From the editor: Stand-up comic, doctor and medtech innovator

In his editor's letter, Dave Gray discusses the pathway that doctors take into innovation, and in some cases, comedy. 

The BBC News website ran a great article in May about Dr Jagdish Chaturvedi, an ENT specialist from Bangalore, India. This individual has seriously impressive credentials.

As well as his clinical career, he’s a prolific medtech inventor, popular stand-up comedian on the Indian circuit, internet personality and author of three books. He’s also an improv actor, drummer, and guitarist. And all of that by the age of 35.

His website lists 18 devices that he has invented over the last eleven years – some of them are still at prototype stage, many are awaiting clinical trials or are ready to commercialise, and some are already in use on the front line. He specialises in devices which target the specific needs of patients in rural India.

I wonder if there’s something about the life of a doctor that draws them towards careers in comedy and/or invention. If you were in attendance at this year’s Medilink UK Healthcare Business Awards, which took place alongside Med-Tech Innovation Expo, you’ll remember our host, comedian and author Adam Kay, regaled the audience with tales of his time as a junior doctor, from his no.1 bestseller, This is Going to Hurt. Given the extraordinary challenges of the job, it’s little wonder we sometimes see doctors turning to secondary – and sometimes career-defining – pursuits.

For Dr Chaturvedi, comedy and technology are still secondary, as he says he has no plans to leave his practice. But I suspect he will continue innovating, as a means of easing the day-to-day pressures of his work.

Another junior doctor who’s branched out into other fields (not comedy this time, but innovation) is Lydia Yarlott, co-founder of a company responsible for an app called Forward. I asked Lydia to open the HealthTech stage at this year’s Expo, with her brilliant talk on growing startups in the healthcare space. Like Dr Chaturvedi, she’s one of a growing league of clinical entrepreneurs working on new ways to allow her and her colleagues to work more effectively.

I suppose the usual route to success for clinical entrepreneurs at the moment is to launch as a startup using one of the many different funding models, pass clinical trials and then look for a buyer in the form of a major OEM. But despite improved access initiatives, the failure rate for this route is still frustratingly high. We’re starting to see major OEMs launch their own incubators, but the flexibility has to be there too. Both Lydia and Jagdish manage to balance their clinical work with their entrepreneurial pursuits, but not all accelerator models allow such flexibility. Hopefully the next accelerators to emerge will take into account the busy life of the clinical innovator.