November 28^th 2017 was a warm sunny day and I was excited to meet up with the ever omnipresent Doctor and Entrepreneur Mian Bi, in a little coffee shop in Rosebery. I had reached out to him a month earlier seeing his name plastered all over social media, commenting on queries about technology, medical politics and most often facilitating discussions amongst doctors about investing.

Bi and I had already had some interesting discussions where I lamented about the start-up world and how hard it was to get seed funding for health technology entrepreneurs with amazing ideas but without deep pockets. Bi was debriefing about his doctor members of the online “Investing for Doctors” community who were always on the lookout for new types of investments but often had no access to (or expertise in) anything but traditional investment options (except maybe for Bitcoin!).

The lightbulb moment hit us in that coffee shop in Rosebery that day, as we reached for a napkin to start scrawling a business plan on. Why would we not connect these two communities? – one who had money and wanted to invest it, and another who desperately needed it to fund their brilliant innovation. Aside from the commercial appeal and potential returns for the investor, there was a deeper social impact angle that would potentially have a lingering effect amongst this group.

By nature, we are an altruistic bunch, wanting to feel like we are helping improve the system we work in, and having an impact on patients, maybe even broader than the one sitting in front of us day in day out as we tend to their immediate problems. The thought of using your spare cash to better the system by supporting the innovators and entrepreneurs amongst us, was more appealing than either Bi or I could have ever imagined, with record numbers expressing interest in joining such a network.

Fast forward to today, Australian Medical Angels has invested millions of dollars into health technology companies and has a member base of over 700 medical and dental practitioners from across the country. Australian Medical Angels, has attempted to fill the gap between the three F’s (family, friends and fools) and larger Venture Capital Funds who usually want to write cheque sizes over $1m and rarely have health specific expertise or advice to provide to these start-ups. The angel network has invested in over a dozen early stage healthtech companies in diverse areas such as telehealth platforms, obstetric monitoring solutions, healthcare talent marketplaces, and VR technology. Doctors investing in the very space they have knowledge and expertise in, is a no brainer.  

While the Digital Health revolution continues, there will be no shortage of doctors wanting to capitalise on the benefits this sort of investing brings, not just commercially but also from an impact perspective and besides who wouldn’t want to earn the title of being a “Medical Angel”?