Hector Smethurst

Hector founded Appt Health while volunteering as a Social Innovation Fellow in an East London GP surgery. He spent half his week in the reception team, supporting patients and coordinating planned and preventive care, and the other half in the communities team, working alongside Patient Participation Groups and Community Health Champions programmes. Seeing the structural and cognitive barriers between people and the care that helps them stay well, he became focused on how primary care can deliver prevention in ways that reduce friction and tackle health inequalities.

Hector started building Appt Health part-time while working at the secondary care health technology company DrDoctor, before leaving to launch Appt Health’s first product: a recall tool designed to increase uptake of planned and preventive care for identified patient lists. He has also researched strategies to increase uptake of lung cancer screening at the University of Cambridge, developing strategies for delivering prevention that works for underserved communities.

Since then, Appt Health has grown into an intelligent care coordination service used by 180 GP practices nationwide, showing that a fairer, more efficient and effective approach to care coordination is possible.