Big Picture Medicine

How do you spend £16 billion to improve the world’s health? That is the job of Sir Jeremy Farrar, the Director of the Wellcome Trust. In 1936, British pharmaceutical magnate Sir Henry Wellcome left his fortune to improve the world’s health. Now Sir Jeremy must work out what to do with £16 billion over the next decade — and where to most effectively spend it. 0:00 Intro  0:47 The Third Role of Philanthropy  2:53 Appetite for Risk  5:38 What's Broken in Science Funding  8:16 Generalism vs Specialism  10:12 Why Are You Slow?  14:49 Sexy vs Incremental  17:04 How Much of Your Job Is Not Messing Things Up?  19:35 Metrics for Philanthropy  22:10 Playing the Long Game  23:20 How Do You Know You're Doing a Good Job?  28:05 First Become a King, Then a Philosopher (?)  30:00 Habits That Have Helped In Your Career  31:52 What's It Like Being Famous?  33:28 Book Recommendations By background he is a medical doctor and researcher, he has been named 12th in Fortune’s list of the world’s 50 greatest leaders, served in the UK’s SAGE group and was knighted in 2019 for his services to Global Health. I ask him about how he spends that money, how to measure philanthropic impact, problems and opportunities within research funding and just how much of his job is just not messing things up. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Dr Imran Mahmud studied Medicine at Oxford, before studying Public Health at Harvard on a Fulbright Scholarship. He then ranked first in the country entering the Ophthalmology training programme — promptly leaving and joining McKinsey. In 2018 he co-founded NYE Health, raising over £4M. He is now a startup advisor, angel investor, digital health consultant and content creator. We speak about angel investing — which was traditionally a way in which high net worth individuals could invest in small startups — but is now becoming possible for many more people. We speak about the digital nomad post-economic lifestyle — and whether doing whatever you want, wherever you want actually makes you happy. And one of my favourite one of Imran’s principles: To be interesting, do interesting things. I hope you enjoy. 0:00 Intro  0:49 How to angel invest  06:47 Can anyone angel invest?  10:46 To be interesting, do interesting things  12:43 Does money buy happiness?  16:40 Does freedom make you happy?  19:47 Is homeschooling weird?  23:52 Why are successful people making content?  29:20 Content creation as a competitive advantage  32:07 Better to know how to code or know how to make content?  33:19 Managing your ego  35:43 Habits that have helped you in your career? You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

After missing out on getting into Medical School, Ahmed studied Computer Science — later completing his PhD at Cambridge University. As a student, he launched his own health AI startup — which diagnosed rashes on intimate body parts. This didn’t work out and he pivoted and launched a data AI company called Catalyst AI. This company was later acquired by Farfetch; the luxury online fashion retail platform to help optimise their fashion supply chains. He now sits on the Prime Minister of Pakistan’s Science and Technology task force, on the Development Council of the Woolf Institute and is the Co-founder of a sustainable fashion enterprise. We speak the about the unlikely overlaps between fashion and healthtech — no seriously there are lots of them, we speak about how to find your ultimate purpose and how when building relationships — the ultimate form of self-serving is being a giver. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

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Dr Sandeep Bansal is the Founder and CEO of Medic Bleep; a pager replacement which raised over £3M. On top of that, he recently co-founded Carebyte Health — which offers personalised on-demand healthcare to Indians. He is also Faculty at Harvard Medical School and Barts. This is a super interesting conversation in which Sandeep explains how he has partnered with some of India’s largest companies, to pay Indians to be healthy, how crypto fits into that mission and the fascinating new HealthTech/FinTech fusion model hitting emerging markets. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Dr Molly Gilmartin is an Investment Manager at AlbionVC who manage over $1bn in assets and have invested in companies like Arecor, Healios and Pando. She studied Medicine at Oxford, was a founding team member of Pando, Chief Commerical Officer of Induction Healthcare, a Consultant at McKinsey and now an Investor at AlbionVC. We talk a lot about the psychology of communication, about strength-based feedback and radical candour, about how being inquisitive can get you very far, how energy is Molly’s superpower and lots of other frameworks that Molly finds useful in her career. We finish off by discussing her thesis on the emerging B2C2B model in healthcare. This is a really value packed interview — I hope you enjoy. Video Interview on Youtube. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Joe Stringer is a Partner at Octopus Ventures, one of the largest European Venture Capital firms with £1.8 billion under management. He was Partner at Ernst & Young for 10 years, before leaving his cushy position to launch his own venture fund TenX Health. He then led Google Health in the UK before becoming Partner at Octopus Ventures. We talk about his thesis on the future of health, the importance of hard work, grit and resilience, as well as building and managing relationships — in particular, trying not to be too British. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Dr Patrick Malone is an MD, as well as having a PhD in Neuroscience. His research focused on computational cognitive neuroscience and AI applications in radiology. In 2020, he joined the investment team at Northpond Ventures where he invests in early-stage health-tech and deep-tech companies. Patrick put together a viral Twitter thread on his transition from Medicine and Research into Venture Capital. In 40 tweets, he detailed his high yield advice on networking, communication and which skills are useful to develop. Essentially a Bible on some of the meta skills needed to have impact at scale in healthcare. In this episode we discuss that thread — and I ask Patrick to expand on some of those meta skills, and we also talk about his thesis on the future of healthcare. I think this is a super valuable interview — I hope you enjoy. Video interview on YouTube. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Niklas Rindtorff is a Physician-Scientist and one of the Pioneers in decentralised healthcare and life sciences. He has an MD from Heidelberg University and he received his Master's Degree in Biomedical Informatics from Harvard Medical School as a Fulbright Scholar. He is a founder of LabDAO, an online community of life scientists collaborating to increase the accessibility of life science tools both in the dry lab and wet lab. He’s also a Core Member of VitaDAO, a collective funding early stage longevity research. DAOs are Decentralised Autonomous Organisations and a staple of the ongoing WEB3 revolution. Investopedia defines DAOs as having no central governing body, every member within a DAO typically shares a common goal and attempts to act in the best interest of the entity. Popularized through cryptocurrency enthusiasts and blockchain technology, DAOs are used to make decisions in a bottom-up management approach. Or as Niklas describes them, DAOs are basically a WhatsApp group chat with an attached cryptocurrency bank account. In this conversation, I find out about how DAOs can be used in healthcare. From enabling rare disease research to fixing science’s publishing problems. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Nikhil Patel is the Founder and CEO of Craniometrix, where they’re using innovative deep learning and digital health tools to diagnose Alzheimer’s Disease — and position themselves as the all-in-one Alzheimer’s care platform. Nikhil studied Computer Science and Economics at Yale University, before launching Craniometrix — which was accepted into Y Combinator and have raised $6M in their seed round. We talk about how he’s been able to build Craniometrix as a 22-year-old and get investors really excited about his vision, how a digital tool can unlock new levels of diagnostic ability and why Nikhil talks so fast. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io