Dr. Nadine Hachach-Haram, FRCS (Plast), BEM, is a Consultant Plastic Surgeon at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and the Head of Clinical Innovation.The NHS clinical entrepreneur founded Proximie in 2015 with the goal of saving lives by disseminating the world’s finest clinical practice. She relied on her surgical expertise as well as her love for innovation and teaching.
As part of the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours, Dr. Nadine was awarded the British Empire Medal for her pioneering achievements in the disciplines of surgery and medicine. She also undertakes a number of roles to help advance surgery, including council member of the Royal College of Surgeons’ Future of Surgery Commission, council member of the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (BAPRAS), Innovation UK, and council member of the Royal Society of Medicine plastic surgery section.
Below are highlights of the interview conducted between World’s Leaders and Dr Nadine Hachach-Haram:
Describe who you are as a person, inside and outside of the workplace.
I think I am a very driven person who is passionate about innovation in healthcare. Proximie was born out of a need, and my ambition as a surgeon was to find a solution and scale it using technology. In my experience, disruption in healthcare has many challenges, but I can say with experience that if it is really solving a problem, then adoption can be swift and decisive. I think having that drive to create a sustainable solution for creating better access to safe surgery has really come to define me as a person.
Describe your background and what did you do before you started the company?
I grew up in post-war Lebanon in the early 1990s, which was undoubtedly a formative period in my life. It shaped my career, not just as a surgeon but also as the founder of Proximie. Seeing the human impact conflict exacted on my homeland had a profound influence at a very young age. At that point, I started to get interested in the ability to help patients and to look for opportunities.
I spent 10 years working on global health initiatives around the world as a trainee surgeon. During that period, I definitely found myself feeling like I simply wasn’t doing enough. When I looked at the Lancet Commission that revealed five billion people in the world lack access to safe surgery, I realized that we were only scratching the surface. I realized that it was really about building scalable, sustainable models of support and delivery, so I started to look at technology, and the idea for Proximie was born.
Tell us about the inception of the company. How did it all start?
You can’t do remote surgery in 2D. It has to be more immersive than that. What we wanted to do with Proxmie was to create a multi-sensory experience that was a catalyst for collaboration and could digitize a surgeon’s footprint. We wanted to extend the geographical reach of a surgeon and create the effect of a borderless operating room that could empower physicians to remotely share knowledge that could ultimately reduce variation in care, and help save lives.
Five years later, Proximie has been used in every surgical specialty due to our software-first design, and has been used in more than 100 countries, in over 500 hospitals worldwide, and by over 35 medical device organizations. In the last year alone, Proximie has assisted over 13,000 surgeries, but we know we need to keep pushing and the business is evolving everyday.
What has made you successful? What do you value?
I think one of the fundamental drivers of our success has been the way we designed Proximie in the first place. Being of use to the broadest user base within any given healthcare setting, Proximie was built to be light, easily deployed on low bandwidth, and therefore as usable in austere environments as it is in a high-end hospital. It needed to be intuitively designed so that it could plug in to any part of the global healthcare landscape. Due to Proximie’s software-first design, we have an accessible platform that can be easily integrated at every level in any healthcare setting. Within three weeks, we can secure approval for use in a new hospital. That approach has been fundamental to how quickly we have been able to scale Proximie to all corners of the globe.
Which are the major services of the company and how do they help the company to get ahead in the competition? What value-added services does the company provide?
Proximie is an easy-to-use Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge based platform, which means there is no need to download any cumbersome software. Using the platform, you can broadcast four simultaneous live video feeds at one time and to multiple users, including from any medical device (imaging, cameras, navigation, fluoro, robotics, scopes, ultrasound, ECG and any other device with a video output), as well as regular cameras (webcams, room cameras, overhead cameras, wearables etc.), while Proximie’s integration team can support other bespoke needs (share screens, laptops, mobile devices, increase the video feeds). The agile integration is bespoke to the clinical setting, but ultimately it has been designed to be malleable to healthcare settings all over the world.
Give us your opinion on; do organizations rely heavily on individual heroics or team processes?
I can’t speak for other organizations, but for Proximie the focus is always on the team and how we can collectively work together to help create more efficient and sustainable health systems. We have over 120 people in the company from all over the world, and this diversity of experience can be a real catalyst for innovative thinking. We know that over five billion people in the world lack access to safe surgery. The ingredients for better connected healthcare systems are right in front of us. It’s incumbent on us, as one of the players in this field, to try and accelerate these conversations and to play a proactive role in finding innovative ways to democratize access to safe surgery, reduce variation in care, and, ultimately, save lives.
What are your responsibilities as the Founder/CEO of the company? What is the happiest part of your daily routine?
We recently closed our Series C investment round, which certainly kept me busy! No one day is the same at Proximie, but my role is very much to drive us forward, both internally and externally, on our mission to democratize access to safe surgery.
The happiest part of my day is when we sit down as a team to hear the success stories of the platform. Moving away from the data and the steep increase in Proximie procedural numbers, one of the most tangible measures of our growth and success, are the stories that we’re helping to facilitate. Every case is a story in itself and whilst I can’t profess to be central to every single one, I feel immense pride and a connection to the stories Proximie are helping to tell every single day. Behind every procedure is a story. It could be about the technology, the location, or the innovative way Proximie was harnessed to assist, but behind every one are real people. Real physicians, real patients and real emotions. Behind all of the layers of technology, behind every procedure, are people.
What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
Embrace the challenge, believe in yourself and, crucially, be human. It sounds easy enough, but when dealing with a variety of different people from different walks of life, there is immense power in remembering to do simple things; listen, empathize, and treat every single person you meet with the same level of respect. Be authentic and be yourself.
