medDigital 10th Birthday: The past and the future

It is incredible to be writing this blog on the day of medDigital's 10th birthday celebration. It has been an amazing 10 years.

I can still remember our first office in an old attic in Esher. It was so small and the roof so low that the three of us couldn't all stand up at the same time. The floor was so wonky pens would roll off the desk if they were placed on the wrong perpendicular. We couldn't even imagine that we'd now be a fantastic team of 20 people with our head office on the beautiful Southbank with free beer and a roof terrace overlooking the River Thames.

Who knew what would grow out of such a cramped and wonky start. Auspicious beginnings, indeed. Some may have said that we might have started a little early, so soon after the first iPhone was launched and back when Facebook was still a thing.

But, we watched as digital technologies and social media disrupted the news, music, travel and banking sectors. It isn't that often that we buy CDs now, or visit travel agents, or queue at our local bank. So, we knew that one day the same would happen to health and care. The questions wasn't whether, it was when and how.

But, we don't want health and care to be disrupted. We are believers in the system. We think the NHS is awesome, especially because of the people who work for the NHS and other care providers are the reason that healthcare works. They must not be disrupted, but the system still must evolve.

We believe that everyone must work together to change the way the systems work. We want to improve the way people access and receive care, not break it, because if it does break then people will come to harm. So, the wider realisation of the impact of digital technologies on health and care really started happening in 2017. Last year! 10 years after the iPhone!

Amazing how long it has taken, but the pace of change is slower than other 'consumer-driven' sectors, as healthcare is much more complex and much more tightly regulated. If it was easy to change, someone would have done it years ago.

medDigital was founded in January 2008 and has been here watching and learning by doing. We are already playing a major part in the evolution of health and care. We have so many products and services that are genuinely transforming the way the system works. Ranging from genuinely engaging and relevant scientific communications at international conferences through discovering insight in real-time to helping with health and care workers to communicate more effectively with each other and their patients.

We are loving being part of this incredible digital evolution, as we work together to improve the care people receive while avoiding disastrous disruption. Join us, in raising a glass to celebrate our 10th birthday.