Published: March 18, 2026 at 3:00 pm
It was a Wednesday when I sat down to make sense of the published medicines datasets we wanted to work across: the NHS dictionary of medicines and devices (dm+d), English prescribing data and pricing references such as the Drug Tariff.
This meant opening spreadsheets, reconciling codes and translating fragmented signals into something an intelligence platform could use.
When I next looked up, it was Saturday morning.
That experience stayed with me because it captured a truth about company-building. Most startups fail because the founder thinks they are building a product. The companies that reshape industries are building systems.
In complex sectors such as pharmaceuticals and artificial intelligence, the hard part is not a launch. It is connecting fragmented information, decision-making and infrastructure into something coherent. This rewards a particular way of thinking, and in my experience neurodivergent founders can have a real edge there.