Founder of CardMedic Crowned Pitchfest Champion Weeks After Winning World’s Largest Start-Up Competition for Women in Tech

An NHS anaesthetist has founded a web and mobile app-based startup to help UK healthcare professionals communicate with patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has attracted the attention of the international technology and digital health communities, winning the worlds largest startup competition for women and tech, as well as the industry renowned Pitchfest title.

Rachael Grimaldi, who developed the CardMedic app during her maternity leave, competed to win the prize with 5,000 female entrepreneurs in 70 countries. She will now receive an investment prize of US$50,000, along with mentoring and facetime with leading venture capitalists.

Previous alumni of She Loves Tech have gone onto raise over $250 million in aggregate funding from some of the world’s top investors, including Microsoft and Amazon.

The Oxford-based CardMedic app, which offers online flashcards to guide patients through common clinical interactions, is the first of its kind in the world.

The app uses flashcards to replicate conversations on a wide range of healthcare topics, ranging from breathing and heart problems, to end-of-life care and emergency situations. Staff simply select a topic and choose from nearly 20 language options. They can use questions and explanations developed by clinical professionals or can add free text.

The content can be flexed to overcome different communication barriers, by converting it to different languages, sign language videos, easy read, or read-aloud mode, or using the integrated speech-to-text translation tool.

She Loves Tech aims to solve the funding gap for women entrepreneurs worldwide, with peer coaching, experiential learning, and mentorship in global technology centres, including China, Israel, Singapore and USA.

The competition focuses on businesses with at least one female founder or majority female consumers/end users. The She Loves Tech online conference in 2020 attracted more than 2,200 attendees.

Adirani Heraputeri, global program manager from She Loves Tech said, “It’s been such a pleasure having Rachael as part of the She Loves Tech cohort. CardMedic is one of the most exciting solutions we’ve seen this year, answering the real challenges of overcoming the communication barriers in accessing healthcare, one of the basic rights of a human being.”

She added: “We are excited to continue supporting them in their journey bringing this impactful and scalable solution to the next level.”

For their work, CardMedic were also recently crowned the winners of Digital Health Rewired’s industry renowned Pitchfest competition, earning the opportunity to implement and scale the solution at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust as part of the CW Innovation Programme.

Dr Rachael Grimaldi, Chief Executive, CardMedic, said, “I was absolutely thrilled to win the Global Finals of She Loves Tech! It was an honour to be part of a network of incredibly inspiring women from around the world using such creative, brilliant and ground-breaking solutions to some of our biggest challenges.

“The mentorship, tutorials and peer support during the competition were phenomenal. The team behind She Loves Tech are so impressive, with world-class expertise and a passion for supporting the journey of women in technology – I’m so grateful to have been a part of it.

“To then be named as Digital Health Rewired Pitchfest winners so soon after really is the icing on the cake. The recognition from digital health peers and the opportunity for CardMedic to make an impact on such a large scale is a dream come true. ”

The She Loves Tech competition results were announced on 4th December 2021, and Rachael was crowned as Pitchfest champion on 16th March at Digital Health Rewired.