In our latest #OurEntrepreneurs profile we meet cohort 8 Clinical Entrepreneur Majid Akram, Chief Clinical Information Officer for Primary Care.
Tell us a bit about yourself
I am the Chief Clinical Information Officer for Primary Care at Lincolnshire ICB. During my time in this role, I have led programmes to prioritise and implement digital health technologies at system level within primary, community and secondary care settings. I also engage with key stakeholders with an adaptable approach to building the case for change, by tailoring key messages to the needs of patients, commissioners, clinicians, and citizens.
Name: Majid Akram.
Occupation: Chief Clinical Information Officer for Primary Care.
Location: Lincolnshire ICB
I value research within digital health and have acted as a clinical lead sponsor for an NHS England funded research project testing the hypothesis: can we use data from wearable technologies to predict patient outcomes at an early stage so that we could intervene, to avoid unscheduled use of health services. This research has helped shape the strategy for remote care in the NHS.
Beyond work, I find joy in cycling and often participate in charitable events. These activities not only allow me to contribute to worthwhile causes but also let me appreciate the great outdoors.
Tell us about your innovation
Working within a multi-professional team, we faced a challenge when trying to establish a chronic disease pathway to optimise care for symptomatic chronic disease patients. The primary care record was burdened with excessive information, hindering its effectiveness as a workflow tool. Additionally, our lack of technology prevented us from scheduling meetings and extracting clinically relevant data. This problem limited integrated working across organisations and therefore we needed to explore the solution of a unified digital space accessible to all team members, allowing them to establish workflows for documenting and fulfilling patient care plans.
In response to this challenge, in 2021, I established my start-up company called DeepMedicine LTD, where I developed “vMDT”, a virtual Multi-disciplinary Team platform enabling clinicians to schedule integrated workflows that allow them to work collaboratively.
vMDT provides the digital infrastructure to help teams work more collaboratively with an emphasis on optimising patient care, and formulation of concise action plans with visibility of who is responsible for those actions and transparency when this has been completed by team members. There is a need to coordinate the elements within this new approach to delivering care, whilst maintaining communication with all key stakeholders including the individual patient that is navigating this MDT process. This is why I have designed a virtual MDT (vMDT) platform with inbuilt decision support tools to ensure this process is streamlined and shaped around the end users (both clinicians and patients’).
Virtual MDT meetings allow clinical teams (from hospital, community, and primary care) to discuss patients’ cases and create rapid action plans. This is an ideal approach to ensuring that patient’s receive care promptly with all the necessary professionals able to discuss an individual patients’ case together as a team. Our proof of concept using vMDT has demonstrated improved productivity that provides better value for money for the health service and is being used within Lincolnshire ICB for Heart Failure, Community Neighbourhood, and Care Home MDTs since 2021.
Why did you apply to join the programme, and what are you most looking forward to?
As a Clinical Entrepreneur it is all too easy to fall into the imposter syndrome, where you continually question whether your innovation is ready for the market. In addition, having been based in a semi-rural county (Lincolnshire) it seemed that all the exciting entrepreneurial work was happening in the big cities. It was a struggle to find individuals with an entrepreneurial mindset who understood why I was embarking on this journey to develop vMDT. As a practising clinician and system leader I was often reminded about perceived conflicts, and this meant I was having to justify my integrity as opposed to highlighting the benefits of vMDT to the NHS and patients at large.
I viewed case studies from previous CEP cohorts and related to the stories that founders of various companies had shared and decided to apply.
As I am edging towards the phase of customer creation, I hope the CEP can support me to understand how I could monetise the platform to enable me to scale the vMDT offer within the NHS marketplace. I hope to gain insights and develop networks within the programme to enable me to execute this.
What are your ambitions for the next year?
My ambition for the next year is to understand the market space within the NHS and how to develop contracts within Integrated Care Systems, construct a pricing model, explore investment opportunities to scale vMDT and build a team to help scale up the business model.
Why do you think innovation is important in healthcare?
Change is continuous and the best solutions to healthcare challenges will be born out of experiences from patients as service users or from those delivering care. Innovation is key to ensuring that we are able to provide the predictive, preventative, personalised and participatory care required to future proof our healthcare models.
How can we find out more?
Please visit our website or watch the NHS Midlands video for more information.