Our latest Ones to Watch, in partnership with NatWest, are IgniteData who specialise in patient recruitment, patient feasibility and eSourced data using digital patient records in the UK. We caught up with Managing Director, Dan Hydes.
What was the inspiration behind IgniteData? We wanted to build a high value business in a growth area whilst trying to do some good. We didn’t want to look back in 30 years having made a load of money from accident claims lines or sub-prime mortgages! We use data and tech to speed up drug development. Everybody benefits, patients, the NHS, biopharma and UK plc. What’s not to like?
Name a business that inspires you – why? GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) have been very inspirational to Ignite. They were the first pharmaceutical company to take the step to integrated digital data capture, rather than the traditional methods of people transcribing data from one computer to another. It sounds so obvious, but in reality it has been a monumental step. In an industry which can often be quite conservative they seem to view risk differently, more in the way you would expect a much smaller more agile to organisation to. And now they find themselves at the forefront of innovation in this space with projects like the Salford Lung Study. Their approach has definitely given us more confidence to re-invent traditional research processes.