In conversation with: Semble’s Christoph Lippuner – UKTN

Christoph speaks to UKTN about Semble’s journey, striking the balance between innovation and trust and how he believes building a business is perfecting the balance between a creative act and purpose.

Tell us more about Semble and the journey to where you are today.

Semble came out of a personal experience.

Unfortunately, my mother got diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, and around the time of the inception of Semble, my co-founder and I were faced with similar personal situations. We tried to make sense of what was happening and through that staged process we identified a pattern – we saw that healthcare professionals had systems working against them,

Semble came from empathy; empathy for healthcare professionals and for our close relatives impacted by severe medical diagnoses. We embarked on trying to tackle these inefficiencies.

We started working on the platform at the end of 2016 and it took us a year and a half to build. Back in 2018, investors were telling us that this solution wasn’t going to be successful as this was not a market that wanted innovation, but we deeply believed that we could make a difference, and we have been proven right.

Building a business is perfecting the balance between a creative act and purpose

How do you strike the balance between innovation and trust?

It’s all about trust. Innovation for the sake of innovation doesn’t mean anything. A question we think about often is how to accelerate trust in a world with an increased speed of adoption, it is about being transparent with our users and healthcare professionals and being authentic about the mission and placing the impact first.

As my co-founder Mikael and I are not healthcare professionals, we spent months with doctors to understand how they work. Through these sessions, we built trust while they explained what they wanted from our system to fix the day-to-day issues they faced.

This focus on product continues to be key for us; 60% of our current team consist of tech and product specialists, and we are consistently requesting feedback from users on the product. This, I think, balances innovation and trust perfectly.

What has been the key challenge you have faced when scaling the product?

Ultimately, we need to have a fully integrated solution, and the scope of the product made it difficult to maintain and grow.

When we first started, we would simply add items to the platform when we wanted to fix a problem, which resulted in a clunky offering. We knew this wasn’t the right direction, so we hired the right people and became focused on the mission.

Now, everything we do is intentional and well-thought out rather than an instant reaction. This outlook has completely transformed our approach to the product and has kept us closer to our users.

How do you safeguard your clinical data?

We view it as a privilege to look after and maintain the data of millions of patients, and this also comes with a great deal of responsibility. From day one, we didn’t see data security as a function or a role – we saw it as an integral part of our culture that everyone in the company is a part of.

For this reason, every Semble team member is trained on – and aware of – data privacy and what constitutes sensitive data.

“We like to focus on the idea of interoperability”

How do you see the role of private digital health platforms complementing, rather than competing with, the NHS?

We like to focus on the idea of interoperability. I see a world where the private healthcare system in the UK and the NHS collaborates by using one streamlined system where patient data flows effortlessly from one practice to the other.

Our main goal is to improve processes for healthcare professionals across all organisations, which in turn creates better patient outcomes. We view it as one market rather than two siloed ones, and we hope to become more involved with the NHS in the future.

As the health tech sector evolves, are there any future risks that concern you?

Keeping relations a part of the process. The speed of automation is something to be celebrated but equally to be cautious of in the digital age.

I think we need to be careful as tech builders to ensure that we do not disrupt the fine line between transactional and relational when it comes to patient care.

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