Discover more about our members and digital health community.
Health Foundry Newsletter: April 2022
April is here, and it’s World Health Day! Click through to read this month’s community features, upcoming healthtech events, opportunities and more.
Happy April!
It's World Health Day and here at Health Foundry, we're proud to support, connect and enable our ecosystem of digital health startups and entrepreneurs to make a real difference in health and care.
This year's theme is 'Our Plant, Our Health', urging governments and the public to share stories of steps they are taking to protect the planet and their health. Read more here, including recommended actions we can all take to protect our planet and our health.
We’ve also got some great community features in this month’s newsletter, along with upcoming healthtech events, opportunities and more!
You can read our April newsletter here and subscribe to our mailing list below.
Member Feature: Michaela Coker
Click through to read the last (but not least) of our IWD member features this month on Social Prescribing Link Worker and Community Development Lead at My Community Age UK Lambeth, Michaela Coker.
To mark International Women’s Day this month, we’re featuring some of the female-lead startups and individuals in our digital health community making a difference in health and care!
Find out more about one of members, Social Prescribing Link Worker and Community Development Lead at My Community Age UK Lambeth, Michaela Coker.
Michaela has nine years of frontline experience working in Primary Care in various patient-centred roles including Reception Management and Primary Care Navigation.
Since 2019, she has been committed to social prescribing in public health working collaboratively in the voluntary, community, social enterprise and the NHS. Her vast understanding of personalised care encouraged her to lead on several initiatives that benefit patients such as the Thriving Streatham community wellbeing hub founded in October 2021.
Michaela’s passion to tackle health and social inequalities is what led to her current innovation. During the pandemic, she monitored the pressures on the social prescribing service and the lack of capacity many Link Workers had to partake in personal and professional development.
Recognising the issue, she wondered if an integrated collaboration platform could improve the service structure!
In its early development stages, the mobile app will be accessible to all Link Workers who will have 24/7 access to all the resources and support they need to feel empowered in their roles.
Words: Michaela Coker
Michaela became a member of Health Foundry in November 2021 and is a great asset to our community, making valuable connections with other members passionate about health and innovation, including Bionabu Founder Ina Burgstaller and Dr Morton Founder John Wilkes.
To find out more about Michaela's projects, don't hesitate to connect with her on here: Email, LinkedIn, Website.
Member Feature: Doctors in Distress
Click through to read one of our IWD member features this month on one of our amazing members Doctors in Distress.
To mark International Women’s Day this month, we’re featuring some of the female-lead startups and individuals in our digital health community making a difference in health and care!
Find out more about one of our amazing members Doctors in Distress; a UK Charity dedicated to providing mental wellbeing support to healthcare workers, aiming to reduce suicide rates.
This International Women’s Day, we celebrated being part of a team of women who are pioneers in their field, strong, knowledgeable, kind and compassionate. We stand alongside each other and share our knowledge and experiences.
Working with women is inspiring – our ability to solve problems whilst empathising with others. Every day we are grateful for the ability, thoughtfulness and openness in our team. There is a long way to go before we reach gender equality in the working world and we want women not to settle for less than they are worth, but today we celebrate the steps that have been taken by all the women before us. It is our hope that one day soon all women and girls realise their potential to be effective and powerful leaders and take their rightful place as equals in every space they occupy.
More than 300 NHS workers attempted suicide during the first year of the Covid pandemic. Doctors in Distress is committed to reducing the prevalence of burnout and suicide among all medical professionals in the UK.
We are. determined to reduce stigma around mental health, change behaviours and cultures in the medical profession and promote the values of good leadership. We provide safe professionally facilitated spaces for talking and listening, workshops with specialist speakers and verified statistical data to support our methodology. There is no healthcare without selfcare.
To date, Doctors in Distress has provided support to across the UK to Junior Doctors, Doctors, Nurses and Allied Health Professionals, Paramedics, Black Medics, Overseas Doctors, ITU Teams and Primary Care Clinical Directors.
Words: Doctors in Distress
We're so proud to have Doctors in Distress as part of our community. Find out more about what they do and connect with their amazing team here.
Member Feature: Lori West
Click through to read one of our IWD member features this month on the amazing Lori West, Founder and CEO of Business Brilliance.
To mark International Women’s Day this month, we’re featuring some of the female-lead startups and individuals in our digital health community making a difference in health and care!
Meet one of our amazing members Lori West; Founder and CEO of Business Brilliance.
Have you ever wondered what all the fuss about mindfulness is? Maybe you’ve tried it and decided it wasn’t for you?
As a mindfulness practitioner for 40+ years, I hear that a lot. Busy people with busy lives
keep getting busier and busier and busier until...
Presentee-ism
Workplace conflict
Imposter syndrome
Low self-esteem
Restless sleep
Burnout
Depression
Anxiety
Constant colds
IBS
Eczema and psoriasis
The list goes on.
Something’s gotta give, right? And consider that that something may just be the conversation you are having with yourself that mindfulness is not for you.
Mindfulness is for EVERYONE. In fact, I’d say it’s one of the biggest skills that’s missing from our education.
It’s not really about meditation. Sure, mindfulness is a type of meditation, but it does not require you to sit on a meditation pillow for 30 minutes chanting a mantra. It does not need you to take off your shoes and feel the wet grass between your toes.
All of those things are wonderful, but there is more to mindfulness than this. This is why a lot of people talk about mindfulness but don’t practise it. There’s a misconception that mindfulness requires time and effort that you don’t have. This is the myth I’m about to bust for you.
Mindfulness is about checking in with yourself. Using the breath, you consciously connect with your internal world to notice what’s going on for you. Think of it this way. If you only breathe in or out, you die. You need to breathe in to breathe out, and vice versa. Consciously using your breath helps you ensure your inner and outer experiences are aligned. And when they’re not, you can do something about it.
Let me share my perspective with you. While piloting a leadership development programme designed for women in STEM industries, I discovered two things:
The participants were fearful of what they would discover when they turned within to reflect
When they did reflect, it was as if they entered a foreign landscape, having no knowledge of, or language to describe what they were experiencing
Their lack of self awareness resulted in them finding themselves in a place of dissatisfaction with their careers. I realised I had to find a way to empower busy people to apply mindfulness in the workplace. I knew my methodology had to be:
Easy-to-use
Engaging
Effective
After three years of development, my methodology, I-AM-I, is being born.
What’s it all about? Well, I’ve based the methodology on HIIT principles with the purpose of helping people accomplish a specific outcome quickly and efficiently. Let’s break the acronym down.
I-AM-I stands for Intentional Applied Mindfulness Integration. Intentionality guides your will towards the accomplishment of something. Applied Mindfulness means that you actively connect with yourself to accomplish something Integration offers you the means to align your thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations, attitudes, behaviours and actions to accomplish something. In essence, it is designed to help you accomplish the best result possible.
When you learn the skill, you can apply the I-AM-I method wherever you are — in a board meeting, during a sales pitch or even at a moment of conflict with a colleague.
I-AM-I enables you to elevate workplace performance with minimal effort. It empowers you to take charge of your career. It enables you to master your mind/body connection. And, no air pods, whale music or incense is required.
Words: Lori West
Lori has been a part of the Health Foundry community since 2021. A qualified psychotherapist, coach and mindfulness practitioner for over 20 years, Lori empowers you to take charge of your career by showing you how to master your mind. Her trademarked I-AM-I methodology, based on HIIT principles, enables you to expand workplace brilliancy intentionally applying mindfulness to integrate your thoughts, emotions, sensations, behaviours and results.
Member Feature: Ina Burgstaller
Click through to read one of our IWD member features this month on the “Queen of Bionabu”.
To mark International Women’s Day this month, we’re featuring some of the female-lead startups and individuals in our digital health community making a difference in health and care!
Find out more about one of members, the “Queen of Bionabu”, Ina Burgstaller.
Healthcare entrepreneur Ina Burgstaller is affectionately know as the Queen of Bionabu by her wide network of contacts in the industry, not least those here at Health Foundry.
She is not actually the monarch of a Disney-inspired island nation but the founder of Bionabu, one of the most exciting healthcare community platforms to launch recently. Bio is derived from the Greek word for life and Nabu is the Babylonian word for wisdom. See what she did there?
A natural multitasker, balancing home life and childcare with the demands of starting a new business, Ina has created a crowd-teaming platform where project sponsors can find validated experts to support their innovative initiatives.
Our grandparents had jobs for life, our parents worked for the same company for decades. We’re averaging 4 years in any one full time position so it seems likely that our children and theirs will be freelancing with portfolio careers in the new world of work.
Which is why Ina’s company is being so successful. With over 200 registered and engaged users, a busy schedule of events, and several live projects on deck, Bionabu makes validated expertise available as-and-when-needed by the sponsors of projects such as research, clinical trials or technical development in digital health and therapeutics.
Words: Bionabu
Ina and Bionabu has been a great asset to the Health Foundry Community, offering expertise advice to Health Foundry members through monthly Clinical Trial Clinics.
Follow the link here to watch a short interview with Bionabu’s Marketing Lead Mark Walmsley and Ina Burgstaller as she marks International Women’s Day by talking about why she started her business and what's made it successful.