Dr Amy Davis BSc, MBBS, MRCP, FRCR is a radiologist and Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer of radiology technology company Hexarad. Hexarad provides technology-driven solutions to boost radiology capacity and address the key causes of diagnostic delays. Amy is also an experienced medical journalist with over ten years of experience as an Associate Editor of The BMJ, the fourth-largest general medical journal in the world. She was also an Associate Clinical Editor at BMJ Open. She has been a member of the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme since 2020, and is a judging panel member for the BMJ Awards’ Imaging category.
Can you tell us a little about your background and your company?
My name is Dr Amy Davis and I am the co-founder of a health technology company called Hexarad. By training I am a radiologist and also worked as a medical journalist at the British Medical Journal (BMJ) for over a decade before leaving to work full-time on Hexarad. Hexarad is a high-growth healthcare technology company, providing technology-driven solutions to boost radiology capacity and address the key causes of diagnostic delays. In 2024, we raised an a £11 million growth round led by Swiss-based growth equity firm MTIP, and we are now one of the fastest-growing health technology companies in the UK.
What inspired you to start your business?
My co-founders and I all met when we were senior radiologists working together at St George’s Hospital in London. It was clear to all of us that there was a fundamental problem with radiology: there were too many scans but not enough radiologists. We could also see the impact this was having on patients, as without a diagnosis, you can’t access treatment.
While none of us had a background in business or tech, we were tired of seeing that no matter how hard we worked, patients weren’t getting diagnosed quickly enough. This was our inspiration for founding Hexarad. Our mission is to make sure every patient can have access to fast and accurate diagnosis.
How did you create awareness for your brand?
As founders, our backgrounds of working in radiology really helped us in the early days because we already had a fantastic network, which is absolutely crucial when you’re starting a business. We went to lots of events so we could speak to our target audience, and also gave lots of presentations and talks so we could get a firm idea of our market and the problems our potential customers needed us to solve. Now that we’re looking to expand into new markets we are doing exactly the same thing, so it’s well worth building up these skills from the start of your entrepreneurial journey.
I will also say that we had a brilliant marketing lead from the beginning, and again this came via our network. Lots of start-ups don’t focus on marketing early on, but for us it has been invaluable to have a coherent and effective marketing strategy from the outset.
What strategies helped you secure funding and scale your business?
When it comes to looking for funding, the thing I emphasise most is the importance of really understanding what you want to achieve with your company and having a great understanding of your financials and your market. If you don’t have these three things you’re not ready to be talking to investors, because they need you to tell them a story they can understand and buy into.
Once you’re ready to speak to investors, it’s really important to make sure you’re picking the right kind of investor for your level of funding. It’s no use speaking to investors who only invest £2 million and above if you’re looking for pre-seed funding.
When it comes to scaling up, as I said before you will use a lot of the same strategies you developed when you first started. However, it’s also important to think about what your strategy is for scaling up – what do you want to achieve, and are you looking to scale in the right places? So, develop a really clear strategy, focused targets, and build the team that you need to succeed.
What have been your biggest successes so far?
The biggest success for me is that Hexarad has now processed over a million scans, which means we have helped over a million patients access a diagnosis. Making a real difference to patients’ treatments and outcomes and supporting the NHS was exactly what we wanted to achieve when we first started Hexarad, so it’s really special to have got to the milestone of one million scans!
What challenges have you faced, and how did you overcome them?
Personally, I have found the scale-up stage to be harder than the start-up phase. When you’re starting up it’s just you and your co-founders and I loved that close-knit, collaborative environment. When you start scaling up you have to develop different skills, particularly managing people. It’s so important to recognise what you don’t know, and one of the most valuable things I have done is leadership training to improve my management skills. I have also been able to rely on my co-founders through everything, and the benefit of having a group of founders is that you often compliment one another’s strengths and weaknesses.
What are your plans for the future?
We have ambitious growth plans both in the UK and for other international markets – watch this space!
What advice would you give to aspiring female entrepreneurs?
Make yourself heard, and don’t be shy about speaking out in a room. On your start-up journey you will invariably find yourself in meeting rooms where you’re outnumbered by men, so get used to advocating for yourself. And, don’t be shy about calling out sexism and misogyny where you see it! Networking with other female founders can be a big help here, as you will find that you have a great deal of shared experiences and sometimes you just need to be able to vent in a safe space.
I also think female founders should embrace and celebrate their natural strengths, whether those are skills typically seen as ‘female’ like communicating and networking, or more masculine stereotypes (which are too often seen as negatives when they’re associated with women). Lean into your success and ignore the haters!
What are your top three tips for entrepreneurial success?
Always ask questions
Never give up
Rely on your network
Who are five people who inspire you the most, and why?
There are so many inspiring people in the world, but my honest answer to this is my fellow founders, and my husband and kids – they are the ones who have kept me on this journey by just being caring, loving, successful, amazing people. Their unfailing support of me means I never need to look elsewhere for motivation.
What are your favourite inspirational or motivational quotes?
It’s a quote that my husband says all the time: “Victory favours the prepared”.
