In conversation with Dr Derrick Khor, Medical Consulting Group

Sophie Burton-Jones: Hello and welcome to Talking digital health, a podcast by law firm Mills & Reeve, hosted by health and tech lawyers Sophie Burton-Jones and Charlotte Lewis. Our aim is to discuss key topics of interest to those procuring tech in the NHS and those selling tech to the NHS. If you like this podcast, then please follow or subscribe and maybe even leave a review. It really helps with our reach. I'm Sophie Burton-Jones.

Charlotte Lewis: And I'm Charlotte Lewis, and we're your hosts for this episode. Uh, we're delighted today to be joined by Dr. Derrick Khor. Um, Derrick is an NHS cancer doctor, co-founder of Medical Consulting Group. He's also an advisor to GC Ventures. We're going to say more on this later when we talk about women's health.

Thank you very much for joining us today, Derrick.

Derrick Khor: It's an absolute pleasure to be here. I've been a big fan of this podcast, and it's great to be part of the guests.

Charlotte Lewis: Well, thank you. Very delighted. You'll be, maybe pleased, maybe not to know that this is the first of our “In Conversation” series, so you're our first interviewee for that purpose. We’re inviting interesting people from the worlds of digital health and healthtech to come and talk to us about what they're doing, and we're thrilled to have you with us to discuss that today, Derrick. So before we actually get into healthtech, we'd love to hear a little bit about your journey into the NHS and your clinical work, and then perhaps how that sort of set you up for a move into healthtech, because I think people are really interested to hear about the backstory.

Derrick Khor: So I was a pure clinician, and I am still a full-time clinical oncology registrar. I work in the Beatson Cancer Centre in Glasgow, so my day job is helping cancer patients and planning radiotherapy, administering chemotherapy. But my healthtech journey began about three years ago.

So as we all know, COVID happened and I was really thrown straight into it right after our wedding. Didn't have a honeymoon, straight into COVID and it was probably the two, three years of the hardest time of my life. Because, you know, you're seeing people die every single day, and you're seeing so many inefficiencies, so many things that can be improved in healthcare. And it was shortly after my son was born that I realised that, wow, actually, I want to do something to help improve the situation, and that's when I just started writing on LinkedIn.

I just took a selfie, posted on LinkedIn saying "You know what? One of the greatest reasons why AI and healthtech fail is because there's not enough clinical engagement, so here's a picture to prove I'm a human being. Reach out to me if you need me."

And that's how it began, and three years later, here we are. It's been quite an organic journey, you know. We just started talking to lots and lots of founders who reached out on LinkedIn, and I had zero followers then, but you know, people were just interested to engage with clinicians, and we built a whole business out of this as well. So here we are.

Charlotte Lewis: Gosh, it's crazy, but brilliant too. Talk about maximizing on an opportunity. You’ve clearly got an entrepreneurial streak within you. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about Medical Consulting Group and who you support and what you're trying to achieve?

Derrick Khor: Yeah. I mean, the story of it is quite silly. So I told you that I took a selfie, and what really shocked me was that even though I had zero followers, nobody knew who I was, we had, like six founders reach out to us in that month, and I was like, "Hmm, something strange here." Created a little website, and then people reached out within a week. Nowadays, sometimes we can get up to six people reaching out in a day. We realised that there was this need that not just health tech startups, but biotech startups, pharma, very, very big pharma actually reached out to us and said, "Hey, you know, we really want to engage fellow clinicians, but we don't really have an easy way of doing that."

Some companies are great, they have their own in-house team, but a lot of companies don't even have that. It's like a full-time job to engage the clinicians, the consultants, their key opinion leaders, and it's something that they really struggle with. And being a clinician myself, I came together with my co-founder, Thomas, and we are both clinicians and also working in this healthtech sector. We've come up with a way of making it really easy for both sides. We sort out all the paperwork, we match people personally by hand, and it worked really well, you know. We’ve had about 50 to 60 clients so far, and we've collected over 200 clinicians already. We find that collaboration is very much a hands-on personal approach, and that's the kind of collaboration that we need in this sector because we see so much waste. We see so much waste about people raising lots of money, but they are building things that people don't really need. And where the rubber meets the road, where clinical tools are deployed into the NHS or into any healthcare setting, they realise, "Oh, this actually doesn't solve the problem that we need."

You get people who write some incredible papers for BMJ, NEJM, but then that's it. You don't hear anything about it anymore, you know, and there's lots of blind spots to it. The clinical piece is one, but having spoke to about 250 founders, we realised that it's a whole puzzle, isn't it? You know, there's the legal aspect, Mills & Reeve. There's the regulatory aspect. There's the commercial aspect. You need all these pieces to fall together for it to work. And that's why I've always been such a big proponent of collaborating with lots and lots of people to put together all this material on LinkedIn to make it easier for them to understand.

So yeah, that's what we do. We mainly connect healthtech and biotech companies with clinical opinion leaders and consultants throughout the entire UK.

Sophie Burton-Jones: It's a great idea. And we hear quite often, are health tech companies creating the right things? Are they focusing on big, shiny things rather than things that might actually make a difference on the ground? But, you know, that's what the clinicians actually need, so it really makes sense.

We've obviously mentioned LinkedIn a couple of times already. From our perspective, you seem really prolific on LinkedIn, and that's definitely how you came to our attention originally, and you have your infographics and all of that good stuff. What is your approach now to LinkedIn? You've been doing it for a few years. How do you make the platform work for you?

Derrick Khor: Well, I could talk for an hour on this. Literally, I've done, like, a course for clinicians as a part of a fundraiser for Doctors in Distress.

I've been doing LinkedIn for about three years now, and I'm not a social media person, you know. Before three years ago, I barely had a Facebook, didn't have Instagram or Twitter, I was a social media ghost. But I think what really worked for me for LinkedIn is because there was a bit of a positive feedback loop. I post something, somebody reaches out. I post another thing, somebody reaches out.

But of course, the first 20, 30, 40 posts were essentially shouting into the void, and everyone experiences this. You post something, you get two likes and you can feel like, oh, I put my heart and soul into this, and it doesn't really work. But eventually we started to hit a streak, and then started to realise that the best posts are the ones that drive value for people, and I'm sure you guys experienced this with the podcast as well. If your content produces value for people, people will naturally want to engage. And so we just started posting more and more infographics, more and more carousels.

The approach I do is I take lots and lots of calls with early-stage healthtech founders with Series A, pre-seed, all the way up to Series B founders. From this conversation, I try to pry out what are they confused about, what do they not know? And that is when I realised, okay, I don't know about GDPR, I don't know about NHS DTAC. Let's read about it, let's write about it, and share the homework with the class. And that seems to work quite well, and I think people do quite enjoy this kind of post.

Ultimately, it's all about building community, about really talking to people, engaging people, and not just creating something just to get likes. But it really helps with the business as well, let's be honest. It's an incredible inbound lead generator because, you know, people trust you, people are familiar with you, and the saying goes, people need to engage with your content about seven times before they will buy from you, so there we go.

Sophie Burton-Jones: I was just going to ask, because you mentioned building community. I know you were at HLTH in Europe this year. We were there as well, and that felt like a real kind of community where you do interact with people online, but to see a lot of people there together in one space was... I always find it great having those conversations over multiple days and getting to know people a bit better, and that you're not just that profile picture on LinkedIn.

Derrick Khor: Yes. I enjoyed HLTH in Europe a lot this year. It was amazing because I couldn't move a step without someone intercepting me. I think it's just really nice. It also shocked me because I remember I was a part of one of the evening events, I was just trying to get a taco, and someone just reached out to me and said, "Oh, I know who you are. I know you have your children. I know your healthtech stuff."

I was like, "Oh, God." But, but it's, it's really nice to put a name to a face. I can't really go to many events now these days because I have a baby. But it's good when we can go, you know? It's really nice.

Charlotte Lewis: How do you decide what you do and don't go to? Because we have a similar problem, which is that there are so many conferences and events, and they all look fantastic, but you can't be at everything, and then also you're, you know, in your case, running a business, doing your clinical work. In our case, we’re serving our clients' needs. So how do you decide what's for you and, and what you leave.

Derrick Khor: Yeah. That's a great question, actually. There's so many good events, but these days, I only go when I'm invited to go as a speaker or as an ambassador. So for HLTH in Europe, I was appointed as one of the five or six UK ambassadors, so free ticket - wonderful. And I managed to get there, it was good. HealthTechX is another good one that's coming up, and I'm an ambassador for that as well, but I can't go to that. I know THE FIX was one recently as well, which I was curated for, but I couldn't go to that either because of baby. I think for me right now the key thing is am I a speaker? Am I ambassador? If so, I will go to represent or I'll send my MCG team.

If you're asking a personal question for me, right now in 2025, early 2026, it's a no-go for me because I have two babies under two. I personally find it's not fair to just leave my wife alone at home to look after two kids while I go and do my prolific stuff. I think that would be slightly bit hypocritical, so I'm deciding to stay put.

But you know, one thing I've realised is a lot of these healthtech events that reach out to me, the first thing they tell me is, "I want you to be our ambassador". I say, "I can't come physically” and they're still very keen to get me involved. So lots of work can still be done even if I'm not there.

Charlotte Lewis: And I think it goes to show the strength of your social media profile actually, that you don't necessarily need to be at all of the events to be involved in them or to gain the momentum from them, so that's quite interesting.

Sophie Burton-Jones: I was just going to ask because I know you're based in Glasgow. Are there many events there locally for you or are you having to travel to London or Manchester?

Derrick Khor: Actually, Glasgow is quite a unique city, so one very interesting thing that's going to happen very soon is in November, Barclays is hosting a women's health talk with Nexus in the Barclays Eagle's Lab, so there's one I'm going to speak on as a panel in Glasgow. I think they know that I'm here, and they have a very beautiful new campus in Glasgow as well, so they organised that event and then they got other people to come in and join as well. Women's health is a great topic to talk about, so yeah, it's amazing. And I got invited to speak in one of the other... There's an amazing lab here called the Digital Health Validation Lab. They're literally building like a four-story building for it, it's amazing. And sometimes we get invited to speak here and there, but most of the events are unfortunately in London.

Charlotte Lewis: They often are, aren't they?

Derrick Khor: Yeah. Such is life, and London has just too much opportunity for it.

Charlotte Lewis: You’re clearly doing an awful lot. You've got a lot of professional roles and then obviously you've talked about your personal life as well. I love the fact that you're so vocal as a father and you prioritise that, that's really quite refreshing. But how do you navigate all of those competing demands? It's something that I hear women talk about a lot more, not necessarily always in relation to children, but we talk quite a lot about juggling everything. Very rarely do I have that conversation with men, so given that you are quite honest, I would love to know how you juggle.

Derrick Khor: It's a really good question, and it's an ongoing struggle. I'm Malaysian, so I'm not from Britain. My wife and I are both medics. We moved from Malaysia to the UK, and we have the children here, but what this also means is that we don't have our village here, you know. It's just my wife, myself, and two very small kids, very intense kids. So it has always been something in my mind and, you know, I draw the lines very clearly. Family comes first, my kids come first. I don't believe in throwing childcare to my wife and expecting her to do everything, and that used to be part of Asian culture. I don't want to do that in my family, so family first, then I have to always say, "Okay, you know what? I'm a doctor after as well." So you know, my clinical work when I'm working in the cancer centre, when I'm going through my clinics, when I'm talking to patients, that is my focus as well. You can't be doing LinkedIn, you can't be doing apps in between work. So that comes second. And then the crevices of my time then gets dedicated to LinkedIn.

I guess a point to say as well is I don't work alone. A lot of people think I do because they see me posting all this stuff, but the truth is, even the work that we do through the medical consulting group, Thomas and Amy are really good at the operational stuff. I often rely on them to actually deliver the projects, the consulting projects, the market access, the clinician engagement work. They do a fantastic job for that.

So we work as a team. In the family, in the house, and even at work, we work as a team, so that's the key thing. But I think balancing is all about knowing what you need to prioritise, and for me, that's always family first. So that's why, you know, I'm not going to events, not doing this stuff even though you technically could expand the business a bit faster, you technically can be a bit more prolific. But I think, uh, what's the point?

Charlotte Lewis: It's about building a life that you want to live, isn't it?

Derrick Khor: Exactly. There's no point getting lots and lots of business but, your family is floundering. It’s pointless.

Sophie Burton-Jones: I think there's some good messages there in terms of, people might think everybody's doing it on their own on the face of it, but not necessarily. There's normally a team of people in the background that are really helping make it happen, and how you juggle might have to change at different points in your life. What works at one point doesn't necessarily work at another point, and you just have to kind of keep reprioritising, so I think there's some really good messages there.

Charlotte Lewis: And I guess, built on your foundations as well, whatever they happen to be for each person. But you've clearly got a really solid core purpose and foundation, and you build on from that, that grounds you and keeps you focused on what you want to achieve.

Derrick Khor: It's just one step at a time, isn't it? You know, you often see the people on LinkedIn, the big, bright, shiny founders with a 100 million raise, and you tend to think that, oh, that's an overnight success, but really it's built over ten years, you know? Just slow and steady.

Charlotte Lewis: Consistency is key.

Derrick Khor: Showing up every day, that's what matters, and that's what most people fail on anyway.

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Sophie Burton-Jones: Can we move slightly on to women's health? So you've obviously been talking on LinkedIn a lot more about women's health recently, and you've been quite a vocal ally, which is great. We'd love to hear more about what you're doing in this area and your role with GG Ventures, and what drives you to support this area.

Derrick Khor: I've always been very interested in this space, but, like most men, I was looking at it from the outside and very worried about entering it because you want to be respectful, you don't want to be a mansplainer, and you just worry. Even though I am a clinician, I have the qualifications, you do know that this is a space where everyone's very passionate, rightfully so. It's something that I've always looked at from the outside with great admiration.

But HLTH in Europe was the turning point, really, because I was invited to speak on a panel with some amazing founders, Carmen, Dave Venters. We sit down, and we talk to lots of people. From there I realised, "Hey, you know what? This is a very welcoming space." and from there onwards, I pledged to myself that I want to write more about the gender health gap. I know I have a platform, and I want to use the skills that I have to write a bit more and to actually vocalise some of these thoughts, you know. I did that quite a lot, and it received quite a good following, so I was very pleased about that.

And from there, GG Ventures, previously known as Goddess Gaia Ventures, Priya, the general partner, reached out to me and said, "Hey, would you like to be an advisor?" I said, "Yes. It would be a great honour to." and here we are. It's been fun, it's been awesome to be acknowledged, but it's more about trying to find ways to close the gender health gap. Because I didn't know the gender health gap was a thing, but I see it day-to-day as, as a clinician, women who were not taken seriously and they come presenting with very advanced cancer, be it ovarian cancer, be it endometrial cancer, be it breast cancer. And we hear, and I see in my clinic on a day-to-day basis, what happens when women are not listened to, and lives that could potentially have been saved now having a life limiting prognosis because of something that could have been picked up a bit earlier.

We could talk a lot about the problems that we see in diagnostics. Cancer care has transformed radically within the past 30 years, you know? Like what we do 20 years ago is considered barbaric right now. Today we have lots of new drugs, immunotherapy, targeted therapy, new radiotherapy, new diagnosis, lots and lots of stuff, you know? All of this doesn't evolve naturally with time. It's because millions and millions of people have been working very hard and trillions of funds have been poured into it, and that's why cancer care today has evolved so quickly. But if we draw the parallel and look at women's health, we will start to realise, actually, we've not made much progress.

What is the greatest breakthrough in women's health diagnostic in the past ten, 20 years, you know? The Pap smear, mammogram, and then what else? You know, we don't have a blood test to check for endometriosis. We don't have non-invasive ways of checking things like endometriosis. We can't check things easily. And the reason for this is not because it's scientifically impossible. It's just that we've not put enough capital and energy and time into this. So that's why I'm writing about it.

Charlotte Lewis: On the women's health stuff. You know we've been doing a lot of work in women's health as well, and so I've been sort of following the people that have been talking about it, and for me, your voice comes across quite loudly because it's a very different voice. One, because you're male, but two, because actually you're very honest about it all. So you and I have spoken on, women's health is an economic opportunity. But actually, it's not just about it being an economic opportunity. It needs to happen. It also will improve the lives of millions of women, which is also important, not just because they'll work more or pay more or do whatever, but because it will make their lives better, and that's important, too.

And I really like that you said that because it's something that I feel is an important message that we get across. Because you wouldn't say that for cancer, for example. You wouldn't say, "Well, let's improve cancer rates because it's going to mean that more people can go back to work quicker," or something like that.

Derrick Khor: I'm very grateful, Charlotte, for you bringing it up first to me, you know, because I wonder if it's a very male thing where we often try to justify things logically. We need the numbers, we need the figures, we need to back things up, you know? But the more I think about it, the more I realise actually how odd that is. I mean, yes, numbers and figures justify actions and drive policy. But the truth of the matter, even cancer, you know? Cancer, it was a moon shot. In the 1940s, 1950s, cancer was a death sentence. There was no money to be made, you know? It was just something that was very hopeless and nobody could have imagined the technology that we have today. But people rallied together simply because it was the right thing to do. Cancer was a scourge, and people wanted to fix it, because it was killing people left, right, up, down, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters. It was through that story and that power and that rallying cry that people actually moved towards improving cancer care.

Likewise for women's health, it's true that there's lots of numbers and figures that have come out already. But I wonder, as I've written in my post, I worry that we'll miss the point if all we cared about was numbers. Because if, let's say, the numbers were not right, does it mean it justifies us not worrying about women's health? It doesn't, because it is the right thing to do. Just as looking after the welfare of children, just as education is important, even though the numbers may not stack up sometimes, it doesn't mean you can just leave kids alone or just ignore the right things in society.

But it's a very interesting reflection point that I'm going to carry forward, in my own writing and my own life.

Charlotte Lewis: That doesn't mean to say that it's not a good thing if actually it does drive those positive changes economically as well, then, then great. But I agree with you that if that is a government’s sole driver, then, what happens when that doesn't happen? Because it might not always happen. And then, as you say, does that mean that the policy drops? And that shouldn't be the driver, it should be about the gender health gap, and it should be about equity and equality across our health. If there's a positive impact on the economy as a result, then great, but it should be a byproduct, not the driver.

Sophie Burton-Jones: It sort of dehumanises women, and suggests that we're an economic product or asset, and we may well be, but we're humans too.

Derrick Khor: I think I see that a lot more, maybe because I'm a doctor, you know. The numbers that are on the white paper are the people that you see in front of you. They'll be very real lives, very real struggles, very real concerns. And it's not very satisfying as a medic when I just say, "Oh, I can't really do much about it because we don't have any solutions for you."

And, you know, what do I say to them? "Wait thirty years for progress?" Humans are humans, and I think that's something that we always have to bear in mind. People are not numbers.

Charlotte Lewis: For me, this is why it's so important that we involve clinicians and people, patients or just people, in the conversations around women's health, and those people to be having the conversations with those who've got the funding.

So, the fact that you're working with GG Ventures is just so important because they've got a job to do. They've got a pot of money, and they need to invest, and they've got to make decisions about that. And so actually having the voice to remind them of those factors I think is quite important. At the end of the day, nobody's a bad person, but we're all in our lanes and sometimes we just need to be reminded of the factors to bear in mind. And so great for them that they've got you, and good for you that you're working with them.

Derrick Khor: Yeah. It's just starting off, and I think GG Ventures will grow very quickly, and I think they're looking to deploy their capital very soon. It's just a great news for the space, because we just need more funding, period.

Sophie Burton-Jones: Well, thank you very much for your time today, Derrick. You can probably tell by us tripping over to compete with questions that it's been really interesting.

Derrick Khor: It's fantastic seeing both of you as well. I see a lot of the work that you guys do as well, and it's really interesting. I think I spoke to Gayle initially, and it's very interesting that a law firm is championing women's health, which is great. You know, we see lots of the non-traditional fields coming up, like, you know, Cooper Perry championing healthtech. It's great to see that even big firms have the right heart for the right things.

Charlotte Lewis: We've got a group of, as you've noticed, very passionate, vocal women. So we couldn't ignore this area because it affects us all so deeply.

Derrick Khor: Certainly. And it's a growth area. It's a very important area to work in. Well, lovely to see both of you today. I'm sure we will catch each other very soon as well.

Charlotte Lewis: Absolutely.

Sophie Burton-Jones: Yeah, I hope so. And I'm sure we'll be seeing on LinkedIn, all sorts of posts, infographics, comments coming up.

Derrick Khor: I just posted one this morning actually. It's just a quick update on all the investors that are actively deploying capital in the UK. It's just a short one, but hopefully it'll help the community.

Charlotte Lewis: If you'd like to hear more from Derrick, then obviously do check him out on LinkedIn.

At Mills & Reeve, we're always very happy to discuss legal queries you might have, whether you're buying or selling healthtech, and our individual contact details are available at our website, mills-reeve.com.

You'll also find our FemHealth Focus reports on there, and we'll put a link in the blurb too. That concludes the episode, and we'd just like to say a very big thank you to you, Derrick, for joining us for this episode of Talking digital health by law firm Mills & Reeve. Thank you.

Derrick Khor: Thank you.