Big Picture Medicine

Dr Ann Taylor studied at Harvard Medical School, practiced as an Endocrinologist at Mass General Hospital before shifting over to Pharma — now sitting as AstraZeneca’s Chief Medical Officer. This episode's full of wisdom, we talk about being a generalist vs a specialist at life, what she learned from leaving Medicine and entering Pharma and her tips for medics who want to do great things outside of the clinic. I hope you enjoy.

Colin Espie is Professor of Sleep Medicine at Oxford University as well as Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Big Health. With insomnia, there are two mainstays of treatment. The first is medication or drugs, and the second is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (or CBT). CBT has traditionally required face-to-face treatment from a psychologist, and can be difficult to access for patients in a constrained health service. Far easier, the criticism goes, to just give someone a pill. Fundamentally, the problem is that prescription drugs are very scalable and relatively cheap. Face-to-face CBT on the other hand, is expensive and doesn’t scale well. But new approaches package CBT into a digital platform or app — making it infinitely more scalable — and opening it up to many more patients. Big Health are creators of a digital CBT program called Sleepio. Sleepio boasts the largest evidence base in digital mental health with 13 randomised controlled trials. Its parent company: Big Health has raised over $50M in funding. We talk about digital therapy for sleep, as well as some debate about whether digital therapeutics require the same evidence as traditional medications. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Cyndi Williams is the Co-founder and CEO of Quin; a digital therapeutic for type 1 diabetes. The app provides personalised, data-led support for insulin dosing decisions, based on physiological and behavioural factors. Quin have raised £3.6 million pounds to date. We talk about the process of building Quin, the joys and tribulations of fundraising, crowdfunding and the life of a CEO. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Secrets, in Medicine, are a crime against humanity. Dr Marcus Baw holds an unusual career as a GP, Emergency Physician and health hacker. He makes a controversial claim: That we have an ethical duty to openly share our technological innovation — and anything short of this is a crime against humanity. Links from Marcus Digital Health Networks (CCIOs, CIOs, CSOs, Caldicott Guardians, Clinicians Who Code and more) discourse.digitalhealth.net Open Health Hub - completely open discussion of all things open sourcey in healthcare https://openhealthhub.org/ My OSITOWFM blog https://medium.com/@marcus_baw/open-source-is-the-only-way-for-medicine-9e698de0447e "Royal Colleges 3.0" https://marcus-baw.medium.com/royal-colleges-3-0-best-practice-as-code-7065bce821a7 Faculty of Clinical Informatics https://facultyofclinicalinformatics.org.uk/ RCGP Health Informatics Group (for GPs who are RCGP members only) - GP IT specialism https://hig.primary-care.org.uk Chamberlen Forceps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstetrical_forceps#History Me on Twitter https://twitter.com/marcus_baw Marcus's Website: https://pacharanero.github.io You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Professor Sir John Burn is Professor of Clinical Genetics at Newcastle University, a Non-Executive Director of NHS England and Vice Chairman of QuantumDx. His story is fascinating and slightly unusual — because he began life from humble beginnings in a small village in the North East of England. We talk about meritocracy, how to be a showman and why business and clinical academia are really very similar. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

What's the biggest existential threat to the BMJ? Dr Fiona Godlee is the Editor-in-Chief of the British Medical Journal and is an Executive Director of the BMJ Company. She trained as a General Physician in Cambridge and London, before joining the BMJ as an Editorial Registrar. Dr Godlee is incredibly interesting and forthcoming with the realities of running a medical journal — we talk about how the BMJ is not just a medical journal but a societal intervention, existential threats to the BMJ, the future vision and what Dr Godlee’s learned about leadership on her journey. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

How do you capitalise on a problem spanning 5% of Google searches? Daniel Nathrath is the Co-founder and CEO of Ada Health; a self-assessment health app for patients. Ada has 10 million users, 250,000 5-star ratings and they’ve raised just shy of $100M. They’ve been backed by Philip Schindler (Google’s Chief Business Officer_ and William Tunstall-Pedoe; who created Amazon Alexa. We discuss some of the details behind starting Ada and its initial reception from doctors, some of its successes and future direction and finally we talk about Daniel’s leadership philosophy and some of the things he’s learnt as Ada’s grown. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

How do you save the NHS £1 billion? Melissa Morris is founder and CEO of Lantum; a company aiming to save the NHS £1 billion in workforce costs. She started her career as a McKinsey Management Consultant and has since raised over £20M and grown Lantum to 60 employees. We talk about how she grew Lantum and got it adopted in the NHS, first principles, how to take advice, stress as a founder and I ask her about some dubious rumours I've heard about McKinsey. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Founding a company is like getting punched in the face, a lot. Adnan Iqbal is CEO and Co-Founder at Luma Health; a company which better connects patients and doctors. He’s raised over $30M and scaled to over 450 US health systems and clinics. Adnan studied Biology at Berkeley, then did his masters at Cambridge before working at Genentech — a large US biotech company. He then went to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and that’s when him and his co-founder Tashfeen Ekram (a medical doctor) started working on Luma. This episode is littered with gems of advice from Adnan, and we spend a lot of time talking about the early days of Luma — and how he got those initial customers onboard. We also discuss some of his thinking and decision making as CEO, and what it’s like to be a Pakistani dude in Silicon Valley. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

How can you become a superconnector? Will Gibbs leads the Future of Health team at Octopus Ventures; one of the largest Venture Capital firms in Europe — with over £1.3bn under management. Will studied Classic Archaeology and Ancient History at Oxford, before trying his hand at pig farming and then becoming an investor at Octopus. We talk about the pros and cons of being a doctorpreneur, being right when others are wrong and how to become a superconnector. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io