Graham Watson, Executive Chair of InnoScot Health, discusses the necessity for NHS Scotland to retain commercially astute healthcare professionals

When clinicians consider alternative careers to working within NHS Scotland, some opt for a move into clinical innovation and entrepreneurship within the health and life science sector, home to many of our country’s most successful start-ups.

Scotland is undoubtedly a pioneer in this vibrant area, boasting one of the largest life sciences clusters in Europe, with projections suggesting the country will have an £8billion industry just two years from now.

However, as we look to build an NHS that is fit for the future, it is no longer about choosing a traditional career path over alternative options. Both can co-exist and flourish, enhanced by an exchange of knowledge where one informs the other for mutual benefit.

Indeed, we are seeing many positive examples of health service-based innovators who are successfully balancing their entrepreneurial ambitions with their clinical work. These progressive, pioneering individuals are a valuable asset for the NHS. The blend of experience and good practice drawn from NHS and non-NHS experiences offers a tremendous learning resource, but importantly, it can also engender wider benefits such as economic growth, through vital inward investment in the health, social care, and life science sectors.

Such individuals can further be a conduit for industrial and academic partnerships as part of a more collective-minded innovation community – one that prioritises working together with a coordinated strategy for the country’s betterment.

Fundamentally, it is about tapping into the most valuable asset of the NHS – its staff – by leveraging entrepreneurial skills, knowledge, and experience, often honed over many years working in the system.

They have experienced valuable learnings, overcome difficult challenges, and developed unique insight into how processes can be better integrated, carried out more efficiently, or even completely transformed. This first-hand experience cannot be underestimated.

We at InnoScot Health have been a formal partner of NHS Scotland for the past 20 years, working to identify, protect, develop, and commercialise healthcare innovations that improve patient care. We know that entrepreneurship married to health service expertise can produce brilliant results when it comes to improving patient experiences and workforce processes.

We have helped many talented and driven individuals to achieve such ambitions whilst they have remained active within healthcare. Paul Swinton, co-creator of SCRAM™ (Structured CRitical Airway Management), is a great example. The InnoScot Health team have built a relationship with Paul spanning almost 10 years.

He first came to us whilst working as an Air Ambulance Paramedic at the Scottish Ambulance Service. Since then, we have worked with him to expand the SCRAM™ portfolio. Driven by Paul’s ambition to improve processes and save lives, and his relationship with fellow experts in different areas, such as paediatrics to pre-hospital, the portfolio now extends to nine SCRAM™ variants used by teams in Scotland, Australia, America, South Africa, and more.

Yet, despite the portfolio’s success, he is still proud to work as a Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) paramedic involved in critical care and retrieval medicine alongside being the National Education Lead for the Scottish Air Ambulance Service.

Such scenarios are not unusual, and the role of the InnoScot Health team is to help busy healthcare professionals manage clinical and personal commitments alongside their entrepreneurial ambitions.

Dr David Brennan, now full time CEO of our 2015 spin-out Aurum Biosciences, is another positive example. For a number of years, David balanced his NHS career, working in the field of MRI, image analysis, and associated clinical applications, alongside his work to support Aurum Biosciences develop breakthrough therapeutics and diagnostics in areas of unmet clinical.

Working within the healthcare environment can be inspiration for outstanding innovations.

Dr Matthew Freer, a consultant anaesthetist, is also CEO and co-founder of Infix Support – a clinician-led, cloud-based tech company focused on improving the efficiency of surgical operating theatres and tackling patient wait lists. His role in honing a more intuitive system for operating theatre utilisation is considered to be a game-changer.

Biopharmaceutical entrepreneur Dr James McIlroy is founder and CEO of Bellshill-based EnteroBiotix. He completed his NHS medical training whilst building the company which focuses on realising the therapeutic potential of the gut microbiome to transform the lives of patients with serious unmet medical needs.

Another Scottish entrepreneur, Chris McCann identified an opportunity on NHS wards to develop an AI-driven armband to monitor a patient’s health. In 2015, the concept was spun out as Current Health which sold in 2021 to a US company in a $400m deal.

All of these entrepreneurial healthcare professionals have shown that bringing together their business and healthcare knowledge can deliver great patient benefits.

Continuing to harness health service-inspired expertise, InnoScot Health is proud to be associated with this year's NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme (CEP) – a forward-thinking group of collaborative organisations supporting 12 Scottish innovators.

Alongside this, many more opportunities are emerging to establish a positive culture of innovation and entrepreneurship across the NHS. The NHS Scotland Innovation Fellowship scheme aims to develop capacity and capability to support innovation activities, and the recently announced link-up between the Scottish Government’s £42 million Techscaler programme and the health service, is enabling entrepreneurs to work alongside clinicians to test ideas, products, and services.

Initiatives like these are key to the future of Scottish healthcare, and vital to inspiring entrepreneurial staff with the power to bring ideas and expertise back into the health service for a more innovative tomorrow.