Health IQ and Kriya's invoice finance solution

Jilani Gulam is no stranger to ground-breaking technology. Originally from a media background, he launched iPlayer on television platforms for the BBC in 2008 – a pioneering technology that was later emulated by today’s leading streaming companies. In 2011, he shifted to technology in the healthcare space and established Health iQ. Today tech is still at the core of what his company offers, but the focus is now predominantly on the pharmaceutical industry.

Health iQ connects and combines a wealth of complex information from a variety of sources to enable insights from the data. They recently won a prestigious industry award for a solution to help early diagnosis of children with a rare condition called MPS-I.

This innovative approach combined disease registry data, clinician interviews and advanced analytics to deliver diagnosis rates three times higher than standard approaches. Health iQ is also speeding up access to treatment in diabetes, oncology, IBD and a host of other therapy areas.

Jilani said: “The technology we develop helps patients and saves lives, which is the most inspiring thing from my point of view.”

Health iQ uses data to help inform a variety of other real-world situations as well. For example, utilising their Simulation platform they visually represented the operations of a specialist A&E department looking to reduce the time it takes for patients to be seen by doctors.

By overlaying floorpans and data, Health iQ was able to generate simulations to help pinpoint the issues, wargame scenarios and propose a solution.

The cash flow challenge

The business has seen rapid growth year over year and in 2016 Christopher Clark joined the business as CFO. As a proponent of alternative finance options, he came to Kriya to ease the impact of lengthy customer payment terms.

Christopher said: “Working with big blue-chip companies is great, but the downside is dealing with payment terms that can be up to 100 days after we invoice.”

He said: “Kriya helps us quickly bring cash forward. It’s a simple, flexible facility that grows with our business.”

For Jilani, having a cash flow solution in place gives him peace of mind. He said: “Using Kriya gives us confidence that we don’t need to worry about things operationally. It’s an easy way for us to access funds for growth and to keep business running smoothly.”

Finance technology and business

We asked Christopher and Jilani how finance technology has changed the way they do business.

Christopher spoke about how digital finance solutions are making life easier. He said: ‘We use Xero, which is very intuitive and UX focused. It has a great ecosystem around it and incorporates invoice processing so we no longer need to do laborious bookkeeping. And since Kriya integrates with Xero, I can manage my invoices with the click of a button.”

Jilani said: “Before Kriya, I was spending a lot of time dealing with cash flow and finance. Now I can focus on the bigger picture. It’s allowed me to build the team and new products without having to worry about money coming in.”

What's next

They have an exciting new product to launch in Q4 of this year, which will help pharmaceutical companies assess the best course of treatment for patients. Health iQ will be able to perform analysis that typically takes three months in a matter of days. But that’s not all – they’re looking to add nine more products over the next two years.

Big things are happening at Health iQ, stay tuned! A big thanks to Jilani and Christopher for sharing their stories with us.

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