As part of our series about “How Medical Practices Can Use Digital Transformation To Provide Better Care”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Michael Hunter.
Michael Hunter is an accomplished commercial and marketing professional with extensive experience driving growth, innovation, and strategic partnerships within the independent healthcare sector. He joined Welbeck Cambridge in March 2026 as Commercial Business Development Manager, bringing with him a strong track record of delivering measurable business success across multiple hospital environments.
Over the past ten years in the private healthcare sector, I’ve worked closely with consultants, operational teams, insurers, and patients, and that has given me a broad understanding of the challenges and opportunities within the industry. I’ve always enjoyed building partnerships and identifying ways services can evolve to meet changing patient expectations.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
My route into private healthcare was driven by a genuine interest in improving the patient experience and making healthcare more accessible and commercially sustainable at the same time. Early in my career, I was drawn to roles where I could bridge the gap between strategic growth and educating patients about their healthcare options. What really stood out to me about healthcare, compared to other industries, was that every improvement you make has a direct impact on someone’s wellbeing.
Over the past ten years in the private healthcare sector, I’ve worked closely with consultants, operational teams, insurers, and patients, and that has given me a broad understanding of the challenges and opportunities within the industry. I’ve always enjoyed building partnerships and identifying ways services can evolve to meet changing patient expectations.
Joining Welbeck Cambridge was particularly exciting because of the organisation’s patient-centred approach and ambition to combine clinical excellence with innovation. The opportunity to help shape growth while improving the patient journey was something that aligned strongly with my own values and career.
Can you share the most interesting or most exciting story that has happened to you since you began at your company?
Since joining Welbeck Health Partners, one of the most exciting aspects has been the opportunity to work alongside some of Cambridge’s leading consultants to help build a healthcare service that feels genuinely different to what currently exists in the UK market.
Although I’m relatively new to the organisation, what stood out immediately is the shared ambition to challenge traditional models of private healthcare and create something far more patient-focused, collaborative, and innovative. There’s a real energy around developing services that combine clinical excellence with a more seamless and personalised patient experience.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Then, can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
One of the funniest mistakes I made early in my career happened during a co-presented event with an ENT consultant. I had been preparing for several consultant meetings and events at the same time and, somehow, managed to completely confuse him with another consultant I had recently been working with, who happened to be a gynaecologist.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realise my mistake before stepping up to present. Throughout the entire presentation, I confidently referred to the ENT consultant by the other consultant’s name, completely unaware that everyone in the room had noticed except me. The audience was exchanging glances, and the consultant himself was incredibly polite about it, which probably made it even worse in hindsight.
It was only afterwards that a colleague quietly pointed out what I’d done, and I remember being absolutely mortified. Thankfully, the consultant saw the funny side of it, and it became one of those stories that people brought up for quite a while afterwards.
As embarrassing as it was at the time, it taught me a valuable lesson about preparation and being fully present, especially in a fast-paced environment where you’re juggling multiple relationships and priorities. It also reminded me that humility matters in leadership sometimes, the best thing you can do is laugh at yourself, own the mistake, and move on professionally.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Adaptability: Healthcare is constantly evolving, so adaptability has been essential throughout my career. Whether responding to operational pressures or changing patient expectations, being able to adjust quickly while keeping teams aligned has helped drive growth and maintain service quality.
Relationship Building: Strong relationships are central to healthcare. Building trust with consultants, insurers, and operational teams has helped create long term partnerships that ultimately improve both business performance and patient experience.
Resilience: Healthcare can be demanding, and not every initiative succeeds immediately. Resilience has helped me stay focused, solution-oriented, and persistent when facing challenges, which is often what leads to long-term progress and success.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
One of the most exciting projects I’m currently involved in is a collaborative effort looking at the behaviours involved in referral pathways and how technology can help simplify and improve the patient journey within private healthcare.
As a team, we’re exploring how smartphone apps and digital platforms could be better integrated into the private healthcare sector to make access to care more seamless, connected, and convenient for patients. The focus isn’t just on technology itself, but on understanding how patients, referrers, and clinicians interact throughout the healthcare journey and identifying where friction can be reduced.
What makes it particularly exciting is the opportunity to help modernise parts of private healthcare that haven’t traditionally embraced digital innovation at the same pace as other industries. If implemented well, these kinds of solutions could improve communication, speed up access to care, and create a more personalised experience for patients while also supporting clinicians and operational teams more effectively.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview about Digital Transformation in Healthcare. I am particularly passionate about this topic because my work focuses on how practices can streamline processes to better serve their patients. For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what exactly Digital Transformation means? On a practical level what does it look like for a medical practice to engage in a digital transformation?
Digital transformation in healthcare is about using technology strategically to improve patient care, operational efficiency, communication, and accessibility. It’s not simply about introducing new software; it’s about redesigning processes around the needs of patients and clinicians. This could include online appointment booking, digital patient intake forms, integrated clinical systems, automated communications, data-driven reporting, or AI-supported workflow management.
For a medical practice, successful digital transformation means creating a more seamless experience for both patients and staff while allowing clinicians to spend more time focused on care rather than administration.
What are the specific pain points that digital transformation can help address in a medical practice?
Digital transformation can help address several major challenges, including:
- Administrative inefficiencies and duplicated processes
- Long waiting times and appointment bottlenecks
- Poor communication between departments, providers and patients
- Inconsistent patient experiences
- Manual paperwork and data entry errors
- Difficulties managing growing patient demand
But more importantly, digital transformation can also empower patients by giving them access to more information about their care, treatment options, appointments, and healthcare pathways. Providing patients with clearer, more accessible information allows them to make better-informed decisions about their personal healthcare and become more active participants in their treatment journey.
Ultimately, the goal is to reduce friction throughout the patient journey while improving both operational performance and clinical outcomes.
What are the obstacles that prevent a medical practice from engaging in a digital transformation?
One of the biggest obstacles to digital transformation in healthcare is balancing innovation with the day-to-day pressures of delivering care. Many providers face challenges around cost, resource limitations, integrating new systems, data security, and ensuring staff feel confident using new technology. There can also be resistance to change and concerns that digital tools may reduce the human element of healthcare. The key is ensuring technology enhances the patient-clinician relationship rather than replacing it.
Managing a healthcare facility is more challenging than it has ever been. Based on your experience or research, can you please share with our readers a few examples of how digital transformation can help a medical practice to provide better care? If you can, please share a story or example for each.
Digital transformation can significantly improve care delivery in several ways.
Improved Access to Care: Online booking systems and digital triage tools allow patients to access services more quickly and conveniently, reducing delays and improving patient satisfaction.
Better Communication: Automated reminders, patient portals, and integrated systems improve communication between patients, clinicians, and operational teams, reducing missed appointments and improving continuity of care.
More Time for Patient Care: By reducing manual administrative tasks, clinicians and healthcare staff can spend more time focused directly on patient interaction and treatment.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Access to real-time operational and clinical data helps practices identify trends, improve efficiency, and allocate resources more effectively.
Can you share a few examples of how digital interactions or digital intake processes can help create a frictionless patient experience and increase access for patients?
Digital interactions and intake processes can significantly improve convenience and reduce stress for patients by creating a more seamless healthcare journey. Patients can complete forms online before attending appointments, reducing waiting times and administrative delays, while automated reminders help minimise missed consultations. Digital communication platforms can provide quicker responses to patient queries, and online self-referral pathways can improve access to services. Virtual consultations also support patients who may face travel, mobility, or time constraints. In modern healthcare, creating a frictionless patient experience is increasingly important, as patients now expect the same level of accessibility, convenience, and transparency they experience in other industries.
Based on your opinion and experience, what are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Effective Medical Practice” and why?
1. A patient first operating model
The most effective medical practices are built around the service user, not internal processes. When patients can access care easily, understand their journey clearly, and feel supported throughout, trust grows and so does long-term success.
2. Technology that improves the experience, not just administration
Healthcare has been slow to embrace innovation in ways that genuinely improve service delivery. Effective practices use technology to create faster access, better communication, smoother pathways, and greater convenience for patients in line with what healthcare should look like in 2026 and beyond.
3. Operational efficiency without compromising care
High performance comes from removing friction. Streamlined pathways, efficient scheduling, clear communication, and joined up processes allow clinicians to focus on care while delivering a seamless patient experience.
4. A culture of continuous improvement and adaptability
In highly populated markets where competition from established providers is strong, standing still is not an option. The most effective practices challenge legacy thinking, embrace change, and constantly evolve to meet rising patient expectations.
5. A clear point of differentiation
Reputation alone is no longer enough. Whether established or emerging, practices must be clear on what makes them different, whether that’s speed of access, exceptional patient experience, specialist expertise, or smarter models of care delivery. Patients increasingly choose value and experience, not just familiarity.
Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most people, what would that be? You never know what your ideas can trigger.
I would want to inspire a movement focused on making healthcare more accessible, connected, and patient-focused through thoughtful innovation.
Technology has enormous potential to improve healthcare, but it should always be implemented in a way that strengthens human connection rather than replacing it. I believe the future of healthcare lies in combining clinical excellence with smarter systems that remove barriers for patients and support healthcare professionals in delivering exceptional care.
If we can create healthcare experiences that are more accessible, efficient, and compassionate, the positive impact on individuals and communities could be enormous.