Priyanka Chaturvedi is a healthcare entrepreneur and CEO of London-based concierge medicine venture HealthClic. She is an alumna of the Postgraduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship programme, a forerunner of the Master of Studies in Entrepreneurship.
What made you become an entrepreneur, and why did you choose to study entrepreneurship?
When I started the programme, I knew I wanted to start a business but didn’t know exactly what. It was a great opportunity to reflect, take inspiration from my peers and spend time in a creative environment to discover my calling. That’s how I would view the course, and to try to gain as many practical skills as possible.
Did you gain any knowledge that you could apply immediately in your venture?
We had someone come in and teach us about running a successful Google Ads campaign, and that’s how I first marketed my business and use it successfully to this day. Also, the course helps you learn about the confusing parts of starting a business; how do you set up, which legal steps and structures are required, and how to structure a business financially and split equity (if you wish).
Tell us more about the venture you started.
HealthClic was started soon after I graduated, and today we are a concierge medicine service based in London. We have a team of family doctors – private GPs – working seven days a week, offering home visits as well as telediagnosis. Concierge medicine started in the US nearly 25 years ago and is a way for family doctors to provide high quality, personalised primary healthcare to patients. Concierge medicine at HealthClic is intended for leaders; and we work to simplify the challenge of accessing highly responsive, discreet and preventative healthcare. We are all about empowering leaders, and families, from the health side, allowing them to continue their success and impact in the world. Patients pay an annual membership fee to register with us, and each of our doctors has a patient list of 50 families maximum.
Your business offers a unique value proposition which makes you stand out from the competition. Can you tell us more about it?
We were one of the first teams in the UK to offer whole genome sequencing privately to our patients, and this enabled our doctors to really focus on precision medicine. Ever since the story of Angelina Jolie’s “Jolie” gene case, we knew that patients would be interested in this test, and it would help our doctors be mindful of patients’ underlying risk factors. Based on your genome sequencing result, you could be at a slightly higher hereditary risk of developing certain diseases, cancers, etc., and the whole idea is to be aware of this, so your doctor can adjust your screening plan. Additionally, we work with a lab which gives pharmacogenomics results in the genome sequencing, telling our doctors how their patients may react to certain drugs, which they may not metabolise well and recommended doses. It’s pretty impressive to see how far medicine is coming, and I am sure there will be more progression in the years to come, which we can offer our patients.
Many healthcare businesses are solely focussed on making a profit. But your business is also involved in making a difference to children unable to afford private healthcare. Can you tell us more about that?
We have also been working with a few of our members on philanthropic activity, where they sponsor children with very serious conditions to access world-class private healthcare and seek second opinions, sometimes overseas. The generosity and spirit of this activity is so touching. It’s something we are keen to develop more in the future and work with our clients to provide more young children access to the biggest children’s hospitals and surgical teams in the world, who may make improvements in their quality of life.
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