I completed the Queen’s MBA in 2012 and today I’m founder & CEO of Raidmed, a Northern Ireland med-tech company developing ThermiCare, an at-home thermal monitoring solution to help prevent diabetic foot ulcers. My role spans strategy, product and regulatory planning, fundraising, partnerships and culture translating clinical need into an executable venture plan.

Before the MBA, my career was hands-on engineering and product leadership across telecoms, audio and medical devices. At Intelesens I progressed from senior engineer to Engineering Director, leading multidisciplinary teams to deliver CE/FDA-cleared wearable vital-signs monitoring over multiple generations, while interfacing with clinicians, quality/regulatory, and a global partner ecosystem. That period taught me how to make evidence-based decisions under regulatory constraints and how to organise teams for predictable delivery.

The programme gave me the strategic finance, operations and governance toolkit to complement my technical base. I left with a clearer mental model for choosing markets, aligning stakeholders, managing risk and capital, and sequencing milestones. The biggest shift was moving from “how do we build it?” to “what must be true across users, payers, regulators and investors and in what order?”

After my MBA I moved into roles with broader strategic scope. As Centre Director of the Connected Health Innovation Centre (CHIC), I reported to an industry-led committee and stewarded an £8m collaborative research portfolio, building partnerships across academia, healthcare providers and industry, and ensuring delivery against funder expectations. This sharpened my skills in portfolio strategy, stakeholder management and impact reporting.
In 2022 I founded Raidmed.

Since then we’ve taken ThermiCare from concept to a robust technical foundation (custom hardware, embedded firmware, BLE connectivity, and a data/AI pipeline), mapped our regulatory pathway (including IEC 62304/60601 considerations), engaged PPI groups for usability, and prepared for pilots aligned with ethics and MHRA requirements while structuring a blended finance strategy (grants plus investment). The MBA’s disciplines show up daily in how I prioritise, communicate risk, and negotiate around the next clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones.

Alongside executive roles, I’ve contributed in formal governance settings. I served as a Trustee of the UK Scout Association (2017–2023) including finance and risk committees and chairing the HQ Appointments Advisory Committee, supporting digital transformation and EDI initiatives across a large national charity. I’m also a long-standing local Scout leader, and vice-chair/trustee of Acorn Integrated Primary School, helping to shape strategy, policy and budget in an inclusive education setting. These roles deepened my practice in corporate governance, stewardship and values-led decision-making.

I also contribute to national innovation infrastructure as a member of the NIHR Invention for Innovation (i4i) Committee, offering objective, evidence-based evaluation of proposals experience that directly improves how I design Raidmed’s own clinical and commercial strategies.

My advice to prospective MBA candidates is if you want to found, scale or lead in complex, regulated spaces, the Queen’s MBA gives you a durable operating system: strategic finance, stakeholder alignment, governance, and execution under uncertainty. Arrive with a real problem you care about, use the faculty and cohort as a sounding board, and treat every assignment as a safe place to pressure-test live decisions.

For me, the return on investment has been compounding since 2012 across products shipped, partnerships formed, communities served and a mission-driven venture now poised to improve patient outcomes at scale.

David Branagh

View Profile