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We were thrilled to have so many of our Curators gather in London on the 19th & 20th of September to finally meet in person, and after so many years, check-in on all things OHT.
Our Shabang (which went from being a random word in some notes a long time ago to an official event title. HUBba-HUBba next year?!) kicked-off with drinks and food hosted at Deloitte's offices (thanks Deloitte) where Beverley Bryant, part of the Founding OHT Team and incoming-Chief Digital Officer at Guy's & St Thomas' and King's, gave us some uplifting words about the importance of communities and role models.
Next morning, after much giddiness, we met at the Alan Turing Institute for a day of learning from each others' experiences about running Hubs.
Here are some highlights:
1. We chatted about what OHT meant to the Curators. These included:
"I wanted something to give myself a kick up the bum to do"
"It's an awesome network"
"I used to hate networking, this is more human"
"It helped me quit day job, and helped me to explore what healthtech is"
"It made me push myself from behind writing screen. I am now able to go and speak"
"We knew we wanted to set up a network, having the model there helped us bring a community together"
"Being part of the community and making friends"
"The fact that anyone can join in, this is not a clique! "
Moving from X city to Y city, another disjointed world, hoping that OHT will uncover the cool people that have a common set of values that supports diversity and ideas!
Looking at the real world problems
Clinical, analogue to digital, process engineer to tech.
"A community of people that are pushing bottom-up solutions"
"Values, promoting equality"
"Payment in kind"
2. We talked about what diversity means to us. Our Curators all agreed we have to work hard to communicate the nuance of being far beyond male-female to those not familiar with us. Here is what diversity meant to them:
3. Every Hub shared the Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Common themes were having fun and engaging community activities, event disasters and balancing OHT with jobs and working effectively as a Hub team
A highlight was certainly a workshop run by Sarah Foster-Cook, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Lead at Google Health who delivered an #IamRemarkable workshop. Everyone was encouraged to share two professional and two personal reasons why we were remarkable. There was MUCH crying... the good kind.
"It was great to catch up with the OHT hub curators at last week's get together in London. The work that is being carried out by these Hubs is absolutely amazing and it was good to share experiences with everyone" - Mandy Pope - Cardiff Hub Curator
So many warm fuzzies, so much learning and now so many actions for the OHT Core team to follow up on to make sure all our Hubs feel as supported as possible in building welcoming, diverse and inclusive health tech communities!
Want to set up a Hub anywhere in the world? Get in contact at info@onehealthtech.com! We'd love to hear from you.