Founder of Pioneering Healthcare Communications App Wins World’s Largest Startup Competition for Women & Technology

An NHS anaesthetist who founded a web and mobile app-based startup to help UK healthcare professionals communicate with patients during the COVID-19 pandemic has won the world’s largest startup competition for women and technology.

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.”

Dr Rachael Grimaldi 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.”

The competition results were announced on 4th December 2021.