Dr Jeni Wellington is the founder of Annuo, a digital healthcare networking platform for doctors, patients and allied health professionals that supports the integrative care needed for optimal chronic disease management. It was built to support the hybrid delivery of face-to-face and remote health care. Leveraging the personalised insights generated through the artificial intelligence, Annuo closes the communications gaps that currently exist and supports the delivery of truly collaborative care.
With improved health professional to patient communication and the facilitation of better communication between the health professionals that share a common patient, Annuo seeks to ensure patients are matched with health providers that share their health values the first time.
She is an unlikely software entrepreneur who jokes that seven years ago she would have difficulties setting up the modem for home internet. But faced with the daily difficulties in driving home the messages her patients needed to improve their quality of life, she set out to find a better way of doing things.
The challenges of living with chronic diseases is personal to Jeni. She has lost 5 members of her family in recent years due to some of the common complications associated with their chronic diseases. With the statistic that 90% of people living with chronic diseases today are dying from the complications and these experiences, Jeni wants to make sure that everyone has the right digital tools to bridge the inequalities that exist in accessing health care.
What issue are you looking to solve with your business? What is your WHY?
I see Annuo as a means to give back to the community. When I was 4 years old, I wanted to pursue a career in medicine. However after 13 years working at the front lines of healthcare delivery, I realised I couldn’t effectively make a real difference to the a growing number of people seeking health interventions just by filling the seats of my
consult room.
With the 12% rise in chronic diseases over the last 7 years, and an increasingly overburdened health system, the idea of a digital health tool that could support the 47% of people living with a chronic disease presented some hope to me. Today, nearly two years later, I feel I have a better understanding of the challenges in the chronic disease digital health space and I remain dedicated to harnessing the use of technological innovations to deliver the best in evidence-based care. And with Annuo I feel I can do that.
How do you think the Health tech industry has evolved in recent years?
COVID provided many challenges to the delivery of health care globally. It forced the medical landscape to reckon with a lot of discrepancies in the use of digital innovation. On one hand you had surgeons using cutting edge robotic surgery to minimise post-operative complications, while at the same time writing their clinical notes with pen on paper and faxing off letters to support the transition back to community general practice. There was a lot of fear around the use of digital solutions for medicolegal reasons and worries about being seen not to be evidence-based.
Today in Australia the health tech market has grown from a few million to $2 billion in the space of two years. A lot of today’s health tech giants have sprung up during COVID to support the overburdened community health systems. Good progress has been made, but new challenges emerged. Managing the balance between profitability and practising good medicine has seen a few people get themselves into trouble, and the medical board taking a hard line with them. But people did not realise that there was a dual epidemic at the time.
The opioid epidemic was overshadowed but it saw a 36% rise in new cases during the COVID pandemic. There are some who feel there is a connection between the rise of mHealth prescriptions apps during COVID and the worsening of the issues with controlled medications – like opioids. And while the WHO has declared the COVID pandemic over, the effects of the opioid epidemic continue to pose challenges to the community.
But I do not think that these emergent challenges will stop the digital age from continuing to mature. I think like any change, we are learning and growing from it as an industry. And in truth, I think we are only just getting started.
With AI being in the spotlight more than ever before, what are your views on AI and its influence on modern technology?
I believe artificial intelligence is an essential technological advancement in the delivery of healthcare. I share the concerns around the use of non-principle based artificial intelligence tools to treat diseases. But I feel that a lot of the scepticism could be better addressed with the use of a change management framework to better understand the appropriate application. This understanding will create a depth of knowledge into the fears that have dogged the use of digital technology in medicine for so long.
For example, with the emergence of Planetary Health leading to changes in the medical curriculum, digital health innovation will probably lead the way in the implementation of the timely dissemination of information to those living with chronic diseases to mitigate the potential for adverse outcomes.
Planetary Health is solutions-oriented, transdisciplinary field and social
movement focused on analysing and addressing the impacts of human disruptions to Earth’s natural systems on human health and all life on Earth. This means that people living with asthma, a disease that is significantly dependent on strict control of exposure to environmental factors, will now be provided environmental interventions routinely as part of their treatment plans. Digital health will be a huge support.
At Annuo we are using algorithms associated with the weather forecasts in a user’s current geographic location as a way to provide early warnings to adapt their asthma management in real-time.
What were some of the challenges you faced as a WoC founder in Medtech?
I feel there is not enough coverage for the problems associated with the fact that less than 0.03% of all funding for entrepreneurship is granted to black women. As a person who believes in science, a less than 0.03% rate of success is not favourable odds to motivate people such as myself to innovate. I have often joked that had I known the odds, I don’t know if I would have started Annuo.
When reading the articles about the first 97 black women who raised over $1M USD in start-up funding by 2021, a pattern emerged of their having to bootstrap their companies for a minimum of up to 2 years before receiving funding was on the table. This was extremely confronting to me. It helped to explain why so many doors seemed closed to me so quickly and why my ability to execute on such a big dream was met with so much skepticism early in my fundraising journey. That was hard.
Thanks to the support of the Office of the Queensland Entrepreneur, Advance Queensland and Technology Innovation Queensland, I was able to access a lot of support to bring Annuo to where it is today. From the Empowered program to the Female Founders Fund and later on my selection to represent Queensland as an official delegate of Australia to London Tech Week 2023, a lot of opportunities I could not have dreamed of have been opened up to me by the State Government of Queensland. They incentivised investors to consider my all female-founded, led and funded-at-initial-incorporation start-up as an option.
What are your top 3 tips for female founders looking to break into health tech?
Another black female founder, Aishetu Fatima Dozie, said recently “I told someone today that the hard part is getting in the room. Once you’re in the room, you better believe that you belong here and act accordingly”. This summed up the meaning of one of my favourite poems from Maya Angelou “Still I Rise” nicely. With gratitude, comes impostor syndrome, which you have to shrug off very quickly in order to get down to the business of making the most of knowing you have “one-shot at this”.
Along with learning to stand up tall and recognising that you have the right to be in the room, I believe that getting down to the business of doing the work is a huge part of leaving no room for anyone to question whether you truly belong there.
And lastly, find your tribe. Your tribe are the first believers, the ones who stand by you and will advocate for you in rooms that have doors you cannot “see”. These people depend on your ability to have resilience, to keep the foundry fires burning during the hardest days until the opportunities come.
Who is Dr Jeni Wellington outside of business?
Honestly, I think what most people find most surprising about me is how quiet I really am.
Some people have mistaken my being quiet for a lack of self-confidence and will often try to make me feel like I need to act differently in order to succeed. I don’t believe this. I always want to be authentic.
I embrace my mixed heritage of being an afro-caribbean woman with an Irish accent living in a household in Australia. In my house, we were all born on different continents – true global citizens. I love to cook, I love Afrobeats and colourful traditionally hand-made batik African fabrics and “Ankara”. I speak French but my love language is time with those I love most.
I am also a keen advocate for the equal opportunities for young women and girls to access STEM subjects in school. This is the only way we can give foundational equal opportunities to STEM careers.
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