Dr Harriet Treacy is the founder and chief executive of BeyondBMI, a University College Dublin spin-out company headquartered at NovaUCD.<\/p>\n
A medical doctor with more than a decade of experience across multiple healthcare settings, she founded BeyondBMI in 2022 as Ireland\u2019s first fully comprehensive, technology-enabled obesity clinic which delivers evidence-based care centred around the patient. <\/p>\n
Working alongside world-leading obesity specialists, BeyondBMI combines expert medical care from expert doctors, dietitians, nurses, supportive coaching and technology to help people achieve sustainable, long-term improvements in their health. <\/p>\n
Since launching, the clinic has cared for nearly 5,000 patients across Ireland and is helping reshape how obesity is treated as a chronic disease<\/p>\n
What vision\/lightbulb moment prompted you to start-up in business?<\/p>\n
Working in emergency medicine, I realised I was often treating the consequences of obesity rather than preventing them. I felt many patients had been let down long before they reached hospital. As GLP-1 medicines emerged, I saw an opportunity to combine them with compassionate, wraparound multidisciplinary care and build a service that treats obesity as the complex chronic disease it is.<\/p>\n
What is your greatest business achievement to date?<\/p>\n
Without a doubt, it\u2019s the impact we\u2019ve had on people\u2019s lives. Two examples that come to mind are a semi-professional rugby player whose career was on hold due to back pain impacted by weight who got back to playing professional rugby, and a member who became pregnant within months of being with us after seven years of trying. Those moments remind me we\u2019re not just helping people lose weight \u2013 we\u2019re helping them get their lives back.<\/p>\n
What was your backs-to-the-wall moment and how did you overcome it? <\/p>\n
One of my toughest moments came early on when I realised the original co-founder relationship wasn\u2019t the right long-term fit. It was incredibly difficult but I learned that your responsibility is to the business, your patients, the people who have backed you and the team whose salaries depend on you. It was my first lesson that leadership means putting the long-term interests of the business ahead of anyone\u2019s short-term comfort.<\/p>\n
What are your annual revenues and profits?<\/p>\n
We\u2019re generating annual revenues in the low millions of euro. We\u2019re continuing to reinvest heavily in expanding our team and technology to support our next phase of growth. Our focus is on building a sustainable business that delivers both excellent patient outcomes and long-term value.<\/p>\n
What are you doing to disrupt, innovate and improve the products or services you offer?<\/p>\n
For us, innovation always starts with the patient. Rather than expecting everyone to fit the same pathway, we\u2019re designing more personalised models of care for different needs and stages of care including fertility, PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) and menopause. We\u2019re also using technology to make expert care more accessible, more convenient and more proactive and importantly, while never losing the human connection that\u2019s essential to long-term success.<\/p>\n
To what extent does your business trade internationally and what are your future plans\/ambitions?<\/p>\n
Ultimately, we want to build the leading model for accessible, long-term obesity care and, in doing so, help tens of thousands of people regain their health and improve their quality of life. We\u2019ll do that by becoming Ireland\u2019s leading obesity clinic before expanding into selected European markets. For me, success isn\u2019t measured by the number of countries we\u2019re in but by the number of lives we\u2019ve genuinely helped change.<\/p>\n
What is the single most important piece of advice you would offer to a less experienced entrepreneur?<\/p>\n
Entrepreneurship is a craft, much like surgery. You don\u2019t become a great surgeon by reading about surgery; you become one by getting into theatre, operating alongside people who are better than you and doing it over and over again. Entrepreneurship is no different. You learn by building, making mistakes, correcting them and continually improving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr Harriet Treacy is the founder and chief executive of BeyondBMI, a University College Dublin spin-out company headquartered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":883086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[45,49,48,137,221319],"class_list":["post-883085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-ey-entrepreneur-of-the-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}