Cambridge Cognition Holdings (LON:COG) Chief Operating Officer Matthew Stork caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss his background, what he brings to the company and growth drivers going forward.
Q1: You’ve recently joined Cambridge Cognition as Chief Operating Officer and I think the intention is to shortly move to Chief Executive. Can you explain a bit more about your own career to date?
A1: So, I’ve been a business leader in the sector for 15 years and as Managing Director or Divisional Leader in a number of companies, companies like GE Healthcare, InHealth who provide diagnostic imaging services, in case you don’t know them, and Canon which was Toshiba.
Early in my career, I was in global marketing and business leadership in Smith and Nephew and also the Getinge Group. Prior to that, I did work in a start-up for some time and I’ve worked in sales and marketing roles and even before that, I’m a pharmacist and I have a PhD in Artificial Intelligence.
So, quite a varied early career.
Q2: So, a wealth of experience there and knowledge. What brought you Cambridge Cognition?
A2: There’s areal opportunity for growth in the sector that the company is in and there’s several drivers for that.
So, we see growth in the clinical trials markets, faster growth of what’s called eCOA’s, electronic measurements of clinical outcomes for clinical trials and then also, another sector that the company is in, digital health solutions, is also growing very rapidly.
There’s increasing interest from major players and many of our existing customers in that sector so some of the big pharma companies.
Q3: How do you feel your past experience will be able to be leveraged in your new role in the company?
A3: It’s also part of the reason I joined because I’ve got a very broad background with a lot of experiences that I think are helpful and will be helpful in the future.
I did actually work for the National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery when I was working as a clinician, very early in my career and as I said earlier, I have a PhD in Artificial Intelligence which is very relevant at these times. I’ve led major contracts working for pharmaceutical companies and also been the lead on major clinical trials and as well as that, my sales and marketing and leadership experience, and I’ve worked globally, will also be useful.
So, actually I think I’ve got a very broad range of experiences that cover much of what is done at COG.
Q4: Now, you’ve been in the company now for about 6 weeks, what have you learned about the business?
A4: Well, I’ve obviously been getting to know everybody in the business very well, it’s been great actually and I’ve really enjoyed spending time out in the field, in the office, meeting teams.
I’ve found that the team are really professional so there’s a deep expertise in neuroscience and they’re delightful to work with, they really care about customers and customer service levels. So, I found that the company has got extraordinarily high customer service results from their metrics which is fantastic and great to see.
I’ve also seen that there are huge collaborative partnerships with some of the major pharmaceutical companies, some very exciting work that’s being done within the company and there’s real enthusiasm for many of the new offerings that we’ve been developing.
Q5: What are your initial thoughts on the growth drivers for Cambridge Cognition Holdings?
A5: It’s very much what I was thinking it would be before I joined so there are two real opportunities.
One is in digital health and that is improving the monitoring of patients on a frequency basis so moving from periodic measurements to measuring and monitoring them on a very regular daily, or even many times during the day, basis. That will give more insights for clinical trials and then also better care for patients out in the community.
The other major driver is a move to increasing the electronic systems that are used within clinical trials, that market is going to grow very rapidly from what is still a low base.
So, I think we’ll see the company have many more opportunities as those markets grow as well.
