Some time ago I realised the banking industry was in for a regulatory shakeup along with perhaps some revelations in the areas of privacy and security. I chose to have a break, putting a few things on the shelf for a while. A friend of mine, a nuclear physicist, who was also in the financial industry and had moved into electronics, suggested I turn my mind to medicine. I had always held an interest, having long been a member of a medical professionals website and even initially doing my CME diagnoses when they arrived.

I chose the areas which would potentially have the most impact on me, and charged in full steam, going Marie Curie in the back shed, as no-one in their right mind would let me near their expensive lab. Marie is the only woman to win 2 Nobels, and the only person to do so in two fields, but I soberly recollect she died of the effects of radiation poisoning.

The first thing I learned was there are a lot of very bright people in medicine. Secondly, the technology is somewhat more complex than any other field. The regulatory environment is also even more challenging than the financial industry. Just perfect for a brain stretch.

It has been a very exciting ride. I've come up with a few encouraging things, like a potential treatment for arthritis, something potentially useful for some cancers, something which may lessen the post trauma severity of many injuries, and more, but I suspect the most popular will be a treatment for mosquito and other insect bites. Popular because it will be easier to get to market. While it may stop the itch and the bump in even hypersensitive mosquito-bite victims, I'm not satisfied with that. My goal is to prevent at least some of the diseases insects transmit to humans, and those diseases kill more humans than anything, even all the wars.

In medicine, ethics are fortunately still alive and well. This means I can't go around getting people to be bitten by deadly disease carrying mosquitos just on the chance my treatment may keep them alive and well. In vitro and then in vivo animal testing is an option, however positive animal results don't always translate into positive in-vivo human results.

After all the effort so far, I am back to IT. The only way to ethically establish if my new treatment (called QUITCH™ btw) is efficacious against mosquito-borne diseases is probably to give users a feedback app and let us determine if our users catch fewer mosquito-borne viruses than the general population around them. Here's hoping.

p.s. As hint of what else I discovered, my new theme song is Dylan's 'My Back Pages' or 'I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now...' Not quite 'Forever Young' but:)

I also very much look forward to a predictable environment for new fintech.