Automedi — The Alternative Care Supply Platform

The 2020 Coronavirus pandemic mercilessly exposed serious weaknesses in national health supply chains. Critical shortage of PPE and ventilators put the lives of patients, service users, health and social care professionals and their family and friends at significant risk. Stemming from our involvement in community efforts to help, we also decided to find a way to reliably close this gap. It was from this necessisity, that the idea for Automedi was born. We brought together a world class team of technologists and built the first prototype within a month. With the support of InnovateUK, the UK's research agency, we then set out on an ambitious journey to get this product into every one of the world's hospitals, care homes, surgeries, clinics and more! I'm proud to officlally launch automedi on the 17th September 2020, to coincide with sustainability day. We'll have more news on the platform and how it helps. So follow us to join the event, which I'll be posting nearer the time.

One of the first Automedi machines was launched into Alphabet Pharmacy in Stretford, Greater Manchester. They published a pic of it on Facebook showing their Automedi nano appliance (https://www.facebook.com/alphabe...) Alphabet's team have access to the private co-production channels, that help shape the product over time. We chose co-production as the baseline, so the entire community can get involved in the development of a project and catalogue _they_ actually want and need. The lesson is to always focus on the customer's needs and their feedback. But in what they say and what they do.

Tuesday Thoughts on Monday's motivation: Yesterday, we had a great discussion with a larger client, who have identified a couple of different areas which we didn't initially think there was much traction in. However, it turns out this may well be a very lucrative alternative market! Something we can probably pivot to supply in two days. The moral of the story is not to go in with any preconceptions and ensure you can pivot fast once you get the data to form a hypothesis!

This week, we're talking plastics, which are a major contributor to carbon, land and marine ecosystems threats. In particular, we focus on the real, systemic considerations for health plastics and what they actually offset. So, today's question, do you think plastics all plastics are bad? https://www.automedi.co.uk/post/...

BIG NEWS: We've been doing a lot behind the scenes to grow Automedi since our last update. So it's worth filling people in on where we are with ProductHunt and our future. ProductHunt was a one of a number of channels we looked to, to examine how well it raises awareness of the brand. This included engaging with members and experimenting with, as part of a cohort of channels we could use to grow the brand. After analysing the data over Christmas, we've found ProductHunt a poor platform to launch Automedi on. As a B2B offering, which includes a substantive hardware component, ProductHunt wasn't an exact fit for us from the off and thus research confirmed it. The formulaic nature of PH, which typically requires "gaming" it in exactly the right way to get exposure, has never sat comfortably with us. It's not a typical part of any hustle in our space and isn't required to get domestic sales in the UK at all. Indeed, it can sometimes hurt it, as PH is not taken seriously by the UK health service. Also, another feature that stood out, is that ProductHunt's discussions often need substantive answers, which we are very happy to give in the spirit of sharing. However, where a topic requires a lot of background, our answers are then caught by "spam bots" and collapsed. Never mind that lower exposure and specialist niche, means products can't even be references or found through search. Together this means ProductHunt has been a waste of our time, money and energy in engagement and crucially, it has taking time away from more lucrative, higher performing work elsewhere in our portfolio. Our analysis has identified other platforms that are a better fit for Automedi. Providing a more targeted, appropriate audience for both the offering and the sector. Raising awareness but also having meaningful conversations that don't require opaque "gaming" (i.e. experiments can focus on direct prospecting, not trying to understand how best to launch on PH to get awareness to hopefully maybe get leads some time in the future). Since money is coming in from those other channels, this must now be where we pivot with that knowledge, given they are generating more fruitful activity. So, after a lot of deliberation, we've taken the decision to sunset the ProductHunt page. But this is what we will do instead: * Focusing on appointing dedicates sales & marketing personnel to take the brand forward and approach specialist medical, care and laboratory providers * Building licensing and distribution agreements with medical product providers and technology companies * Building franchises of Automedi devices for each region * Building on the offline work done so far to engage with European member state governments * Radically scaling Automedi through the European and African networks established since. If you are interested in properly following Automedi, sign up to our Automedi newsletter on our website or follow us on instagram @weareautomedi. For now, I wish everyone well with their future growth. Adios!