Karen Kelly

So I have been working, I suppose, I know Martin quite well.

He's a good friend of mine and we would have met in the HSE while he was there.

I was working in a hospital in the Midlands in heart failure.

embracing a lot of med tech at the time and learning about it.

So we would have brought in one of the first remote monitoring platforms for heart failure patients during COVID.

Very simple tools, so a digital scales and a

Blood pressure monitor that was linked in with an app that allowed us to get patients home quicker and monitor them at home and basically let them feel, help them to feel more empowered that they were being monitored 24-7 and also help them to learn better.

how to manage their own illness at home because heart failure is something that you can live quite well with once it's managed well.

Another tool that you probably hear Martin talking a lot about is point of care ultrasound and handheld point of care ultrasound.

So I learned how to use that during COVID and it really changed the way I could actually manage patients and find out whether they had fluid on board or not.

So within seconds, you could manage a patient.

And some patients who are very,

mobility-wise might have been an issue and very elderly, you wouldn't even have to take them out of a car or out of a wheelchair.

You wouldn't have to put them through x-ray.

In seconds, you could see whether they had fluid on board and you could change the management of their care.

So very quickly, I became an avid fan of how digital health and digital tools, when used correctly, can augment practice and really help patients and care.

And I...

built relationships with a lot of companies over the years, one being Echo Health, who have the most amazing digital stethoscope that can do loads and portable tools that have a backpack that's full of portable tools.

So that's kind of where I got into the health tech space as a nurse was learning how tools can bridge health equity gaps and how they can really augment practice.

Definitely.