Tailoraid - when students bring AI-driven healthcare solutions to patients and doctors
Daniel S. Rosales and Oliver Rockall, along with their associate Juan Arias, have gone down with a bug. An entrepreneurial one. Drawing on their on-going experience of the emlyon business school MSc in Health Management & Data Intelligence, Daniel and Oliver recount the learning curve that has taken them from their early days as Bachelor-level students of Physiotherapy and Medicine respectively to fully-fledged entrepreneurs. Business ventures don’t come much healthier than Tailoraid.
Why emlyon and the MSc in Health Management & Data Intelligence
Daniel: “The fact I am now part of emlyon is a great advertisement for the power of word of mouth. The school was recommended to me by a friend of my girlfriend. As for the MSc itself, I had already made my decision to re-orientate the kind of career I had in my mind. To move from the first line of care as a physiotherapist to the creation of innovative solutions, I needed the health industry-business management and technology combo offered at emlyon”.
Oliver: “Looking back, my interest really lay in helping patients. Although medical school was crucial for me, my passion became looking at the forefront of innovation in healthcare. I maybe naively jumped ship from medicine to health tech but I have absolutely no regrets. I then started to develop a keen interest in setting up a business. The MSc ticked all the boxes in this sense, backed by emlyon’s reputation for excellence of which I was already aware”.
Have the program and school met your expectations?
Daniel: “Absolutely. Once my desire to set up a business started to grow during the early days of the pandemic, I realized that solving healthcare problems and improving people’s quality of life also required technological knowledge and business acumen, which the school and program have provided me. What’s more, the input received from professors when we were first floating the idea of Tailoraid was of enormous benefit”
Oliver: “Without a doubt. No sooner had I arrived than we were working on a space health project with NASA, taking part in an exchange with TalTech, an Estonian University of Technology, and visiting a Paris-based hospital and meeting with healthcare professionals at the height of COVID-19. Talk about discovering the challenges of the profession in the field!! Then once we started to get our business venture off the ground, we were expertly advised by our MSc Program Director Benjamin Dalmas, who, to this day, still offers us input on areas such as coding and data infrastructure”.
What skills acquired at emlyon have you applied to your own business?
Daniel: “Thanks to the program, I now have a far better grasp of the sector, the various stakeholders that it is comprised of, and related legal issues. In short, our studies have given me the bigger picture, if you like, coupled with the requisite technological know-how and a host of management skills. In a way, by starting our business ventures whilst studying for the MSc, we didn’t give ourselves much choice other than to work on time management above all!!”
Oliver: “There isn’t a week or month that goes by without me applying learnings or skills from the program, be it how to pitch, giving presentations, AI building etc. You have an online platform that you can explore to hone the technical side of things and the benefit of the school’s business incubator, which Tailoraid officially entered in September 2022. The way I see it, the program has served as an ecosystem that is perfectly designed to kickstart your career”.
What does Tailoraid offer that the healthcare industry currently does not provide?
Daniel & Oliver: “Our idea and eventual business venture emerged from our analysis of the current, fragmented nature of healthcare. In short, you have a series of separate silos (namely prevention, consultation and treatment) that are badly in need of streamlining. We have designed a platform that employs Artificial Intelligence to provide predictive solutions that will suit the needs of patients and doctors alike. Ideally, with tools such as Tailoraid, we would like to see a healthcare system that is not slowed down by protocols, where processes are less set in stone and patients are supported along their entire care pathway. The challenge awaiting us will be to sell the idea. It’s for this reason that the almost Double Degree nature of the MSc is so useful as it provides the perfect combination of managerial know-how and technical expertise”.
Any words of wisdom or advice to prospective students?
Daniel & Oliver: “The excellence and industry-relevance of the program are plain to see. However, it won’t just be served on a plate for you so whatever you do, make the absolute most of the learning experience. Studies at emlyon offer a holistic perspective but the Masters is only as good as you make it. This might sound a bit of a cliché, but it’s much like a kid in a candy store. There are so many benefits to be derived but you need to dive in to take full advantage, whether entrepreneurship is your thing or not”.
