Serial Entrepreneur & London Medical Education Academy Founder Angela Spang
Angela Spang is a Swedish born serial entrepreneur, founder and owner of London Medical Education Academy, Spang Group Innovations and JUNE MEDICAL, amongst others.
Winner of UK Entrepreneur of the Year 2017, Angela Spang spent time with our members and attendees at AM Live event, hosted at London Olympia last week. Angela spoke about entrepreneurship on the LIVE stage and we have caught up again with her since to hear all about London Medical Education Academy (LMEDAC).
Tell us about LMEDAC?
LMEDAC is a company that I founded that actually WILL change the world! I started London Medical Education Academy (www.LMEDAC.com) purely by coincidence and it isn’t until lately I’ve realised how absolutely enormous the need and the market is.
Sounds like an interesting journey. What happened?
AS: Well, it started out as a cadaver training company for gynaecology, focussing on hands-on anatomy dissections and surgical skills training. This has now grown into 5 subdivisions, with facial anatomy as one of them and breast reconstruction as another. We started with abdominal surgery and are also doing orthopaedics, spine, laparoscopy and fistula courses.
How does that work? Where are your courses? Do you have your own lab?
We are using labs in several places in the UK who follow our strict ethical guidelines. In 2019 we will have a new purpose-built lab in the UK and we will move the majority of our courses there.
But why training? Aren’t there many others doing that already?
Interestingly enough, no. We do true hands-on training and you don’t come to our courses to WATCH, you come to DO. That is what we do differently. We also have a much better ratio of staff to attendees and work only on fresh frozen human tissue - it is by far the best learning experience available.
There are plenty of observation and theory courses, but we spend our time IN the lab, working on anatomy and surgical procedures. Our anatomy lecturers and faculty are absolutely phenomenal.
You said training is extra important as the risks are higher in aesthetics than in other businesses. What did you mean by that?
I did and I know that raised a few eyebrows but I do think that people agreed with my explanation. See for an aesthetic practitioner EVERY Patient is a billboard, a walking advertisement publicly displaying the skills and expertise of the injector or surgeon. If there ever was an area an entrepreneur shouldn’t take any risks in, it would be in this as a single mistake can ruin YEARS of hard work. I think that is why our trainings are so popular with the aesthetic surgeons and nurses. Our first course was booked up fully by the BACN and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We really do seem to be filling a gap in the market and I am delighted that we can utilize our donor’s bodies by using every part of them - just the way they wanted when they decided to donate it for teaching purposes.
Speaking of donors, you feel very strongly about this?
It’s impossible not to! Brave, generous people who have the foresight to understand that if we don’t change the current training methods, not only will patients be injured and even die while doctors use them for training, but also that we will run out of doctors. We already see that Royal College of Surgeons are alerted to the fact that applicant numbers are down dramatically and we aren’t filling the spaces. It is no wonder that two of the medical schools in the UK don’t even have a dissection lab. Students just don’t feel prepared enough to take on the responsibility of surgery.
This has to change. Surgical proficiency has got to become a key aspect of medical device introduction and the focus on continuous medical education will have to get better funded than it is currently.
You’re passionate about education. You even gave us a discount code to use for booking onto your courses. That’s nice of you!
Well, you let me speak to people about my passion for entrepreneurship, so consider it a thank you! And I look forward to seeing people on the next Facial Dissect and Inject course, which I believe is on September 27th in Nottingham! Nobody has ever said they have trained too much and with the challenges from a medicolegal perspective, documented and non-industry sponsored training with CPD points, it is more important than ever.The code is AML18 and the booking form is here!
