At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top London based Founder operating in the Medical Device space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Luke Heron
Co-Founder of TestCard Ltd
Luke Heron co-founded TestCard.com, a UK domiciled startup revolutionising the direct to consumer healthcare diagnostics market.
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About TestCard Ltd: TestCard is the medical technology company behind the eponymous at-home test kit. A partnering mobile app delivers immediate results.
Houman Ashrafian
Managing Partner & Founder of SV Health Investors
Houman Ashrafian is the Managing Partner at SV Health Investors.
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About Catamaran Bio, Cellinta, Enara Bio, Karus Therapeutics, Sitryx Therapeutics, SV Health Investors, Zarodex Therapeutics: SV Health Investors is a Boston-based venture capital firm focused on investments in biotechnology and healthcare industry.
Nader Alaghband
Co-Founder & CEO of Ampersand Health
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About Ampersand Health: Ampersand creates innovative digital medicines for complex long term conditions, using behavioural and data-science.
John E. Milad
CEO & Founder of Quanta
John E. Milad is a global healthcare executive, board member, investor, speaker and author. He has a career spanning over 25 years, with experience working in various senior positions in the healthcare sector, including NBGI Ventures, Atlas Venture, Nitec Pharma and Nomura. Currently, John is Chief Executive Officer and founding board member at Quanta Dialysis Technologies, where he recently raised $245m in Series D funding. An executive with international experience in building and growing successful healthcare companies, John had the vision and belief that core technology of managing fluidics on a disposable cartridge could be developed into a portable hemodialysis device with the potential to address multiple unmet needs in the $93 billion global dialysis market. John is a regular speaker and panelist at global medtech and investment conferences and has co-authored 4 peer-reviewed papers.
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About NBGI Ventures, Quanta: Quanta develops an advanced haemodialysis systems for use in the home and clinic.
Ali Rezaei Haddad
CEO and Founder of NeuroNav
Ali is a neurosurgical resident in London and an NHS Clinical Entrepreneur. Prior to this, he completed his Academic Foundation Training in the Medical Sciences Division at the University of Oxford undertaking research in the field of neuroimaging. He graduated with first class honours in Neurosciences BSc at Imperial College London, and he holds honorary research positions at the University of Oxford and St George’s Medical School. Ali co-founded the internationally acclaimed GoodSAM app used by the NHS, in which clinically trained individuals sign up as volunteers to respond to life-threatening emergency calls. He also directed and curated the Imagining the Future of Medicine at the Royal Albert Hall in partnership with TEDMED, attended by a live audience of 5,000 people. Inspired by the lack of user friendly and affordable neuronavigation solutions worldwide, he founded NeuroNav to democratise access to neurosurgery navigation solutions.
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About Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, NeuroNav: An augmented reality neuronavigation platform powered by computer vision and machine learning.
Carina Cunha
Co-Founder & CEO of Be Nosy
Carina is a business strategist and inventor of Nosy with passion for science, sales and marketing. In her former role as MD and Launcher of Crimson Education Europe, she created sales, marketing and service delivery teams from scratch, achieving millions in ARR and 150%+ YoY growth. Prior to working with startups Carina was corporate strategist at JPMorgan, Strategy Consultant at Accenture, Investment Banker at Credit Suisse, and a fashion model with Elite. Carina is also an innovation and commercial consultant through Meta Strategy and Founders Intelligence where she helps startups and scale-ups find product-market fit and corporates build new revenue lines. She has a B.A. from Columbia University and PgD. from the University of Edinburgh.
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About Be Nosy: Nosy is a MedTech startup developing wearable air filter and air pollution tracking network.
David O’Rourke
Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) & Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) of Bea Fertility
David O’Rourke is the Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of Bea Fertility.
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About Bea Fertility, Vitrolife: Bea Fertility is a monthly subscription program that provides users with at-home fertility treatment and ovulation tracking.
Richard Vincent
CEO & Co-Founder of FundamentalVR
Richard has 20+ years’ experience of building international businesses and has throughout his career sought opportunities for positive market disruption through technological application. It was this desire that led him to co-found FundamentalVR to help address an age-old problem for the medical market; how to create safe, realistic, measurable spaces to learn and develop skills. In his role as CEO Richard is responsible for building a world class team of medical, learning and technologist who together can realise the company’s ambition of creating the world’s first global, haptically enabled, low cost ‘flight simulator for surgeons’.
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About Fundamental Surgery, FundamentalVR: FundamentalVR delivers VR haptic ‘flight simulators’ for surgery creating a safe, measurable & repeatable space to refine to refine skills.
Chris Scattergood
CRO & Founder of FundamentalVR
A key part of his role at Fundamental, Chris visits leading surgeons, educators, hospital groups, bodies and device manufacturers across the US to understand their educational needs and requirements for successful integration into our learning platform, and continue to develop our product to support those needs. As one of the co-founders of Fundamental, in 2014 Chris and his co founder saw the opportunity to invest in Virtual Reality as the next tech platform after mobile to revolutionise the way we communicate, share and learn together. From his experience in the Healthcare sector, it was clear that VR presented a clear opportunity to make a real difference in way education could be delivered for Health care professionals.
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About Fundamental Surgery, FundamentalVR: FundamentalVR delivers VR haptic ‘flight simulators’ for surgery creating a safe, measurable & repeatable space to refine to refine skills.
Ali Moiyed
CEO & Founder of Aerobit Health
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About Aerobit Health: Breathing New Life Into Asthma Care
Krishan Ramdoo
CEO and Founder of Tympa Health Technologies LTD
Krishan Ramdoo is the CEO and Founder of TympaHealth Technologies.
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About Tympa Health Technologies LTD: TympaHealth are a team of doctors and technology experts united in their vision of helping the world to hear.
Alex Hooi
Chief Medical Officer / Founder of Callaly
Inventor of the Tampliner®, and a co-founder at Callaly.He is also an NHS Gynaecologist, Consultant Specialist and Clinical Director of the Barking Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust and Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
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About Callaly: Callaly is a period care company that develops and manufactures innovative feminine care products.
Thang Vo-Ta
CEO & Co-Founder of Callaly
Co-founder & CEO at Callaly.Thang is a graduate of MIT and started his career in Goldman Sachs in NYC & London.
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About Callaly: Callaly is a period care company that develops and manufactures innovative feminine care products.
Agnieszka Chomka
Co-Founder and Head of R&D of BioMe Oxford
Agnieszka is an intestinal immunologist at the Kennedy Institute for Rheumatology, University of Oxford. Her main research interests focus on the microbial-host interactions in the large intestine. She was awarded the prestigious Wellcome Trust scholarship at the University of Oxford to conduct her research into the role of a tissue-resident regulatory immune cell population in the gut. Agnieszka has published her results in top peer-review research journals.
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About BioMe Oxford, Globe Life Sciences: Unlocking your gut microbiome by developing a medical device for targeted and non-invasive sampling
Ioannis Papakonstantinou
Founder of Echopoint Medical
Ioannis holds a PhD in Optical Interconnections from University College London. After his PhD, he joined Sharp Laboratories of Europe to work on the design and fabrication of photonic nanostructures for Optical Displays. Subsequently, he joined CERN-European Organisation of Nuclear Research where he led the work on fibre optic communication systems for particle physics detectors. He is currently a Professor of Photonics and Nanofabrication in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at UCL where he leads the Photonic Innovations Lab (www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/pilab). The mission of his lab is to exploit the synergies between nanotechnology and photonics for energy and biomedical applications. Ioannis has authored/co-authored over 130 journal publications and conference proceedings and is the holder of over 10 patent families.
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About Echopoint Medical: Echopoint Medical is a medtech company
Richard Colchester
Founder of Echopoint Medical
Richard was born in Ipswich, U.K., in 1990. He received the MSci degree in physics from Imperial College London, London, U.K., in 2012, and the MRes degree in photonic systems development from University College London, London, U.K., in 2013. He finished his Ph.D. in Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering at University College London in 2016. On completion of his Ph.D. he was award an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow at University College London to develop an all-optical ultrasound imaging system for cardiovascular procedures. Since, he has received a Royal Academy of Engineering research fellowship to continue his work in this field and establish his research. His research interests include developing interventional medical imaging systems based on laser-generated ultrasound and photoacoustics.
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About Echopoint Medical: Echopoint Medical is a medtech company
Katerina Spranger
Founder and CEO of Oxford Heartbeat
Katerina is the Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. She holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Oxford and was previously a researcher in AI at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris.
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About Oxford Heartbeat, Royal Academy of Engineering: Oxford Heartbeat makes cardiovascular surgery more accurate and safe.
Ema Kufel
Co-Founder, CEO of Prosoma
Co-Founder/CEO, Ema is an (MSc) Marketing Communications graduate and an expert in healthcare communications. Ema has vast experience in managing projects developing digital strategies within the National Health Service and the Department of Health in the UK. She is passionate about healthcare and innovation, key components of Prosoma.
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About Prosoma: At Prosoma, we design world-leading digital therapeutics solutions for Oncology.
Marek Ostrowski
Founder of Prosoma
Founder, Marek finished Philosophy at the University of Wrocław, and then a post-graduate accredited Psychotherapy course, and Simonton’s Therapy Course. He specialises in working with oncological patients. From 2008, the founder and shareholder of a tech company, in which he was responsible for the development, innovation and management of strategic projects.
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About Prosoma: At Prosoma, we design world-leading digital therapeutics solutions for Oncology.
Alexandra Hussenot
Founder & CEO of Immersionn
Alexandra is the founder of Immersionn, the world’s first VR Discovery Engine and she is also the UK lead for ‘Women in Immersive Technologies’, a community of 1000 members that aims to empower European women working in XR. She is also 1 in 10 members of the UK5G Creative Industries working group reporting the department in charge of Digital, Medias, Culture and Sport (DCMS). Prior to this, Alexandra pursued an international business career at insurance firm, Allianz, managing an £80M global business. She has also worked all over Europe during her 11 years at Sony Ericsson (now Sony Mobile) and has solid experience designing and launching software and service products, particularly covering user experience design and continuous improvements. She also lead large scale operations for mobile phone repairs and remanufacturing.
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About Immersionn: Immersionn is a content discovery company. We allow people to discover VR content they would never find
George Frodsham
Founder & CEO of MediSieve
George Frodsham founded MediSieve after being awarded his PhD in biochemical engineering from University College London (UCL), during which he developed the magnetic blood filter. As well as being a physicist and engineer, George is an entrepreneur. George was awarded a BBSRC Enterprise Fellowship from the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2014. Since 1996, only 180 individuals have benefited from this highly competitive and prestigious programme. George has also completed the Entrepreneurship Summer School programme at the London Business School. This equipped him to research target markets and industries and turn his visions into viable businesses.
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About MediSieve: MediSieve is a therapeutics company developing a platform technology for the treatment of blood-borne diseases.
Gemma Timms
Founder & COO of VitaeVR
Gemma Timms is an executive at Hakluyt and the co-founder of Vitae VR.
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About VitaeVR: Medical devices for early diagnosis of cognitive disease
Kitty Liao
Founder & CEO of Ideabatic
Royal Academy of Engineering 2018 Enterprise Fellow, Ambassador at THE Port Association, Switzerland. Ten years experience in multi-disciplinary system design and R&D, including low temperature systems, superconducting cavity diagnostics systems and design for low-resource settings.
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About Ideabatic: Ideabatic is solving the most challenging humanitarian problems by delivering innovative solutions and devices.
Faii Ong
Founder and CEO of GyroGear
Faii Ong is the founder and CEO of GyroGear.
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About GyroGear: GyroGear is developing a wearable to help individuals with hand tremors.
Lise Pape
Founder of Walk With Path
Lise is the Founder of Walk With Path and the inventor of the two products. She holds a double Masters in Innovation Design Engineering from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. Prior to that, she worked for Invest in Denmark at the Royal Danish Embassy in London, where she was responsible for attracting foreign companies to Denmark within the sectors of life sciences and clean technologies. She has also worked in online advertising for AOL’s Advertising.com and in finance for J.P. Morgan. Lise holds a BSc in Human Biology from King’s College London.
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About Future Care Capital, Walk With Path, Walk With Path: Walk With Path is a mobility company providing active wearables and data insights to improve human function.
Neel Patel
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of ZiO Health
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About ZiO Health: ZiO Health has developed proprietary pocket-sized technology, bringing lab testing to the point of use.
Herbert Oakes
Founder & CEO of NOXSUDOR THERAPEUTICS LIMITED
Herbert Oakes, non-executive director, is an investment banker and builder of high technology life sciences companies. He is currently a Managing Director of Oakes, Lyman & Co. Limited an investment banking firm specialising in high-tech healthcare; a Managing director of Hycroft Advisors, a global investment banking firm specialising in arranging capital for private equity partnerships; and CEO of NoxSudor Therapeutics Limited, a start-up medical business developing a therapy for hot flashes and night sweats for menopausal women. He is an advisor of Wilton Corporate Finance Limited.
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About NOXSUDOR THERAPEUTICS LIMITED: First prescription medical device to control sweating
Toby Basey-Fisher
Co-Founder & CEO of Entia
Toby Basey-Fisher serves as a Co-Founder & CEO at Entia.
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About Entia, Imperial College London: Entia is a medical technology company that specializes in improving access to blood test.
Cameron Shaw
Founder and COO of Virax Biolabs
Cameron Shaw is the founder and Chief Operations Officer at Virax Biolabs.
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About Virax Biolabs: Virax Biolabs is an innovative Biotechnology company focused on the prevention, detection and diagnosis of viral diseases
Guang Zhong Yang
Co-Founder of Smart Surgical Appliances
Guang-Zhong Yang is Founder of Smart Surgical Appliances Limited. Guang-Zhong Yang serves at Institute of Biomedical Engineering.
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About Smart Surgical Appliances: Smart Surgical Appliances is a medical device company, developing sensor-enabled surgical instrumentation.
Ara Darzi
Co-Founder of Smart Surgical Appliances
Prof. Ara Darzi, KBE MD, FRCS, FRCSI, FACS, co-founded SynaptiQ Ltd. in 2001. Prof. Darzi is the Founder of Smart Surgical Appliances Limited. He serves as the Head of Scientific Advisory Board, Director and Member of Scientific Advisory Board of SynaptiQ Ltd. He served as a Hunterian Professor of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He holds the Chair of Surgery at Imperial College School of Medicine and is also the Tutor in Minimal Access Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in England. He is the James IV traveling fellow for 1999/2000, and is also a Council Member of the Association of Coloproctologists of Great Britain and Ireland, The Association of Endoscopic Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Society of Minimal Invasive Therapy. He is also the Chairman of the London Committee for the Modernisation of the National Health Service, which is charged with recommending how best to modernise the NHS. He was appointed as Advisor on Surgery to the Department of Health. He serves as Vice Chairperson at Sidra Medical and Research Centre. He conferred a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. His main clinical and academic interest is Minimal Invasive Therapy, including Imaging and Biological research. He has co-authored over 100 peer review publications and five books on surgery. Prof. Darzi received an honorary Knighthood in December 2002 in recognition of his service to the United Kingdom National Health Service. Prof. Darzi obtained his fellowship in Surgery from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and an M.D. degree from Trinity College, Dublin.
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About Smart Surgical Appliances, The Institute of Cancer Research: Smart Surgical Appliances is a medical device company, developing sensor-enabled surgical instrumentation.
Charles Ball
Co-Founder and Commercial Manager of Chronomics
Charles Ball is the Co-Founder and Commercial Manager at Chronomics.
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About Chronomics: Tech-bio company, providing access to a ‘bio-infrastructure’ to simplify and speed-up the use of biomarkers to improve everyday decisions.
Toby Call
Co-Founder of Chronomics
Toby Call is the Co-Founder of Chronomics.
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About Chronomics: Tech-bio company, providing access to a ‘bio-infrastructure’ to simplify and speed-up the use of biomarkers to improve everyday decisions.
Daniel Elías Martín Herranz
Co-Founder and CSO of Chronomics
Daniel Elías Martín Herranz is the Co-Founder and CSO at Chronomics.
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About Chronomics: Tech-bio company, providing access to a ‘bio-infrastructure’ to simplify and speed-up the use of biomarkers to improve everyday decisions.
Charles Large
Founder and CEO of Autifony Therapeutics
Charles Large received his first degree and PhD from the University of Bristol and has more than 20 years of experience of drug discovery and development in the pharmaceutical industry. Before founding Autifony, he was Director of Molecular and Cellular Biology within the Neuroscience Centre of Excellence for Drug Discovery at GlaxoSmithKline, and has worked on programs focused on schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, bipolar disorder, and major depression. He is an expert on drugs that modulate voltage gated ion channels and their application to neurological and psychiatric disorders. He has built up a reputation in the field of sodium channel blocking drugs, and has collaborated widely with academic groups. He has authored over 50 papers, book chapters and patents relating to ion channel modulators.
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About Autifony Therapeutics: Autifony Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing medicines to treat hearing disorders such as hearing loss and tinnitus.
Rafael Michaeli
CoFounder of SAVA
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About SAVA: The first effortless continuous molecular tracker unlocking human perfomance
Hugo Macedo
CEO & Founder of Smart Separations Ltd
Hugo is the founder and CEO of Smart Separations Ltd. He has over 11 years of experience in entrepreneurship which helped him founding this start-up company that has developed a proprietary filter that can be tailored to suit many different applications in the poorly explored but very large microfiltration market, from biotechnology to food & drink processing. Throughout his PhD in Biomedical Engineering, Hugo was constantly challenged with new and diverse tasks, in a multidisciplinary environment, where he breathed skills from chemical engineering to stem cell technology, including membrane technology, hydrodynamics, stem cell culture and bioprocessing, human blood production, amongst many others. This provided him with the right tools to create the first “3D hollow fibre bioreactor for the production of human red blood cells” – a system design that he patented. This work was featured in different magazines, including the cover page of The Chemical Engineer (TCE) in 2011, selected as one of “Ten life-changing ideas under research at UK universities” by the Research Councils UK and shortlisted for the highly prestigious IChemE Awards in 2011. Hugo currently holds 2 patents and is passionate for innovation leading to improve people’s quality of life – a vision that he has shared with Smart Separation
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About Smart Separations Ltd: Smart Separations is a limited company based in London UK that has patented an innovative microfiltration technology.
Yen Choo
Founder of Plasticell
Yen Choo is a Founder at Plasticell.
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About Plasticell: Plasticell offers a cell-based screening technology for the discovery of small molecule drugs that regenerate cells of the body.
Sukhbinder Noorpuri
Founder & CEO of i-GP
With over 15 years of NHS experience, Dr Noorpuri founded i-GP to improve patient access to care that is convenient, affordable and safe.
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About i-GP: i-GP is an online service that provides customers with medical services and advice.
Malav Sanghavi
Founder and Director of Creoto Technologies
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About Creoto Technologies: Creoto Technologies is developing the first custom fitting, standardised, smart prosthetic socket.
