And why showing love is desperately needed when building tech for better health. Using words like “human-centric” or “human-first” feels awkward these days. At least for those of us, who really believe in it. We have seen the concept vulgarised, violated and the terms overused in contexts that are at polar opposites of what it …
Inspiration Thoughts March 23, 2020 Why you should care about what’s happening in diabetes
People with chronic conditions – just like anyone else – navigate life dealing with stress, exercising, falling in love, getting angry, commuting, eating out and travelling etc. And yet, little attention is paid to the expertise they develop living their lives, while managing their own condition. Despite hundreds of research programmes that sound great …
Diabetes Management Thoughts March 20, 2020 Pancreas versus human being: the big diabetes debate
Today many companies and apps try to help people living with diabetes. These companies can follow one of two approaches: one focuses on the pancreas while the other looks at the entire person in addressing diabetes. Here at Quin we strive to learn from the pancreas approach and we pay close attention to the science …
Inspiration Thoughts March 8, 2020 Why should women bother becoming investors?
July 2018 marks an important for my journey as a female investor. It all started with the critically acclaimed book called Slay in your Lane also known as The Black Girl Bible. To be honest, I did struggle to relate to some of the concepts in the book not being Black British or growing up with …
Business Thoughts March 5, 2020 Why you should invest in a startup founded by women
Quin was founded by two women engineers. Cyndi Williams started her career as an engineer at Sun Microsystems and has 20+ years starting, growing, and leading global tech businesses. Isabella Degen is a robotics engineer specialising in machine learning and artificial intelligence, with 14 years of experience delivering complex enterprise engineering systems. That the company …
Thoughts September 5, 2019 How we built our medtech startup without marrying a billionaire
Just over five years ago, Isabella and I met for our bi-weekly coffee and mentoring session. This time she surprised me with a very unexpected topic. She was planning to quit her job and set up a business to make technology to help people with diabetes. She wanted my advice on how to get going, …
Thoughts December 13, 2018 A different take on diabetes
We believe diabetes is not a disease. It’s an umbrella term for chronic high blood glucose. And underneath that umbrella, there are other umbrella terms like “type 1 diabetes”, “type 2 diabetes”, “MODY”, and a few others. But there are possibly hundreds of different conditions rolled up under these broad classifications, and because of this …
Thoughts November 14, 2018 World Diabetes Day: a day like any other?
Let’s come together Oftentimes you will hear marketers talk about community building as a goal. It looks like a beautiful goal especially when you’re trying to achieve social impact. As a marketer, you imagine a digital (and physical) crowd of amazing people, loving each other, supporting each other, a pool of advocates willing to push …
Thoughts October 29, 2018 The journey so far – our challenge
When Isabella came to me four years ago looking for a partner to set up a business that would help people take insulin, I was all ears. I knew nothing about diabetes or insulin, but I was moved by the magnitude of the need and the challenge, and I had worked with Isabella for 8 …
Thoughts January 19, 2017 Why AI won’t solve diabetes (yet!)
If humans don’t know how to solve a problem, no artificial intelligence can magically create the missing knowledge to solve it for us. We have driverless cars because we know how to drive cars. Computers are world chess champions because we know how to play chess. We have factory robots because we know how to do …