October 5th 2017: Zesty has appointed Andy Williams as a Board Advisor. Andy was CEO of NHS Digital, formerly HSCIC from January 2014 until March 2017. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt commented on Williams 3 year tenure of NHS Digital saying “Andy had a tireless commitment to improving the quality of health and social care for patients through the power of data and technology during his tenure. He has made a decisive contribution to setting the NHS on course to be far better digitally integrated and advanced, and I want to wish him all the best for the future.” Andy joins Zesty at an exciting time in the company’s growth phase. In addition to building digital patient facing services for Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Trust and Guy’s & St Thomas NHS Trust, winning the 5 year Pan London Sexual Health Digital Transformation Project as part of a consortium with Preventx, Chelsea & Westminster NHS Trust and Lloyds Online Pharmacy, Zesty has launched 20+ new online booking services for various NHS Trusts across the UK. Zesty will shortly announce new digital outpatient projects with one of the Global Digital Exemplar trusts in England, one of the largest Scottish NHS Trusts and one of Europe’s largest private healthcare providers in Germany. Andy has extensive experience in overseeing large transformational technology projects in the UK and around the world having led teams in companies such as IBM, Alcatel-Lucent and CSC during the last three decades. He has worked across a variety of industry sectors, usually being involved in programme governance, introducing complex new technology and managing change. He has an international reputation and the companies he has worked with include many well-known names both in the UK and abroad. Speaking about the appointment Zesty CEO, James Balmain said: “Andy’s extensive experience gained within the public and private European healthcare sectors made him a natural choice for us and this role. His vast knowledge of the UK healthcare market, impressive network of NHS contacts and operational experience will certainly add value to our board. We are very excited and honoured Andy has agreed to help us with our mission to improve access to healthcare with digital patient facing services.” For media enquiries please email lloyd@zesty.co.uk.

The UK Digital Healthcare Council met for the first time today at the Royal Society of Medicine, Chandos House, 2 Queen Anne St, Marylebone, London W1G 9LQ. 40 people from across the UK digital health industry debated a number of key points and discussed the aims & objectives of having an industry body represented at both a local and national stages. The Council’s stated purpose is to: 1) Advocate the benefits of technology in healthcare for patients 2) Provide a vehicle to promote ‘data does good’ to the wider system 3) Collaborate to influence policy decisions from organisations such as CQC, Department of Health, NHS England and NHS Digital 4) Explore opportunities for partnership 5) Share innovation and best The Council aims are: A) to ensure there are open lines of communication with the key stakeholders, as named above B) The Council aims to advocate for the views of members and ensure these are considered by key stakeholders when making policy decisions C) The Council aims to work with key stakeholders to ensure barriers to innovation in the system are removed The full list of attendee's were: Simon Abrams, CEO, Datapharm Zenon Andeou, Clinical Director, DrEd.com Paul Bate, Director of NHS Services, Babylon Matteo Berlucci, CEO, Your.MD Jonathan Boor, Director of Clincal Information, System C Healthcare Stephen Bourke, Founder and CEO, Echo Miles Boyden, Clinical Director, iDoc Andy Burton, Lloyds Pharmacy Online Doctor Jonathon Carr-Brown, Managing Director, Lost4Words Simon Chaplin-Rogers, Chief Medical Officer, iDoc Shellane Crisostomo, Co-founder, Vala Health Neil Daly, CEO, Skin Analytics James Davies, CEO, DrEd.com Mark Davies, Chairman, Your.MD Murray Ellender, CEO, eConsult webGP Farzad Entikab, Co-founder & Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Care Anywhere Costas Fantis, Business Development Manager, Doctor Morton’s Ian Gallifant, CEO, Medelinked Hamish Grierson, CEO and Founder, Thriva Alex Heaton, Founder, Live Smart Mark Jenkins, UK Managing and Medical Director, Oviva Alex Kafetz, Managing Director, ZPB Associates Jason Keane, CEO, Patient Suzanne Lawrence, Medical Director, Care UK Tanya Lawson, Director of Quality & Governance, Dr Morton’s Michelle Lea, Chief Operating Officer, OBS Medical Dermott Mullins, Chairman, iDoc Tim Ng, Chief Technology Officer, DrNow Claire Novorol, Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer, Ada Mary O'Brien, CEO, VideoDoc Ltd Adam Odessky, CEO, Sensely Eren Ozagir, CEO, Push Doctor Mike Pallett, CEO, Cupris Joaquim Pereira, CEO, PharmaDoctor Lloyd Price, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Office, Zesty Owain Rhys Hughes, CEO & Founder, Cinapsis Paul Roberts, CEO, GPDQ Sam Rodgers, Medical Director, Medichecks Joel Schoppig, Director of Strategy, Healthy.io Katherine Ward, Chief Commercial Officer, Managing Director UK and Europe, Healthy.io Tom Whicher, Founder, DrDoctor

Julie Pelta is Director of Business Development for DataArt Healthcare and Life Sciences division. DataArt is a global technology consultancy that designs, develops and supports unique software solutions, helping clients take their businesses forward. Recognised for their deep domain expertise and superior technical talent, DataArt teams create new products and modernize complex legacy systems that affect technology transformation in select industries. DataArt has earned the trust of some of the world’s leading brands and most discerning clients, including Nasdaq, S&P, Oneworld Alliance, Ocado, Artnet, Betfair, and Skyscanner. Organized as a global network of technology services firms, DataArt brings together expertise of over 2,200 professionals in 20 locations in the US, Europe, and Latin America. http://www.dataart.com/ Technology is transforming our lives. Digital health, AI, TeleHealth, machine learning, all terms that excite individuals from pharmaceutical executives to venture capitalists. But what if the advent of technology is actually hurting us? I’m referring specifically to technology in surgery. Surgery for hundreds of years was a trial and error process of learning and developing through hands on skills and many challenging hours in the operating room. The growth of Laparoscopic (keyhole) surgery in the 90s saw a huge change in how surgery was performed. Laparoscopic surgery reduces infections (due to the keyhole incisions), improves outcomes and patients recover quicker than they would have with open surgery. The developments powered by the advances in medical devices, to speed up procedures and increase capacity really did transform surgery. But there was a step change again when the robots arrived! The DaVinci robot was first to market, and is now being followed by new players. A surgical robot is a huge investment for a hospital and with clear surgical benefits in visualisation, movement and access. Being able to turn a robot’s “hand” 360 degrees in the surgical field laparoscopically is clearly an improvement to the movement of a human hand! I thought for some time that the robot was a natural progression in surgery. But then a coffee room conversation with an older surgeon, Mr X made me think rather differently about how technology is impacting us. Mr X described his early career and surgical training, the very long hours he had to endure (prior to the European working time directive!), but that the investment in time during his training meant his understanding of the anatomy, the procedure and potential complications and how to manage them was outstanding. Mr X had put in long hours and had a huge amount of experience. Then laparoscopic surgery arrived and Mr X needed to re-train, he realised the “nintendo generation” of younger surgeons had the dexterity and ability to visualise on screen more quickly than he could but also recognised the benefits and the reduced infection rates, quicker recovery times etc. Robots in the Surgery Room And then came the robots, yes he acknowledged their benefits and ability to get into anatomical spaces and visualise areas that in open and basic laparoscopic surgery were hard to access. But what happens when the robot stops working? Devices and machines break, and at that point one has to revert to basic training and open the patient to complete the surgery. This was the impactful part: Mr X admitted that some of the juniors that were joining his department didn’t know how to do an open appendectomy or remove a gallbladder, two very basic procedures for a general surgeon. In fact the advent of progression in the form of the surgical robot had in fact de-skilled the junior Dr's and this concerned him greatly. It makes me think, do we just get a bit carried away with “progress” and ignore the associated risks. An airline pilot still undertakes extensive training and can take full control of a plane if the autopilot fails. We think this is the same for surgeons, sadly it’s not. The medical device industry is rapidly becoming a commodity market place with open and laparoscopic instruments no longer competing in innovation but price. Traditional medical device companies need to innovate as their core business is getting swallowed up by the “me-to” products being produced at scale and significantly cheaper. Innovation is being led by the robotic companies and a few niche start ups with a handful of products. More recently a new partnership Verb Surgical, a start up founded by Verily (Google/Alphabet) and Ethicon (Johnson and Johnson) is developing an intelligent digital surgery platform that will incorporate robotics, visualisation, advanced instrumentation, machine learning and connectivity. It’s an interesting partnership and I’m looking forward to seeing what they bring to market, the partnership appears to be a good example of an extension of the product life cycle in the medical device industry. The innovative products used to command a higher price tag, but with the increasing pressure on budgets it will be interesting to see how this plays out, particularly at scale. Can the system tolerate the innovation that is moving into the market? Having worked in this industry for over 20 years I will always keep a keen eye on how things are moving in medical devices. But I wonder if innovation in medical devices is really what’s needed to fix a broken health system?

https://www.hottopics.ht/stories/health/top-100-health-tech-influencers/ I am proud and honoured to have been included in the Hot Topics most influential people in Health Tech list 2016. To be listed alongside my fellow practitioners, founders, investors, digital leaders, government representatives, consultants and pharmaceutical heads leaves me humbled and motivated to work even harder :) Healthcare is currently undergoing a digital revolution, and its rapidly developing relationship with technology is beginning to shape potentially one of the largest industry sectors in the world. The digital sector and its stakeholders began to acknowledge the role of technology within the healthcare system barely five years ago, but it has since allowed a reservoir of investor capital, startup creation, and consumer adoption to explode. By 2020, it is projected that $102 billion will be spent on health and wellness technology across nine different markets, and the growing value of the global Health Tech market pushes well over $100 trillion. It’s development has been hotly anticipated: the healthcare industry was initially slow to adopt innovative solutions within its services, but recent traction points towards a rewarding future. Driving this growth is not only technology innovation, but behavioural changes in the general public’s attitude towards health and wellbeing, regulatory changes – in the US in particular – are beginning to open up the space to entrepreneurship, and changing demographics are forcing governments to ameliorate the effects of an ageing population. These macro-trends go some way to explain the perfect storm scenario that Health Tech is predicted to experience this year. Crucial to the safe, responsible, efficient and productive delivery of each Health Tech innovation are the many people, healthcare influencers, across the world, that seek to improve the consumption and experience of care. Of those, there are 100 Health Tech influencers who operate as practitioners, founders, investors, digital leaders, government representatives, consultants and pharmaceutical heads that have a particular knowledge of their field, product or service, that truly makes them influential in these important, early, days of Health Tech. The list was defined in association with Hotwire PR, and the challenges we face in shaping the future of healthcare are vast, but these 100 Health Tech influencers represent a digital sub-sector that could be fundamental to the future of our species. https://www.hottopics.ht/stories/health/top-100-health-tech-influencers/