Creating an End-to-End Radiology Solution to Reduce NHS Delays w/ Farzana Rahman | Hexarad

Dr Farzana Rahman: 0:00

Is we saw this problem, which was there were too many scans and not enough Radiologists, and what that meant for patients was there were big backlogs. They weren't getting their diagnosis, and without a diagnosis, you can't get treatment In healthcare. If you do your job right, you help patients, and so there is a net good that you do in the world, which is why I became a doctor in the first place. And so, knowing that, because we've worked hard and we've created something that helps solve this big problem, what we've done is we've helped hundreds of thousands of patients get diagnosed.

‍Amardeep Parmar: 0:36

Today on the podcast we have Dr Farzana Rahman, who is co-founder and CEO of Hexarad. They're using AI to transform radiology so that patients get the results they need faster and more effectively. She's got an incredible story and we see how she went into medicine, studied for radiology, become a radiologist and realized with her co-workers and colleagues that there was so much that could be done in the tech space to really impact what was happening on the ground, where there just wasn't enough. Radiologists and tech could really make a difference here and it's incredible what they've been able to achieve in a short amount of time and you're going to hear all about it and I really hope you enjoy today's episode. So great to have you on the podcast today. You obviously were at our Doctorpreneurs event as well and it's great to see you alongside Lucy sharing your insights. But we didn't get to hear about when you were younger, when you're growing up. What did you want to be? What was your ambitions?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 1:30

It's a hard question. Actually, when I was really young I wanted to be a hairdresser and because I'm Asian, that was quickly dismissed. But actually after that I wasn't really ever sure. I wasn't one of those kids who thought a lot about what I wanted to do in the future, but I liked science and was relatively good at exams. So I think medicine was always there in the background. I didn't have particular pressure from my parents, but I had a lot of friends who wanted to do medicine and I kind of just went along with the crowd, if I'm honest.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:06

But obviously at that age as well, like medicine is one of the toughest things to get into. How did you feel about that? Did it feel like something which, like it, was very obtainable? Did it feel like something which was quite difficult to get into?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 2:17

No, it was obtainable. I went to a private school, so my parents worked really hard. They have a very, very typical immigrant story. They came to the UK with nothing in the 70s. We used to live in a bedset and they worked really hard and my dad went back to university and he did another degree and so for them education was really important. So I went to a private school, which was actually filled with lots of people similar to me with that kind of background, where people had worked really hard. So getting into university and having those opportunities it didn't feel unattainable. But I think that was because of the support I had from my school and I have no doubt that if I didn't go to the school that I did, it wouldn't have felt so within arm's reach.

Amardeep Parmar: 3:02

And then, once you're studying medicine, how was that experience? Was it what you hoped for or did you feel like maybe you made a good choice or a bad choice?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 3:10

When I started medical school I was really overwhelmed. I was used to being, you know, kind of top of the class, but when I got to medical school I was in a really big year of like 300 people and I did well, but I was never top, like I was never number one, and so I had this real period of self-doubt where I really felt like I wasn't good enough and I wasn't sure where I fitted in in terms of the academic side of things, and so I think I lost my confidence quite a lot at university. Actually the way that I think I had a lot of confidence at school, I think at university I always felt like I wasn't good enough, and so the social side of university was great, made some great friends, had a really good time. But I would say, from an academic perspective I'm not sure I really thrived.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 3:57

And for the first couple of years of medical school you do a lot of very like science, very, very heavy like microbiology and biochemistry, and I just found it so incredibly dull. And so it was dull and I didn't feel like I was good enough, never thought about leaving because I wasn't really sure what else I would do. But as soon as I hit the clinical years in medicine. So when you start, you know when you do medical training, your first couple of years are all the sciencey stuff and then you actually get onto the wards and start seeing patients in your third year and then I really, really enjoyed. It was a lot more thinking on your feet, it was a lot more speaking to other people and speaking to patients.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 4:31

So by the end of medical school I definitely felt like I'd picked the right career.

Amardeep Parmar: 4:34

And obviously the reality of being a doctor versus studying medicine could be quite different, and I've heard from a lot of my friends obviously about that those difficult early years where you're kind of thrust into that high levels of responsibility, right, how were those early years for you?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 4:49

I loved my early years as a junior doctor really, really hard.

Amardeep Parmar: 4:53

I don't hear that very often.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 4:54

Yeah, I really liked it. Like. I liked thinking on my feet, I liked seeing patients. I felt really overwhelmed. But I think when I trained there was a real atmosphere of camaraderie and there was a lot of support from my seniors. So we worked long hours and, you know, we did, we did the shifts that you know, by the end of my training you couldn't do anymore, like the working patterns, but we had a real sense of community and family and my early consultants were amazing, like they, you know, were real mentors and would kind of guide you along this quite difficult path. As you say, you're young, you're suddenly thrust into making some decisions which are very, you know, admin and clerical, but some which are life and death and the you have to flip between the two and you have to know what's important. So, um, but I had a really, really good team. So, yeah, I loved being a junior doctor much more than I enjoyed being, like, an early stage medical student.

Amardeep Parmar: 5:48

And obviously, with the medicine career right, you've got you specialize and that's the normal kind of path people take. And where were you thinking at that time, like where did you want to go with medicine? Did you want to specialize, did you want to do different things, or were you still very much focused on like that was your path at that time?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 6:03

It's really interesting. You ask that. I think, much like in school, I wasn't really sure where I wanted to end up and so I struggled quite a lot. So you have to make a decision in medicine relatively early and I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, but kind of by default, I thought I'll apply for surgery. You know, I had some bosses who were surgeons. They seemed quite nice, I quite liked going to theatre, and so I applied for a surgical job. And then the kind of pivotal thing that I always talk about is I didn't get the job that I had applied for. So we had this thing called MTAS, which was this national programme, the first year where you had to apply nationally for jobs. And so I applied for a surgical job and I didn't get it.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 6:43

And I always say that this was the kind of turning point where I was so devastated I didn't get a job. I blew it up completely out of proportion. You know, I thought it was like the end of the world. I couldn't believe I didn't have a job. I thought my life at 26 was over. It was just completely ridiculous. But that kind of experience taught me not to fear rejection. And so then in the year after that I actually took a step back and really thought about what I wanted to do. I looked at other prospects. I had an opportunity to do a surgical job and some research, but I realized I you know I had kind of gone there by default. So that's when I really went back, researched and then picked radiology, which I ended up applying for and getting into.

Amardeep Parmar: 7:22

When I think about radiology from a naive perspective, we're talking about like MRIs and x-rays and things like that. What interested you about that?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 7:29

I liked the problem solving. So what I really liked about medicine was, you know, looking at information and then just figuring out what the problem is. And radiology is that it is fairly quick problem solving and at high volumes, and you can do procedures and you can do interventions. You can do the kind of things that, uh, you know, might interest you as well, but I liked that. I didn't love these kind of long ward rounds that you do, you know, in certain fields of medicine where you spend a long time with each patient. I liked this kind of problem solving, and radiology is quite, you know, it's quite academically intense and challenging and I quite liked that. You know I was, I was drawn to it for that reason.

Amardeep Parmar: 8:09

And obviously you did very well in that area. But there's issues that you then sought right and when did the ideas for what you're doing today start coming about, and what triggered them?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 8:19

So I was a registrar. So that meant I had done my kind of initial training and then I was doing my specialized registrar training and I was at St George's Hospital in London and that's when I met my co-founders. So there are four of us who founded Hexarad and we all trained together. So we were all in like slightly different years but we were brought together because we saw this problem, which was there were too many scans and not enough Radiologists and what that meant for patients was there were big backlogs. They weren't getting their diagnosis and without a diagnosis you can't get treatment. So you know you might have a patient who had had cancer in the past and they've got, they're having a scan every six months to see if that cancer's come back. But there were huge delays happened actually to the father of a close friend of mine where the delays were huge and actually had cancer had come back and by the time they diagnosed it was too late. So we could really see this huge problem that needed solving and the impact that it had on patients. And the four of us all kind of were brought together because we cared about the problem but we'd also done things outside of medicine. So when I was a registrar. I did a another degree in health economics from the LSE. I took some time out. I set up a primary care clinic in Bangladesh where my family's from, did some kind of policy work nationally.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 9:36

Sam, who's a co-founder of mine. He was studied physics at university, then he became a structured product trader. Then he did that for 10 years in the city, then he went back to medical school and then, Amy, she was an editor at the BMJ and Jay had done, you know, a fair bit of entrepreneurial stuff. So we all had done things outside of medicine, which I think is a long way of saying. We liked solving problems at scale, so we loved the frontline stuff. But we really liked the idea of being able to do something that solved a big problem and we had the kind of energy and naivety to think that we could do it which you know in retrospect now is really funny that we were just so like bright-eyed and bushy tailed, but then you know you start going and then you just really want to solve the problem.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 10:19

So then yeah, you do it, and so that's how we formed Heraxad.

Amardeep Parmar: 10:21

When you kind of came together from that problem, did you think there's gonna be something you span out into a company, or what was the initial? Was it just like an idea phase, or when did you decide let's actually do this and let's make it a serious business?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 10:32

So we started off, yeah, wanting to solve the problem, but it was always a bit of a side hustle. So we had full-time jobs by then, like we had become consultants, and then we got to this point where it was. You either had to kind of sink or swim. And I had this like brilliant advice from this other radiologist I worked with when I was a registrar. He was a consultant and he said something. He said he said if you don't believe in yourself, no one else will. And that was the first question you've got to ask yourself.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 10:58

And so at that point, it was if we don't believe in this enough to take a leap, then no one else ever will, and it's got to cost you something. There've got to be stakes, right. You can't create something, but it'd be so safe that it's just a side project. If it matters, it's going to cost you something. And so I left my job the first one and we decided that's when we were going to raise some investment and actually fully focus on it. And that happened in about 20, like around covid time, around 2019, 2020 that when we decided, right, we're going to focus on this, this is going to be the thing. I left my job then, and then we raised our first investment round shortly after that.

Amardeep Parmar: 11:34

What's interesting as well, we're four co-founders.

Amardeep Parmar: 11:37

How did you decide the different roles you're going to take on? Because obviously you'll work together, which is quite good because you know a bit about each other's working styles, how you interact under pressure. But it must have also been quite a difficult decision about maybe two of you wanted to do the same thing. How do you resolve that? And I think that sometimes stops some people from starting something, because they just don't know about interpersonal dynamics. So how do you think about that? How do you work out who's going to do what?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 11:59

What's really interesting is that we all naturally fitted into specific roles really early on and you know, a few years later we've done all this leadership training and we've done all these like gazillion personality assessments that you have to do, and we each have four very distinct personalities which fit. I think in our first investment round we had this big part of due diligence was assessing this, and so we each our kind of core strengths very clearly fit with certain roles. So we didn't actually have much debate about this. Um, it was. It was really obvious to everyone who would be good at what, and it still is. So I think I'd love to say that was strategic, but I think we got lucky.

Amardeep Parmar: 12:38

Yeah and then how did that work for you right? So how did which was? What was your personality type, and how does that make your role easier or your role more effective?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 12:47

Yeah. So I think a CEO, I think I always had the kind of big picture vision thinking and, uh, this kind of like unwavering belief that we could do it and and very good at taking rejection, um, so that that is all stuff. I think you need a CEO, uh and uh, you know, and I like people, I like talking to people, I like listening to people, so I think that that was, you know, really clear early on. Um, Amy's like really good at relationship building. She's very kind of creative and commercial and so her being chief commercial officer was was, again, a natural fit. Sam because of his finance background. He's amazing at numbers and so he very clearly fit into that. And Jay is very, you know, kind of can see the big picture, so can see, like you know, can understand the vision that I want to get to, but he will figure out how we get there.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 13:40

So he is kind of a natural chief operating officer and like in charge of product.

Amardeep Parmar: 13:44

Looking at those first steps that right so you quit your job and obviously it must have been quite scary leaving quite a high-flying career which comes with a lot of prestige, a lot of status. What are the first steps you take to trying to make this a reality and to take this from something which is a side hustle, which you're doing on the side, to like let's actually build this and let's really make the impact that we hope to make?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 14:03

So we had actually done a lot of work before we got to that stage. So we were revenue generating a really good amount of revenue, before we even got to the stage where we needed to raise investment. And actually the first thing we did before any of that, when it was still like a side gig, we partnered with another big imaging company and we had a joint venture. So I think that in retrospect now, that was almost like they helped siege the business. They didn't give us investment, we didn't give equity away, but we had a joint venture partnership where they provided us with some of the equipment.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 14:35

And so by the time it came to quitting our jobs, we had done a fair bit of work. We had figured out there was a product market fit, we had shown that our idea could generate revenue. We demonstrated that we could work together. So I think, translating that for other people, I would say if you can get that bit done and you can show, like you know, a little bit of proof that what you're doing is going to work, it's important for investors, but it's also important for yourself, right? Because you don't want to, you know, leave your job and not be able to pay your mortgage for something that you're not, at that point, you don't believe is going to work.

Amardeep Parmar: 15:06

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Amardeep Parmar: 15:43

I think it's always interesting as well because obviously, with the samples I have with the people on the podcast, some people have this idea of like they quit their job, they burn all the boats and they try to make something work, which in reality, what I find is more common. It's like what you've done there right, where you have a lot of stuff on the side beforehand, so by the time it actually comes to quit your job, you've mitigated some of that risk. And and it's always, I think, difficult sometimes when people listen to different stories, because if they keep hearing this idea, oh, just quit and just hustle. But it's like that's not right for most people and it's also depending on like your journey in life things as well, and how long ago now has it been since you quit and you've been ? full-time

Dr Farzana Rahman: 16:17

So so I quit in 2019, so five years .

Amardeep Parmar: 16:20

So would you have to say like, what's the biggest win, or what are some of the biggest wins since that time?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 16:25

So what's been? What have been the big wins? Yeah, lots of big wins. Actually, we've kind of doubled in size every year since 2019, so we've grown. We kind of went from a small team of like four founders we now have over 70 people, we have a few hundred radiologists and we, you know, have a much bigger customer base. So that's been, you know, a huge win. We've won a bunch of awards, we've raised investment, so a series a and a series b, so I guess that that's an achievement, although I would say that, you know, the growing of the company is certainly more interesting than, you know, raising money.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 16:56

So I think, so I think, yeah, I think those things, and then actually just the people and the culture that we've, you know, we've built. We've just got the most amazing team. I say this all the time. I said this when we were on our panel. Like you know, I think a good rule of life is to be the dumbest person in the room. Surround yourself with excellence, and I learned something from the team members at Hexarad every day.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 17:17

We've just got an absolutely brilliant team and I think we've got a really strong company culture. We're very values-based and that has really helped to kind of foster this environment, where you know, I love going to work and actually we do quarterly staff surveys and 100% of our staff find their work meaningful, so that I think having a good team has been awesome. And then the last thing is that in healthcare, if you do your job right, you help patients, and so there is a net good that you do in the world, which is why I became a doctor in the first place. And so, knowing that, because we've worked hard and we've created something that helps solve this big problem, what we've done is we've helped hundreds of thousands of patients get diagnosed.

Amardeep Parmar: 18:05

And what's interesting for me is like earlier on in the episode, you talked about how at school you were one of the highest achievers it was top of the class and then you struggled initially into university because you weren't top of the class anymore. And it's interesting now you said about being the dumbest person in the room because it's almost a flip of what you had before, right where before that might have made you feel insecure whether or not you belonged, whereas now you're in a stage where you're much more secure in terms of knowing. Actually this is a good thing because I'm being able to learn people around me. Have you ever kind of thought about that and how that journey's gone from maybe before you wanting to be at the top all the time to now actually kind of liking that you've got a team around you, maybe more knowledgeable in different areas than you are?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 18:44

I haven't thought about that. That's why you're a really good host. I think that's a really good point, actually, and I think maybe it stems from, like, security. So I think if you're secure and I think that comes with age, right so if you're secure in who you are and you feel like you add value, you don't need to worry. If there is someone brighter than you and there should be people who are brighter than you that's what I loved about him.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 19:08

As a consultant, I worked at UCLH. It's a big teaching hospital and I loved that my colleagues were so clever. I could ask them about the latest research or be working with clinicians who are the only people in the world who treated certain conditions. So I think you know, if you are surrounded by people who are excellent, you also rise to the challenge and you try and be better. So, yeah, you're completely right. Like I think there's nothing interesting about if you're the smartest person in the room or you feel like you're at the top. Maybe it just means you're in the wrong room.

Amardeep Parmar: 19:39

Also looking at the product as well.

Amardeep Parmar: 19:40

So we mentioned it's to do with the long waits that people had to do radiology. Could you also let us know like what's the product like today and what difference does it make? Like it, you know, explain, like I'm five kind of way.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 19:50

Yeah, sure.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 19:51

So it's a radiology platform and, as I said, the core problem we're trying to solve is too many scans, not enough radiologists. So we have two products in the platform. So we connect to hospitals. Our technology integrates with hospitals. They send us like thousands and thousands of scans. We've got other radiologists who use the platform and they then read the scans and send them back, and that finding the scans, allocating the scans there's quite a lot of complex tech that goes behind that, and I say our key differentiator is our focus on allocative efficiency, so getting the right scan to the right radiologist at the right time. So we've, then, also taken some of that core tech and we've also created software for hospitals. So when we go to them we say, look, you can use our software to optimize everything that you already have, and then, when you need more resource, then that's when you use our tele-radiology service.

Amardeep Parmar: 20:43

And how has that adapted over time or has that been fairly constant since you quit your job? Or what have you had to pivot or tinker with since?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 20:52

Yeah, no, it's definitely adapted. So when we first started, as I said, we didn't have any money and so we just needed to get scans reported. So we went to our mates who are radiologists and we did everything ourselves. So in radiology there is like thousands, like over 4,000 different types of scans and each person will report different types of scans, and it's not consistent. So you then need to know who is the best person to report a certain type of scan. So when we first started, if you've got five scans and five radiologists who are your mates, you know which scan should go to which person, right. But when you've got 5 000 scans and when you've got you know, 200 radiologists, that is quite difficult, because how do you know you're going to get the right person, the right scan to the right person?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 21:37

So that's the kind of ethos of the tech that we've built, and so you know we kind of started off with it being a very complex like logic model that Sam built, who's our CFO, but was the trader, and then, very early on in our journey, Tim joined. So he wasn't a founder, but he was probably our first kind of strong tech lead, and so he's our CTO and he then has now been instrumental in building all of this technology. That takes that core intelligence and he's got a really interesting story. So he studied philosophy at university. Then he was a model it's like super random, Like was a catwalk model throughout university. Then he started working, then he taught himself to code, then he worked at Deliveroo and then he joined us.

Amardeep Parmar: 22:25

So how those pivots have happened as well and obviously, as you said, you've scaled from like the core team, initially of four people, to now a percent of people. What have you found the most difficult about that journey of scaling from those early days to where you are today?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 22:38

I think the question that I think about all the time is how we preserve our culture, because I think that's one of the most, if not the most, important thing assuming that you've got the right product, but your culture, your company, is your people. It's your product, but it really is your people. And making sure that everyone is aligned and that everyone is living our values. It's really easy when there are five of you, because you're all sitting around the table, but when you, as you get bigger, you're not all sitting around the table. So how do you make sure that that culture translates? I say that I think that's the. That's really hard.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 23:14

Scaling is really hard. So one of the things that we've come to learn is that you might build a process and it will be great, but you can guarantee that nine times out of 10, that process will not be what you need in a year, and that's okay. You need to let it go. You need to know that you need to keep pivoting and keep growing. So I think always changing and you know with in order to accommodate the environment you're in. That's quite different to when you're a doctor in the NHS, because actually many of the protocols and processes are the same, but that's different when you're scaling a company.

Amardeep Parmar: 23:46

And how have you been able to try to maintain that culture? Because you mentioned earlier about the 100% staff satisfaction, what do you think you've done to be able to maintain that and keep people happy, as you have?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 23:55

So I think it's a work in progress. Actually, I think the first thing is that it's really important to us, so we talk about it a lot. We have an exercise called living the values that we do in any kind of company meeting, which is we have six core values and we generally talk about how we've lived one of those values that week. We are intentional with hiring. I still go to we do two, you know, we do two or three rounds of interviews and one of them is purely values-based and I still go to all of them for the values and probably will carry on doing so. And then, as we're scaling, we try and have touch points for our team to kind of know regular communication, all hands.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 24:36

But I don't know if we've got the final answer for it to be honest. It is a really difficult problem to solve, and so it's something we think is really important. But I'd be lying if I said I think I've cracked it. I don't think we have, but it's certainly something that we think is really important, and our senior leaders in the team know how important it is. So I think part of it's just knowing that you don't know all the answers, and that's why you have these smart people around you so you can say to your senior leaders around you that I think this is really important. What do you think would be a good way for us to preserve culture?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 25:05

And invariably they'll come to you without with ideas you never had yourself.

Amardeep Parmar: 25:09

And you mentioned that as work in progress, but you've also said how you've already impacted hundreds of thousands of lives, but there's so much more, I'm guessing you want to do too, yeah. So, looking forward, what's the dream, what's the ambition for Hexarad?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 25:20

So I think we always wanted a scalable platform that could be used in any geography. So, certainly increasing our footprint in the UK and then international expansion. So we've started some work in the Middle East, so that's going to probably be one of our big target markets. We're going to start looking at the US. So I think being able to scale what we're doing in in different countries but continue to make an impact and continue to have the same, the same ethos, the same quality, the same emphasis on patients, is really important.

Amardeep Parmar: 25:53

And what's exciting for you now? What's the bit of that that's exciting for you?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 25:56

I think, as we're thinking about, we're building out, so the software part of our platform is called OptiRad. We're doing some really exciting work building out that product, thinking of like new features to add, how to make customers love that product. So that's really exciting. The early exploratory work in new markets is really exciting, Like you know, coming to it with kind of a bit of a blank slate. Hiring great team members so that's always really exciting.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 26:23

You know, people really do bring so much when you bring them in. So how do you get the best talent? And then I think you know I still have, so myself and my like kind of the four members of my exec team, so my three co-founders and Tim who's our CTO, we have breakfast every Monday and it's just an opportunity just to have a free form chat and it's probably like one of the highlights of my week. We just sit around, we don't have an agenda, we just talk, and actually in those moments we come up with some really great ideas and we're now expanding that to our senior leadership team as well. So I think, you know, just being inspired by everyone else is also something I find exciting.

Amardeep Parmar: 26:58

You've also mentioned impact quite a few times throughout this interview and you also mentioned earlier about, before you even started, Hexarad, about some of the work you did in Bangladesh. Could you tell us a bit more about some of the stuff you're doing on the side? As well as building Hexarad, you're obviously doing many different things with the communities in both the UK and other countries as well. Can you tell us about that work?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 27:16

Yeah, so we've got a strong like. The idea of impact has always been very important to us. So there are two kind of tangible things that we do. We set up a scholarship for um. It's for both medical students and junior doctors who want to enter radiology. It's now in its fourth year and we open it up and what we do is we give a prize, which is, I think now it's £1,500, and then the opportunity to work on a radiology project, and it's designed to improve access for people from less privileged backgrounds so that they can get a career in radiology. So we give them that support and that's because the data demonstrates, as in many industries, but particularly in medicine, that there is a glass ceiling once you leave medical school, that in particular certain specialties such as radiology, which are quite competitive, you have less representation from people you know who may have not gone to a private school or who you know are from a black or ethnic minority background. So that scholarship is specifically targeted. We've got very specific entry criteria you have to be from a black or ethnic minority background, you have to not have parents who are doctors and you have to not go into a private school. So so we do that and actually we've had three winners so far and everyone like, who's won that scholarship gets this kind of one-to-one mentoring and we've had just a lot of really positive feedback. So that's pretty one of my favorite things that we do, and everyone who enters is also entitled to mentorship as well. So that's one of the things we do. And then we started something last year which was to sponsor a radiologist to be either a registrar or a consultant, to go to a developing country to then work on a project with a radiology charity. So we did that last year in Nepal and we'll continue to carry on doing that.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 29:00

So that impact thing has always been important for us. We started when we were much smaller and at the time people did say that you're a really small company, like why are you doing? You know, like csr, like corporate social responsibility, just hate as say it as an acronym. But actually it's just all about impact, isn't it? And you can have impact at any scale, like any individual can have impact. So I don't think there's ever a right time to think about how you could impact. And because it was really important, it reflected one of the values that we lived. So, yeah, but the scholarship is probably the thing that I'm most proud of we've done at Hexarad.

Amardeep Parmar: 29:35

And before we go on a quick fire question.

Amardeep Parmar: 29:36

So obviously you didn't have an economics background or an entrepreneurship background. You said you did a degree on the side because of that as well. But for other people who are from a similar background a science background or a medical background and maybe think about going into a kind of career like you've done and what you've built, do you have any tips or advice for them to maybe think about that transition?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 29:56

Yeah, I think, first of all, you know, believe in yourself. It sounds like really, really cliched, but you know, that's the first step and the advantage you'll have by being, you know, very specific in industry is you will understand an industry and its pain points and where the problems are. So that's going to give you brilliant insight and don't you know, don't underestimate how important that is. You might not be like a 25 year old Mark Zuckerberg, but you will be someone who understands a complex thing, a complex area, quite well and it's only in that that you'll understand the nuances that could help, you know, solve some of those problems. So, I think in yourself and understanding the value that you add.

Dr Farzana Rahman: 30:34

And then I think, just learning and reading. I mean, I like to read books, but whether you listen to podcasts or you watch YouTube videos or you just talk to other people, you can just learn so much. That's why I think you know the community you're building is just so interesting and I've just had so much help along the way. So don't be afraid to ask for help, like I've just had, you know, people who've really given up their time, people who've supported, people who've, you know, helped either win contracts or given advice, so just ask for help. You know you'll always, if you, if you buy someone a coffee, you'll always learn something. So and most people like, when people approach me, I always try and you know, free up time because so many people have done that for me as well.

Amardeep Parmar: 31:13

So thanks so much for sharing your story.

Amardeep Parmar: 31:14

It's like it's so. We've had a few talks before this as well, so I obviously knew how inspiring your story was, so I'm grateful that we get to share that audience today. So we have to move on to quick fire questions now. So first one is who are three British Asians you think are doing incredible work and you'd love to shout them out today?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 31:30

So, uh, Sheena Pirbhai, who is the founder of stress point health, it's got an amazing, really interesting mental health story. Everyone should google her. Uh, Junaid Bajwa, who is the chief science officer at Microsoft, who is also super bright, one of the most humble and self-effacing people I know. And Omar Din, who is another health tech entrepreneur, was the former CEO of AT Medics, which exited one of the biggest primary care exits, and again, is just very humble, very knowledgeable and always willing to help.

Amardeep Parmar: 32:03

Awesome. And then, if people want to find out more about you and find out more about Hexarad, where should they go to?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 32:07

Our website and I am for my sins on LinkedIn, so you might have more there.

Amardeep Parmar: 32:14

And is there anything that you need help with right now or that Hexarad needs help with?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 32:16

We are always hiring, so if you want to find out more, just reach out to me. I always like to talk to anyone who's interested in joining us.

Amardeep Parmar: 32:24

So thank you again so much for coming on today. Any final words?

Dr Farzana Rahman: 32:27

No, just you know, just amazing work that you guys do. I think creating this community and helping you know students and helping people to connect with each other is just so important. And as immigrants, you know we didn't. We didn't come into a culture, not a culture. We didn't come into an environment where that was already ready made for us, and so that's why I think what you're doing is so important and it's the importance of all of us, like lifting each other up.

Amardeep Parmar: 32:53

Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.

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