I studied dentistry and was introduced to Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (Maxfax) during a placement, where I realised I loved the specialty and the hospital environment. I went on to study medicine to become a Maxfax surgeon. During my medical training years, COVID hit and I ended up spending a lot of time working in ITU. I had the opportunity to lead a large collaborative project in a major COVID hub. The goal was to streamline airway services for patients with COVID and improve bed availability. At this point, I developed a passion for doing this kind of multi-disciplinary project work. Then, when things started to get back to normal, I was the skin cancer registrar and my team inherited a massive backlog of patients. That's when I really started thinking about digital health because I’d get emails, pieces of paper, and screenshots sent to me about various patients sitting on different lists that I had to somehow bring together and manage, and on top of that, the hospital was under-resourced and many colleagues were frustrated. I’d spend probably half my time doing admin and emails rather than clinical services. So, from a combination of all those experiences, I decided to take a pause and look into other sectors that could give me an opportunity to work on some of these challenges and develop skills outside of clinical practice. And that’s how I started here as the medical affairs associate. I was the first official member of the medical affairs team. I've had to shape the role, which has been great but also means it’s been quite varied. Broadly speaking, the role covers a few key activities. The first is medical engagement and insights—talking to clinicians about real-life issues in healthcare and bringing my own insight into what we do here. There’s the strategic side, such as researching how we go about engaging in new markets. Then there's the consultancy. Currently, I’m leading two consulting projects that have no digital involvement and are purely looking into how to optimise clinical pathways in the NHS. There’s also clinical safety, where I’m involved in reviewing products and content to ensure safety and accuracy. And the last big part is education. Internally, I’ll talk to non-clinical colleagues about what certain services look like in the NHS and the impact our products can have. And externally, I’ll often talk to clinicians and, more recently, pharmaceutical companies, to explain what digital can and cannot do—the art of the possible, essentially. I don’t have a typical day ever, but I love it because I’m very curious and I get to experience many types of projects. One of the things I love about my role is that I work with pretty much everyone in the company in some capacity. It’s a huge learning opportunity to work cross-functionally like this; everyone has something to teach me. I also really like that it feels quite creative; there are very few repetitive tasks. Every week, sometimes even every day, I’ll have conversations about something completely new. It doesn’t mean we will go on to do a project in it, but it still means I will go and learn about new aspects of healthcare. I also love that I work with enthusiastic people who are open about new ways of thinking. Coming from clinical care, where there's a more hierarchical structure and also, of course, the patient safety side—you can’t go and be creative with your patient’s treatment—it’s nice to work in an environment where I feel comfortable and encouraged to propose new ways to tackle healthcare challenges and hopefully result in a positive impact on patients, clinical teams and the wider healthcare ecosystem. The big standout is establishing the company's oncology vertical. About 9 months ago, we embarked on a journey looking at how our digital solutions and expertise could improve oncology care. We started with extensive research and talked to many clinicians, administrators, managers, ICBs, Cancer Alliances and patients. Once we found a gap in the market where we could add value, we built a cancer management system that supports clinical, admin, and management teams in cancer, as well as providing a very advanced database. This was a large and complex piece of work that is still ongoing. If you had told me I was going to do something like this a year ago, I would’ve laughed and said, “No way.” What I enjoyed the most from this project was having that futuristic lens. It’s good enough to solve the problem now, but it's actually thinking about where cancer care might be in 10 years. You want something that is future-proof, not just for now. In the digital innovation space, it’s very easy to get excited about all the things that could be, but you have to be real about what you’re doing. As a longstanding NHS doctor, I'm very conscious about ensuring our solutions apply to real-life problems. Growing up in Iran, I saw that women did not have the same opportunities as men. When I came here, many doors opened and I could pursue what I wanted to do and push the boundaries of what women in my family had previously done. Then I went into a career path that was very hierarchical and lacked female representation. This does have knock-on implications, no matter how confident you are or how hard you work. I had incredible mentors, but they were usually male, and I often craved a mentor I could relate to more. Then I thought that if I’ve been lucky enough to get where I am in my career, then I would love to support other women who may be overcoming similar challenges, so I started mentoring junior female surgical trainees. Then, randomly, I got in touch with an inspiring woman from a documentary about Nepal who was running an NGO that does extensive work in women’s leadership training. And I work with them now! We go out to Nepal and do in-person workshops; we also do remote teaching, and we have our own mentees. We are trying to develop the programme to get local Nepalese women to run it so we can move to other countries and do the same thing there. It’s definitely something I want to keep doing for the foreseeable future and something that fills me with a lot of passion!