Meet the Innovator
October 18, 2018Meet the Innovator
Each issue we’ll get up close and personal with an innovator asking them to share their thoughts and experience from their journey into the world of health and care innovation. In our latest edition, we spoke to Dr Nicholas Andreou, Co-Founder of Locums Nest, a staff bank management app; connecting healthcare professionals to temporary work.
Pictured above r-l: Dr Nicholas Andreou with fellow Co-Founder of Locums Nest, Ahmed Shahrabanian.
Tell us about your innovation in a sentence
Locums Nest bridges the gap between hospitals and doctors. Making staff vacancies easier and simpler to fill, without the expensive agency middle man.
What was the ‘lightbulb’ moment?
Working as junior doctors in the NHS and experiencing first-hand the frustrations and inefficiencies of filling gaps in the rota.
What three bits of advice would you give budding innovators?
- Be tenacious- don’t take no for an answer, have thick skin
- Hire people with purpose who believe in your message
- Be kind to everyone you meet.
What’s been your toughest obstacle?
Trying to positively change an established institution, with large long-standing incumbents. Challenging the status quo.
What’s been your innovator journey highlight?
With our help, a Trust managed to staff a winter pressures ward without going to an agency. This meant they saved £1.6m in the first 10 months.
Best part of your job now?
Meeting different people in different environments; realising the NHS is enriched with experience and expertise from a vast range of backgrounds.
If you were in charge of the NHS and care system, what’s the one thing you’d do to speed up health innovation?
Open up the barriers to meeting the right people in the system to support innovation.
A typical day for you would include..
There’s no such thing! One day I could be travelling across the country for meetings, in the office for a full day product meeting or spending the day supporting our NHS clients.
Contact us
T: @locumsnest