While launching a startup can be incredibly exciting, the initial stages of growth can also be stressful and high-pressured. Over time – after raising your first investment, for example, or onboarding those crucial first customers – you begin to feel more confident in your role as founder.

After many years of studying and training at medical school, I became a doctor in 2014.

In the face of rising care backlogs and staffing shortages, healthcare services urgently need innovative solutions to deliver sustainable transformation and support. As an Accident and Emergency doctor, I witnessed first-hand how poorly implemented, inflexible tech put additional pressure on clinicians and affected the ability to provide the best patient care. 

It’s received wisdom that successful startups solve real world problems. But there’s a commonly overlooked footnote to this mantra: you can’t try to solve a problem unless you’ve lived it first. Because without gaining the authentic understanding of lived experience, you’ll never find a solution that works in practice as well as in theory.