Avocados are not the only fruit but they sure bring a salad together

by Charly Massey, Kate Prescott & Mary Yip | 5mins

Often, when we talk about One HealthTech, people cannot quite believe a community like this exists. Then the 💡 lightbulb moment lands. They feel the pull to commit, but they are not sure they have the 🕒 capacity to run hubs and networks.

In early 2025, three long-standing community members found ourselves in exactly that spot. Our energy for OHT was still there. We wanted to nurture and celebrate the community, while growing our own professional skills. We had the practical know-how from running hubs and networks before, but we did not have the space to step back into leadership roles.

So we did what OHTrs tend to do. If it does not exist, we make it. 🛠️

Last June, we launched a new type of OHT Fellow: the OHT Advocate. 🥑 (or Avocado) for short. It is a way for OHT enthusiasts to use their invaluable skills and resources, without having to run the whole show.

As a grassroots, volunteer-run community, OHT is its people. Your memory of OHT is shaped by who you meet, where you find the community, what members talk about and promote, and how those encounters make you feel. Our 18-month mission touches all of those elements, strengthening the ❤️ heart, the sustainability, and the distinctive personability of the community.

• Foster collaboration and knowledge sharing across the OHT community

• Raise awareness of key issues in health tech

• Increase our collective visibility, so we show up as confident, credible voices in health tech

Now, 12 months in 📅, it is time to reflect and ask: “How is it for you?” and “What did we do?”

OHT’rs are fans of the wonderful magic of reciprocity, and we lightly wear our smartness.

🥑 What advocates do 

We help people find a path

People knock on the #OHT-Advocate channel, or we 👋 post a group call. We give each other permission to try, improve, and celebrate the wins.

Sometimes it is as simple as signposting the right OHT resource. FYI, the OHT Notion covers almost everything, including docs and toolkits. Other times, we do a little light coaching.

We sit alongside channels as they grow, from brand new “birthing pains” to established rhythms. We are honest, no-filter soundboards who help groups navigate decisions, stay focused, and keep moving. We support the “how” and the “what” behind the scenes, and we lend a hand when people are trying something new.

Our scope (and what we do not do)

As 🥑🥑 avocados, we have defined our scope clearly. We are catalysts, not part of the process.

We do not run workshops. We do not help with pitching. Often, the Core Team is the right home for those questions.

What we do get is the trusted pleasure of being among the first to see what is emerging. Health tech is vast. This year, we have heard incredible ideas, proofread proposals and toolkits, and been exposed to ground-breaking professional thinking. It has sharpened our perspective, and deepened our appreciation of the impact of our day-to-day work.

Highlights from the year

A highlight has been taking seats at the founding steps of the #Womenshealth channel, from grant writing, to toolkit launch, to whatever ambitions they climb to next in order to raise this important issue in health tech.

And, as anyone who has been to an OHT event or joined a meeting will know, we are keen to talk, listen, and connect. It is not a closed community. We are here to share, and the advocates have spent much of this year taking OHT outside itself.

We took Shift, an event series inaugurated inside OHT to theDataScienceFestival. We built new conversational alliances, created opportunities across the wider network, recruited new members from the wider tech community, and even won new business for our resident career coach, Dina. We wrote about the experience as part of the Field Notes, which have become a safe space to showcase skills and thought pieces.

To coincide with International Volunteering Week, we reported on the benefits of volunteering for your professional development .

Most recently, we helped the #OHT-Mental Health  channel and their first collaboration, adding just the right zing to the Applied Neuroscience Association 2026 symposium, “AI and Mental Health”. By bringing OHT’s ready-made mix of lived, in-practice digital health experience into the room, we widened the lens: the questions got sharper, the conversation got more real-world, and the learning kept rolling into the debriefs.

Programming a stand-alone OHT panel also helped us define an “OHT effect” we can propose to other meetings:

• Specialised capability from experts with lived technical, clinical-facing experience

• Connection to a vibrantly engaged community of digital health enthusiasts

• Open and welcome interdisciplinary space that is easy to drop into

• New, in-practice knowledge

The Avocado patch

What this troika has appreciated most from giving it a go, is each other. There is something so special about the bonds and support we have built between us. We 🥑 each other.

We are each other’s cheerleaders, celebrating new jobs 👩🏼‍🏫, (awards 🏆 and we are the critical friends 👂🏼 we rarely find in our personal and professional lives. Plus,

If you are reading this and you can feel the 🥑 in you twinkling, come talk to us. We would love to see what you can bring to this wonderland OHT salad.

We got you, we 🥑 do. Come say hi in #OHT-Advocate if you are interested in hearing more, being supported or contributing!

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