Interview with Alex Templeton, CEO and Co-Founder at Covid Testing HealthTech Company: Qured

I co-founded Qured in 2016 with the aim of giving people easier and more convenient access to healthcare, to empower them to take control of their health and that of their families.

Qured provides all types of government approved Covid-19 testing kits, Lateral Flow, PCR, Travel tests. Whether that’s returning to the office, travelling, attending sporting events, concerts or simply hugging loved ones, accessible Covid-19 testing will help us achieve this, safely.

We are also a premium healthcare service for businesses to help them deliver care to their employees. Our Health Checks enable our customers to book affordable face-to-face appointments with highly experienced doctors, physiotherapists and other healthcare professionals at a location of their choosing.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
The business idea developed around the time I sought medical care for my young son but found that appointment slots were limited and difficult to coordinate around my own schedule and that any private alternatives were very expensive. I wanted to create a service at an accessible price that worked for people with busy lives.

I come from a very entrepreneurial family in which my father and my four uncles all led the way by starting their own businesses. Of the next generation, I soon realised that amongst my cousins, I was the only one who was an employee. Although my career started in finance and worked in the City for over 10 years, I have always had a sense that I wanted to create my own business but wanted to work on an idea that resonated personally and helped others on a large scale.
 

 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
Around the time Qured launched, the health tech industry was growing quickly – other market entrants were already focused on telemedicine but, reflecting on my own family’s needs, I felt that more could be done to improve in-person care, with a real focus on the patient experience. It wasn’t until world events impacted the business that I started looking at how Qured’s innovative health tech platform could be used to solve some bigger problems.

Qured has pivoted hugely as a company in the last year. The core values of personalisation and easy access remain at the forefront of the service, as well as providing patients with the support of the core medical expertise, as the business turned to Covid-19 testing.

Qured saw healthy growth in the business but nothing prepared us for the sudden rush of interest we received at the end of 2019 and start of 2020 as concerns grew over a virus circulating in Wuhan. Government guidelines kicked in gradually and customers returning from holidays around the world wanted to check whether their common winter ailments ere in fact Covid-19.

However, despite the huge spike in demand, the team and I took the decision to suspend all existing Qured services to protect both the doctors from getting sick or spreading the virus amongst customers – after 3 years of watching the business grow, hundreds of bookings a week were cancelled.

I quickly realised that my customers would need support of a different kind as, at that time, you could only get a Covid-19 test if you were very sick or in hospital.

So, Qured then invested in testing early on and were amongst the first to introduce home self-testing kits for individuals and private corporations, some of our clients include Transport for London, British Airways, Chelsea Football Club, Daily Mail General Trust and the British Horse Racing Authority.

In the last 12 months the business has remained at the forefront of testing technology and government requirements by creating innovate ways of delivering the best available and most accessible testing solutions. For example, launching the first at-home PCR self-swab service, an innovative at-home antibody testing service and, most recently combining a rapid antigen test with remote consultations to deliver validated results for travel from anywhere in the world.

I have been mindful of ensuring that Qured offers more than just a test. The business is focused on offering wider health support to help people deal with symptoms and signpost their next steps. It’s important to me that customers have a good Qured experience from the start, no matter if they want a one-off test or continued support for their whole family.
 

What can we hope to see from Qured in the future?

 
In the short-term future, Qured is committed to being part of the solution to create a new and safe ‘normal’ to help us get back to doing the things we all love.

At Qured we are looking forward to returning to our core mission of supporting people’s health and empowering them to live healthier lives. We will be making access to preventative care easier, as physical and mental wellbeing have become more prominent in people’s minds since the pandemic. We’ve noticed that people have been reluctant to seek non-urgent care during the pandemic and therefore haven’t been maintaining such a good level of health and in some cases, ignored issues until they’ve become serious. We plan to help our hundreds of thousands of new patients gain deeper insights into their health and understand how to manage it better, whether that be supporting their recovery from long Covid or understanding the impact of their diet and how they can improve it after lockdown.