Dr Harriet Treacy tapped into a childhood entrepreneurial streak when she came up with the idea behind Beyondbmi. She talks to Arlene Harris about the obesity-tackling platform.

As a teenager in boarding school, Dr Harriet Treacy made something of a name for herself as young entrepreneur selling sweets to fellow students. Analysing the market to decipher when the best time was to sell her wares, and what offers would be most enticing, she regularly traded in candy after the lights went out.

This interest in sales and figures may have been due to parental influence, as her mother ran a pub, and her father was a chartered accountant. And now, decades later, she has just launched an innovative new venture, Beyondbmi, a digital platform for weight control that combines pharmaceutical solutions with clinical supervision and nutritional therapy.

Although she undoubtedly showed business acumen at a young age, the Dublin woman had her heart set on becoming a doctor, and after finishing school she enrolled in the University of Nottingham, where she qualified in 2013 with a dual degree in Biomedical Science and Medicine.

During a two-year stint as an intern in Bristol, Treacy says she became really interested in improving the hospital system and helped to develop a solution allowing staff to report incidences anonymously in order to reduce working challenges.

Dr Treacy moved from the UK to Australia, spending two years working in a trauma hospital, but couldn’t shake off the “niggling feeling” that she should be working in healthcare at a higher level.

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“While I was in Sydney, I discovered ‘Value Based Healthcare’, and it really caught my interest as the funding came from proving that you were delivering improved healthcare outcomes,” she recalls.

“I found out about a primary care network called Iora Health in the US. After contacting the CEO and telling him that I wanted to know more, I was invited over to have a look at how things were done. I handed in my notice in Australia and headed over to America.”

Treacy was impressed by Iora’s healthcare model, which involved a family practice partnering with a health insurance company. “There was a risk share agreement in place, where they would share the dividends of the cost savings by improving people’s health, and I felt this was a really great way to align incentives across all stakeholders,” she says. “It made me feel really optimistic about where healthcare was going.”

After ten years abroad, Harriet Treacy returned to Ireland in 2018 and enrolled in a course with her Local Enterprise Office in order to reflect on her business skillset. Realising that enthusiasm wasn’t sufficient to start her own venture, she signed up for a Master’s in Design Innovation at Maynooth University.

Continuing to work as a doctor in the emergency medical space, Treacy honed her business skills and made some interesting connections while studying. These included product designer, Peter Lumley, who would go on to become the co-founder of Beyondbmi.

“We worked together on our dissertation project which focussed on the growing problem of diabetes, and this led us to spending time with insurance and pharmaceutical companies as well as obesity clinics,” she says. “Identifying a need for a men’s health platform, we approached Enterprise Ireland for funding, which was granted, and off the back of that we worked out of the Nova innovation centre at UCD.

“We soon realised that we weren’t getting the traction we needed from our target group. As obesity was an underserved area of healthcare, we decided this was another area for us to consider.

“We came up with the idea for Beyondbmi which is essentially a platform which connects people living with obesity with a team of experts, all of whom understand that it is a disease, and that shame and bias doesn’t solve any of its problems.”

With a clear plan of action, the 32-year-old entrepreneur and business partners went on to raise €525,000 to develop the start-up. Backers include Ergo chairman John Purdy, CKS Finance founder Conor Sheahan, KPMG partner Eoghan Quigley, and Grant Thornton head of corporate finance Paddy Dillon.

“I reached out to my network and people gave me introductions to various investors,” says Treacy. “John Purdy was really fundamental in opening his network to us, and we had built some relationships through the LEO Commercialisation Fund, so we pitched there too.

“During 2022 we really developed the concept and were very lucky to have access through UCD to some of the world’s leading obesity experts. We worked really closely with these scientists and doctors to develop the platform to meet not only the needs of people living with obesity but also the needs of clinicians, so they would enjoy the experience of using the technologies we developed to deliver the best care.”

Beyondbmi’s platform, which connects obese people to a team of doctors, dietitians, health coaches and clinical nurse specialists, is aimed at anyone who has experienced complications as a result of their weight. Besides Dr Treacy and Peter Lumley, also involved are obesity scientists Alex Miras and Carel Le Roux and clinical nutritionist, Werd Al-Najim. The monthly charge is €150, excluding the cost of medications.

Beyondbmi’s approach centres on obesity targeting drugs, something which Dr Treacy says is essential for long term weight loss.

“The pharmacological management of weight loss is central to any sustainable long-term solution,” she says. “Any diet we do will help us to lose weight, but 95% of them don’t work in the long term.

“Pharmacological therapies are increasingly going to feature as a solution as prescribed drugs are key to the problem of obesity. At the moment they cost between €99 and €200 per month and while some obesity drugs are covered by the Drug Payment Scheme, the criteria are strict and people need to have a BMI of over 35 and one weight-related health complication, so that doesn’t open itself to a lot of people.

“However, increasingly we are seeing that insurance companies and governments are going to cover this cost, as the health economic outcome data shows that this is a cost-effective way to manage the obesity epidemic. Prescribing the drugs without providing the support would have resulted in us generating some early quick income, but ethically it wasn’t the right thing to do and not the best way to structure the business.

“In order to offer a sustainable solution, it was important not to prescribe this medication without offering dietary and lifestyle coaching and even psychological interventions. We align ourselves with national and global guidelines to ensure that medications are prescribed only alongside all the necessary support that people need in order for the platform to be a viable solution.”

Dr Treacy feels fortunate to have been able to combine her medical skills and experience with her natural affinity toward the business world. “I certainly don’t regret studying medicine and I see my new venture not as a diversion from my original career but as a combination of skills,” she says. “It is the perfect harmony for me as I love the purity of business - there’s something really raw and pure about it and this is something that you don’t get in medicine. I also love the idea of sustainable business and building something which grows.”