Did you know? There are 7,000 rare diseases affecting 30 million people in Europe. 75% of whom are children. And 42% of recent peadiatric trials have failed to establish safety or efficacy.

Worldwide orphan disease sales are forecast to total £137 billion by 2020 (EvaluatePharma Oct 2015). Hospital located assessments are only a snapshot of a patients health. The patient's perspective is not adequately captured and considered by conventional hospital based tests. 

In our very first Share Impact podcast, Dr Elin Haf Davies, CEO & Founder of aparito share's her journey to creating the wearable health technology company. 

Elin shares her experience of leading a social enterprise, aligning with your values, choosing which advice to take, and the importance of working with beneficiaries to co-develop services.

Two years old this month, aparito provides wearable devices and disease-specific mobile apps to provide remote patient monitoring outside of hospital. This delivers meaningful, relevant, and real-time data between patients and clinicians in a way that actively supports and enhances diagnosis, treatment and drug development.

Elin had always imagined she would be a nurse, but after 20 years of clinical, research and regulatory experience she was frustrated about how clinical trials were run, especially with children. She recognised the need for using technology to do trials well and properly, that didn't have detrimental impact on patients, so she founded aparito. 

By embracing digital health technology aparito connects patients to doctors - and to parents/ carers – via remote monitoring to support better patient outcomes, improve understanding of disease, and clinical trial outcomes.

I'm excited to see how aparito grows and develops, particularly with their new tech office in North Wales. Although living in London now, Elin remains deeply rooted to where she grew up, and as she grows her business she plans to encourage more young women to consider alternative careers to the limited options Elin found herself faced with when she left school. Training and employing people in their tech office seems like a wonderful way to achieve this.

This whole business approach to company values, sustainability and consistently creating positive change in everything that they do is exactly what excites me about social entrepreneurship and its ability to transform the individuals, communities and environments in which they interact with. 

In this episode we discussed:

• how aparito's wearable devices and disease-specific mobile apps provide remote patient monitoring outside of hospital
• aligning your business with your values
• deciding in which advice to take
• working with beneficiaries or service users to co-develop and deliver services

Find out more about Elin and aparito here.