A webinar for anyone who has been frustrated as a professional or patient in a healthcare setting.

Randeep will take us through an overview of how to take the first step towards getting your problem fixed. Explaining what's wrong to the people who might have the money, equipment, or expertise to help. 

This isn't about pitching a shiny solution to attract investors. 

It's about taking the first step to getting the right people on-side to work on what really matters.

Expert: Randeep Sidhu, Non Executive Director, NHS

Transcription:

Welcome to the first  event in the whole of the BMJ Future Health series. And we're starting with a webinar. My name's Helen Serana. I'm one of the editors at  BMJx. And we're really delighted that so many people have joined us for this webinar. And I'm gonna start by just taking you through a little bit of what BMJx 

So we're going to have an introduction to BMJ Future Health from me, an introduction to this webinar series, and then I'm going to be handing over to Randeep Sidhu for the main part of the webinar, which is where the fun starts. And after that, hopefully you'll be inspired to contribute to our core problems. 

So about BMJ Future Health, we are looking at healthcare innovation.  for a more efficient future, a more equitable future, a more sustainable future and for our people. And by that we mean the people working in healthcare and obviously every single person affected by healthcare as well. So what we're really keen to do with BMJ Future Health is  start the conversations around those topics front and center. 

What we want to do is bridge the gaps between the problems we face and the solutions we create. Obviously, many of you may be deeply embedded in the tech world and fully understand how the marketplace of solutions work, but we think there's a real place for those people who work at the front line of healthcare being able to be involved in those conversations.

We really do believe innovation is for everyone and we believe innovation happens and is capitalised through shared experience or impact. We want to focus on real problems, not perceived problems or commercially lucrative problems. And we want to learn and connect as a community. We think that's the best way to do it. 

So how are we going to do it? There are four streams to all of the BMJ Future Health content going forward. Learning will be about gaining skills and capabilities. Develop will be about generating new ideas, processes, and pathways. And learning from each, learning from experiences. Discover will be, really leading  thinking in this area, new ideas, leaders in the space, hearing about the most exciting advancements in the research going on, really thinking about the future.

But most importantly, we're going to do it by connecting the right people. And we think that  Of the people on this call, hopefully you'll be connecting with each other in the chat as we go along. So, and with us here at BMJ, but also with our speakers in whichever webinar you're on or whichever part of the event you're on.

So that connection is really important to us.  So, as I said, we really think that, problems, problems are a problem. So often we hear about great solutions, but actually.  when we're delivering healthcare or experiencing healthcare ourselves, we can see problems that aren't being solved. And so we thought we'd start this with a session that explains  to you,  hopefully helps you explain what needs fixing actually to the people who can help you fix it.

And so we're really delighted to welcome Randeep Sidhu. He's an experienced chief product officer in AI and health tech. He's an executive, non exec director on, for the NHS.  Business Services Authority and Randy over to you. 

Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here. I'm excited to see all of the people on this call. Mine's Randy. I'll kind of introduce myself properly in a second.

So pitching the problem. I'm here to talk about explaining what needs to be fixed to the people who can help you fix it.  What am I here to talk about?  I'm going to do a quick poll first, because what I'd love to know is why are people are here and what stage you're at.

So I would love if you were able to kind of. answer, it's not scientific, just to give me a sense of What's going on in the room? I'll leave it open for a few minutes so I can see people replying and hopefully, once we've done it,  we can share it with the room so the room understands where we're all at. 

Okay, so Randy, I've got it on my screen and I'll just read out the answers so far. So 63 percent of the people here are here to learn and increase their general knowledge. We've got 6 percent are intrigued, 8 percent are confused and 16 percent are stuck on a current idea and need help and support. And then the mysterious 6%.

Perfect. 

So essentially two thirds of people are here just to learn and increase general knowledge, not necessarily for another reason. Which is great. So  if I go back, I think I can just share the results.  So I share the results. You'll see it for 30 seconds, about five seconds. And I'll ask the second question, which is what stage you're at, which might be answered already.

So that's useful.  And then I can do this.  So  what stage are you at in terms of your ideas? 

Okay, people responding quite quickly.  Interesting.  Now,  this is surprising, actually. So as I share it at the end, I'll give it another ten seconds. 10 seconds just for people to reply because what we're seeing here is about 40 percent of people are just exploring but lots of people, half of the people actually have an initial idea or are already building. So I would say a good 28 percent of people are building an idea already. So this will hopefully be more practical for you all.  So thank you.  What I'll do now is kick off.

So what's this session's focus?  You understand there's an opportunity for doing things better,  but there's an issue.  This talk will focus on what happens when you try describing it, but no one gets it.  What do different teams in technology do?  And how do you start getting something built? 

This is the pitch.  What do people need to know about your idea? Obviously, it's not a serious solution. It might just be a problem at this stage. So it will cover, as I said, how to explain your problem to a non medic,  how to get either tech or product or advisory support for this problem,  and what to try and validate to refine the idea. 

I will say  these are the areas we'll cover people in tech  thing. We're calling the problem pitch not the solution pitch Validation  some practical tips and then hopefully next steps. So this should take about 40 minutes 30 to 40 minutes We'll have some time for q a hopefully  so I haven't introduced myself properly.

So I'm Randeep.  I started my life in strategy consulting. So doing lots of consulting for big companies, solving knotty problems. I was also always on the innovation side,  but I also have some charity and board experience. So I'm currently a non exec director, which means I'm on the board of something called the NHS business services.

You'll know us because we pay your payroll if you work in the NHS. So we pay one in 10 of the UK workforce. We run that horrible, EHR app that you have to use to kind of look at your payroll, but that's slowly improving.  I was previously, on the board of Terence Higgins Trust, sexual health HIV charity, and I helped set teach first up.

So I started my career as a teacher, but in terms of the reason I'm speaking to you is health tech. I built the NHS COVID 19 app. I worked at companies previously like Babylon and Bupa, where I was a product director and worked in senior product roles, and I've advised people at the Alan Turing Institute.

Who are, you know, the lead body for AI in the UK. Talking of the NHS app for those people who aren't in the UK, this was a thing during COVID that was released by the Department of Health and NHS to tell you if you're exposed to COVID and help notify you to isolate. Now, it got a mixed set of Press, but what was interesting in this product that I built, which was only in six weeks.

So that was in June, 2020, I was parachuted into government to build that.  There is a talk, a separate talk, just about this app. If those people are interested in finding that, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. And it's actually posted and pinned at the top of my LinkedIn board. But to briefly explain, we used AI to help Determine and detect outbreaks weeks before they were going to happen. 

And  we were published in nature that proved the app worked and saved.  At least a million infections and 10, 000 lives, but that was only looking at the first direct impact of infections. It didn't  demonstrate how many people were then, those chains of infections were stopped. Another metric we use is we halved the number of people who were in hospital. 

So, back to the talk today.  People in tech is where I'll start,  but I'll give you one hygiene.  This is a huge topic.  I'm not going to achieve this in even half an hour. So this will take longer and we'll come to the next steps about how we can continue this journey of learning how to pitch a problem. So it's not super technical, but also what I'm showing you is more of a treasure.

I wouldn't take it as being something that's gospel. I would not look at it as a recipe for this is how it has to be done.  It's not an exact blueprint. Think of this as a way of.  Working out what you haven't been considering and how you add it into the pitch that you might be thinking of building. Do not use this as a recipe that you have to tick every single box in every single way.

If you do, you'll have a good pitch, I'm sure. But don't force what you're doing to fit this if it doesn't fit.  Each situation is different. Consider the challenge I'm talking about. Take what you need because not all of it's applicable.  So, warnings out of the way.  People in the technology space. So some of you might be like, Okay, Randy, I don't quite know what you do in this space  But what I'll say is there's three specialist areas that most people need to understand technology product and design  There's some other terms for these titles.

I'll tell you later, but in essence  Those are three distinct specialities, and if you hear someone talking about a squad, a squad is typically a group of people, a team, where all of these people come together. A bit like if you're in surgery, you'll have a surgeon, an anaesthetist, and maybe a support nurse.

They come together to achieve a thing, that's what a squad is. So what is tech?  These are the terms that you might often hear for tech people. Programmers,  coders, CTOs.  Product. Usually they call themselves product, they might call themselves growth or growth hacking. They're usually the strategic people who do kind of the minimal viable product or product strategy.

And finally design, who can be researchers, designers, UI, which is user interface, UX, which is user experience.  How do you understand the differences between what these groups do?  I'll give you an incredibly bad analogy, but it's a useful analogy.  The reason I say it's bad is because it could put one team above another and make it feel like one of the teams who are in a different area is doing it.

You know, it might feel insulted, I hope, but I hope not.  So let's think about building a house.  When you're building a house,  you have architects, you have builders, you have interior designers.  This is a useful model for thinking about building an app or building a service.  Product is there to understand the users.

So in essence, think about them as the architects. So they understand what the user needs. How big should the bedroom be? Do you need a garage?  Do you think about, you know, unmet needs? So you're now a married couple. Will you have a child in the future? Maybe I should think about building a bedroom for your child.

So not just what you're saying today, but what you might be thinking about for tomorrow.  And then we monitor the metrics. We go, okay, you said you wanted a garage. Are you using the garage? Maybe we should redeploy that garage and use it for a different space.  And we end up writing the specs. So the architects write the specs that are given to the builders. 

Product write down specs and requirement documents that are given to engineers. And the program is to build  and I'll highlight there's a confusion here because there's also a term an actual title in the Engineering space called a technical architect  not confusing the both building a house. You have an architect That's what I think product could be described as  Of course, different product managers have different flavours in the same way that different architects do.

Some architects are super technical understanding, you know, where the steel girders go. They're more technical. Some architects specialize in kitchens.  We have the same kind of specializing in products. Not every product person is the same. So think about the room you're trying to build and the kind of product person that can help you do that. 

Then we come to engineering.  The builders they're the people that actually build the house an architect essentially has a nice diagram and a piece of paper Without the builders the house does not exist  They advise what is the best technical way to build it. I might want a steel girder somewhere, but the architect says, or the builder says, can't be there.

So we have to listen to them because they're the experts in building. And like I said,  they also care about the user. They're not just bricklayers who just do what they're told. They may also say, like a good builder, you shouldn't put that thing there. It's more efficient if you do it somewhere else. So there's often a dialogue between product and engineering building.

Because as much as we set the user problem, the engineers might say, ah, there might be a better way of doing this. There might be a simpler or faster way of doing this.  And I'll break down the key roles of engineering. These are terms you might hear, and this is an analogy that's useful to think of.  So front end, you hear a front end engineer, they're the painters and decorators.

So the building exists, and they do the, you know, the paint job. The floors, the tiling, the paint. They make it look nice.  Backend is people who build the structure. They put the bricks in place, they build the infrastructure, the databases, they make the house stand.  Fullstack is someone who can do both. They can build the, put the bricks down and paint and decorate.

And DevOps. That's something which some of you may come across and they basically make sure the building is plumbed and lay the foundations. Don't worry too much about those roles. I only mention it as if, if you're very new to the area, you might not know those terms.  So you've got product,  you've got engineering. 

What about design  design? And this is where the analogy falls over because it can really kind of discredit the design field. They're interior design advisors. Of course, they're more than that. But the way to think about them is they're people who understand the look, the feel and the flow of the space you're creating.

They may say that you've got too many doors in this space. No one's going to understand what the light switches are. The design has to look like this to be harmonious. So they conduct user research. They speak to customers. They understand some of those unmet needs. So as much as  product might be strategizing about what's important.

Often the research comes from design saying there's this problem that users are facing and product will try and work out how to solve it.  They build the actual technical design documents and they visualize and create mock ups. Not always working mock ups, but a kind of flat mock up that you can get it to the user to comment on. 

Their roles are often called user interface,  user experience. Researchers.  So those are the three key areas.  What do those three different teams talk, care about? So you're going to think about now, maybe I need a product person, maybe I need a design person,  but when you're speaking to them, when you're pitching to them about a problem, what do they care about? 

And this is where there is something quite easy.  They've got different biases and flavours, but in essence, they all want the same thing.  They want an interesting problem that has big impact. If there's an interesting problem that's a rounding error or they don't think it's important, they're less inclined to help or contribute. 

If it's something that's really key, because healthcare is so vital for everyone, what do users want and how is this problem  going to try and help users get more about what they want?  I would, however, with that bias  view, I told you about the architect, the builder, and the interior designer,  use those insights to maybe change the flavour of what you're saying.

You can pitch slightly differently to a builder. So a developer might care about a really interesting technical solution that hasn't been done before that could scale. So  yeah, you can build this thing for me in  hepatitis, but also it also worked for diabetes and something else. Cause my problem is quite universal for these sectors.

That's a way of thinking about the engineering being good  Of course the design and the user will be a knotty problem that hasn't been solved before and there's a really intuitive way of fixing And for product obviously it's a strategy. It's how would this be successful and how could this scale 

finance? I mentioned this just to ignore it.  A lot of people are worried about finance  I would not worry about it. Now if you're still at an early stage build a thing That's good build a concept that works finance will come later. So you have VCs venture capital PE Angel seeds investors, what are they? 

They're the bank. They're the bank to have a mortgage on your house. In essence,  if you don't do what they want, they'll repossess your house.  They invest, they take apart the business. For now, don't worry about them. This is much more about making sure you can get the support for your problem.  So then where do you fit?

So this is a room of medics and experts.  You're not an architect. You're not a builder. Maybe you're not an interior designer. You might have a bit of experience at one of those. So you feel like you can put your hand in it.  But who are you in this world?  The way I think about this is  you are the owner of the house.

You're the customer  You know the house you need  You need the expert opinions of the people around you to make sure you build the right house  You might think you need a two bed house.  Speak to a product person or the architect who says you might be having a kid soon. Do you really think about making that a third bedroom? 

How to make the garage a more flexible space? Things like that. So that's the way to think about yourselves. You are setting the problem because you're living in the house.  And this is a foundation of this problem pitch. This is what the rest of the presentation will be about.  You are the medical insight. 

Me and my team can build an app, but I need to understand the problem I'm fixing, not just to fix it for you, but also to push you and make sure you're fixing the right problem. There might be things that you're missing that I can understand because of my separate biases.  This intro is the backbone of any future pitch deck.

Don't think that this is something that can come later doing it now Is important because without having a foundation you're not going to be able to grow  but don't worry It's not set in concrete. Of course, it's going to change and it will evolve and it should evolve with this input But unless you start somewhere you're not getting anywhere  because you need that clear starting point. 

So brilliant  We've got to the different teams Inside the tech product design space  Now, how do you pitch your problem? 

I'm going to pause and just check there's no questions But I'm sure the team will shout if there's any questions. Okay, let's keep going 

I give you another big health warning Some people might be pitching or even building the idea  and they might think it's the best solution in the world  A big caveat is Walking in with too much confidence in the early stage can be quite dangerous.  I have advised and sat on lots of early stage start-up boards.

You name an early stage start-up, I've probably been involved in them.  And this is something I see quite often. You might not have the right idea to start with. And that might be your fix on a solution.  Don't fall in love with the current solution you think the problem is important. You can describe the problem Don't fixate on this being the only way to solve it because during the process of working with these teams You might come up with a better idea  So I see this a lot and I have the same issue myself.

I fall over by going. This is the perfect solution It's gonna work  But it may not  and the challenge is it could turn off anyone you're pitching to if it's already a done deal What can they contribute? Why would they bother helping? They're like, well, this guy already knows this person already has an idea And they may actually think it's the wrong idea But if you're so set in your ways, they won't be comfortable in challenging you  and I would highlight You are not the typical user You are here in a talk about digital health  that in itself in essence makes you Atypical for most people who'll be using or building a kind of product So just remember your own biases of the kind of person that you are. 

Okay Let's get to the meat and potatoes  the structure of a basic pitch.  There's five areas I'm going to cover  Each of which is dense  I was toying with how to remove content, but I thought, because there's such a broad range of people in this room, I will keep all the content in. The way to understand the next ten minutes is,  does this challenge the way I was thinking about doing this?

And if it does, maybe I should take a snippet or a nugget of this,  and use it when I'm talking.  The structure of any basic pitch is these five areas.  Who I am.  And by I, I mean you, as one of the medical experts.  What is it like today for me?  Why can the future be better?  Why is this going to be successful  and how I need your help? 

Now I've done a kind of concept of say 15 minutes. This is how I break up the time If you had an hour break it up differently But I think everyone should have nailed a 10 to 15 minute pitch of what your problem is Because that's pretty much most time you'll have with someone at a dinner party running into an event networking.

If it takes longer than this, you are failing somewhere. Of course, each one of those areas can go deeper, but you should really try and get a simple pitch that would explain this.  As I said, treasure map, not blueprint.  So, section one.  Who I am, you're gonna come up to me and talk to me about who you are, what am I as a product or tech or engineering person thinking. 

So you turn up at a networking event and start speaking to me.  My first question is, are you credible?  Do you actually know what you're talking about? So you, you, I don't know you who you are, I don't know you from Adam.  So do you know your subject? Do I trust you and is there something about you that I want to help?

And that literally could just be personal. How warm you are, how interested you are, how you're engaging with me as a human.  That's what I'm thinking is someone you're pitching to.  So how do you demonstrate these things?  This will be the format of the next five areas.  What I'm thinking and then how you can address that. 

So if you have roughly two minutes for who I am,  who are you?  I would start with your life story.  That's not a saga. When I say life story, I need you to create a mental model of who you are.  I'm an anaesthetist that started my life in this area, dealing with inequality in these communities.  This is the reason I'm doing this job. 

And why I care. I'm an anaesthetist who's focused on the Brown community for this, this, this, or I care about this problem. I have to have a quick mental model of who you are for me to make sense of you. I'm not an expert. So if your little introduction helps me frame where you are  and why you're doing what you're doing, it helps me because I'm not spending a whole time going, why does this person care about this thing? 

You're, you're dead from the start. You need to help frame who you are  to then explain to a non medic  why you're credible. And that credibility is important.  Often medics talk in very medical language, and that's understandable. You'll talk about your experience, you'll talk about what you've done, but it might be quite alien to someone who's a non medic.

So simplify it.  Make it clear that in a language that I would understand what you're talking about. They call it often the grandmother test. What will you describe about your job to your grandmother? And that's probably the pitch you should give to me.  If you have an award or a success, contextualize it.

I don't know what the X prize is. If you say it was the top prize, only 1 percent of it, of people got, then that's a, Oh, credibility. Don't just assume I know all your accolades  and make sure what you're showing to me is relevant. Don't kill me with every single credential you have. because ultimately it's overwhelming.

Do not overwhelm me with your life story or your life credentials. Show me what's relevant because if you do too much it reduces your credibility.  And be clear when you're talking there's a difference between frustration and passion.  The same problem can be so,  can be tackled and described in both ways.

So just remember when you're describing your life  Show passion not frustration because frustration can turn people off  because ultimately if you're too frustrated it makes me question Do we care about the same thing? Is this something I care about clock fixing because it just seems like you're quite angry  So just that's how I think about who you are. 

So now I know who you are basic two minutes simple  What's your life like?  I'm not a medic. I have no context of the life of a medic. I don't understand the challenges, specifically if it gets very granular, involving systems that I might not even understand that the NHS and this service and something else, all of that is invisible and opaque to me. 

So you have to let me into your world.  Because at this point, I'm like, okay, you're credible.  Why should I be caring about this? Why should I listen?  Because you need to make me understand that your job is important.  Because if you just seem frustrated. And I don't understand your job. I'm like, well, everyone's job's hard.

Why is this any different? Why should I devote my energy to helping you make your admin tasks easier?  So a way to get over that, why should I even listen to you describing your problem  is to help describe what your life is like today  to describe your day.  But not as a saga.  The key thing here is to think about  if you do a job, that's understandable.

When I was a teacher, everyone knows what a teacher is, but what they don't always understand is how much time is spent outside of a classroom. They think as soon as you walk out of a classroom, you cease to exist.  And then when you describe planning and they're like, Oh, okay. You have to plan a lesson marking.

Oh, okay. That could be quite tedious, but some of the stuff you'll do as a doctor or a medic.  will be invisible to people. They'll go, as soon as you leave the room, you'll, you disappear.  So give a sense of the percentage of your time that's spent doing something  and help address the misconception. There is probably a likely misconception you hear all the time.

Oh, an anaesthetist spends 80 percent of the day mixing formulations and speaking to patients. Oh, I thought they just did an injection and walked off and had a cup of tea.  No, no, those formulations are what makes it really hard, because every person is different. Oh, I didn't realize that. That's something I didn't know.

Because then it will stick in the person's brain. They'll know who you are and your credibility, and they'll have a sense of who,  what your daily challenges might be.  But once again, not a saga. I don't care about your whole diary. I care about the stuff that's relevant to this problem.  This also leads to thinking about your value.

So of course you have value. Of course you're helping people. But helping to explain that to someone else can be harder. So there might be metrics that you care about that are less relevant to externals. Like how many people do you help? How many lives do you save? How many minutes do you stop? How much pain do you alleviate?

It could even be how much money you save. You doing x stops spending twice the amount five months down the Down the, you know,  the way  and this also then leads to potentially the reason that your solution is going to be helpful or the reason this problem is important. 

Because also if you disappeared, what would that mean?  That's an extreme way of thinking about it. But there's also a kind of an angle of, well, if I wasn't here, this is what would have happened. Well, this will happen before my role was existing  and then describe your frustration.  What's the pain that you're feeling?

How big is that impact and why do current solutions not work?  One of the biggest challenges here is you describe this problem. You're like, oh my god I never knew that this is what happened to anaesthetist or this is what happened to dieticians You get to the end. They're like, oh my god. I need to fix a problem.

The first thing I do is Go and call my mate who's a doctor. Oh my god. I spoke to a dietitian They described this horrible problem and they go. Oh, there's already an app the NHS used for that That's a redundant problem. And then I walk away thinking I was really excited by trying to help this person  But they're a bit of an idiot because actually there's already a solution there and they hadn't they didn't even realize it was a solution So this is a waste of my time  if you know, there's a solution being used Address it and acknowledge why it's not good enough. 

That's a really powerful way of kind of forewarning anything that might be causing problems You 

So that's just  credibility  and what it's like today.  This is when you start painting a picture of what it could be if this problem could be solved.  So you've hopefully set up a sense of a problem,  but then you need to try and describe what  a solution could be.  This is where it gets a bit meatier because you want to try and tease the possible without locking in on a certain solution. 

Because at this point  I need you to make it come to life for me. You're the expert.  What could it be? What could this unknowable future be that I don't even understand?  And I care about, am I excited? And can I actually contribute? If it's so  strange and different, and none of my skills can be helpful, I'm like, that's amazing. 

I'm not the person that can even help contribute to this. 

I've spotted a question which I'll come to afterwards. Good question from the anonymous attendee.  What I will say is, this is a way that you can talk about  the way I've often spoke, thought about this is in that movie trailer. If you think about those old movies where, like, in a world where  doctors spent 50 minutes doing patient records, Imagine what would happen if those doctors were liberated and could spend 50 more minutes with every patient, which would alleviate the NHS So think about that kind of way of pitching.

But ultimately, I need to feel like I understand and I'm excited about what you're talking about.  So it does help to have a skeleton idea, knowing that it's not the final solution, but give a shape of what you're talking about. Because I'm like, okay, there's a problem.  I've heard you describe the problem.

Oh, you think it can be an app that could be on every doctor's phone.  Oh, I can build apps. I think I could probably build something on every doctor's phone or it's probably a website or it might be something in between but Don't lock it down so much that I don't understand But help me frame it in my world because now you're coming into the space that I occupy And helping to kind of have a rough sense of what I can do makes me go.

Oh, no, I can do that Oh, yeah, it's not for you. I I can start thinking of how I can do that  try and describe where it fits and what it does to help you, not what it is. So, it's an app with 15 buttons that do this and this. No, it's a service, maybe an app, but there's a button. When I click it, it automatically generates a prescription. 

It's a thing that I can see the X ray on immediately without having to wait for someone else to bring it.  It's an iPad  thing so I can show the patient what their scans are without having to do X, Y, and Z.  It's that that helps me understand. Cause as you're describing it, I might go, Oh, you don't need an app.

You needed this. I see how I can solve this with you and be very dangerous with magical buzzwords and tech, particularly the words AI or saying it's going to be an app or saying it's going to be magic. AI is bandied around like it is. You know, unicorn fluff, it's not going to help. And someone who's an expert  will absolutely be switched off by it. And it could even de legitimize the whole thing.

If, and I've heard this many, many times, people think that AI is just a magical wand that can just do everything, be realistic and understand the place that the person you're speaking to is coming from, so definitely ask them for support, but say,  And if you're going to use those terms or you think it's important, do some reading before.

Think about the potential of what it can do before you start pitching it as a solution.  Because don't assume everything is possible. You can pitch the problem and you can brainstorm with them the solution, but don't assume it can be an app with Gen AI that's plugged into an iPhone.  I may be wrong, and this is why I'm talking with you.

Make them part of the solution.  Because that future that you're painting, you do have to demonstrate in an optimistic way how much this would help, how many hours would be saved, how much money, how many lives. Try and get a sense of that pitch  and what else you could do if that was gone. X being solved means Y would be better. 

And I know most people think in that way, but it's really worth highlighting. 

Now, I think I'll address that question that someone did at this point. So the question is, what if the government I'm talking about isn't a priority to the government? The problem I'm talking about isn't a priority, you know, nowadays people would listen to you, but some of the government and population cares about as well. 

I understand. And I understand the challenge.  So while I was at Babylon, I built the Rwandan healthcare practice. That was something which was a nice PR opportunity, but wasn't necessarily  a massive focus of the business.  Now, we built it. We built tech and deployed technology out in Rwanda. This was a private business work in the Rwandan government.

But the thing we had to do there is find the mix of  pitching one way of that story to the engineers and the product people and a different pitch to the funders, the VCs.  Because if the bank to have a mortgage to the house,  they care that you're going to keep paying the bills and then maybe you'll grow.

So I completely understand your challenge, but that's where someone who works in product should be able to help you with thinking about the strategy of how this isn't just your problem, how this problem, if it was built, could then be applied to different sectors or maybe in the private sector. So you're building something that helps your problem, but can then scale to other areas.

As an aside, I'll mention there was an LGBT start-up called Lavender that I was working with. They were doing PREP delivery online, e.g. Being able to video call a doctor and get PREP, which is an anti HIV medication, in the post. The model there was they would start with PREP and essentially it was a doctor consultation, a video call, a blood test, a follow up consultation, and prescription.

But that model would then be able to be used Not just for PREP, but for multiple other pathways. So yes, it solved an immediate problem within the sexual health HIV sector, but that model could then be lifted and shifted and used for menopause support, pregnancy, testosterone, hormones for our trans friends. 

It's about thinking about the scale, which maybe a product person can help you do. But I completely understand the frustration. If your problem isn't important, you might need to think of a different way of building a solution that can make more people care.  So I'll just address that there, about why the future can be better. 

And I'll pause for a second, just to catch my breath,  and say why this will be successful.  When we get to the fourth stage of the pitch, I want reassurance.  I'm hearing this thing, this sunny future,  but is this worth me spending my time on? Because ultimately,  the other people want this, and will I be embarrassed for spending my time doing this? 

The example of by telling my friend, Oh, I've got this great solution for, and he's, you know, for dieticians, my friend says, you're an idiot. There's already a solution here.  That's what I'm trying to avoid the embarrassment for myself.  So you need to address it directly.  and think about adoption. And by adoption, I mean, who's going to use it, why are they going to use it, and why is it better than something else? 

In the private sector, they also care about how it's going to be paid for. But I would consider that if you think there's money being spent on a solution, sometimes it's, well, we're spending 10 million a year on this random piece of software, which is rubbish. We could do this for two, if you know that. 

Evidence is very important.  Any data that supports why this is a good idea is useful. And I'll come to that in the next section.  And finally, competitive advantage.  Why will someone else not just be able to copy what I've done?  It sounds simple, but if it's as simple as a simple website,  someone else can come tomorrow and do it.

That makes me less inclined in building it, because all I could do is build a product, and then someone copies us.  I know it may not be at the front of your mind, but it's worth considering. Why is what your, why is your problem  unique? And why do you think any solution you build will be different from others? 

And the fifth section  is what I need from you. So you're pitching to me as someone who's a product expert. What I'm thinking about is how big is my investment? And am I going to be, is, are you going to become a headache?  If I say yes, what does that mean? I'm saying yes to  what am I signing up to? And ultimately, how annoying are you going to be?

If you're going to be on my case every week, this is not something I want. I'm not, I'm likely not being paid for this. I'm likely doing this out of the goodness of my heart or from some future equity and some future thing that may not exist.  So how annoying will you be?  So what I need from you is a sense of the time impact How regularly are you going to message me?

And how long is each chat?  Then the commitment.  As soon as I do this, am I trapped into being in this forever? Are you going to be talking about me publicly?  And do I have a point to get out and release?  And focus. Am I going to have to do all the work and thinking because you've just got this notional problem and I'm going to be stuck in a box trying to fix it without you?

Or am I going to have to fight you because you've got such a strong idea of your solution that you're not going to be malleable to what I'm saying?  And ultimately, is there a clear question that I can help you answer?  So, this is the structure of the basic pitch,  the next two sections are much faster,  so I will move on  to validation. 

This is all about reassuring me that I'm not a fool,  and it's actually quite straightforward.  It can be varied, it doesn't have to be exhaustive, but please do it.  And it could just be basic hard data that you've got from research, or numbers about money being spent in the sector, or money being spent for competitors. 

If it's a private company looking at their reports, looking at their annual reports, BMJ publishes data, lots of other people do, get data as much as you can. Charities and lobby groups often have that as well.  Your own research  isn't absolute, but can be useful to show that you actually cared enough to have spoken to.

people you work with,  data from your department, some desk research, but just make sure it's relevant.  And finally, a really powerful area is thinking about adjacencies. So let's say you're thinking about  blood glucose monitoring. You might say, Oh, the fitness industry, they do this and it costs X and gives them Y.

My thing will be similar.  So think about a direction of travel. So it might just be  cars all now in Uber, what would the doctor version of Uber be? So there's a way that you can bring other ideas in and other research without it being completely related to medical. Cause you see the direction of travel of the rest of the world. 

A valid trend can be applied to healthcare, but remember that it has to be valid. 

And I'll finish with six practical tips that I found over time. 

You have to be sticky. So when you're pitching to someone, they may not be convinced in the first conversation  and they may want to come back and speak to you. So make sure you give something insightful that will be memorable.  Don't just give a homework pitch with lots of text. They will read faster than you speak. 

I mentioned earlier the grandmother test of how to make sure that what you present is quick and understandable. Simple is good for everyone, because ultimately, if someone doesn't understand, they will never tell you. They lie. People are arrogant, people are confident, they will never tell you if they don't understand what you're saying, so they will just ignore it. 

And that's where it comes to avoiding jargon.  A good rule of thumb is think about physical analogies. The analogy of building a house. It's easy, it's physical, you can picture it.  That's the way to describe anything that's quite  esoteric.  And ultimately, don't corner the person you're speaking to.  Give them a get out, don't do a hard sell.

I mean, it sounds so obvious, but I have so many doctors hard sell at me, which makes me just switch off and walk away and not want to help at all.  So, with that,  I will finish by saying, there are going to be some next steps.  which I will come to in a second.  This recording is online.  I will be speaking at the BMJ Future Health event, and there's a pitch workshop at the BMJ. 

So I'm just going to do a quick feedback poll and then hand back to Helen, but I would love,  if I can do where the poll is,  I think someone might have to do the poll because I've lost it. 

Perfect.  So I would love you just to take a minute to  talk about practicality in information  and then any direct feedback of what was good or bad. And as you're doing that,  I will say, please do come to the BMJ Future Conference and reach out on LinkedIn.  And I'll hand back to Helen. While that poll is going on. 

Yeah, thank you so much, Randeep. That was really, really great. I think towards the end we got some sort of good advice for life as well as some good advice for how to explain what our problems are in, healthcare. So  thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. I'm just gonna give you a few more minutes to fill in that poll and we'll feed back  any results to you afterwards and I'm going to share my screen now,  hopefully, and with a bit more detail about the, pitching the call for problems we have.

Now, if you're familiar with, medical conferences, we often do a call for abstracts, which is people present their ideas. And what we thought was here is to, oh, Rhonda, can you stop sharing? Oh, I'm staring at brilliant.  

We've got a call for problems.

We want people to submit as if they were submitting an abstract or conference, but, we will be presenting it at the event itself. 

We've got a Google form, which is where we're going to present it. We're asking you to submit and the,  the result of you submitting will be that by the end of August is that we'll get our panel of experts, our expert advisory board you can look at on the BMJ Future Health website.

They'll be the people assessing the different problems, according to how important they are, how fun they'd be to fix, all those sorts of  questions. But we really do want to use this as an opportunity to, for you to bring forward what, what, what the issues really are at the front line. And then, some of the problems will be selected to participate in a workshop where you'll get to develop them further, again, with more experts.

And again, do look at our advisory board because they'll, they'll be Or be participating in this process. So you'll be able to get hands on some really great expertise, but also will be inviting as many as we can to take part in our problems Expo at the BMJ Future Health event in November.  And the idea is that is rather than how.

A, marketplace of products that you don't really want to buy and you don't want to really want to be talked out about. We have an opportunity for the community to come together and do exactly what Randeep's been talking about, presenting your problems well in a way that people can understand, but also coming back to each other with solutions.

Like, we're already doing this over here, this has worked, this hasn't, we'd love to participate, we'd love to join you, and we think we could work really well together. So,  the idea is that you can, submit your problems from now, the closing date for submission is August the 31st,  and, people will be in, will be in touch with people early in October with feedback and an invitation for those who we want to participate in the event itself.

But it would be remiss of me to say that you can't. You couldn't, you, you can register now to attend the event even if you, even if you don't wanna come with a problem, particularly, you can register now to join us in November and we'd to see as many of you there as possible  and whether or not you'll be there in November. 

We've got a series of webinars coming up. They're about fortnightly, up until November, but keep an eye on the website for details. The next one is the 15th of May, which is about how to foster inclusivity and collaboration with Matthew Kex.  So we'd be delighted if you can join us for that. But again, keep an eye on the BMJ  Up the details, how to pitch your problem, and the event in November, which we're really excited about.

So a big thank you to the team here at BMJ. A big thank you for talking to us today. And a big thank you everyone behind BMJ Future Health. And thank you for attending and we hope to see you again on one of these webinars or at the event itself.