Meet the Innovator: Rebecca Allam

Current job role: Co-founder and CEO

Name of innovation: PreActiv

Tell us about your innovation in a sentence.

PreActiv is a cost-effective solution, aligned with NHS perioperative care goals, preparing patients before surgery using smart technology to create individual prehabilitation programmes that can help to reduce complications and hospital stays.

What was the ‘lightbulb’ moment?

As NHS clinicians with over 25 years' combined experience, my co-founder, Dr Alec Snow, and I saw firsthand the huge impact poor preparation before surgery has on patients. However, if prehabilitation were implemented, the risk of complications could be reduced.

Moreover, due to a lack of preparation during wait times, some patients deteriorate and may have a worse outcome.
Recognising this gap, we saw an opportunity to make a difference. There was a clear need for affordable, individualised prehabilitation to improve patient outcomes and ease pressures on NHS trusts. That’s why we created PreActiv: a scalable, equitable solution designed to drive widespread change.

What three pieces of advice would you give budding innovators?

1. Focus on implementation.

Even the best innovations will fail without proper implementation. Clear planning, effective integration and training, and interoperability are essential to ensure successful execution.

2. Rigorous PPIE and user testing.

PPIE and user testing with patients, the public, and hospital stakeholders is vital to ensure your product meets their needs, ensuring strong product-market fit and better outcomes in real-world use.

3. Demonstrate your return on investment (ROI).

Health economics are crucial for success. Proving your innovation’s financial and clinical ROI is essential to gaining stakeholder buy-in and ensuring your solution delivers long-term value to healthcare systems.

What’s been your toughest obstacle?

For us, and for a lot of HealthTech companies, procurement has been a tough obstacle. There’s real excitement among clinicians around innovation, especially in preventative care and prehabilitation, however, the NHS procurement process can be lengthy and fragmented. It’s been a steep learning curve for us, as each ICB and Trust has its own unique procurement process.

There are ways to navigate it, and we’ve found frameworks especially helpful, alongside innovation funds and grants. The NHS is amazing, and once you are implemented within a site, it is lasting and reliable.

What’s been your innovator journey highlight?

There have been many highlights. Most notably, the patient feedback and the social impact of our innovation, especially in relation to the results of our clinical trial. Evidence-based medicine is a core value of ours, and knowing we’re making a real difference is incredibly rewarding. It’s the reason I stepped away from medicine to run PreActiv.

Beyond that, the accelerators and programmes we've been awarded have been significant for us. As someone who has always championed women and female founders, winning the Women in Innovation award was a personal highlight. Recognition from prestigious accelerators like DigitalHealth.London and the NHS Innovation Accelerator was also a stand out moment for us. All of these were highly competitive processes, and receiving this recognition for what we are doing was a real highlight for me.

What is the best part of your job now?

There are many perks to owning your own company, but I’d say there are two key things I really value in this role. Firstly, the incredibly rewarding ability to see the tangible impact of our innovation on both patients and the healthcare system.

The other equally best part of my role now is the ability to achieve a healthy work-life balance, which I believe is crucial. I have the autonomy to curate that balance not only for myself, but also for my employees. As someone who’s passionate about advocating for working mothers, I make it a priority to create a supportive environment for parents in the workplace.  Being able to foster a culture that values both professional growth and personal well-being is something I’m truly proud of.

If you were in charge of the NHS and care system, what’s the one thing you’d do to speed up health innovation?

I believe streamlining the procurement process is one of the key changes that could make a real difference. The NHS often gets a lot of bad press for being difficult to sell into, which leads many innovative companies to focus their solutions on private systems or look to markets like the U.S. instead. It’s a real shame, as working with the NHS is incredibly rewarding.

We need to rethink not only how we represent innovation within the NHS, but also how we can create more efficient procurement processes, especially for start-ups and new innovations. I believe this would accelerate health innovation and generate a lasting impact on UK healthcare at scale.

A typical day for you would include…

• Juggling the demands of running PreActiv alongside life with three young children - no two days are the same!
• Structuring my time around when I work best: early mornings and evenings for deep focus, avoiding meetings during those hours.
• Using tools like Jira, and Trello boards to stay organised and prioritise my day.
• Leading on strategy, partnerships, and product development - keeping our vision aligned with user needs and NHS priorities.
• Maintaining an open-door culture within the team, encouraging rapid collaboration and problem-solving.
• Carving out time for reflection and big-picture thinking while remaining agile to respond to fast-moving challenges.

You can find PreActiv on their website, LinkedIn, and Twitter/X.