Eva’s CEO, Maddy Phipps-Taylor, joins us for her monthly column on all things Eva and why it matters to you.

This month, she’s talking about change and how we’ve had to make huge transformations to ensure we’re doing the best we can for healthcare professionals.


A Year Like No Other

As we look back on the last year – Eva’s first under new ownership and new leadership – there are lots of positives to draw out, and of course there have been lots of challenges to recognise. Our journey has been one of reinvention through necessity. At the start, as Microtest, we were struggling to keep up with the increasing demands for better tech within the NHS, and then the pandemic hit and it went from bad to worse.

Going fully remote, making tough decisions about our product strategy (including which products we could not continue to support), and scaling back our team have all been exacerbated by pandemic-induced hardships. Other businesses have had to make similar tough decisions; we are not alone in our struggles. It’s been a year like no other.

Indeed in many ways, Microtest served as a microcosm of the NHS’s complex relationship with innovation. As a long established company, we had been a key part of the Primary Care medical records infrastructure for three decades. But by April 2020, when the company was acquired, it was in need of radical change to remain relevant in the mission-critical, interoperable, fast changing world of healthtech.

Starting Again

For this reason, in Autumn 2020, we made the tough decision to reset and restart. We decided to rebrand the company and rebuild on new, more robust foundations for the tech-enabled 2020s. And so, Eva was born. We have worked hard to reimagine ourselves, re-energize and rebuild. I’m extremely proud of the company we’ve become, and continue to grow into.

Looking back, there are three elements that underpinned our transformation.

  • First, we were bold in embracing modern technologies. Our products now leverage the awesome power of the Cloud; they are robust, reliable, secure, high performing, and scalable in terms of both depth and breadth, with higher volumes of transactions and the additional modules in design and production. We had to be brave to start again, yet it was clear that old techs from the early 2000s are no longer fit for purpose in the healthcare sector. 
  • Secondly, we have had to say ‘no’ a lot. Often management is about what you say ‘yes’ to, at times of crisis it is perhaps more important to say ‘no’.  What will we stop doing? What costs can we cut without impacting our customer services and customer experience? What can we no longer afford to do? These have been very tough questions to ask ourselves. There is no easy way out. You have to be thorough, diligent, and analytical in making decisions, and then execute with respect and compassion.
  • And finally, teamwork is always key. Sharing the burden across the team has been the only way to make so much change happen so fast. There have been days when the plan went out the window and it was all hands to the pumps. This has forged a tight bond among the team, and a level of trust, respect and mutual understanding that is beautiful to see. By selectively bringing in new talent we have also been able to harness both the domain knowledge of Microtest as well as new experiences and skill sets. We now have a truly broad team where diversity of thought and experience are appreciated and encouraged.

With all this change behind us, we are now embracing the next year. Our first new module is eVacc, a mini medical record for Covid-19 vaccinations, built from the ground up in just five months. Building medical records has never been easy, but I am proud that we were the fastest to achieve each assurance milestone set by NHS Digital.

As we go live in the coming weeks, we can look back and say that our transformation is starting to pay dividends. We’ve set ourselves up for success just when the market needs us most. We’ve cut our teeth on some of the most complex NHS Digital assurance processes. And we’re just getting started. 

What’s Next?

We believe that the next decade of healthcare will need better medical records software. It will need software that is interoperable by design, that can handle scale and complexity across multiple care settings, and will be much more centred around a holistic understanding of the patient than we have ever had before. We are here to meet that need for clinicians and for patients alike. 

At Eva, we’re not just pushing the change agenda for our customers, we’re embodying it ourselves. It’s been a year like no other yet we’ve come out stronger on the other side. It’s been hard, it’s been emotional, but it’s been for the better. I feel we are now uniquely positioned with fresh ideas, technical skills and domain knowhow to make a real difference.

We’d love for you to come join us on the next phase of our journey to help bring better tech into the hands of hardworking clinicians.


If you’d like to hear more about Eva, get your hands on our eVacc module, or find out about our upcoming Partner Program, please get in touch.