London Tech Week – Day Three Wrap Up plus ANDHealth UK Market Entry Delegation

This was a big day for our delegation, with the final day of the London Tech Week conference, multiple ANDHealth-enabled health focussed meetings, roundtables and an evening of networking! Let us fill you in.

The final day of London Tech Week programming was not health specific but there were still many insights to hear on investment and challenges. In her fireside chat, Zahra Bahrololoumi CBE , CEO UK/I Salesforce, highlighted how the jobs that are being created are misaligned with both short- and long-term skills shortages and the skills that do exist.

On trends in capital, Michael White, Market Manager, Life Science and Health, HSBC Innovation Banking , explained that the environment of high-interest rates, inflation and banking collapse has created the 'haves and have-nots' – for public companies, values have come back down (and were possibly overinflated), for the 'haves' the established companies are acquiring, while for the 'have-nots', creative business structures are emerging. One of these is reverse mergers into the US public markets (traditionally a negative connotation but in this market, it’s being viewed more favourably as at least something to keep companies going). He concluded that the UK has world-class education and a tight-knit entrepreneurial community, but needs the free-flowing capital.

The room was packed for the 'Investing Through the Noise' panel and despite it being broadly tech-themed, there were some applicable insights. Eva-Maria Dimitriadis , Managing Partner, Conduit Connect, lamented the media hyping and reporting on valuation as not helpful, along with fads like blockchain or psychedelics that create noise in the market. She reminded us that “you save your children first in a fire” – so be aware that funds will be supporting their existing portfolio when approaching them to raise.

Jannick Malling , Co-founder and Co-CEO of Public implored us to focus on performance over the immediate term rather than vision for the next decade, as the performance of a company will now matter more than ever for survival and for demonstrating credibility to investors in a capital raise.

Jeppe Zink , Partner at Northzone, observed that across tech, the vast majority of investment staff in Europe have an average of 5 years of experience and that the risk appetite has become much safer. His advice for early-stage or riskier assets is to be aware of the current climate and really find someone who understands your space to appreciate the value of your asset.

The afternoon included an overview of selling into the NHS with Jennifer Head from Midnight Health, followed by a Roundtable alongside Global Victoria with Jon Wilks and Shane Tickell , and an intimate 'ask-me-anything' on the nuances of selling into the NHS with Dr Lloyd Humphreys , who has over a decade of experience selling digital interventions into the NHS. As these were Chatham House Rule meetings, we’ll share a summary of some killer tips but won't name names...

Ultimately, does it save money or improve patient outcomes, and can you prove it? There are three key issues in the NHS and if you’re not addressing at least one, go home now:

• Workforce: it's no secret that the NHS is under immense strain – there are 100,000 vacancies, and retention and recruitment are huge problems. Anything that truly makes working in the NHS easier and attracts or retains the workforce is going to be of interest.
• Waitlists: from primary care to specialists, they're all under huge pressure with an estimated 7M on waitlists. If your solution can show it directly solves waitlists, it will be attractive.
• Money: The typical budget of the NHS is ￡145B, around 10% of GDP. Over the last decade, there has been approximately a 1% annual increase in budget per year but a 5% demand increase on average. This has left a huge delta between the budget and demand. Potential solutions must do their health economics and if it genuinely saves money, it will be attractive. (Note: In-year cash savings are king, and cost savings are good – time, efficiency etc., but if you can save a quantifiable dollar that is better and will be a surer path to uptake. For example, a digital health service reduced sending letters. It cost 54p to post each letter and demonstrating reduced mail expenditure enabled sales as there were clear in-year cash savings, as well as cost savings.)

“The quality of the frank and actionable insights into selling into the NHS and the connections to senior influences from today's meeting alone was well worth the journey to London.” – Delegate

“It’s this getting this kind of information and connections that makes being on the ground in a new market essential.” – Delegate

“The depth of the connections specific to digital health from ANDHealth have been impressive. Today's session was absolute gold and money can't buy advice for genuinely selling into the NHS.” – Delegate

Understand the structure: It is important to understand the structure of the NHS and how everything fits together; there isn’t 'one NHS', there are hundreds of organisations which means hundreds of opportunities to approach but also to navigate. For instance, NHS England will not be the one in charge of writing a check. The Arms Length Bodies are worth engaging with for awareness and opening doors, but will not be purchasing. Currently, there is no national purchasing happening.

Piloting: Recommended to offer discounts and incentives, not a free pilot! Always charge something, even ￡500. Then they have to justify to someone somewhere why they spent it. If it’s a research project, think of it as a co-investment, you are investing your product and expertise and they are investing their time and will publish. The transition from free to paying is very difficult so don’t get stuck there.

The suggested sales calendar for the NHS: Typically, Trusts purchase one year at a time, with yearly budgets (which they must spend, or they will lose). April – March is the financial year for them and be aware it's typical for them to hold onto funding in the first half as they are keeping tight budgets.

• July – September - NHS is on holiday.
• Start selling at the end of September as people will come back and be ready to talk. 150-250 day sales cycles to be expected with all the required accreditations and data and purely ready to sell.
• October November – really go after customers hard.
• NHS typically buys/signs contracts in February and March, when they know the budget for next year OR know their underspend and want to spend or lose it.
• They prefer capex over opex as they can’t guarantee recurring funds.
• You need to make it easy for them to buy you and be on a procurement framework (see Top Tip of the Day below).
• Typical sign-off levels – ￡5-10k for department-level sign-off. For e.g., a pilot should be <￡5000.
• Less than ~￡138k doesn’t have to go to public tender, typically will have some kind of tender process but not full competitive tender.
• An advantage of the timing is that it's almost opposite timing to Australia so your hard sales times will be at different times of the year.

Top Tip of the Day

Make it easy to buy you!?There are procurement ‘Frameworks’ which act like catalogues. It’s much easier for NHS to buy off a framework. GCloud is one suitable for technologies (note, it opens to new admissions every 6 months). The?GOLDEN TIP?is that your keywords are KEY on GCloud – and this may be counterintuitive. You actually want to be?super specific?so you are the ONLY one that comes up (if only one company comes up competitive tender is not required). Yes, you will not come up easily in general searches but if you are selling correctly, you should be in conversations with your purchasers (don’t rely on them trawling GCloud), and then you provide your customer with the specific search terms and link to your product. You can then sign a contract through GCloud (swift) or negotiate your own (longer).

Phew, that was a big day of insights and learnings ??.

Stay tuned for updates from the rest of our UK and Ireland delegation!