Futuru
The first time I spoke with Stephen Pattrick, Michelle Gorringe, and Martin Weigold about FuturU, I thought it was a crazy idea.
“You want to create healthcare education that’s accessible to everyone?”
“Yes,” Stephen said, “and it has to be free. We need to shift the global mindset. It’s totally unfair that nurses, doctors, and care professionals have to pay for it. There is a huge demand for these careers – and it’s only going to become more of a crisis in the next decade – but they pay an enormous amount for the education itself? How does that make sense for something so important?”
As we spoke, it dawned on me that the crazy thing would actually be to stick with a status quo that’ll have the world short 10 million healthcare professionals by 2030, according to the World Health Organisation. And, those were projections before pressures and burnout from COVID led to enormous turnover among healthcare professionals.
Bring more people into care, upskill and connect current healthcare professionals with one another, and, as Michelle put it, have a positive impact on millions of lives? Find a way to, as Martin said, make all of this financially sustainable to ensure we could achieve this essential mission? Tackle these global issues with a moonshot startup at the intersection of healthcare and education? This was too good of a challenge to pass up.
I am proud to say that we’re already providing free training for 10,000 British carers and nurses a month and helping them get jobs in a closed beta. We’re ready to launch broadly in the UK and the US is not far behind!
Who are we?
We’re a team of UK-based educators, trainers, software engineers, product managers, content developers, assessors, and people who believe that it’s going to require something bold, even crazy, to develop and empower the global healthcare workforce we need in the future. We believe healthcare professionals doing truly important work every day shouldn’t have to take on a lifetime’s amount of debt to fund their education. We believe they should have easy access to the skills and opportunities they need to advance their careers. We believe it’s time to try something new.
Come, be a part of the journey!
– Michael