Founder and CEO of Fitabeo Therapeutics
What does your company do?
Pharmaceutical company developing medicines within elderly care and women’s health
Where are you based?
Edinburgh and Glasgow
Turnover
We are at a clinical-stage. Our first two products are due for commercialisation in 2025.
What are the biggest challenges facing your business right now?
We have been fortunate to find the right talent and have had phenomenal support from the Scottish entrepreneurial ecosystem, particularly being part of the Converge Challenge cohort and winning it in 2021. Our global advisory board has played a major role in our progress so far. However, we would have liked to be able to move faster, to push forward with our development programmes and commercialise them.
What should be done to overcome these challenges?
I would like to work with various stakeholders within the entrepreneurial ecosystem to enhance entrepreneurs’ ability to build businesses faster and scale quicker.
Has Brexit impacted on your business?
Brexit has enhanced focus on the UK as a country – the world is watching us, to see if we succeed with this renewed identity. I am very bullish on the UK becoming a science superpower.
What are your short- and long-term goals?
In the short to medium term, we want to focus on building a high performing team to accelerate development, registration and commercialisation of our products across various geographies.
In the long run, our objective is to build a Scottish global pharmaceutical company that will be known for medicines that save lives and enhance the quality of life for patients and their families. We want to challenge technology barriers with the objective of improving patient autonomy and expanding medication access. We have demonstrated our commitment to enhancing access to medicines by pledging 10% of all volumes sold.
Are you a purpose-led company? If so, how?
We are very clear about our purpose, which is to enhance quality of life for patients and their families by playing a role in decentralising patient care, enhancing medication adherence, and providing greater patient autonomy.
By 2050, the world’s population of over-65s is expected to grow by 120 percent to 1.5 billion, with an anticipated increase in global healthcare costs of over £1.6 trillion. If there isn’t a significant rise in innovation aimed at promoting healthy aging, we could soon see a crisis in the social care and healthcare sectors.
Do you favour a four-day working week?
Fitabeo chose to adopt a four-day week and a hybrid working policy from the outset. I think the improved work-life balance that it brings really energises our team and ensures they are focused on reaching our targets. It helps us attract the best talent, from a diverse range of backgrounds and thought processes, who believe in delivering on our mission.
What is your company doing to support the green agenda? Have you increased or decreased your commitment?
Green issues are top of the agenda for us, and our board is dedicated to delivering on the initiatives that we have in place.
We are committed to the Scottish Government’s Net Zero initiative and have prioritised using vendors as close to our base and market as possible to minimise our carbon footprint, and we are investing in using sustainable materials in our production.
Once commercialised, our products will also result in significant enhancements in patient autonomy that reduce both hospital visits for patients and visits to patients’ homes by healthcare professionals.
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