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Technology doesn’t transform services. People do.
Problems Worth Solving brings you conversations with the leaders, practitioners, and radical thinkers reshaping health, care and support services. It's hosted by Sam Menter, co-founder of Healthia (www.healthia.services).
From transformation and AI to prevention and human-centred design, each episode uncovers the ideas and experiences behind lasting change.
Guests include NHS directors, policy shapers, entrepreneurs, clinicians, and designers — all united by a drive to solve complex problems.
Listen if you would like to understand how health systems can evolve to meet today’s pressures and tomorrow’s possibilities.
16 Episodes
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At a radiology AI conference, a clinician described a simple interface choice: an agree/disagree button for feeding back on AI diagnoses. It looked clean and efficient. But it assumed something fundamentally untrue: that clinicians experience a binary internal state when reviewing AI outputs. In reality, what they experience is uncertainty, context, fatigue and gut instinct. And when you force all of that into a binary choice, you don't just create a poor experience. You distort the data trai...
Last year, GP teams in England delivered over 380 million appointments — and the pressure is on to deliver even more. But maybe the bigger opportunity isn't making each consultation faster? What if it's rethinking the relationship between a person and their GP? Dr Shanker Vijayadeva is a practising GP and lead for digital transformation in London at NHS England. He lives on both sides of the system - in clinic seeing patients and leading change across the capital. In this episode, we explore ...
In this episode, Helen Thomas, Chief Executive of Digital Health and Care Wales, shares a rare and honest perspective on the human side of transformation. Drawing on more than 36 years in the NHS, including leading Wales’ digital response during covid, Helen reflects on what leadership really feels like at the sharp end of health and care – making difficult decisions, carrying responsibility, navigating uncertainty and still showing up for others. We explore why digital transformation is fund...
Imagine starting every day with a calculation: what you eat, how you move, whether an unexpected walk or a stressful meeting will tip your blood sugars out of range. That daily mental load sets the stage for our conversation with Dr David Cheney of Diabetes UK, where we unpack the hidden frictions in diabetes care and the bright spots that are changing outcomes. One in five people in the UK are living with diabetes, prediabetes, or undiagnosed type 2, yet only around sixty percent receive th...
Professor Jim McManus: Zooming out on prevention In this episode, we explore prevention in its widest sense — across systems, communities and everyday life. Professor Jim McManus, National Director of Health and Wellbeing at Public Health Wales, explains why prevention remains one of the toughest challenges in health and care. He shares how poverty, place and inequality still shape life expectancy in Wales, and why we must shift prevention from a “side programme” to the organising principle o...
The way we design health apps is shaping who stays healthy and who gets left behind. In this conversation, Amber Vodegel, founder of the world’s largest pregnancy app, Pregnancy Plus, and now CEO of 28x, challenges how women’s health technology is built, funded, and trusted. Amber argues that health knowledge shouldn’t sit behind a paywall or be traded for personal data. With around 800 million people menstruating every day, access and trust matter. She’s designing a different path: on-device...
What if the word "solution" is generating more problems than it solves? In this revealing conversation, Rachel Hope, Director of Digital Prevention Services for the NHS, challenges our fundamental thinking about technology and transformation in healthcare. Rachel is building the architecture for a new kind of health service - one that's digital-first and prevention-focused. With stark statistics showing a 19-year gap in healthy life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas, and 4...
Transformation is pervasive but we rarely discuss implementation - the secret sauce of successful change. In this episode, we explore one of the most persistent challenges: how to turn promising ideas into real, lasting impact. Malte Gerhold, Director of Innovation and Improvement at the Health Foundation — and trustee of the Alzheimer’s Society — has spent his career at the intersection of policy and delivery. From No.10 and the Department of Health to the Care Quality Commission and now the...
At some point in your life, the chances are that you'll either become a carer or be cared for. For Charlotte Newman, this reality became the foundation for groundbreaking social innovation. With 5.7 million unpaid carers in Britain saving the public purse £183 billion annually—more than the entire NHS budget—Charlotte saw an overlooked crisis. Her charity Carefree found an unexpected solution in an unlikely place: empty hotel rooms. Running more like a tech startup than a traditional charity,...
Imagine passing your health data down like a family heirloom. Not just a list of conditions, but a rich personal history — something that could help your children and grandchildren live longer, healthier lives. But that future depends on what we do now. Right now, governments are pouring billions into electronic health records. But if the data inside them is siloed, inaccessible, or locked in outdated formats — what are we really building? It’s a bit like building a library, but locking all ...
Dr Katharine Halliday, President of the Royal College of Radiologists and a leading voice in UK radiology, joins host Sam Menter to discuss how collaboration, authentic leadership, and ground-up innovation drive meaningful change in complex healthcare systems. In this episode, they explore: Balancing AI with human expertise: Exploring how artificial intelligence can complement rather than replace clinical judgment.Collaboration as a catalyst for innovation: Breaking down silos and integratin...
In this two part episode, we talk to Dr. Jonathan Gregory, a former NHS cancer surgeon turned healthcare innovator, to explore the intersection of data, digital tools, AI, and patient-centred design in transforming cancer pathways. With over 20 years in frontline surgery and leadership roles, Jonathan now works. as clinical advisor for Macmillan Cancer Support, and in roles at Imperial College, and NHS innovation programmes to rethink how healthcare is delivered—from AI-powered end-of-treatme...
In this two part episode, we talk to Dr. Jonathan Gregory, a former NHS cancer surgeon turned healthcare innovator, to explore the intersection of data, digital tools, AI, and patient-centred design in transforming cancer pathways. With over 20 years in frontline surgery and leadership roles, Jonathan now works. as clinical advisor for Macmillan Cancer Support, and in roles at Imperial College, and NHS innovation programmes to rethink how healthcare is delivered—from AI-powered end-of-treatme...
Dr. Videha Sharma—NHS doctor, clinical innovation lead at the University of Manchester, and co-founder of Fava Health—joins host, Sam Menter from Healthia®, to explore how prevention-focused care, human-centered design, and genomic insights can reshape healthcare. Dr. Sharma offers a unique perspective on the power of tailoring treatments to an individual’s genetic profile, shedding light on how this can help reduce adverse drug reactions and improve patient outcomes. From designing better di...
Rochelle Gold—Head of User Research and User-Centred Design at NHS England—joins host, Sam Menter from Healthia®, to explore the challenge of making digital services more human. They discuss how actionable insights from user research are delivering better outcomes for patients and healthcare professionals. From pioneering an AI-powered tool to manage research insights, to tackling the risk of “research vampires”, this episode uncovers innovative ways to create truly inclusive health services....
Dr. Lia Ali—consultant psychiatrist and clinical advisor at NHS England’s Transformation Directorate—joins host, Sam Menter from Healthia®, to explore the intersection of healthcare, human-centered design, and digital innovation. Dr. Ali shares her unique insights on the bio-psycho-social model and how it aligns with user-centered design to create more personalised, effective health services. From using digital tools to improve patient outcomes, to exploring how the therapeutic relationship e...
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