In our latest #OurEntrepreneurs profile we meet cohort 8 Clinical Entrepreneur Elle Clarke, Emergency Medicine Physician and Clinical Lead at Heim.
Tell us a bit about yourself
I’m a junior doctor based in East London, delivering emergency care to the population of Hackney. Through my clinical work, I became passionate about the merits of decentralised healthcare and improving accessibility of at-home clinical care. This is what I aim to tackle with Heim.
When I’m not at work, I can be found at on the netball court!
Name: Elle Clarke.
Occupation: Emergency Medicine Physician and Clinical Lead at Heim.
Location: Homerton University Hospital.
Tell us about your innovation
Existing policy-driven initiatives such as virtual wards demonstrate the benefits of healthcare decentralisation; however, public, and private sector community care services are still struggling to meet demand (Chalk and Legg, BJN, 2016; District Nursing Today, QNI, 2019), and continue to rely on manual administrative processes. This affects workflow efficiency, accuracy of expected arrival times and effectiveness of patient communication.
At this point in time, there is no offline-enabled clinical task management software designed to support the complexity of community-based care.
Heim solves this problem by matching community clinical care tasks with skilled practitioners in the area, surfacing their live availability for service users to book into and providing live updates to the responsible clinical care team. I am looking to build an innovative practitioner-facing mobile application which integrates with our existing platform, empowering clinical care staff to take control of their availability, coverage areas and skill set.
Our innovation aims to positively impact the accessibility of healthcare, by bringing more care into the patient home, which directly benefits those less able to travel or engage with traditional, centralised healthcare models (for example, the mobility impaired, those with sensory ailments, cognitive impairments or learning disability). It will also increase the capacity of existing community care services such as district nursing by improving efficiency of workflows and improve communication between practitioner and patient during the community care tasks.
Why did you apply to join the programme, and what are you most looking forward to?
A previous colleague suggested I apply for this opportunity, and I am most looking forward to meeting other like-minded people and making the most of the mentorship opportunity!
In addition, the programme has learning aspects of entrepreneurship I have either never before considered (such as the issue of intellectual property and patent law), alongside those I am familiar with in a more unstructured way (such as leadership and management) and I look forward to exploring these topics further. Besides that, previous entrepreneurs always speak about what a wonderful, rich and supportive community the programme is, and I am excited to get involved.
What are your ambitions for the next year?
My ambitions for the next year are to be supporting a diverse range of clinical care tasks in a safe and efficient manner within the NHS.
Why do you think innovation is important in healthcare?
People are living longer than ever; we have a duty to ensure our healthcare systems keep up. With finite resources, this means innovation is essential to help us deliver more care, more efficiently.
How can we find out more?
Please visit www.heim.health for more information.