What Happens When a UK Doctor—and a Quiet EMR Pioneer in the NHS—Both Decide to Fix a Broken Health System?

Rose Odette
Nov 14
5 min read

Dr. Mahiben (Ben) Maruthappu, the London-born physician behind Cera, Europe’s leading digital-first home-care platform.

Introduction - UK Doctor

Most entrepreneurs chase the next hot trend. But the leaders who truly change industries — the ones who build hundred-million-dollar companies and redefine entire markets — run straight into the parts of the world everyone else has given up on.

Two powerful stories show this truth clearly:

Dr. Mahiben (Ben) Maruthappu, UK Doctor - the London-born physician behind Cera, Europe’s leading digital-first home-care platform.
Rose Odette, an American healthcare innovator who spent a decade (2004–2014) living in the UK and deploying electronic medical record systems across the NHS in Portsmouth, East Sussex, and multiple other Trusts through her company, The Wellness Connection — one of the first EMR pioneers in the space.

One reimagined care inside the home. One reimagined care inside the hospital.

Both understood something every entrepreneur must learn: Real opportunity lives inside the broken systems everyone else avoids.The Origin Story: From London Classrooms to Global Health Leadership

Ben Maruthappu’s journey begins in London, born in 1988 to Sri Lankan Tamil parents, both NHS doctors who instilled a deep understanding of care, sacrifice, and system pressure. As a teenager in North London, he lost his father to a sudden heart attack. He watched NHS staff fight for hours to save him—an experience that carved a lifelong mission into him:

Make the system better for the next family.

He trains across the world’s top institutions:

Cambridge (Selwyn College) – graduates with a triple first, creates national medical organizations.
Oxford (Green Templeton College) – clinical medicine, academic leadership.
Harvard (Boston) – Kennedy Scholar researching global surgery and public health.

Then he steps into the guts of the system:

Junior doctor at Ealing Hospital
Senior Fellow to the CEO of NHS England, advising on £100B+ of annual spending
Co-founds the NHS Innovation Accelerator and major prevention initiatives

His breakthrough moment comes when his own mother needs home care in London—and the experience is an administrative nightmare. Paper files. Delays. No coordination. No data.

He realizes: Hospitals are digital. Home care is stuck in the ‘80s. That’s the spark.

My Parallel Origin Story: A Decade Digitizing the NHS Before “Digital Health” Was a Thing

At the same time—years earlier—we were already transforming NHS workflows from the inside.

From 2004 to 2014, I lived and worked across the UK—Portsmouth, East Sussex, and multiple NHS Trusts—deploying EMR systems through The Wellness Connection.

My company pioneered electronic medical records in large-scale communities before most people even understood what “digital transformation” meant.

We weren’t just implementing software.

We were:

Changing clinical workflows
Training teams
Integrating systems
Navigating NHS politics
Managing the cultural shift from paper charts to digital care

We were doing in hospitals what Ben would later do in homes—digitizing care at the point where the system breaks down the most.

His story. Our story. Two sides of the same leadership coin.

Founding Cera: Where Personal Pain Meets System Redesign

In 2015–2016, Ben launches Cera in London—a digital-first home-care platform built on AI, structured data, and scalable care delivery.

The outcomes are staggering:

50,000+ home visits per day
10,000+ carers and nurses
Coverage of ~30 million people
AI predicting falls and hospitalizations days in advance
NHS savings estimated at £1M+ per day
Expansion across England, Scotland, and Germany
Unicorn status after raising $150M+

This isn’t an app. It’s a new operating system for home care.

And it mirrors the boldness you brought to EMR deployment a decade earlier.

His Go-To-Market Strategy (The Masterclass Your Entrepreneurs Should Study)

Target the quiet giant: social care Cera enters the massive, under-digitized world of domiciliary care—a space controlled by NHS organizations and local councils, not consumers.
Sell to payers, not patients His revenue flows from institutional contracts—NHS Trusts and local authorities—by proving measurable outcomes, not convenience.
Use data as the wedge Every home visit produces structured data. AI turns that into predictive intelligence. Cera stops being a care agency and becomes a preventive health platform.
Land-and-expand across the UK & Europe One contract → new services → new geographies → new verticals.
Anchor everything in outcomes When you can show “we reduce falls, reduce admissions, save millions,” procurement becomes a yes.

This GTM philosophy is the same DNA we carried in our NHS EMR deployments: Outcome-driven. System-focused. Human-centered.

Five Ideals

Ideal #1 — System-Scale Problems Are Worth More Than Trendy Ideas

Ben targeted the UK’s struggling home-care sector. We targeted the NHS’s outdated, paper-dependent hospital workflows. Both chose massive, difficult problems — and built transformational solutions.

Ideal #2 — True Change Happens from Within the System

Before launching Cera, Ben worked deep inside NHS England, advising the CEO on over £100B in annual spending. Rose spent ten years inside UK hospitals — adapting EMR systems to real-world clinical environments, navigating NHS culture, and modernizing care delivery from the ground up.

Insiders create change that outsiders only theorize about.

Ideal #3 — Data Is the Real Power Source in Modern Business

Cera turned every home visit into structured data. EMR systems turned every clinical encounter into digital intelligence.

Both solutions proved the same point: Technology is useful — but data is transformative.

Ideal #4 — Outcomes Are What Sell, Not Innovation

Cera scaled because it delivered measurable, undeniable results:

Fewer hospitalizations
Fewer falls
Millions saved for the NHS

The Wellness Connection scaled because EMRs improved safety, accuracy, and efficiency — metrics that hospital leaders could not ignore.

Executives buy outcomes, not features.

Ideal #5 — Origin Stories Create Authority

Ben's mission was shaped by witnessing clinicians fight to save his father. Rose’s mission was shaped by watching firsthand how broken documentation and fragmented medical histories hurt patients — and by pioneering EMR adoption early in the global movement.

The origin story matters because it proves the founder has lived the pain they’re trying to solve.

Five Action Items

Action Item #1 — Identify the Broken System in Your Industry

Ask: Where is the most frustration? The most paperwork? The most outdated processes?

Action Item #2 — Pinpoint One Hard Outcome You Can Achieve

Hospital errors reduced. Costs lowered. Time saved. Whatever it is — it must be measurable.

Action Item #3 — Build Your Data Flywheel Early

Every product or service should quietly collect the right data from day one.

Action Item #4 — Align Your GTM With the Budget Holders

Just like EMRs sold to administrators and Cera sold to councils and NHS organizations — sell to the entities that control the purse strings.

Action Item #5 — Craft Your Founder Narrative as a Strategic Asset

Your birth-to-business journey clarifies why you are uniquely equipped to deliver the solution.

Conclusion

Ben Maruthappu built a unicorn by applying data, AI, and bold vision to home care. Rose Odette built a pioneering healthcare technology company by digitizing NHS hospitals from the inside out, years before digital health became mainstream.

Two innovators. Two decades. One universal lesson:

If you want to build something of enduring value, stop chasing trends and start repairing the systems the world depends on. That’s where legacy — and wealth — are created.

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