We spoke with Daniel Measor, Deputy Director of External Affairs, about his background working in the House of Commons and bringing those perspectives and insights to the Feedback Medical team.
“With the experience I have on the other side of politics – working with civil servants and government departments – I can bring a level of expertise on how to engage with these stakeholders.
I help to translate developments into more user-friendly language and make sure that everybody at Feedback understands how those announcements will impact them, their work, and the wider company. This helps us to quickly pull together all the relevant information and ensure we don’t fall behind the curve when important decisions are made.”
Daniel Measor, Deputy Director of External Affairs
Can you tell me a little bit about your background before joining Feedback Medical?
I’m originally from Hartlepool, a small seaside town in the Northeast. Before moving to London, I went to the University of Hull where I studied philosophy, politics and economics.
While studying at university, I started a job in the House of Commons as part of a placement scheme that I continued after I graduated. After the last general election, I briefly worked as an associate for a blockchain advisory firm before joining Feedback in December 2024.
In terms of your work at Feedback Medical, how would you describe the role of external affairs in the team?
The external affairs department exists, in part but not exclusively, to provide guidance to the company about how to properly react to the information that’s coming out from within NHS England and from within government. As part of the external affairs team, most of my day-to-day work revolves around digesting the news as it is related to healthcare, med-tech, economics, government announcements and politics. I use that information to advise on communication with relevant stakeholders and how best to capitalise on the opportunities that arise as a result of that news.
With the experience I have on the other side of politics – working with civil servants and government departments – I can bring a level of expertise on how to engage with these stakeholders.
I help to translate developments into more user-friendly language and make sure that everybody at Feedback understands how those announcements will impact them, their work, and the wider company. This helps us to quickly pull together all the relevant information and ensure we don’t fall behind the curve when important decisions are made.
I also work closely with the senior leadership team, and the sales, marketing and tech teams to ensure that the product positioning and the company strategy are all aligned with the government priorities of the day, which will put us in the best possible position to work with our NHS partners.
Especially with the upcoming ten-year plan, which looks like it’s going to centralise tech procurement to an extent, which will slightly shift how we navigate our relationship with NHS organisations.
Following major announcements, I work with colleagues to keep everyone up to date with what is happening.
As an example, the recent announcement that NHS England will be abolished and merged into the Department of Health and Social Care – I think its very important to fully understand the implications of this shake-up because those relationships directly with government will be vital.
In terms of the market, there’s been a lot of shifts in the political landscape the NHS. From your perspective what would you say the biggest challenges that we have to overcome in terms of working with and supporting our customers in the NHS?
The Labour government was elected on a mandate for radical change across the board, especially within the NHS, and it’s not lost on us that our NHS partners are going through an incredibly turbulent time right now.
Major restructuring, major job losses – there will be a lot of uncertainty around who’s keeping their job, what people’s jobs will evolve into eventually, and where different bodies that currently exist will have their remit changed going forward, so we appreciate just how difficult that is for our NHS partners.
However, once all’s been said and done and that certainty returns, we need to make sure that we’re on the same page as our NHS partners and that we understand we have a joint goal of empowering staff, bettering patient care, and reducing wait lists – which everybody in the NHS wants.
Things are uncertain right now; we’ve just got to hold steady until these major announcements are fully enacted and we can understand all the implications they will have. In the meantime, we will do everything that we can to support them right now and look forward to ensuring that these positive shifts in the NHS are fully implemented to the best of our ability.
I think Feedback Medical has a good track record of acknowledging the correct solution to the problems facing our health system. But at times we’ve come to that solution faster while the NHS is still realising what the problem is – we’ve given them an answer before they’ve figured out what the question is that they need to ask.
Now is the perfect alignment between the two, where we have the solution and they are now recognising that this is the time to act.
Coming back to the ten-year plan – what are we, and particularly our external affairs team, doing to prepare ourselves and make sure that we’re getting our message to the right people?
The ten-year plan has the potential to be one of the most transformative documents that the NHS has ever really seen. So far the government looks very keen to capitalise on this opportunity and follow through on their promises to enact radical change.
We don’t yet know what exactly is going to be announced. There may be new funding models. There may be new guidance or best practises that are being issued or otherwise.
We are, however, confident that whatever is announced within the ten-year plan, we will be there to jump in and actively support NHS colleagues in delivering on the mandate that they are given as part of the plan.
Once it’s been released in the spring/summer, we will be reading the plan line by line to fully understand it and ensure that we’re in a good position to advise our NHS partners on exactly how it will affect them, and how our relationships can move forward to make progress. We will need to do that very rapidly.
We need to make sure that all colleagues are up to speed on what’s happening. It’s crucial that we digest that information as quickly as possible and think about exactly what approach we need to take to fully capitalise on the opportunities ahead of us, because we don’t yet know exactly how what is announced in the plan is going to function in reality.
Despite the current turbulence, it’s an incredibly exciting time to be working within our industry and I really look forward to digesting these upcoming announcements.
Read the previous entries in our Staff Expertise series: