Women in healthcare leadership: Why female founders need to speak up and speak out now

Women in healthcare leadership roles need to start speaking up because females remain underserved in this very male dominated industry.

Jo Halliday, Elizabeth Fairely and Scott Crae, founders of Talking Medicines, have created a data platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to gain greater clarity about what people are saying about the medicines they are taking. Put simply, Talking Medicines wants to ensure people are taking the medicines that have the best chances of working for them, whilst helping the pharmaceutical industry to deliver on its promise of putting patients at the center of its decision-making processes. There are still very few females sitting on the boards of companies, there are very few female investors, and only around 3 percent of females actually get invested in,” Jo says. Jo does feel like things are changing as investors start to buy into the valuable attributes women are bringing to the corporate world and healthcare leadership. They are also very good at adapting to change,” Jo says. Jo and her two co-founders have now secured £4 million in funding from a range of investors, including Tern PLC and pharmaceutical and life sciences veteran Mark Bamforth of Thairm Bio, who believe Talking Medicines will amplify the patient voice as well as improve commercial operations. Our early private investors have come from a variety of fields but shared the vision of better patient outcomes through data,” Jo says. It takes more than an idea to succeed,” Jo says. Speaking to investors can take a lot of time so it’s vital that anyone seeking investment researches the most appropriate investors to speak to and understands what they need to know from them, Jo advises, adding that impact investors can make a huge difference to companies’ ability to secure funding. And it’s this commitment to a clear purpose that makes investing in female-led companies so attractive to investors like Silvia Mah, partner at Ad Astra Ventures, which invests in innovative women founders. Once you have that in place, get in there and speak with a big strong voice about how you and your company will make a difference to the industry you are working in, and prove it,” Jo says.