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Wharf Life Jan 15-29, 2020 wharf-life.com
virtual viewpoint by Chris Ezekiel
how Draper & Dash is helping hospitals in the UK and beyond use patient data to improve their services by James Drury
Doors of perception: Chris says he prefers exercise as a way to alter his mind rather than using drugs
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friend recently told me he was considering attending a legal magic mushroom retreat in order to reset his mind. He had read the book How To Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics by Michael Pollan and I hasten to add this was something of a surprise as neither of us take drugs. I believe the premise of this book is that not all drugs are the same. In the case of psychedelic drugs like LSD and magic mushrooms, it claims they can even have genuine positive effects in helping people fight depression and break bad habits. My friend is in his 50s and is neither depressed or trying to break a bad habit – he just wants to change the routine of his life. There are other routes to rewiring the mind – meditation and intense exercise. I run regularly and also use Barry’s Bootcamp in Canary Wharf’s Crossrail Place, which certainly qualifies as the latter. Running and working out helps me with business and life’s conundrums. The convergence My friend’s point is that such routes take of technology and more time than using medicine has led to psychedelics. That’s true, but exerimplants. How long cise and meditation before we can have so many other benefits. And, despite choose our mood? claims such drugs are Chris Ezekiel, Creative Virtual not habit-forming, I’ve seen cases where good people have been lost to the vicious spiral of addiction and crime. The convergence of technology and medicine has led to implants that can already change our bodies. I have another friend who has an implant for back pain relief, for example. I wonder how long it will take for implants to be readily available that enable us to choose our mood at the touch of a button. The US at least, with its opioid prescription drug epidemic, will be a big market for such devices, I’m sure. Personally, I’ll stick with the exercise method for now.
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Chris Ezekiel is founder and CEO of customer engagement solutions specialist Creative Virtual based at Cannon Workshops on West India Quay Go to creativevirtual.com or follow @creativevirtual and @chrisezekiel on Twitter
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ife has a funny way of pushing you in directions you might not necessarily have thought of. ou can find yourself doing something totally unexpected, and making a huge success of it. Orlando Agrippa was planning to quit his job in healthcare to set up a business making “the Christian Louboutin of ties”. He’d even come up with a name for the new firm raper ash partly named after one of his heroes, Mad Men character on raper which sounded suitably avile Row. But just as he was preparing to get things off the ground, Orlando was asked by a couple of hospitals that were in trouble to come in and help. He agreed, and asked them to pay his fee into the new company. The work led to a lightbulb moment and the tie firm pivoted to health tech. Today it’s one of the leading companies offering predictive analytics in healthcare. “ ometimes you get into stuff and you don’t think it’s going to be your thing,” he said from his base at Canary Wharf’s One Canada uare, where a he s member of tech accelerator Level 39. “It’s like running, you go to the gym get on a treadmill and realise: ‘I like this’. Before you know it, you’re running marathons. That process is not dissimilar to how I got into healthcare.” The former chief information o cer at arts ealth Trust said his experience working in hospitals around the world helped him realise he has a particular passion for patients getting access to care in a more human way. “ raper ash was founded on the back of those principles, but broadly on the idea of helping hospitals provide better access, better ow and better processing of patients,” he said. The company offers hospitals software tools designed to take patient data and use artificial intelligence to predict patient ow and demand, meaning they can plan and allocate resources more effectively freeing up precious bed space as quickly as possible.
Orlando says if he were creating a company today he would still look to work within healthcare as it’s only half there in addressing the issues it faces
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Image by James Grimshaw - find more of his work at jamesgrimshaw.co.uk or @j.grimshaw on Insta