Meet Will Cook
From Managing Major Trauma Cases in Australia to Leading a Medical Affairs Team in Health Tech
© Open Medical 2024.
Around 4 years ago, Will joined Open Medical and helped implement digital solutions in hospitals across the country. Today, he is the Associate Medical Director and leads the Medical Affairs team at Open Medical.
In this interview, Will talks about his journey, starting with his background working in a major trauma centre in Australia, surgical training in London, and then switching to a career in digital health, what he’s learned, projects he’s worked on, and more.
My background prior to Open Medical was focused on a career in orthopaedic surgery. I qualified as a doctor in Bristol, initially worked and trained in London for 2 years, then moved to Australia, where I worked in a mixture of specialties like A&E, surgery, and trauma.
I worked in a Major Trauma Centre (MTC) in Perth, Australia. Royal Perth Hospital is the MTC for the whole of western Australia, so we had trauma patients flying in from very rural places, sometimes as far as a 4 to 5 hour flight away. We’d pick up all these unique trauma cases from very remote regions, sometimes having to deal with multiple severely injured patients at once. I gained some incredible clinical experience from my time there. After 2 years, I returned to London and completed a competitive T&O themed core surgical training programme; however, it was during this time that I started to explore career options outside of medicine.
Then the pandemic happened. I had already decided that I wanted to move out of clinical practice and into another career, and I was deciding between the usual options like consulting, pharma, and even finance. But with the pandemic and the unique challenges it presented, digital health became the obvious direction of travel for me.
I knew of Open Medical, having worked with Piyush, the CIO at Open Medical, and Harry, our CEO and founder. Open Medical were doing some really exciting things and therefore seemed like a really great opportunity; there were a lot of interesting projects happening, I had an interest in digital health, and it felt like a role where I could grow and develop not just with the company but also within the industry, which still felt relatively immature at the time. It felt like a natural move out of clinical practice. So in 2020, I joined Open Medical and I’ve been here ever since.
I started at Open Medical in more of an operational role with a focus on project delivery. It was the perfect place to start because I got hands-on experience delivering and implementing solutions in the NHS and healthcare more widely. I learned so much about our products, about digital transformation and what makes it work, about change management and just overall, I gained a really in-depth understanding of what we do, how it helps, and how we deliver successful projects.
From there, I progressed into a senior commercial position within the company. I’ve always been very commercially-minded. I’d go to implementations and while doing that, I’d also have commercial conversations with the clients, telling them about all the other cool things we were doing and looking for opportunities to upsell. I’ve always enjoyed those conversations so a commercial role made a lot of sense, and I became the Associate Commercial Director.
I was involved in a lot of fascinating projects. For example, we did a consulting project with NHS England (NHSE) where we looked at preoperative assessment processes across London. We worked directly with NHSE and engaged hospitals, senior clinical stakeholders and operational teams, looking at how preoperative assessments are conducted across the region. It wasn’t about implementing our software but more about engaging stakeholders, understanding the pathways, and identifying pain points. We created a report for NHSE, which has informed their ongoing transformation strategy. I learned a lot from that project, including ways of undertaking widespread stakeholder engagement, an in depth understanding of perioperative pathways, how these can be optimised digitally, and how Open Medical should position ourselves and our product in this space. It was a hugely rewarding project.
When Open Medical went through a restructure, the Medical Affairs function was created and I became function lead. Medical Affairs is basically about how we can apply our clinical expertise to everything that Open Medical does. There is both a commercial as well as a clinical aspect to it. It’s about seeking new business opportunities; it’s about clinical strategy, looking for new areas we could move into, project support, product development, clinical stakeholder engagement, and working with the marketing and research teams. We essentially dip into almost every function within the company.
I’d say that when thinking about changing careers and industries, you need to be confident in yourself and know what skills you possess. Take communication for example. That in itself, if you're good at it, can make you successful in so many different types of jobs. But also consider if you work well under pressure, if you can work in a team, if you can have humility, and if you can take direction or delegate effectively. All these soft skills will determine how successful you are in different roles. And it’s also about your attitude. There will be times when you have to do something you’re not that motivated by, but you have to see the bigger picture. It’s part of the journey. Have a long-term view and look at it as a learning opportunity.
But definitely the most fulfilling part of my job is that I am constantly learning and developing. There are so many opportunities to learn more about clinical pathways, novel models of care, the latest guidelines, how to run successful projects, product development, data analysis, etc. And there have also been some very unique experiences. For example, in the early days, we’d go to project launches in towns you probably wouldn’t visit otherwise. We stayed in rural B&Bs and had breakfast with B&B hosts that were at times a little odd, to say the least... I have definitely had a lot of fun along the way.
