From Medicine to MedTech Entrepreneurship, meet Tom McCartan, CEO of Nazata Bio, and a Trinity Business Alumni making a real impact on global health.
In an exclusive interview with Jonathan Totterdell, Head of Communications for the Trinity Business Alumni, Tom shares his journey from working on smart inhalers and Ireland’s COVID early warning system to tackling a global health crisis – hypertension, the #1 cause of death worldwide.
Tell us a bit about yourself and your business?
I’m a doctor and bioengineer by background and have always been passionate about medical innovation. During my bioengineering master’s, I worked on smart inhaler systems to predict and prevent severe asthma attacks by identifying early warning signs from the sound of the lungs, then when COVID happened, I co-developed the national COVID early warning system (with some excellent colleagues in RCSI’s INCA lab) which was deployed nationally in Irish hospitals to identify the most ill patients, and redistribute ventilators between hospitals.
Finishing that work, I decided I’d like to start my own venture and did an MBA to round out my business skills, which has served me very well since! I then spent a year deciding what problem I’d work on – researching what caused the most death, disability, and loss of quality of life; what I could actually address and make a difference to; and what would make a viable business that could fund itself while solving such a problem. In the end, I zeroed in on high blood pressure (hypertension), as it’s the #1 cause of death worldwide (as the main cause of heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure).
Despite many drugs available for this condition, it still causes 1/6 of all global deaths (>10 million annually) and affects 1/3 of the adult population – there is a huge problem in that the condition’s root causes aren’t addressed – largely lifestyle. High sodium and low potassium intake, sedentary behaviour and high stress all contribute to causing hypertension. As it affects 1/3 of adults, health systems have no capacity to provide support for diet, exercise and stress – there simply aren’t enough dietitians, clinical exercise specialists or psychologists. We aim to digitise this support and roll it out on a mass scale to reduce the massive burden of hypertension.
What inspired you to start your own business, and how did your education contribute to your entrepreneurial journey?
The level of impact it could make. Tackling the #1 cause of death worldwide through a scalable solution means that any improvement on the current state you make could have a massive impact on society – reducing mortality, morbidity and disability. My medical and bioengineering education gave me the tools to find this problem and come up with a potential solution, while my business education helped me to find a way that I could sustain operations in medtech, an industry that usually takes years to get a device or therapy to market.
Building the team, fundraising, and coming up with a viable market strategy all came from the latter – there’s a synergistic relationship between my medical/bioengineering background and my business one – they’re both essential for this particular work.
Additionally, my bioengineering master’s introduced me to our outstanding CTO, Shane O Neill, who has done outstanding work since he joined us at the start of 2024. He was leading a software team in Rakuten Japan, and was the first person I messaged, when I was looking for advice for hiring a CTO. In a great stroke of luck, we were just about to move back to Ireland from Japan when I called, and he bought into the vision and joined us.
How do you stay ahead of trends and continue innovating in your industry?
Don’t just look at what your competitors are doing and iterate. If you just iterate a few steps beyond them, someone will easily do that to you, and you won’t make as much of an impact innovating.
We look at digital products that aren’t targeting healthcare quite a bit, as these are what people use frequently in their digital lives. If we can make digital health as behaviourally ‘sticky’ as the apps you use most frequently, we can provide huge health improvements.
Furthermore, obsess about your customers, and obsess about building the right team. If you’re building something new, you need to be testing it with real customers, getting their feedback. Find out the underlying problems behind their complaints or perceived wants. You should be the expert, you should find how you can address their needs, both the overt ones they’re aware of, and those that you, as an expert, should be able to anticipate or understand.
In terms of building the right team, we recently made a very talented operations hire – I personally went through 490 CVs and had a demanding three stage interview process for this hire – this is a huge commitment while running a company, but it is worth it. Every great hire makes the company so much stronger.
What advice would you give to recent graduates or aspiring entrepreneurs looking to start their own business?
- Pick the right problem. Choose something you’re genuinely passionate about and can make a real impact on. The problem you decide to solve will fuel you through challenging times, so make sure it’s one that matters to you. Passion and purpose will help drive you through trying times, of which there will be plenty, when starting a business.
- Have resilience. Founding and running your own company is extremely challenging. I’m lucky that I’m a pretty low stress individual, but even with that, stress can build up. Have good ways of dealing with it – outdoors and exercise are one of the best in my opinion, even though the Irish winter demands a bit of willpower to force yourself out, some days.
You’ll face setbacks regularly as an entrepreneur – treat them as problems to be solved and lessons to be learned – not that something unfair is happening to you. Being antifragile and having a proactive mindset when dealing with setbacks helps a great deal. - Ask people for help (but also give it). Don’t be afraid to ask for help, and be generous in offering it back. Many people are willing to share their experience and advice if you approach them with respect and an open mind. I’ve been blown away by the generosity of people, often incredibly busy ones with exceptional experience.
- Equally, be generous in giving back. Helping others, whether through sharing knowledge or making connections, builds a supportive network and a stronger community for everyone involved, especially when these are like-minded people working towards the betterment of society.
