Meet James, Chief Technology Officer at Phlo Connect. In this next instalment of our Meet the Team series, we speak to James who tells us about his vision for the future of digital healthcare and how the technology at Phlo rivals others in the digital pharmacy industry.
I joined Phlo two and a half years ago as our first engineer. The leadership team brought me in to build out an engineering team that could deliver on the vision of Phlo and provide technical oversight of the development of the platform. As we grew the team and evolved our working practices, this role became formalised as a Head of Engineering role.
Helping to scale an ambitious business and the personal growth that would provide is a key part of what attracted me to a role at Phlo. From day one, I was encouraged to take ownership and get involved in helping the business in any way I could. The opportunities a scaling company like Phlo provides are endless, and the team gave me space to go and deliver on our plans over the initial eighteen months.
From there, conversations started about a transition in the leadership team to give our previous Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Jonathan space to focus on our data and automation strategy. This change provided me with the opportunity to step up into the CTO role across our B2C digital pharmacy offering and our B2B pharmacy infrastructure platform, Phlo Connect. It's exciting to take on this new role and help lead the business into our next chapter of growth.
As a business, we have spent a lot of time building a world-class pharmacy infrastructure platform for our NHS patients. We quickly realised that we had built the underlying technology that could also help other private healthcare providers with their digital patient experiences.
Phlo Connect allows healthcare providers to seamlessly plug into Phlo's pharmacy infrastructure to provide an unrivalled patient experience. Phlo Connect is a huge space of growth for Phlo, and we're still only scratching the surface of what we're setting out to achieve!
For me, my number one is our people and building a strong engineering culture where we can test, learn and iterate. I want to build an environment where individuals can grow and feel fulfilled. If the team are happy and aligned with Phlo's vision, the Phlo Connect platform will ultimately build itself. Providing our engineering teams with autonomy and allowing them to make the decisions that matter is the key to this. My role is to simply enable and support the team in any way I can to succeed. This involves coaching and providing strategic direction to the team and ensuring they have the people and resources they need.
Outside of the team, I want to continue to build Phlo's profile in the technology space. I'm always amazed at what we achieve day-in-day-out at Phlo and our innovative approaches to solving problems. We have a lot of great stories to tell, and it will be my role to go and tell them. Sharing our story will help prospective employees, patients, and healthcare partners know what we're all about.
At Phlo Connect, we like to keep things simple and not overcomplicate the technology. Our core aim is to make our patient's and healthcare partners' lives easier and always remain focused on the outcome over the technology underpinning a particular solution. This is one of the reasons why we built Phlo Connects Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). We wanted to adopt a “plug and play” approach to our technology rather than building complex bespoke technical solutions.
Saying that, building the modern pharmacy platform is no easy task. We use the latest web and cloud technology to ensure our services are always available, no matter the time of day, the device you're on, or where in the country you are. All of Phlo's offerings are always just a click or two away. This convenience factor is what people have come to expect, given the rise in on-demand services throughout our everyday lives.
Making a difference in people's lives up and down the country. When we built Phlo Connect, we knew that we wanted to regard our partners’ patients as our own patients, and thus constantly strive to provide them with an exceptional level of service and patient care. This is apparent in every conversation we have and every step forward we take with the Phlo platform. Having a team that cares so much about our patients is what makes Phlo what it is.
On top of this, Phlo is just a great place to work. The business is full of energy and always looking for ways to push the industry forward and do things better. The ambition throughout Phlo is unlike anything I've ever seen, and I'm excited to see where the future takes us.
Healthcare, like many sectors, has a lot of legacy providers, and there are so many areas ripe for innovation. Join a business that is pushing forward state of the art and that cares deeply about improving people's lives - then you will be on to a winner.
From there, it's the same general advice I'd give to anyone, find a team that you trust and respect, lead by example and always have a can-do attitude. Almost anything is possible with technology, so figure out how to get it done.
Interested in finding out more about Phlo Connect and how we can help? Get in touch with the team today
