Big Picture Medicine

Do you need to be a d**k to be a good leader? Here's what Dr Nadine said... Dr Nadine Hachach-Haram BEM is a plastic surgeon and CEO of Proximie — an augmented reality platform for virtual surgical collaboration. Rather than telemedicine it’s about telepresence. It means that a surgeon in the UK could open up their web browser, and see what another surgeon across the world is doing in real time and collaborate. Proximie has had incredible impact: it’s helped people in need across the world access surgical care, it’s been used by NHS surgeons who are self-isolating due to coronavirus and it’s also being used by the RAF. Dr Nadine received the British Empire Medal in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours for her innovation in surgery. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Do you need to be a d**k to be a good leader? Here's what Dr Eric Topol said... Dr Eric Topol is in the top 10 most cited doctors in the history of Medicine. He is a cardiologist, geneticist and digital medicine expert — and was commissioned by the UK’s Health Secretary to write a report to prepare the NHS for the digital future: The Topol Review. Dr Topol has three best selling books on the future of Medicine: the Creative Destruction of Medicine, The Patient Will See you Now and Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again.  You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Look around and you’ll be surrounded by let’s face it... d**ks. Not just in politics and business — but also in Medicine. We’re taught lots about the multidisciplinary team and how important each member is — but that’s not always the experience in the real world. What I really want to know is: Do you need to be a d**k to be a good leader? And not just the knee jerk response of: "of course not". I want to know the ins and outs, and maybe — if sometimes it’s useful to be a bit brash or abrasive — and not always be everyone’s best friend So I’m on a mission to ask this question to all the people I admire in Medicine. Whether that’s clinicians, academics, policymakers or people in business. People of all backgrounds, races, genders etc. It should be really interesting. I hope you enjoy the series — and as always reviews on iTunes are worth their weight in gold. Inspired by Max Joseph's excellent short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRRvjZ_XNog You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Why switch from Investment Banking to Medicine? Dr Yusef Smith is a doctor, competitive gymnast and powerlifter. In a previous life, he was an investment banker before packing it in and training in Medicine. Whilst at Medical School he started Propane Fitness — the passive income from which has now overtaken his salary as a doctor. Yusef is a friend and one of the most contemplative people I know. We talk about passive income, physical and mental health, tools for productivity and why Yusef went on a 10 day silent meditation retreat. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Stephen Bourke is the co-founder of Echo; the online pharmacy. If you haven’t heard of Echo, it’s a bit like Deliveroo for your medication. It delivers repeat prescriptions to your door, free of charge and hassle-free. It was acquired by McKesson, the group who own Lloyds Pharmacy in 2019. This is a really valuable conversation and Stephen is hilarious, honest and gives a tasty inside scoop into the world of online pharmacy. We talk about how to improve patient adherence, how Echo rose to the top despite not being the first company of its kind by a long shot, Stephen’s experience of making something cool but also accessible and how sometimes — you need to listen to all your friend’s advice, nod your head — and then ignore it all to take a big leap. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Sir Bruce Keogh was National Medical Director for over a decade — leading clinical policy and strategy as well as being responsible for clinical leadership, quality and innovation. Sir Bruce was a celebrated cardiac surgeon prior to this, and during his tenure as Medical Director — he was most notably responsible for making clinical outcomes the currency of the NHS. He has been declared the most influential clinician in the NHS by the Health Service Journal for three years and was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2003. Honestly, I was nervous about speaking to someone of Sir Bruce’s stature. Fortunately, he is one of the kindest people I’ve interviewed — and I’m really happy to have captured his leadership philosophy, how he made decisions and decided what was important as Medical Director, and his life advice for medics with similar aspirations. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

How does a doctor start working for DeepMind/Google? 🤖  Joe Ledsam is a Clinician Scientist at Google Japan after formerly working at DeepMind. He started his career off as a doctor, before migrating to research and eventually coming to his current position. He’s worked on some of the most influential medical deep learning papers to date — published in the likes of Nature. For many nerds in Medicine — he’s living the dream. He was recommended to me by Pearse Keane who I spoke to on episode #10, who described him as simply exceptional. We talk about how Joe started working for DeepMind and then Google, how he actively seeks out fields he’s uncomfortable with, how the Simpsons influenced his life philosophy, why he wakes up at 2am and what he believes — are the dark horses in this field. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Dr Simon Eccles is the Chief Clinical Information Officer for Health and Care and Deputy CEO of NHS X. Amongst many responsibilities, he’s accountable for delivery of the Personal Health and Care 2020 programme, and the central expenditure for the NHS’s IT. Whilst doing all of this, he also practices one day a week as a Consultant in Emergency Medicine. He’s funny, he’s opinionated, he has a strong vision and he gives wonderful insight into what it’s like as a doctor policymaker. He talks about what he’s learned along the way, electronic health records, his views on blockchain and what he took away from his time at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Why should doctors learn how to code? Josh is really cool. He’s an Australian doctor on a big mission — to empower medics with code. Josh recently released Code Blue: An Introduction to Programming for Doctors. I highly, highly recommend picking this up for a 0–100 guide on coding for medics: https://gum.co/NMtSD  We talk about why you should learn how to code as a medic — but then I push back and challenge Josh — I ask him why you should bother learning how to code when a) no doctor I’ve spoken to in MedTech actually codes much themselves and b) when today, there are so many good no-code solutions out there Finally Josh explains how to start coding for two very different types of medics: Firstly, the hustler, the entrepreneur, the person who doesn’t care about the tools or computers — they just want to build their next startup. Secondly, he explains the path for the academic, who wants to understand the nuts and bolts, build their own models, publish papers and work with companies like DeepMind/Google Health. I hope you enjoy. Find Josh Twitter: @_JoshCase https://twitter.com/_JoshCase You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Where are the dark horses in medical AI? 🐴  Professor Geraint Rees is the Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences at UCL, Pro-Vice-Provost of AI and is also the director of UCL Business — its technology transfer arm. His research is primarily in cognitive neuroscience and he has been cited over 35,000 times with a h index of 93. He sits at the intersection of academia, technology and business — so he has a really rich, birds eye perspective on MedTech. I asked him which areas of AI in Medicine don’t get enough attention, the role of private companies in research and whether you need to work disproportionately hard to reach the upper echelons of a field. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io