Meet the start-up: How a setback became an inspiration

Jean Luc, founder and chief executive officer of HexTransforma Healthcare, spoke to Med-Tech Innovation about its emergence and entering the medtech and healthtech space. 

First of all, tell us about HexTransforma Healthcare – where did the idea come from?

I broke my ankle whilst playing rugby back in 2017 and experienced first-hand the frustration caused by an overwhelmed, fragmented health system. The doctors responsible for my care informed me I’d have to wait at least six weeks to get a referral appointment to a specialist due to a lack of capacity in the system, which effectively prevented me from accessing the required services sooner and ultimately impacted my recovery. In these six weeks, I experienced ongoing swelling, tenderness, and pain and was left worried about the potential of delayed care causing more serious damage to my ankle. It was then that the innovation and desire behind HexTransforma’s remote monitoring solution was born, and eventually the company itself.

Who did you have to work with to develop the wearables and machine learning technology that you use? 

We’ve worked hard to build our own in-house talent pool, based at our headquarters in Brighton, but also wanted to work with top researchers in the field of musculoskeletal (MSK) disorders to develop our products. Our partnership with the School of Biomedical Science at Cardiff University, led by Dr Mohammad Al-Amri, has enabled us to create ground-breaking quality of movement models which help us monitor patients suffering from an MSK condition and visualise their gait and movements outside of a clinical setting. 

Other universities such as the Universite de Caen-Normandie, Sussex University and the University of Lancaster have also joined us and are key partners who support us with observational trials. We are also working with well-known businesses in the UK and France, such as NXP Semiconductors, a semiconductor manufacturer, to develop the components needed for the product. 

COVID-19 has led to digital health becoming more prevalent, how has it affected your company?

The last year has been very intense and fast-paced as the healthcare sector turned to digital technologies and innovations to attempt to control the rapidly evolving situation, treat patients in an effective way and bolster the efforts of overworked healthcare workers, while developing new, effective vaccines.

Historically, the doors to technological innovation in the industry were closed, particularly to SME innovators, who coincidentally deliver approximately 80% of new innovations in the sector. Ordinarily, it would have taken months, possibly years for a small company, no matter how inventive, to introduce some sort of novelty within the NHS or a large private healthcare provider. 

In the last year, these barriers have almost vanished, and we’ve been very busy developing software and hardware products that can help relieve the burden experienced by healthcare providers and clinicians, but also planning for improvements in clinical pathways in the future. 

The digitalisation of the patient experience is nascent, and we are implementing technologies that will transform and shape the healthcare systems of tomorrow.

What do you think the outlook is like for start-ups in your sector?

Very bright! Healthtech is a rapidly growing market which is continuing to expand due to the clear global imbalances in healthcare. I remind my team almost daily that the world’s population is 7.8 billion, yet we only have 9.2 million doctors. With aging populations, and the growing number of individuals living with comorbidities, this situation is simply unsustainable without the introduction of technology to support both patients and clinicians. This makes technology a crucial source of efficiency, as well as the generation and introduction of new methods of treatment in preventative care, primary and secondary care, and end of life care.

We, and companies like ours, continue to focus on the provision of the best of care to patients whilst also increasing efficiency within the system.

We’ve seen some incredible success stories in the last year, such as Babylon’s IPO, and it’s a testament to the fundamental shift in priorities that’s occurred in the sector and that is continuing to gather momentum. I expect we will see a wave of new medtech start-ups launching in the next 12 months, as well as new digital technologies emerging, all focused around the improvement in clinical outcomes as well as patient and providers’ needs. It’s a truly exciting time to be in medtech.

What are your future plans? 

It’s a very exciting period for HexTransforma as we’re getting ready to launch two new products to market in November. The first one, Brit-Med, is the first global self-service platform for medical tourism. With Brit-Med, even more patients will be able to safely own their care. They can choose to have elective surgery sooner, helping tackle the post-pandemic backlogs, with a healthcare provider and clinician they’ve chosen, all with the safety assurances and support we provide.

The platform is completely novel and puts the patient in charge of their own care – allowing them to search, compare and book treatments at the best clinics around the world, for the best price - at a time when our systems are struggling to cope.

The second is our ground-breaking artificial intelligence and machine learning led product, HexOrthopaed. This is an end-to-end solution for the lower limb musculoskeletal pathway, enabling patients to be monitored remotely and safely through continuous data capture. The solution, which combines cutting edge software with a hardware set worn by the patient, enables clinicians to remotely diagnose and spot the warning signs that orthopaedic conditions need attention, without the need for resource-intensive hospital and GP visits. This rich, qualitative data gathered over time helps clinicians make better informed decisions about a patient’s care needs.

The technology has the capability to monitor a broad population of patient groups where there is growing unmet need, all outside of a clinical setting. This will pave a new way for how healthcare is delivered, improving overall clinical care and patient outcomes whilst improving efficiency and reducing healthcare delivery costs. This product is our steppingstone to building a more integrated healthcare system and the clinic of the future.

We are currently in talks with several global venture capital companies to raise investment to finance our next suite of products which will complement HexOrthopaed and expand its capabilities to new pathways, effectively creating one digital care management system with the patient at its core.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about HexTransforma?

Although we develop products that can help patients around the world, we are also highly focused on making an impact in our local community and training the next generation of tech entrepreneurs and software engineers. We’re pioneering research in the field of movement through the EWWD (Early Warning Wearable Device) project, and through it, we’ve hired ten interns to give them the skills and experience they need to kickstart their career in medtech. We’re also organising the EWWD Med-Tech Challenge, which is a competition between schools in disadvantaged areas of the UK to invent and build a technological solution that could improve the life of someone living with a chronic medical condition. With these initiatives we aim to make a tangible impact in our hometown of Brighton as well as the wider southern coastal region in the UK.