Welcome to another edition of Highlight A Health Professional!

In this series of blog posts we are chatting with people who are making waves in the healthcare space. You can check out our previous post here. 

Today we are speaking with Ash Kalraiya, an Orthopaedic Surgeon and the Founder & CEO of MediShout. 

MediShout is healthcare’s first “one-stop” App for staff to instantly resolve any operational task or issue, helping to improve efficiency and patient care.

MediShout helps tackle all issues such as broken IT equipment, estates and facilities problems, faulty equipment or PPE and stock shortages. With different reporting pathways for each problem, these can often take much longer than needed to report, if reported at all. 

MediShout has set out to tackle these problems and seen great success since it’s launch. Below we ask a few questions to Ash and see how MediShout came to be. 

What made you want to pursue a career in healthcare?

Apologies for the clichéd answer but, sciences were always my favourite subject at school, and the idea of applying that to help treat people seemed pretty amazing to me. 

I’m not sure I had a specific reason beyond that but I went with my gut feeling and I’ve not regretted the decision once.

How did the idea of MediShout start?

As an F1 doctor in 2010 (my first year as a fully qualified doctor) I was taken aback by how operationally inefficient hospitals were. I never minded putting in extra hours to help patients who were unwell, as that’s exactly what I signed up for. However, I found it frustrating that every day I had to delay patient care or leave work late, because I’d spent large chunks of my day looking for missing stock or finding a printer that worked or begging other wards to lend me medical equipment or similar issues.

Digital technology was becoming commonplace in other industries like banking and retail, so I realised this could be applied to solving operational challenges in hospitals too. 

MediShout started with me writing lists in my phone of all the operational problems on my ward that I encountered during the week and eventually I thought “wouldn’t it be great if an app enabled me to send this data straight away to the person who can solve it?” and thus the idea was born.

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced since starting the app?

Digital transformation requires us to pass a thread through the eye of not one needle, but multiple needles. Getting buy-in from many stakeholders with different job roles, systems and agendas is always the hardest part. Thus working in partnership with teams and learning to solve their individual challenges is key. 

It is important that we tackle all problems that are being faced by staff, whilst the issues I faced are common, there are many other departments and teams that face different challenges. 

What do you see the future of MediShout being?

I’d love to see every NHS hospital become a “MediShout” hospital where they are using our technology to streamline workflow, save time for staff and enable faster and safer patient care.

I feel we have so much to offer and can help in so many ways, I’m very excited for what we have going forward and look forward to making a difference. 

Thank you to Ash for taking the time to answer our questions, you can find more information about MediShout here. 

Stayed tuned for more pieces on inspiring people in the healthcare space!