The healthcare start-up determined to improve the patient experience.

"Being part of Business Wales AGP has given us access to invaluable mentorship."

The way healthcare is delivered is constantly changing and improving. Now, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the way healthcare services are provided in a multitude of ways.

Concentric Health is a technology start-up transforming the way we make decisions about our health, with a radical approach to patients' experience as they move through the system. The Cardiff-based firm wants to disrupt the health sector for the better. Here Dafydd Loughran, one of Concentric's co-founders, explains what the company does, where it's going and gives some pointers to others starting out on their business journey.

He also explains how being part of the Business Wales Accelerated Growth Programme (AGP) has helped their business. The AGP provides targeted support for ambitious growing firms. The programme is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh Government.

Tell us about Concentric Health.
Decision-making in healthcare is broken. Life-changing decisions are too often made for us, not with us.

In healthcare, consent is given by patients before any treatment or surgery. The process of sharing information and documenting consent is traditionally done using paper, often on carbon-copy forms. It's a poor experience for patients and clinicians alike, and as a paper-based process is increasingly incompatible with post-COVID healthcare.

Concentric Health’s mission is to transform how decisions are made about our health – decisions informed by patient outcomes and shared by patient and clinician. Our digital consent application makes it easy to share trusted, personalised information with patients, and give consent in person or remotely, leading to informed, shared decisions. We’re a clinically-led team with technical founders and experience in scaling impactful healthtech. I stepped sideways from surgical training in 2016 and founded Concentric with Edward St John a Consultant Surgeon at the Royal Marsden, and Martyn Loughran as Chief Technical Officer.

We've had support from Business Wales AGP and our relationship manager on the programme, Andrew Beer, to launch Concentric at pace globally, and is now in use at a number of leading healthcare organisations such as Imperial College Healthcare and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Trusts, and here in Wales at Swansea Bay University Health Board.

 The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need for digital transformation in healthcare, with a particular focus on remote care pathways. Our remote consent functionality, which we developed with a Welsh Government COVID-response grant, has enabled patients and clinicians to have consent conversations regarding urgent treatment remotely. It’s meant thousands of patients have avoided risky face-to-face hospital visits prior to surgery, and is enabling organisations to streamline care pathways in order to accelerate the rectification of significantly increased waiting lists post-pandemic.

What are your proudest moments in business so far?
Having worked on the foundations for Concentric (alongside our clinical work) for many years, seeing the feedback from patients we are supporting to engage with, understand, and own decisions about their care brings us a tremendous amount of joy.

Innovating in healthcare is hard, and it's often a long road, but we're now really starting to make a difference to people's lives.

If you were starting again, what would you do differently?
Relax into how you want to run a business rather than fighting stereotypes. I’m not a classic business person, I’m a clinician at heart, I just happen to need to do some business-type things to ensure that as a group we have a positive impact on as many peoples’ lives as possible.

How has support from Business Wales AGP helped your business?
As well as a Welsh Government COVID-response grant to develop remote consent functionality, being part of Business Wales AGP has meant access to invaluable mentorship from David Rees of Izy Capital (David sadly passed away in August 2020). David’s input was invaluable in guiding us through negotiations for our international sales agreement with EMIS Health. Having access to experience such as David's meant we were able enter conversations with established firms well prepared and with confidence.

What advice and guidance would you give other businesses starting out?

● Seek advice and support - there's plenty out there. The assistance we've received from the Welsh Government through Business Wales AGP has been of significant benefit.

● Anyone can do it. We saw a challenge that no-one else was solving for us so worked out how to solve it ourselves. Requirements to succeed: Bravery to get started and the grit to persevere.

For more information on Concentric Health, visit here. 

Further information on the Business Wales Accelerated Growth Programme

Welsh businesses "falling short" on diversity says leading academic, author and entrepreneur.

Welsh tech-for-good firm Do-IT Profiler announces new global partnership set to pioneer diverse recruitment practices.

Businesses in Wales need to do more to ensure they can reap the benefits of truly diverse and inclusive teams and boards, according to world-leading neurodiversity expert and entrepreneur Professor Amanda Kirby. 

Professor Kirby, a founder of Cardiff-based tech-for-good firm Do-IT Profiler, says that despite increasing awareness of the business benefits of diversity, there remains a "reticence and a naivety" around recruiting, retaining and progressing a diverse workforce. She says this often results in "tokenistic" approaches, meaning many companies miss out on the many benefits that come with true inclusivity, including increased innovation, performance and productivity.

Professor Amanda Kirby

Her comments came as her company, Do-IT Profiler, announced a strategic partnership with global recruitment consultancy Precedent Group. The joint venture will see Do-IT Profiler's proprietary web-based tools and apps help firms improve how they identify and support talent they may otherwise miss. 

Do-IT Profiler is a computer-based accessible screening system designed with the extensive experience of Professor Kirby. She has worked in the field of neurodiversity – defined as variation in the human brain regarding sociability, learning, attention, mood and other cognitive functions - for more than 25 years. The Do-IT Profiler system takes a bio-psycho-social approach to identification and support and is used in thousands of businesses, educational establishments and public sector organisations.

The firm's partnership with Precedent Group will see the global recruitment firm rolling out Do-IT Profiler's tools as part of a holistic approach to improving diversity at senior and board level.

Professor Kirby explained:

"We are excited by the opportunity this new partnership presents to help organisations identify and support people with the right skills and talent to serve in senior and board positions, but who may face barriers for several reasons.

"Increasingly, companies are waking up to the opportunities presented by building diverse and inclusive places to work. But without the data, tools and expertise to make a meaningful change, many take tokenistic approaches which don't result in long-lasting, sustainable change. This is where we help make a real difference."

Professor Kirby, who will publish the first-ever book on neurodiversity in the workplace later this year, with Welsh dyslexic Theo Smith, has been named one of the UK's 100 most inspirational female entrepreneurs by Small Business Britain's f:Entrepreneur '# ialso100' campaign. 

She was also named one of the 20 most influential voices driving professional conversations in the UK by B2B social networking site LinkedIn in November 2020, alongside Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Virgin's Holly Branson. 

Professor Kirby's company, Do-IT Profiler, has been assisted by the Business Wales Accelerated Growth Programme (AGP) which provides targeted support for ambitious growing firms. The programme is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh Government. This support has been "instrumental" in growing the business, according to Professor Kirby:

"Support with our business strategy, financial planning and management as well as our branding and marketing strategy has helped us grow and take our products into new markets. As a result, we have grown our workforce, accessed funding and secured our first export deal to the Middle East. Being able to access this targeted support has been invaluable, and we are looking forward to exciting times ahead." 

Richard Morris of the Excelerator Consortium, which delivers the Business Wales Accelerated Growth Programme, said:

"Diversity and inclusion are increasingly areas of importance for companies of all sizes, who recognise the opportunities and benefits. It's fantastic to see a homegrown Welsh company pioneering data-led approaches in this space, and we are very supportive of the work Do-IT Profiler is doing to help companies put this at the top of their agendas and implement sustainable change."

To learn more about Do-It Profiler visit here.  

Further information on the Business Wales Accelerated Growth Programme

Recruitment firm’s ambitious growth targets after navigating a challenging 2020

“Being part of the Business Wales AGP has provided a huge amount of help and expertise for the company.”

Recruiting the right people for your business is one of the key components in making it a success. For Go2 Drivers, based in Colwyn Bay, that ethos is critical. Providing talent for the logistics sector has been its central aim since it was founded in 2011.

Here, managing director Christopher Hughes gives an overview of the company’s history and shares valuable advice for others setting out on their own entrepreneurial journey,

Tell us about Go2 Drivers
Fundamentally we’re a recruitment and employment agency, with our HQ in Colwyn Bay. We started out as Driver Hire (Wales) in 2011 – a name that’s self-explanatory, but we wanted something to reflect who we were as a company. We became GO2 Drivers in 2017, having previously traded as Driver Hire Solutions for two years, after one of our main clients continually told us we were their “Go to people” for drivers.

Since then, we’ve expanded the sectors we serve and launched two new companies: GO2 Personnel and GO2 Training. The three companies are referred to collectively as GO2 People.

Unlike national employment agencies, we have a strong understanding of the local and regional business scene. This helps us to quickly find the right people for the right roles, so our clients’ organisations can continue operating smoothly.

This local knowledge also means we’re well placed to find job seekers the roles they’re best suited to. We look beyond the CV to identify whether a candidate is a good fit for the company as we think this is just as important as skills and experience.

I head up all our operations and manage our staff. We have 10 people based in our office and more than 100 remote employees, a number which speaks for itself when you think about how we’ve grown since I founded the company. I’ve always loved leading companies and building them into successful enterprises, which I’ve always done since I started out in business in my teens.

I bought a fish and chip restaurant in 1987 for £22K when I was 19 and grew that into a business which turned over £7,000 a week, which I then expanded through purchase of an adjacent business. I sold that in 2003 for about £300,000 and went into the transport industry as a C1 lorry driver.

It was here that I spotted a niche in the market for additional driver support, and I had a real appetite to get back to being an entrepreneur. So in 2010 when the company I was employed by restructured I decided to take a redundancy offer and start Driver Hire (Wales). It seemed the ideal opportunity to get back to running a business.

In our first year, we had a turnover of £200,000. By our fourth in business we were up to more than £800,000.

We took a real hit to the business in 2015 when one of our main clients decided to restructure, which meant excluding agency requirements and going to zero hours employment contracts. This meant a potential loss of £400,000 turnover.

We had to move to bring in a business partner to look at sales, and the company name was changed to Driver Hire Solutions until it was finally changed to GO2 Drivers in 2017. By 2019 the business grew to circa £2.5m turnover with additional clients, and also the ‘lost’ client came back onboard – bringing back £500,000 in turnover with them.

In late 2019 we decided the partnership needed to end so I bought out those shares and became sole owner and director. Our 2020 turnover stands at £2.7m and with projected growth remaining unchanged, we’re set for a £3-3.25m turnover in 2021.

What are your proudest moments in business so far?
I think it’s being respected by our clients for being a quality service provider, rather than what you might call a “bum on a seat” agency. We’re valued by some of the UK’s leading companies so that means a lot to me personally, having founded the company, but I think it also helps staff understand their hard work is paying off and means we’re doing the right things.

What challenges have you faced in business?There was a point where the chemistry with my former business partner wasn’t good. And we had to work out an exit. That gave me a lot of pause for thought. It’s been a huge learning curve.

Then this year, we’ve had to deal with the pandemic. Like almost every business, it’s affected what we do. Business has remained steady, but that doesn’t mean it’s not taken a hit. Before COVID-19, growth for Go2 Drivers was on course for 50%, but that’s not likely to be around 22% now, which overall is great news during a very uncertain period. Our financial partners were amazed that the company had done so well during the pandemic months.

Go2 Personnel suffered because part of that division’s work was in tourism. But we took on two new members of staff with recruitment experience in 2020 and business now looks to be picking up again.

If you were starting again, what would you do differently?
I wouldn’t enter into a partnership again, that’s been a major learning for me, and would only change anything if I was given good advice first.

How has support from Business Wales AGP helped your business?
Being part of the Business Wales AGP has provided a huge amount of help and expertise to our business. We’ve had coaching on a wide range of business functions. It’s been so helpful for us and embedded plenty of good practice within the firm as well as ensuring we are well placed as we target new growth.

What advice and guidance would you give other businesses starting out?

• Work hard to drive business growth and never take your eye off the ball when you have built up momentum and a stable business.

• Have a clear focus on what you aim for and never allow yourself to be thrown off course by unexpected events.

• Your staff ARE your business, so treat them with respect.

• Be passionate about what you do.

• Employ management you can trust.

• Always believe – glass half full at all times!

To learn more about Go2 Drivers visit here.

Further information on the Business Wales Accelerated Growth Programme