In our latest #OurEntrepreneurs profile we meet cohort 8 Clinical Entrepreneur Hazhee Rasoul, Cardiology Registrar.
Tell us a bit about yourself
I am a cardiology registrar by background. Having previously worked as part of the heart failure team, I’ve seen the difficulty in managing these patients in the community, which led to the idea for my innovation – a smartphone application for heart failure patients. I have always been interested in technology and how it has evolved to become integral to our daily lives. Last year I wanted to take this interest further by completing an online computer science course, and as part of the final project I decided to create the initial build of this application.
Name: Hazhee Rasoul
Occupation: Cardiology Registrar.
Location: London/ Kent.
Tell us about your innovation
In 2016, heart failure admissions accounted for £2 billion (2% of NHS budget) and 1 million inpatient bed days. Making sure that patients are on the optimal heart failure medications can reduce the progression of their condition, how often they need to visit hospital, and reduce mortality. However, only 44% are on all the recommended medications, despite being eligible. Heart failure is also a rapidly developing field with recent studies significantly changing the way these patients are managed and what medications we recommend.
My innovation is a smartphone application aimed at heart failure patients and their clinical team. For the patient, it educates them about heart failure and the medications they are on to treat it, as well as what symptoms to look out for and which readings they can take at home to potentially avoid hospital admission while also helping the team looking after them when they come to clinic. For the clinicians, it presents the information they need to make medication optimisation decisions in a much easier to read format compared to traditional electronic health records, so quicker and more accurate optimisation decisions can be made. The aim is to reduce the number of heart failure patients being admitted to hospital and get more of them on the optimised medications.
Why did you apply to join the programme, and what are you most looking forward to?
I found out about the Clinical Entrepreneur Programme after visiting their stand at a conference. I like the concept of finding a problem in healthcare, building the solutions yourself so patients can benefit and then spreading these solutions so you can have a wider impact, and I look forward to meeting like-minded people on the programme.
I’m hoping the programme will teach me more about the realities of taking your innovative solutions to the NHS and getting them adopted.
What are your ambitions for the next year?
The MVP is almost finished, and the next steps will be to pilot it and see what impact it has on patient admissions while improving it based on patient/clinician feedback.
Why do you think innovation is important in healthcare?
The NHS and other healthcare systems around the world are under ever increasing pressure and I believe that innovation provides a way to meet these challenges in order to deliver the best care we can to patients.
How can we find out more?
Please contact me for more information.