LDC Top 50 2023

As an award-winning sales director in the medical industry, Barney Kent, with his two co-founders, Tim Sheldrick and Matt Goodwin, spotted an opportunity to create an open medical education network that leveraged digitalisation to serve high-quality and free content to meet the ever-changing learning habits of healthcare professionals around the globe.

Disrupting the sector, they launched Touch Medical Media in 2012, its websites now attracting two million learners a year with revenues forecast to hit £22 million by 2025. “With ambitious growth plans, we are now going head-to-head with the market leader and our next generation approach to delivering content is a game changer,” Kent says.

Q&A

How important is the team to your success?

I have hired a world class team and don’t micromanage at all. If anything, I get out of people’s way. I have two co-founders – Tim Sheldrick and Matt Goodwin – and we have instilled a culture whereby the management serves the team, not the other way around. This is why staff retention stands at 93 percent and we regularly win awards for being a great place to work.

Tell me about your international ambition

Half of our revenues come from the US and have just opened a New York office & LLC, so that will only continue to grow. Outside of Europe and the US, we’re also seeing a lot of demand from emerging markets. Our website is available in most languages, and we have had visitors from 195 countries.

What’s the secret to your success?

Hiring the right people is crucial. Interestingly, more than three quarters of our workforce and half of our senior management are women. We support our female staff with menopause programmes, enhanced leave for fertility treatment and more. I really believe that women are extraordinarily capable and have been a huge part of our success.