Mahiben Maruthappu


Mahiben Maruthappu is a British physician, entrepreneur, academic researcher and health policy specialist. He co-founded Cera, a technology-enabled home healthcare company and one of the largest social care providers in the UK, while also serving on the Board of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, one of the largest hospital groups in the UK. He was the founder and first President of the United Kingdom Medical Students' Association. He co-founded the National Health Service Innovation Accelerator, a program that accelerates the adoption of new healthcare technologies, and served as NHS England's Innovation Adviser. He has published more than 100 research papers in peer-reviewed journals and received over 75 awards.
Maruthappu was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to Health and Social Care technology, one of the youngest doctors and NHS staff in history to ever receive a Queen’s Honour. He was the first person in British healthcare to be named in Forbes’ 30 under 30 list and was included in the 100 most influential leaders in health technology globally.

Early life and education

Maruthappu was born in London in 1988. He studied preclinical medicine at Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a triple first class, and as a student ran several charities, including CONTACT and Medic to Medic. He studied clinical medicine at Green Templeton College, Oxford and in his fifth year founded the United Kingdom Medical Students' Association, which provided free educational resources to over 40,000 students. He was also a Kennedy Scholar in Global Health at Harvard University, where he conducted research at Harvard's Center for Surgery and Public Health.

Medical practice

Maruthappu began his career as a physician at Ealing Hospital in 2013. He later practised at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and then trained in Public Health. In 2014, he was appointed scholar at National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, where he focused on the use of structured feedback in surgery. He also advised the World Health Organization and the Swiss government.

NHS Policy

in 2014 Maruthappu became the youngest appointed Senior Fellow to the Chief Executive Officer of NHS England, Simon Stevens, and the first clinician appointed by him. He co-developed the plan for the NHS, the Five Year Forward View, and established a number of key NHS programmes.
Whilst at the NHS, Maruthappu advised on £100 billion in health spending focused on innovation, technology and prevention, and in 2015, he co-founded the NHS Innovation Accelerator, a programme aimed at spreading tried and tested technologies across the health service, that also led to the development of the first NHS Innovation Tariff, a national reimbursement mechanism for medical technologies and digital health products. It benefited 3 million people within its first 6 months, and has since spread innovations to over 2,000 NHS organisations. Maruthappu was regarded as the “whizzkid helping save the NHS”.
He co-founded the NHS's £450 million Workplace Wellness Programme and the Diabetes Prevention Programme, which as of 2017 had been rolled out to half of the population in England.  He led NHS England's contribution to the Government's Childhood Obesity Plan and originated the NHS Sugar Tax, which preceded the UK Government’s Soft Drinks Industry Levy and so-called Sugar Tax.

Entrepreneurship

After his mother fell and fractured part of her back, Maruthappu faced difficulties in arranging required home care. In a 2017 interview, he said: “It showed me first hand some of the challenges an individual can experience if they’re trying to organise or care for a loved one themselves.” He subsequently co-founded Cera, a social care provider a social care provider that uses an on-demand digital platform to match people seeking in-home assistance with professional carers, allowing families to keep updated on a patient's progress, while also using Artificial Intelligence to predict potential health deteriorations in patients, helping to avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and alleviate pressures on the NHS.
Under Maruthappu, within 3 years Cera reached over 2,000 employees, 20 offices, and 10,000 care visits being delivered a day, while securing over $90 million of financing, making Cera one of the largest health technology companies in Europe.

Boards, affiliations, and related endeavours

Maruthappu is a Board Member of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, one of the largest NHS Trusts in the country, with £GBP 1.2 billion turnover, and a Board Member of Skills for Care, the national body for the UK’s 1.5 million care workforce. He is also a Senior Adviser to Bain and is a member of the advisory boards for Centene UK, The Telegraph, HealthTechDigital, and an ambassador for Healthcare UK. He was a Founding Board Member of Digital Health London.
He writes for the Guardian and Forbes, and has lectured undergraduate students at Cambridge University since the age of 20. He has given speeches for WIRED, The Economist, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Vitality Health insurance, NHS Confederation, Imperial College London, UCL, Harvard, and Cambridge University.

Research and selected publications

Maruthappu’s research focuses on public health, innovation and health economics. He led the 2016 study that linked the global economic crisis to 260,000 additional cancer deaths in a group of developed countries while demonstrating the protective effect of universal health coverage. The study, published in The Lancet, was ranked as one of the most influential research papers of 2016.
He subsequently led the ‘landmark’ 2018 study demonstrating that health & social care funding constraints in England were linked to 120,000 excess deaths; a so called ‘mortality gap’. The study called for over £20 billion of additional investment into the health and care system. The study was ranked as one of the most influential research papers of 2018.
Recognition includes:
CERA awards: