Tom Flashcards
Tom Mckinnon
- Commerce 1992, accountant for 2 years
- MBA in 1998, investment director
- Medicine in 2007, doctor for 15 years
- BPM founder in 2014
What is BPM
- Modular platform that provides underlying infrastructure to enable HCPs to configure and deploy digital pathways according to needs of population
- Enables better communication between HCPs
What is my role
- Clinical Customer liaison and SME in product
- Primary clinical contact for UK customers, assessing client needs and helping their digital transformation
- Product – discovery of clinical needs and finding solutions. Continual improvement of product (clinical governance)
What’s important to me / Why do you want this job / What do you look for in a job:
- Rapid upskilling
- Developing my leadership skills and taking on additional responsibility
- Mentor to learn under (Dr Maroo but don’t mention name)
- Well rewarded for hard work
Where do you see yourself in 5 year’s time:
- Expect to be an expert in product development
- Want to lead a team
- Develop strategy for the business
- Work closely with CEO and management team
- Want to combine my clinical, business, and advisory skills to work up to a leadership position
Why health tech
- I love IT, technology, business and my clinical role and am looking for a job that fulfils all these interests
- Enjoy conversations with clients in healthcare and meeting their needs and meeting the challenges of healthcare with a technological solution.
Why BPM
- Excellent opportunity to learn in a scale up and take on more responsibilities as the company grows.
- Opportunity to learn under some very talented individuals and role models that are forming careers that I want to follow in the footsteps of.
- Genuinely believe in the vision of an “OS” for healthcare that can be easily modified and built upon
what makes you right for this job
- Developing SOP feeds into clinical governance cycle of continual improvement.
- Trialwell:
o Involved assessing client needs and how Trialwell can help them to recruit
o Experience utilising clinical knowledge to inform product design of website - Clinical background involves primary and secondary care, can see value of BPM
- Working in the product team is client facing and will help me see the bigger picture as it is connected to everything including strategy, R&D etc and see things from client’s POV
Give an example of a time you’ve worked with software developers:
Problem relating to clients signing up for trial, low conversion rate - 2 solutions developed:
1) Change descriptions to include layman terms
2) Include a “help” chat function to be directed to a clinician (me)
Result was an immediate 20% increase in clients signing up for trials. This is great for this role because it involves dealing directly with clients, understanding what their pain points were, brainstorming and then working with the software devs to implement those precise changes
Give an example of a time you’ve pitched to a client:
Led a pitch for a respiratory trial in London that was struggling to recruit. Knew this because they had an ad in the paper. Reached out. Awarded a contract because of 3 reasons:
- Speaking to someone clinical I was able to understand and communicate around their needs so they felt reassured I understood their criteria
- Better able to bill clients around general but not too specific criteria, good deal for us
- My background allowed me better screening of eligible patients
Result was they trusted me to meet their recruitment needs. This is a great example of how I could work in this role as I was able to recognise a need in the market, discuss the opportunity with the client and secure the contract, similar to what is needed here.
Give an example of a time you’ve led a project:
Problem – mid pandemic exposure to COVID, unknown what to do, public test and trace took too long for healthcare. Solution - Developed an SOP for COVID exposure in Plymouth Hospital. Involved 3 things:
- Categorising exposure according to severity
- Acting on this exposure with tests or isolation advice where needed
- Contact tracing
Results showed that in an average month 2 COVID cases were caught early enough and told to isolate, preventing further outbreak and spread amongst patients and staff. This is an excellent example of how I spearheaded a project which required co-ordinating many different disciplines and employees at varying levels to develop easy to utilise guidance, this directly relates to this role as I will have to engage with employees from all walks of life and disciplines and coordinate them all together.
Pay negotiation:
- I am a strong candidate, believe I fill the essential and desired criteria for the job with 5 years of clinical experience both in GP and in hospital and a breadth of experience working in health tech startups
- I am ambitious and resolute – want to put in the hours, upskill, and expand my responsibilities and I’m keen to do so. Would want a salary that reflects this
- A good salary is a strong signal that the company respects and values my input, they’re keen to have me on board and starts us off on the right foot.
Have you had leadership experience?
Problem – mid pandemic exposure to COVID, unknown what to do, public test and trace took too long for healthcare. Solution - Developed an SOP for COVID exposure in Plymouth Hospital. Involved 3 things:
- Categorising exposure according to severity
- Acting on this exposure with tests or isolation advice where needed
- Contact tracing
Results showed that in an average month 2 COVID cases were caught early enough and told to isolate, preventing further outbreak and spread amongst patients and staff. This is an excellent example of how I spearheaded a project which required co-ordinating many different disciplines and employees at varying levels to develop easy to utilise guidance, this directly relates to this role as I will have to engage with employees from all walks of life and disciplines and coordinate them all together.
What’s your experience with stakeholders?
Trialwell and MyMynd - Been in meetings with stakeholders, mostly with founders – discussed outcomes and plans moving forward. discussed strategy. offered suggestions and implementations based on my clinical experience
How would you overcome a difficult situation?
I’ve had to deal with many difficult situations in my clinical work and some in my work as a medical advisor. Clinically, dealing with difficult patients is a daily occurrence. Involves remaining calm, stepping back from the situation and asking what the root issue is, negotiating some acceptable solutions and then implementing them.
Clinical example – Depressed patient who had come to rely on fortnightly reviews to assess her mental health, indirectly threatened she may harm herself if she didn’t get them. With this patient I had to negotiate with her and use positive affirming language, negotiated a slow wean off to once every 3 weeks then monthly then every 2 months etc. Encouraged her to broaden her social network, engage in hobbies via social prescriber.
Non clinical – meeting with a GP client via MyMynd to discuss with them implementing a short term trial gathering data with MyMynd. Lot of inertia when it comes to new tech in the NHS, so after meeting with several GPs one finally showed interest but hesitant about GDPR and confidentiality and how it might be implemented. Agreed to meet them face to face and be there during the first couple of days of the trial. Contacted AHSN. Provided plenty of reassurance.
