Jonathan Patrick is the Managing Director of Teladoc Health UK. Jonathan talks to us about his role and more in our Q&A.
We’re very lucky because Teladoc Health has an excellent management team, many of whom have been with the company for many years. My job is to be a point of reference, helping people to make decisions against the background of our “big picture” ambitions. I also act as the contact for the UK business with international colleagues and our parent company in the US.
I was one of the founders and the CEO of Consultant Connect when we were acquired by Teladoc Health at the beginning of 2021. For those that don’t know of Consultant Connect, it’s a NHS communications platform that allows NHS GPs, paramedics, nurses, and other clinicians to get immediate, specialist advice on their patients. We’ve had a very large impact in the UK, covering more than half of the population, and we now lead Teladoc Health’s public healthcare practice.
Consultant Connect forms a large part of Teladoc Health’s business in the UK. It’s been great fun and extremely rewarding to see two entirely different sides of the coin. Our other partners in Consultant Connect, Roger Ahn, and Roger Tweedale, Scott Welpton have taken the CTO, CIO, and FD roles. It’s been a fabulously interesting and entertaining transition.
From Consultant Connect’s perspective, having access to cutting-edge tech from the US has been a massive boost to the service. We’ve seen hospital robots deployed in NHS hospitals around the UK, bringing fabulous patient care benefits.
I think where we’ve added value to Teladoc Health’s UK business is twofold: firstly, I feel that we are supporting a very entrepreneurial mindset – if you have a good idea, we’ll go after it. We also don’t get hung up on whether things succeed the first time. If we think something is not working, we’ll change it. It’s a very liberated mindset.
The second impact we’ve had is in technology development. People were initially reluctant to believe how quickly we could get stuff done, but the Consultant Connect tech team are masters of getting great tech to release in a short time. The impact on what we offer clients has been enormous, and our work in mental health and virtual physio services leads the pack. It’s a great, exciting time to be working here.
I’ve had a career that has been so varied that it’s difficult to say. My first job was in sales at Procter & Gamble, which was so much fun. I then qualified as a solicitor, which taught me how to understand one end of a contract from another.
The companies I ran and sold before joining Teladoc Health gave me an unbelievable breadth of experience. I’ve done everything from signing big, strategic contracts with NHS Wales to organising an emergency metal chimney in the middle of nowhere. The one thing I’ve always tried to do is be sensible.
I think if you look at Teladoc Health and Consultant Connect’s pedigree in healthcare you can see two companies at the forefront of innovation. Teladoc Health has delivered over 50 million virtual consultations across the world, always whilst relentlessly improving the tech to do more for less.
Consultant Connect has also developed technology that has been adopted quickly in the NHS and directly benefits hundreds of thousands of patients annually.
In both cases, we’ve delivered something new, sustainably, at a scale that has been successfully adopted by clinicians and patients. We are comfortable saying we are the best at what we do.
I know it’s the most boring answer, but the people I work with are the best. There’s not a day where I’m not surprised by somebody’s knowledge or ideas. It’s an old adage that you should surround yourself with people who are better than you and that’s what’s happened.
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