Ten years of One HealthTech — and what comes next

Gosh, we really can’t believe it’s been this long, but OHT has turned ten and it’s been causing a lot of reflection. This wee blog is a chance to share a little of where we’ve come from, what we’ve built, where we want to get to next, and a couple of exciting new roles in the team that we think will help get us there.

But first: back to basics. Whilst lots within the OHT community has changed and evolved over the last decade, our core raison d’être has stayed consistent. We have always believed that innovating for everyone’s health is better when more people get to shape it, especially the people, perspectives and experiences too often left at the edges. We like it when health interventions, particularly the new, shiny, innovationy, techy ones, actually work (and work equitably!) rather than simply giving the impression that “new” must mean better.

That belief has grown into a bubbling, chaotic, beautiful and fizzy community. Then a community of communities. Something volunteer-led, people-powered, and very much a work-not-words third space. Today, OHT includes 13 specialist sub-communities, though over the years we’ve ebbed and flowed through creating and curating almost 40 of them. It is held together by a brilliant group of Fellows and volunteers, and now reaches more than 20,000 people around the world, with 60 events in the last year alone.

But if you have ever been part of OHT, you will know the numbers are only a tiny part of the story. They matter, of course, but voluminous activity does not automatically equal impact, and the real story of OHT has never really lived in the headline figures anyway.

For us, it has always lived somewhere much more human: in the person who came to one event and found the collaborators who helped get their project, business or research off the ground. In the introduction that turned into a job, a friendship, a project or a speaking opportunity — and then unlocked a whole tidal wave of supported exploration from there. In the slightly chaotic WhatsApp groups, the kitchen-table conversations, and the chance encounters where ideas started to grow legs. Because we really do believe that health innovation rarely begins in hospital boardrooms. It begins in informal spaces where people feel connected, challenged and able to grow ideas that lead to change. OHT has spent the last decade trying to make more of those spaces possible.

And over those ten years, that has led to some very real, tangible things. We have not just cheered on inclusion from the sidelines; we have backed it in practical ways, including through the creation of our Accessibility Fund which puts meaningful resource behind financially supporting OHT members to engage with the community if they face barrier. We have taken knotty issues like intersectionality and women’s health and made them more useful for the people building products, services and ideas in the real world. We have helped spark and mentor communities that have gone on to become substantial things in their own right, from thriving city-based communities in Nigeria to work pushing forward more equitable uses of data science. We have supported local action in places like West Yorkshire to broaden participation in health innovation. And we have helped carry community insight into formal decision-making spaces too — yes, even Parliament!

We have also seen the quieter or less visible, but no less important changes that happen when community really works: people finding peers, mentors, collaborators, introductions and opportunities; people stepping forward to host, convene, organise and lead who might never have described themselves as “leaders” before; communities taking root and growing into fully fledged spaces in their own right. That, to us, has an impact too.

So yes, this is a moment to celebrate ten years. But it is also a moment to get ourselves (and hopefully everyone around us!) excited about what the next chapter looks like.

The next chapter is about impact

Our 2026–2030 strategy, landing on our website soon, is not about becoming shinier, bigger for the sake of it, or more corporate. Booo to those things. It is, however, about getting clearer, more deliberate and more useful. The next phase of OHT is about turning community energy into more visible, practical impact. That means not just creating warm and generous spaces, important though those are, but helping what grows inside those spaces travel further, into products, practice, research, policy, partnerships and culture. In other words, we want to get a whole lot better at converting community action into change that we can really see and measure.

Sometimes that will look like people finding opportunities they would not otherwise have had. Sometimes it will look like stronger partnerships, practical outputs, frameworks or collaborations. Sometimes it will look like community insight shaping how health innovation is designed and delivered. Sometimes it will look like a person who once thought, “I’m probably not the sort of person who leads things,” becoming exactly that sort of person. And sometimes it will look like communities themselves becoming stronger, more connected and more influential far beyond the room they started in.

Over the next few years, we really want to be known not just for convening people effectively, but also for helping shift how health innovation is actually done. 

Making it easier to get involved

A big part of that is making OHT easier to enter, easier to navigate and easier to contribute to. For a long time, one of OHT’s strengths has been its openness and organic feel. But with porousness often comes many confusing holes to pass through. Lovely, yes, slightly baffling at times…also yes! We think we can be more intentional about helping people find the the place where they can add value in the community and part of that means creating a clearer journey from first encounter to active contribution — from joining, to belonging, to contributing, to building, to leading, to influencing, and eventually mentoring others. Not because everyone has to move through OHT in the same neat order, but because people are much more likely to stay involved when they can actually see where they fit and what their next step could be.

Communities do not grow just because people turn up to a random meetup one time. They grow when people can see where they fit, how to help, and what the next step might be if they want to go further. They grow when it is easier to move from “this seems interesting” to “I’m part of this now.” They grow when people can find an early way to contribute, and when that contribution is noticed, welcomed and built on and then goes on some wild rocket-ship through the healthtech universe.

Being much more deliberate about leadership

The other big focus for us is our Community Fellowship. Our Fellows are the real powerhouses and community-building workhorses of OHT. The faces of our distinct sub-communities. The people who create trust, energy and momentum, often behind the scenes. So much of OHT’s magic has always come from Fellows, organisers, hosts, connectors, volunteers and mentors who are the people willing to fumble, experiment in public, take up the mantle and try to convene community for action.

One thing we have really noticed over the years however, over and over again, how much learning, leadership and development happens through that process. People do not just help run an OHT community and come away with a fuller calendar. We consistently see them come away more confident, more credible, more willing to collaboratively lead and happier to exist in rooms full of complexity, diversity and sometimes friction. Those are exactly the kinds of capabilities that we would want to see ripple out into teams, organisations, products and systems.

So our strategy is really clear that we want to back that leadership much more explicitly which means making contribution more visible and better supported. It means creating clearer pathways into leadership through the Fellowship. And it means helping people build confidence, credibility and influence in ways that feel grounded and practical, not polished or exclusive. One of the most powerful things OHT has done over the years is help people realise they do not need permission to start building something valuable. A thousand flowers bloom and all that…. We see the meadows everywhere now!

A moment of transition — and a very hopeful one

This is also, in a bittersweet way, a moment of transition.

After ten and a half glorious years, Maxine Mackintosh — our Co-Founder and Co-Director — is stepping down. OHT has been shaped over the years by a huge amount of care, imagination and graft from many people, and Maxine has been a massive part of that. But if OHT has done one thing well, it has grown into something bigger than any one person. Stronger because it is shared and more alive because it belongs to the people in it.

So, with that in mind, we are growing the team and recruiting for two roles: a Community Administrator and a Community Co-Director. The Co-Director will work closely with Angela, our existing Co-Director, and Charlotte, our Community Manager, with a particular focus on funding, partnerships and financial sustainability — helping OHT build the staying power it needs to keep doing what it does best, without losing its warmth, trust or spirit. The Community Administrator will be the brilliant behind-the-scenes force helping the whole thing run well, freeing up volunteers to focus on leading their communities. From drafting social posts and uploading partnerships to the website, to cleaning up data and improving systems, this is a role for someone who loves the details. Bonus points if they are curious about using AI to make things more efficient, while keeping the important human bits front and centre.

And really, after all of that, the last thing to say is a big heartfelt thank you! Thank you to everyone who has hosted, organised, volunteered, mentored, encouraged, introduced, built, joined, stayed, returned, and helped make OHT feel like somewhere people could belong.

Ten years in, One HealthTech still feels like a place where things start.

Here’s hoping the next ten are about helping those things grow — reaching far beyond the OHT bubble, and shaping the people, products and practices that will define better health innovation in the years ahead.

OHT Community Co-Director

OHT Community Administrator