Our Entrepreneurs: Dr Matthew Gloudeman
Welcome to #OurEntrepreneurs, a series where we meet our innovators and uncover what inspired them to create change. Today, we’re delighted to introduce Dr Matthew Gloudeman, joining us from Cumbria.
Tell us a bit about yourself
Over the past decade, my journey as an NHS doctor has taken me to the frontlines
of more than ten hospital and community specialties. Joining Cohort 10 of the NHS
Clinical Entrepreneur Programme feels like a beautiful full-circle moment, allowing
me to turn a decade of diverse experience into future healthcare innovation.
That system-wide insight drives my commitment to address one of healthcare’s
most challenging gaps: how frail and vulnerable patients are supported when urgent
and emergency decisions need to be made.
This mission is deeply personal. During medical school, we lost my wife’s mum to a
brain tumour. The stress, uncertainty, and repeated hospital trips were incredibly
difficult for our family. Witnessing that same distress professionally across many
clinical settings compelled me to act.
Name: Dr Matthew Gloudeman, NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Cohort 10
Occupation: Doctor
For eight years, I quietly supported hundreds of patients and families while refining
the model that became My Emergency Plan®, designed for people facing the same
uncertainty our family experienced.
My Emergency Plan® supports care home residents, housebound patients, and
people living with dementia with proactive, specialist-led, one-page emergency care
plans. These plans are designed to provide clear, trusted guidance during a crisis for
families, doctors, nurses, carers and paramedic crews.
Once fully systematised, the ambition is to scale this work nationally so that
vulnerable people have a clear voice in their care.
What is the problem or challenge you are addressing in the NHS and why is it important?
One of the biggest challenges facing the NHS is how we support our growing frail
and vulnerable population before a crisis occurs.
Acute hospital care is estimated to cost around £18,913 per person in the last year of life (Sleeman and Murtagh, 2025). The human cost, which I’ve lived personally, is so much more. Frail patients and families still face predictable emergency decisions without clear, actionable guidance causing distress and confusion about what is best.
Healthcare professionals are often trained and work within distinct specialty and
organisational pathways. As a result, emergency care plans may not always reflect
the full range of options available across hospital and community settings. Without a
clear, actionable plan, hospital admission can become the default during a crisis.
Around one in three acute hospital inpatients may be in their last year of life (Clark et
al., 2014), while 31% of hospital bed-days following emergency admissions involve
people in their last year of life (Pring et al., 2024).
Advance care planning is an important part of preparing for future deterioration, but it
often does not translate into clear, clinically actionable guidance during an
emergency. Having personally reviewed thousands of advance care plans through
my urgent and out-of-hours clinical work, I repeatedly encountered plans that did not
provide the guidance needed during a crisis.
This prompted an independent real-time audit conducted through urgent and out-of
hours care across Cumbria, which found that 96% of the advance care
plans reviewed were not actionable in an emergency. Furthermore, 84% of the plans
reviewed for people living with dementia raised legal or ethical concerns about their
implementation (Gloudeman, 2025a).
Tell us about your innovation
We plan with specialists before surgery. Why not before emergencies? In almost
every branch of medicine, when we make life-altering decisions, we expect specialist
input. Emergency care planning is one of the few exceptions, despite involving some of the most medically, legally and ethically complex decisions patients, families and
clinicians may face.
My Emergency Plan® is a model and decision tree that creates proactive,
specialist-led, one-page emergency care plans for frail and vulnerable patients.
The innovation aims to give patients an informed voice that reflects their wishes,
provide families with clarity, and offers clinicians clear, trusted guidance during an
emergency.
In a published white paper reporting an early second-cycle audit, the model
supported patient and family wishes and was associated with avoidance of more
than 70% of identified potential hospital admissions (Gloudeman, 2025b).
Why did you join the programme and how do you hope it will support you?
I first learned about the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme through LinkedIn, where an NHS leader spoke passionately about its role in supporting innovation and entrepreneurship within the health service. Their post inspired me to seek out spaces where healthcare innovators were coming together to solve meaningful problems.
I applied because I had developed and refined a clinical solution to a system wide problem I see repeatedly in practice, but I knew I needed a network to support a bigger vision for this innovation.
Being surrounded by innovative individuals normalises mission‑driven, forward‑thinking behaviour. In many NHS environments, it can feel uncomfortable to be too eager, too enthusiastic, or unwilling to simply “work within the system” when patients and families are struggling.
I hope the CEP will support me through mentorship, the network, commercial guidance, and access to people who have already navigated the path from product‑market fit to commercial traction, and from traction to scale.
I am also looking forward to championing other cohort members (past and present), learning from previous cohorts, and growing alongside people who are working to improve healthcare in exciting ways. Most of all, I am looking forward to learning from other mission‑driven innovators, building meaningful relationships in healthcare, and being part of a community that encourages purposeful, patient‑centred change.
What are your ambitions for the next year?
Over the next year, I want to gain commercial traction, strengthen the evidence base,
secure pilot sites, and further develop the model so it can scale safely. This will
strengthen the foundations needed for the model to become standard practice
across healthcare systems.
At the heart of my ambition, there has been, and continues to be, a desire to make a positive impact for others by supporting patients and families through life’s most difficult moments.
Why do you think innovation in healthcare is important?
Patients, families, and the healthcare workforce struggle every day. Healthcare is a
rewarding but high-stakes environment. Each interaction we have with a patient or
family member might be one of the most important moments of their life. Thoughtful
innovation can help address those struggles and ensure that these moments are met
with the care, compassion and the seriousness they deserve.
At its best, innovation protects patients, supports staff, and helps solve the biggest
challenges facing the NHS and global healthcare systems.
References:
Clark, D., Armstrong, M., Allan, A., Graham, F., Carnon, A. and Isles, C. (2014)
‘Imminence of death among hospital inpatients: prevalent cohort study’, Palliative Medicine, 28(6), pp. 474–479. doi: 10.1177/0269216314526443.
Gloudeman, M. (2025a) Exposing the Blind Spot: A Real-Time Clinical Audit
Benchmarking Emergency Care Plans in Vulnerable Patients Against an Expert
Informed Model. My Emergency Plan, 9 June 2025. Available at: My Emergency
Plan evidence page.
Gloudeman, M. (2025b) Before the Next Crisis: A New, Scalable, Expert-Led
Solution Shown to Reduce Emergency Hospital Admissions. My Emergency Plan, 9 June 2025. Available at: My Emergency Plan evidence page.
Pring, A., Westwood, J., Bowtell, N. and Verne, J. (2024) ‘Emergency hospital
admissions near the end of life’, BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care, 14(Suppl 1), pp. A20–A21. doi: 10.1136/spcare-2024-MCR.47.
Sleeman, K.E. and Murtagh, F.E.M. (2025) Costs and Cost-Effectiveness of Adult
Palliative and End-of-Life Care: Evidence Briefing Summary. London: National
Institute for Health and Care Research Policy Research Unit for Palliative
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