business at an international level.
Through their advances in technology, clinician entrepreneurs like Selim, Hughes and Hachach-Haram are devoted to offer better care, understanding and hope to patients who are at risk of lacking it. While their efforts can’t fix the system alone, their startups promises to ease the complicated healthcare processes and improve the quality of resilient care that the NHS and the world needs.
The company mentioned in this article is Mindstep, a neurological care startup founded by Hamzah Selim— 21 year old medical neurological student at Imperial College London in 2017. The startup has developed an AI-driven app, which uses eye-tracking technology, to accurately detect the onset of mental health and neurological conditions, as well as create tailored at-home care plans.
The person mentioned in this article is Hamzah Selim, a final-year medical student at University College London who founded Mindstep. His neurological care startup Mindstep has secured $3 million in funding for its AI-driven app, which uses eye-tracking technology to accurately detect the onset of mental health and neurological conditions and create tailored at-home care plans. Selim started Mindstep because he wants to help patients access efficient care at a time when healthcare systems are suffering from a patient demand and complexity crisis. He hopes to make clinicians more comfortable with technology, allowing them to easily diagnose conditions and preventing a lack of access to specialist care.
