Desire to Change the Face of Women’s Healthcare; Fiona Sweny

Fiona Sweny, a woman who knows no bounds with a strong determination to revolutionize the digitization of women’s healthcare.

Leading a successful 15-year career in healthcare as a clinician in both the private and public sector, she started off in the British Army.

She led engagements with senior members of the Royal Household, and representing the Army at the highest level of sport setting up new healthcare services.

After this, she moved to health tech where she founded Ingo Health, a vertically-integrated women’s health platform.

Additionally, she is a sought-out health-tech and healthcare advisor for start-ups advising on business and growth strategy, organisational effectiveness, leadership effectiveness, and change management.

She also holds a board position with Worldmaker International, and a Parliamentary Position supporting military veterans in the UK.

What inspired you to join the journey of Sustainability?

I decided to move to health tech because I recognised there were quite a number of barriers, particularly for women, to access healthcare. As a clinician, I was only able to address one person at a time, and I wanted to venture into an opportunity that would allow me to address as many as possible.

Healthcare and Technology

What I discovered with many health technologies that come into the market is that whilst they are able to assist with monitoring symptoms, gathering information, giving exercise plans, and more, there are very few engaging in the difficult job of addressing the root cause of these problems. This is why I wanted to be proactive and get involved in this direction.

Tell us about INGO Health.

INGO Health is a hyper-focused, vertically-integrated women’s platform. In other words, we are a consumer health platform where we integrate primary care and pharmacy to give you a complete healthcare journey.

This includes being able to find out what is wrong with you and having a solution delivered to your door, however, in addition to creating that solution, we embrace the saying, “prevention is better than cure” and support you in preventing it from happening again.

Currently, health problems are assessed by vetted pharmacists and doctors, but the next stage for us (hopefully in the next 12-18 months) is to get the MHRA’s approval for our algorithms to cut out pharmacy and primary care need. This is important because I would love to scale this opportunity to other countries outside of the UK.

How far along is your start-up?

We are pre-revenue at the moment. I understand this will be a long journey and for us to be successful, we need to pull in a data strategy at the start. This will be essential to us achieving our longer-term goals.

What is your biggest takeaway from this journey?

For early-stage start-ups, it is quite the task to truly demonstrate your commitment to sustainability and exactly how you are going to have impact across the SDG domains. My first advice for founders is to surround yourselves with people who understand the world of sustainability and the higher purpose it holds itself to, whilst still being able to meet operational demands at that early stage. 

Secondly, it is important to understand your bias. For me, I’m aware that my conscious bias is from a white female’s perspective who comes from a middle-class upbringing with a good job and a good salary. Whilst I have worked in other countries, experienced different cultures, and appreciate the challenges that exist there, I also understand that I still have a significant blind spot.

Therefore, I advise founders of early-stage start-ups to speak to a diverse group of people before they start planning ahead, and bringing out solutions for problems they want to solve.

 What challenges do you feel exist, especially when it comes to green washing and impact washing?

Whilst there are frameworks to measure impact like the IMP, or even going down the B Corp route, I still would like to see more support for early-stage founders in creating specific frameworks for their sustainability goals to get them fully prepped when it comes to engaging with impact funds.

For example, if I was going to approach a VC fund, I would need to have all my legal documents, compliance, contracts and other necessary documents ready. A lot of start-ups do not know what VCs want and need, and how founders can incorporate this into this business plan and business strategy from the outset.

Having this knowledge will allow them to start on the right foot, rather than looking back and trying to correct things. As I mentioned, whilst there are a lot of resources like GIIN, IMP, or B Corp, engaging with consultants and the like are quite difficult to find and are very expensive. Therefore, I would like to see more support for early-stage founders.

Sustainability

In fact, sustainability is a complex concept to truly comprehend. Even if you have selected the right matrix, outcomes, and frameworks, it is also crucial to showcase your impact because, at the end of the day, this is what will attract investors. Therefore, communication of this impact is a challenge in itself as well.

There are a lot of companies who use green washing or impact washing as a tick box exercise, so start-ups need a fool-proof way to demonstrate to impact funds exactly who they are. Guidance is needed in this area as well.

Lack of mentors is a challenge too

Additionally, the lack of mentors is a challenge too. I am in an incubator called SETsquared. When I was doing my MBA, I won the Entrepreneur of the Year award at the university so it gave me a place in the incubator where I have a great mentor who asks me all the difficult questions.

That is what founders need - someone who can open our eyes to areas where we may have our own personal biases or personal blind spots, and teach us how we can develop an attitude of not being afraid to tackle all these issues.

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Speaking with Fiona Sweny has, indeed, been quite the inspiration and honour.

We look forward to following her journey through INGO Health, and her commitment to revolutionizing digital health for women.