GHP / Technology Awards 2021 13 , Hexarad is a radiology technology company, currently focused on providing remote, specialist clinical reporting on diagnostic images to bothNHS and private healthcare providers. Hexarad combines its network of expert radiologists and innovative technology solutions to help hospitals and health providers to better manage their own resources, and ultimately speed up diagnoses for patients. Hexarad’s founders are clinically trained with direct experience of working in radiology, and as radiologists themselves, they understand the enormous strain that radiology services are under across the UK, and how COVID-19 has only exacerbated the crisis. This nationwide shortage of radiologists is causing increased waiting times and delayed diagnoses for patients, which ultimately leads to poorer treatment outcomes. Combined with the huge and growing treatment backlog caused by the pandemic, there is critical demand for more radiology services. Hexarad was founded to address the chronic shortage of radiologists, with its team’s clinical experience allowing them to continue to pinpoint the most significant problems facing the sector. A key development to support Hexarad’s radiologists, especially during a difficult time, has been the launch of an exclusive share scheme for its radiologists, which is part of its strategy to attract the very best radiologists to work with it. The scheme was set up in response to consultations with its radiologists who described feeling valued, and being part of a reputable and expert team, as part of their top priorities. Hexarad believes that offering its radiologists equity participation is going to be truly disruptive within Dec21327 the teleradiology marketplace. It will help to address key concerns voiced by radiologists, and help make its reporters feel truly valued and rewarded for their expertise. Initial feedback from radiologists has been extremely positive, and it has already seen very strong participation following the launch of the scheme in November 2021. The whole Hexarad leadership team has worked very hard to create a strong company culture and a set of core values that define the company and its goals. Its values are teamwork, collaborating for a common goal; innovation, always finding better ways to work; equality, promoting fairness in everything it does; quality and excellence, committing to providing the highest quality in everything it does; integrity, acting in accordance with its values; and patient-centred thinking, always putting the patient first. Chief commercial officer, Amy Davis said, “Having developed these values, it was very important to us that we make sure that they continue to inform leadership decisions and our team dynamic. One key way that we do this is through an exercise called ‘living the values’, which we do at the beginning of our team meetings. This involves one person giving an example of how they’ve lived one of our six company values recently. When we started, it felt a little forced, but now it’s part of what we do and gives us an opportunity to reflect on why our values are so important to us.” One key benefit of clearly defining the company values has been that it allows the team to make decisions more quickly and easily. These decisions range from recruitment strategy to commercial deals to social responsibility, but with a set of shared core values, the decisions become easy to make. An example of value-driven decision-making is the Hexarad scholarship, which was set up in 2021 in collaboration with the Royal College of Radiologists and St George’s University of London Afro-Caribbean Society. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and its people’s own experiences as medical students, Hexarad was able to launch this unique scholarship, providing mentorship and research project financial assistance to UK-based Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) medical students looking to explore a career in radiology, in less than a year. Ultimately, teleradiology is not a new concept, and there are a number of large providers who have been in this space for some time. Hexarad’s uniqueness lies in its focus on ‘intelligent outsourcing’ which uses technology solutions to enhance its offering, such as its workflow management solution, OptiRad, which allows radiology departments to better understand their own reporting capacity at any particular time, and to use their resources as efficiently as possible, freeing up clinical staff to focus on clinical rather than admin tasks. This enables the company to work seamlessly with NHS Trusts and healthcare providers across the UK. It also benefits from being headquartered in London as it is able to take advantage of the start-ups culture in the city. Now, the future is looking undoubtedly bright for Hexarad, with its upcoming plans including the launch of the second annual Hexarad scholarship for UK- based BAME medical students. Other growth priorities for the company will be to support more NHS and private healthcare customers, add deeper capability and specialisation to its reporter network, and further improve its technology solutions. Company: Hexarad Group Ltd Contact: Amy Davis Email:
[email protected] Website: www.hexarad.com Radiology Technology Innovator of the Year - UK