Dr Jing Ouyang, co-founder of NHS workforce platform Patchwork Health, has joined BiteLabs Digital Health as an advisor as the clinician education organisation reports a significant acceleration in the number of NHS doctors, nurses and allied health professionals moving into the healthtech industry.

Jing, who announced his departure from Patchwork Health after co-founding the company in 2016, will be supporting the team to expand BiteLabs' training programmes across the UK. Patchwork Health itself is used by more than half of all NHS trusts and health boards across the UK, and has helped over 120,000 healthcare staff manage more flexible working arrangements.

The most exciting shift in healthcare right now is how many clinicians are choosing to build rather than wait. BiteLabs is the reason a lot of them are able to. The fellows are founding companies, shipping products, and reshaping what a clinical career looks like. I'm excited to be part of it.

Dr Jing Ouyang

A Pipeline Producing Results

The announcement comes as BiteLabs reports growing evidence that its eight-week fellowship model is facilitating a shift in the NHS workforce and producing tangible industry outcomes at scale.

BiteLabs, founded 3 years ago, is built upon the ethos that 'the next generation of clinicians will practise medicine through the products they build, not just the patients they see'.

Within 2 months of launching, over 10% of the entire resident doctor workforce in the UK applied to join the waitlist for the programme.

In the last 12 months alone, more than 150 have moved into permanent roles at companies including Flo Health, Accurx, Skin Analytics, Doccla and Numan, building products impacting 100M+ patients each month, whilst others have become founders themselves and raised over £13M in funding, with one acquisition earlier this year.

The most striking data point came earlier this year when Dr Benedict Turner, a surgical trainee who joined BiteLabs in 2024, had his company Automedica acquired by Heidi, the clinical AI platform valued at approximately £500 million. Turner had built Automedica while completing a PhD at Imperial College London and exited after only 18 months of completing BiteLabs. The product, a knowledge graph-based clinical evidence tool built on NHS guidelines including NICE and BNF, became the foundation of Heidi's new evidence product launched globally in 2026.

Dr Azeem Alam BEM, co-founder of BiteLabs, said the outcomes reflected a structural shift in how NHS-trained clinicians were thinking about their careers.

The clinicians coming through our programme are not just looking for jobs in healthtech. They are building the products and companies that the NHS will depend on. Jing understands that better than almost anyone and he did exactly that with Patchwork, starting from the same place many of our fellows start from.

Dr Azeem Alam BEM

The NHS Talent Moment

The timing of Jing's move coincides with a period of significant pressure on NHS clinical careers and growing demand for clinicians who can bridge healthcare and technology.

The NHS 10 Year Health Plan, published in July 2025, placed digital transformation at the centre of the government's vision for the health service, committing an additional £29 billion over three years and explicitly mandating AI upskilling across the NHS workforce. A 10-Year Workforce Plan is expected from NHS England in Spring 2026, with the Nuffield Trust among those emphasising the need to focus on retaining clinical staff during training and early career stages.

Workforce pressures have intensified, with fewer staff attempting to manage volumes of increasingly complex work, forcing trusts to prioritise technologies that take the load away from clinicians.

Against that backdrop, the movement of experienced clinicians into the industry building those technologies has become both more visible and more significant. Patchwork Health, which now partners with over half of all NHS trusts and health boards, has helped more than 120,000 healthcare staff gain access to more flexible working, while saving the NHS an estimated £40 million in temporary staffing costs.

Jing's decision to spearhead the development of an AI-trained clinical workforce is being read by some in the sector as a signal about where the leverage in the NHS-healthtech relationship now lies.

About Patchwork Health and Dr Ouyang

Patchwork Health was founded in 2016 by Dr Anas Nader and Dr Jing Ouyang, two NHS doctors who witnessed first-hand the impact that long hours, rigid rostering systems, and growing workforce pressures were placing on themselves and their colleagues.

The company raised a £20 million Series B round led by Perwyn, backed by Praetura Ventures and KHP Ventures, and joined by angel investors including Monzo founder Tom Blomfield and Social Chain co-founder Dominic McGregor. Total funding raised by Patchwork reached £30 million.

Before co-founding Patchwork, Ouyang served as Clinical Lead for Digital Health at Alder Hey Children's Hospital and as Chief Medical Officer at Aergo. He is an NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Fellow at NHS England.

About BiteLabs

BiteLabs Digital Health is part of BiteWorld, a healthcare education organisation also comprising BiteMedicine, BitePACES and deeplabel. The organisation has trained more than 200,000 clinicians and students since its founding, and runs eight-week digital health fellowships in both the UK and the United States.

Dr Alam was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to healthcare education by Her Majesty the Queen. He is an Honorary Clinical Research Fellow at Imperial College London, Board Advisor at King's Health Partners Digital Health Hub and Venture Scout with EWOR, Proximo Ventures and Grishin Robotics.

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*For further comment or to arrange interviews with Dr Azeem Alam or Dr Jing Ouyang, contact: [email protected]*

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Ready to follow in the footsteps of 800+ clinicians who have made the transition? Explore the BiteLabs UK Fellowship or browse career paths in healthtech.