Amit Khutti - “So many parts of our lives are increasingly being done through digital means”

DrEd Co-Founder shares insight into planning and creating a digital GP service

Whether it’s booking a flight, reserving a seat at your favourite restaurant, or ordering an Uber on a mobile device to taxi you around, digital opportunities are more abundant than ever. As co-founder of DrEd, the largest online GP service in Europe, Amit Khutti has firsthand experience in this domain. He also knows to find common ground between the public sector and the private sector is easier said than done. Those odds didn’t stop him from doing his utmost to plan and create a digital platform for health care delivery reminiscent of carrying out online banking transactions.

Khutti, a member of the 2018 Sciana group, has melded his experience working with the UK government, the NHS, and as an entrepreneur into one compact package. Dialogue, he said, must happen between the different stakeholders to understand what their shared interests and goals are, even if their means of achieving them are different.

At its core, however, Khutti stressed running a private GP service isn’t that different from running a traditional GP practice from out of a hospital. The purpose of DrEd stems from a desire to make health care more convenient and accessible for people, as well as keep up with the demands of an increasingly digitised world. With more than 1.5 million patient treatments delivered, DrEd has epitomised popularity.

Khutti added, “So many parts of our lives are increasingly being done through digital means… Setting up DrEd, [we] felt that’s important that we do that with health care and I don’t think it has to be done only by private companies, but I think we can show… that this is a legitimate way to do it; it works, people like it.”

Khutti is currently formulating a new business idea around the emotional and mental health of women. Drawing off his experience with DrEd, he explained using a secure software platform and talking anonymously with doctors via phone, video recorder or email could ideally help “reduce stigma and the fear of being judged,” making care accessible to those who might otherwise struggle.

At the time of its inception, DrEd faced a lot of pushback and controversy from medical establishments, but as Khutti underlined, changes are happening at a fundamental level. Similar models are being adopted. If Khutti could offer any words of wisdom to his fellow members of the Sciana Network, they would be: “Just get on with something… do it, and as long as you’re confident it’s the right thing, there’s a good chance the system will eventually catch up with it.”

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