Young Newcastle University entrepreneur targets medical schools with App business

A Gateshead-based company, founded by Newcastle University entrepreneur and Britain’s Top Role Model 2013, Stuart Maitland, is targetting the medical schools market.

Mediwikis creates medical apps for patients and healthcare professionals and aims to significantly improve the quality of healthcare across the country.

The company provides medical students across the UK with free access to a collaborative revision website. The online learning platform creates a virtual learning community, with tailored sites according to each university curriculum.

The aim of the platform is to inspire the next generation of medical professionals to develop their own learning, share ideas and engage with fellow peers.

Following a successful pilot in the Medical School at Newcastle University where Stuart is a student, this innovative concept has been developed and rolled out so that it is now available online, giving students the flexibility to access information wherever they are and via a variety of devices.

Stuart Maitland, manager director of mHealthful, said: “I am really proud of the product that I have developed, going from demo to pilot to deployment in such a short space of time.

“The concept developed when I was revising for my own exams and I hope that Mediwikis will provide students with a mobile learning platform that will enhance their productivity and allow them to revise anywhere, anytime.”

When compared with other medical learning platforms, Mediwikis is unique in that it allows students to directly edit their content.

Since the site has been trialled at Newcastle University it has achieved over 2 million page views in just over a year, with students preferring the way that the notes are specifically tailored to their course.

mHealthful benefited from the business support services at Newcastle Science City which provided funding to develop a market strategy for this innovative software.

mHealthful appointed Horizonworks Marketing, one of Newcastle Science City’s approved providers of marketing services, to rebrand the company, develop a new website and develop a targeted marketing campaign to help launch the new brand.

The project involved a market audit and brand development. Horizonworks interviewed a sample of key decision makers at medical schools across the country to assess current awareness of the product and identify any other online tools being used. This research led to the product being rebranded from its original name uniwikis to mediwikis.

Jen Dugdale, head of Client Services at Horizonworks, added: “We created a distinctive brand and visual identity for online and offline materials to position the product as an innovative and essential tool for the medical learning environment.

“The new brand has been rolled out across a range of online marketing materials for wide-scale promotion, which will be essential to both inform and engage medical schools and students to encourage uptake.”

Charlie Wainwright, business support manager at Newcastle Science City, said: “We have tracked this young business since its infancy and the Mediwikis product is the first to emerge from mHealthful’s portfolio of medical learning products.

“Stuart is a smart young entrepreneur with a promising future, and it has been a pleasure for Newcastle Science City to support the growth of this innovative North East company.”

Following the business support received from Newcastle Science City, mHealthful is now in a position to develop its online marketing strategy, and is planning to launch a Thunderclap initiative later this month, to communicate the new brand to the company’s target audience through Twitter.