Mahiben Maruthappu

Maruthappu was born in London in 1988. He studied preclinical medicine at Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a triple first class [8], and as a student ran several charities, including CONTACT and Medic to Medic. He studied clinical medicine at Green Templeton College, Oxford and in his fifth year (2010) founded the United Kingdom Medical Students' Association (UKMSA), which provided free educational resources to over 40,000 students.[2] He was also a Kennedy Scholar in Global Health at Harvard University, where he conducted research at Harvard's Center for Surgery and Public Health.[9]

Maruthappu began his career as a physician at Ealing Hospital in 2013. He later practised at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and then trained in Public Health.[10] In 2014, he was appointed scholar at National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, where he focused on the use of structured feedback in surgery.[8] He also advised the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Swiss government.[11]

in 2014 Maruthappu became the youngest appointed Senior Fellow to the Chief Executive Officer of NHS England, Simon Stevens, and the first clinician appointed by him.[12][13] He co-developed the plan for the NHS, the Five Year Forward View, and established a number of key NHS programmes.[14]

Whilst at the NHS, Maruthappu advised on £100 billion in health spending focused on innovation, technology and prevention, and in 2015, he co-founded the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA), a programme aimed at spreading tried and tested technologies across the health service, that also led to the development of the first NHS Innovation Tariff, a national reimbursement mechanism for medical technologies and digital health products. It benefited 3 million people within its first 6 months, and has since spread innovations to over 2,000 NHS organisations.[15][4] Maruthappu was regarded as the “whizzkid helping save the NHS”.[7]

He co-founded the NHS's £450 million Workplace Wellness Programme and the Diabetes Prevention Programme (DPP), which as of 2017 had been rolled out to half of the population in England.[16]  He led NHS England's contribution to the Government's Childhood Obesity Plan and originated the NHS Sugar Tax, which preceded the UK Government’s Soft Drinks Industry Levy and so-called Sugar Tax.[17]

After his mother fell and fractured part of her back, Maruthappu faced difficulties in arranging required home care. In a 2017 interview, he said: “It showed me first hand some of the challenges an individual can experience if they’re trying to organise or care for a loved one themselves.”[18] He subsequently co-founded Cera, a social care provider a social care provider that uses an on-demand digital platform to match people seeking in-home assistance with professional carers, allowing families to keep updated on a patient's progress, while also using Artificial Intelligence to predict potential health deteriorations in patients, helping to avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and alleviate pressures on the NHS.[19][20]

Under Maruthappu, within 3 years Cera reached over 2,000 employees, 20 offices, and 10,000 care visits being delivered a day, while securing over $90 million of financing, making Cera one of the largest health technology companies in Europe.[21] 

Maruthappu is a Board Member of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, one of the largest NHS Trusts in the country, with £GBP 1.2 billion turnover, and a Board Member of Skills for Care, the national body for the UK’s 1.5 million care workforce.[22][23] He is also a Senior Adviser to Bain and is a member of the advisory boards for Centene UK, The Telegraph (health), HealthTechDigital, and an ambassador for Healthcare UK.[24][25] He was a Founding Board Member of Digital Health London.[26]

He writes for the Guardian and Forbes, and has lectured undergraduate students at Cambridge University since the age of 20.[27][28][29] He has given speeches for WIRED, The Economist, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Vitality Health insurance, NHS Confederation, Imperial College London, UCL, Harvard, and Cambridge University.

Maruthappu’s research focuses on public health, innovation and health economics. He led the 2016 study that linked the global economic crisis to 260,000 additional cancer deaths in a group of developed countries while demonstrating the protective effect of universal health coverage.[30] The study, published in The Lancet, was ranked as one of the most influential research papers of 2016.[31][32]

He subsequently led the ‘landmark’ 2018 study demonstrating that health & social care funding constraints in England were linked to 120,000 excess deaths; a so called ‘mortality gap’.[33][34] The study called for over £20 billion of additional investment into the health and care system. The study was ranked as one of the most influential research papers of 2018.[35]

• Economic downturns, universal health coverage, and cancer mortality in high-income and middle-income countries, 1990–2010: a longitudinal analysis. (Lancet. 2016 Aug 13;388(10045):684-95. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(16)00577-8. Epub 2016 May 25.)
• The future of health system leadership (Lancet. 2015 Jun 13;385(9985):2325-6. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60990-4.)
• Government health care spending and child mortality. (Pediatrics. 2015 Apr;135(4): e887-94. doi: 10.1542/peds.2014-1600. Epub 2015 Mar 2.
• The influence of volume and experience on individual surgical performance: a systematic review. (2015 Apr;261(4):642-7. doi: 10.1097/SLA 00852.)
• How might 3D printing affect clinical practice? (British Medical Journal. 2014 Dec 30;349:g7709. doi: 10.1136/bmj.g7709.)
• Prioritizing prevention and the health of NHS staff. (Lancet. 2015 Oct 3;386(10001):1322–1323. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(15)00383-9.)
• The NHS Five Year Forward View: implications for clinicians. (British Medical Journal. 2014 Oct 31;349:g6518. doi: 10.1136/bmj.g6518.)
• Delivering triple prevention: a health system responsibility. (Lancet"" Diabetes Endocrinol. 2016 Apr;4(4):299–301. doi: 10.1016/S2213)
• Unemployment, public-sector health-care spending and breast cancer mortality in the European Union: 1990–2009. (European Journal of Public Health.)
• Incidence of prostate and urological cancers in England by ethnic group, 2001–2007: a descriptive study. (BMC Cancer. 2015 Oct 21;15:753. doi: 10.1186/s12885-015-1771-2.)
• A Systematic Analysis Of UK Cancer Research Funding By Gender Of Primary Investigator. (BMJ Open, vol 8, no. 4, 2018, p. e018625. BMJ, doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2017-018625.)
• Effects of health and social care spending constraints on mortality in England: a time trend analysis. (BMJ Open. 2017;7(11):e017722. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2017-017722.)

• Maruthappu M. Sugandh K. Medical School: The Applicant’s Guide, Doctors Academy Ltd., 2013 and 2010, ISBN 9380573278
• Maruthappu M. Sugandh K. Medical School: The Undergraduate’s Guide Doctors Academy Ltd., 2013 ISBN 9380573286

Recognition includes:

• Forbes' 30 under 30[3]
• 100 most influential leaders in health technology[36]
• Maserati 100 – Gamechanging Entrepreneurs[37]
• LaingBuisson Rising Star[38]
• The Indus Entrepreneurs Entrepreneur of the Year[39]
• Financial Times Top 10 most influential BAME tech leaders in UK[40]
• Wired Top 10 Innovators in Healthcare[41]
• 2017 Technology Leader Award (Disruptive Leader of the Year)[42]
• Young Physician Leader Award, InterAcademy Medical Panel (IAMP) & World Health Summit
• Gold Scholar, New England Journal of Medicine
• Scholar, NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) (2014–2015)[43]
• Richard Doll Scholar, University of Oxford
• John Dawson Prize, Royal Society of Medicine
• Prize Award, National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI)
• Braybook prize, University of Cambridge
• TEDMED London (2014), and TEDX at the London Business School (2017)[44]

CERA awards:

• Health Startup of the Year, British Startup Awards[45]
• Award for Dementia Care and Rising Star, LaingBuisson Awards
• Digital Health Innovation of the Year, Global Awards[46]
• Most Outstanding Home Care Provider, prizes for Live-In-Care Expertise and Best Technology at the Home Care Awards[47]
• Best Use of Artificial Intelligence by Health Tech Digital[48][49]
• Top AgeTech startup in the UK, Beauhurst[50]
• Used as a case study for what the future of British care could look like by the UK Government and Secretary of State for Health in their Vision for the Future of Healthcare in the country[51]

• Cera
• NHS UK
• UKMSA