Breaking Boundaries in Healthcare: Hassan Chaudhury on Empowering Patients and Redefining Care

In this interview, we speak with Hassan Chaudhury, a seasoned expert in digital health and MedTech, about the evolving role of technology in healthcare, patient engagement, and the future of patient empowerment. Head of Commercial at Great Ormond Street Hospital and with extensive experience working in both public and private healthcare sectors, Hassan shares his insights into the challenges and opportunities that digital health presents, and how we can create a more inclusive and collaborative healthcare system.

Q: You’ve worked extensively in digital health and MedTech. What role do you see technology playing in truly empowering patients rather than just engaging them?

Hassan Chaudhury: Thank you for the question. The first thing I want to highlight is that there is a mismatch between the supply of healthcare and the demand for healthcare. The growing demand, driven by factors like aging populations, polypharmacy, and comorbidities, means that technology is not just an option, it’s a necessity. But we can't just look at it as engaging patients; we need to focus on empowering and enabling them.

The way to truly support patients and citizens is by supporting them to self-care, which has the benefits of both decreasing demand, and preserving the supply of care. Technology can help busy healthcare providers manage administrative tasks and also provide patients with the tools to manage their own health. The goal is to enable individuals - whether they are chronic patients or healthy people - to say, "I don't need to see a doctor today; I'm okay." This is the future of healthcare, where technology helps bridge the gap between supply and demand.

Q: Many digital health solutions focus on patient engagement, but adoption remains a challenge. What do you think is missing from the current approach?

Hassan Chaudhury: I’m going to be controversial here: a lot of these efforts feel paternalistic. It often feels like healthcare organisations see themselves as the "valid" entity, and they reach out to patients as if they’re doing them a favour. That imbalance can make the approach feel disrespectful.

The problem is that we often still have an old view of medicine. It's based on the idea that the patient comes in, sits in a waiting room, and waits passively to be told what to do. But we’re now seeing a shift. Eric Topol's book The Patient Will See You Now captures this perfectly - it’s about reversing the traditional power dynamic in healthcare. Engagement feels forced when decisions have already been made for patients, rather than co-developing solutions with them.

Real engagement happens when patients are part of the process from the beginning, not after the fact. When we co-create healthcare services with patients, we see better outcomes.

Q: How can the NHS and private sector collaborate more effectively to provide accessible, trusted health information to patients?

Hassan Chaudhury: The NHS often doesn’t have the capacity to think through some of the fresh ideas the private sector can bring to the table. When you engage with the private sector, you gain not only capacity but capability - innovation and fresh thinking. The challenge is creating a structure that allows for effective collaboration.

It needs to be done around specific use cases. Take rare diseases, for example. Different approaches are needed for different conditions. You can't approach information about a rare disease the same way you'd handle something like COVID-19. This is where collaboration between the NHS and industry can be really valuable: industry brings new ideas, and the NHS provides the foundation of trust, and access to care. The challenge is bridging that gap, which could be facilitated by organisations like Cognitant, for example.

Q: If you could change one thing about the healthcare system’s approach to patient engagement and education, what would it be?

Hassan Chaudhury: The phrase that comes to mind here is "cart before the horse." Often, healthcare services are developed, and then we try to figure out how to engage patients. This feels backward. Instead, we need to bring patients in at the very beginning - when we're designing services. If we do that, patient engagement becomes a natural part of the process rather than an afterthought.

When you engage patients and communities early, the services themselves will be better tailored to their needs. This reduces the need for extraneous engagement efforts because the patients are already part of the process. It’s like building up a following for a restaurant over time from a street van to the fixed venue, rather than hoping people will show up based on a billboard.

Q: Looking ahead, what trends in digital health excite you the most when it comes to empowering patients or people?

Hassan Chaudhury: The most exciting trend for me is the move toward frictionless, invisible technology. Think about how we use our phones today - everything is seamless. I want the same experience in healthcare technology: I want it to fade into the background so that it just works. It should be so easy to use that we forget it’s even there.

Take banking as an example. In the past, we had to go to the bank, wait in line, and fill out forms. Now, I can do all of that on my phone. We need to make healthcare technology just as seamless. This is the future: ambient AI that works in the background, such as voice assistants that automatically document a physician’s notes.

The future is about reducing friction - getting rid of those annoying barriers that make technology feel cumbersome. The more invisible and frictionless it becomes, the more patients will be empowered and enabled to take charge of their health.

Q: If you had a magic wand and could instantly change one thing about how healthcare systems engage, educate, and empower patients, what would it be and why?

Hassan Chaudhury: It would be a fundamental shift in mentality. For far too long, there’s been this idea that the doctor, or another clinician, is the sole authority in healthcare, and patients must simply adhere to their guidance. That power imbalance is starting to shift, and that’s good, but there’s still a lot of work to be done.

We need to treat health as a domain where everyone is an equal partner. It's not just about clinicians and patients - it’s about all the people who influence a person's health, as part of the wider determinants of health: social workers, teachers, community leaders, landlords, and even a bank manager. If we start viewing everyone as equal partners, we can begin to address the wider determinants of health and build more inclusive, preventive healthcare systems.

The magic wand would eliminate the paternalistic nature of healthcare and foster true collaboration. That would be transformative.