Georgia Middleton, née Nelson, is senior business development manager at Inhealthcare and a key partner for NHS teams delivering the digital transformation of health and social care services across the UK.
What does your job involve?
A bit of everything: growing our business, aligning what we are doing with NHS and government strategy for health and social care, some product and pathway design, supporting existing customers and working with the product and account management teams to ensure the successful delivery of our technology.
What is your background?
I left school at 17 and after a couple of short-term jobs I went into the automotive industry, did an NVQ in customer service and worked my way up to a national business development role where I would travel around the country helping branches to achieve their maximum potential. In 2014, I decided it was time to come home to Yorkshire and applied for a job as a product specialist at Inhealthcare, which was then a start-up with a small team, a couple of products and a recognition there was a need for integration between new technology and the NHS.
How did your role develop?
My role developed as the company developed. My personality led me into the customer relationship side of things with face-to-face conversations and gathering requirements for what they needed. I enjoy meeting new people, learning about their perspectives and understanding the challenges in the NHS and how much our technology can help. Before the pandemic, digital health was a ‘nice-to-have’. Now it is seen as a necessity. There is lot more smart working and a lot less waste from unnecessary journeys, prescriptions and paperwork.
What do you enjoy most about your work?
I love working with existing customers and I love seeing successful projects and outcomes. There’s also nothing like creating new contacts and new opportunities. Usually these come through word of mouth and events, both small and large. To see our customers from different parts of the UK sharing learning from services they have developed with us is very rewarding. As for events, I’m looking forward to the HETT Show in London in September and the Healthcare Partnership Network event in Nottingham in October.
What is your biggest achievement?
Our NHS contract to support the scaling up of remote monitoring services across Scotland because it’s a project I worked on from the start. I started going to Scotland in 2015-6, attending events, making contacts and learning about the opportunities. NHS Scotland is organised, forward-thinking and always looking for new innovations. The people are friendly, approachable and never afraid of a challenge. I had a lot of freedom to do what I thought was best for the company. Within that time, we got some smaller deals with NHS Lothian and NHS Tayside. Once we had projects in Scotland, it was easier to talk to people about what we were doing.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Encouraging service transformation and working with teams to transform what they are doing. Some clinicians have been doing the same jobs for 20 years and know them inside out. To introduce new technology – something people are not used to – can be difficult. It always helps when you have a clinical advocate in the team who gets it and can speak about their experience and how it helps. Service transformation can be slow at the beginning but people are embracing change much more quickly since the pandemic.
What is it like being a woman in tech?
Honestly I have never really thought about it! I have never felt discriminated against. There have been times when I have had to speak up a bit louder but I guess the key is being confident in what you know. It’s all about experience and knowledge. You are talking about technology, algorithms and coding to senior people within the NHS. When I was younger, I sometimes felt underestimated, especially when I was 21 and having to tell 50-year-old-men they were not doing their job right!
What would you say to a 17-year-old about a career in tech?
Tech is a huge industry that’s growing and it’s going to be where the growth opportunities are. I would absolutely recommend it because it’s exciting, new and where the world is going. You just need to be open to learning. You are forever learning because everything changes all the time.
What does the future hold for digital health?
As awful as the pandemic was, people now see digital health as a necessity. It’s making people a lot more open and thinking about how digital health can improve the efficiency of their day-to-day working. The announcement of the virtual wards programme and the funding associated with it has creating so many opportunities, not just for technology providers but also for hospitals with the ability to reduce waiting lists and increase capacity.
Everybody is getting so excited about big data and being able to predict patient events before they happen based on similarities with other patients. As long as it is understood what’s happening with the data, I think it’s fantastic.
There will be much greater sharing of data between joined-up health and care systems. At the moment, an elderly person in their own home could be receiving social care visits three times a week and the carers have no idea that he or she went into hospital the week before and the hospital has no idea the carers have been in and helped the patient after a fall.
What do you like to do outside work?
Spend time with my family, taking my young daughter on little trips to farms and see animals. She’s getting to the age where it’s enjoyable for her and for us as well. Who doesn’t love a good farm?
Georgia Middleton is senior business development manager at Inhealthcare. To get in touch, please email georgia.middleton@inhealthcare.co.uk