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BeyondBMI was founded as Ireland’s first fully comprehensive, technology-enabled obesity clinic
Dr Harriet Treacy says she realised early on that her co-founder relationship wasn't the right long-term fit for Beyond BMI. Photograph: Naoise CulhaneDr Harriet Treacy is the founder and chief executive of BeyondBMI, a University College Dublin spin-out company headquartered at NovaUCD.
A medical doctor with more than a decade of experience across multiple healthcare settings, she founded BeyondBMI in 2022 as Ireland’s first fully comprehensive, technology-enabled obesity clinic which delivers evidence-based care centred around the patient. 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.
Since launching, the clinic has cared for nearly 5,000 patients across Ireland and is helping reshape how obesity is treated as a chronic diseasebulb moment prompted you to start-up in business? 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. Without a doubt, it’s the impact we’ve had on people’s 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’re not just helping people lose weight – we’re helping them get their lives back.
One of my toughest moments came early on when I realised the original co-founder relationship wasn’t 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’s short-term comfort. We’re generating annual revenues in the low millions of euro.
We’re 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. For us, innovation always starts with the patient. Rather than expecting everyone to fit the same pathway, we’re designing more personalised models of care for different needs and stages of care including fertility, PCOS and menopause.
We’re also using technology to make expert care more accessible, more convenient and more proactive and importantly, while never losing the human connection that’s essential to long-term success. 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’ll do that by becoming Ireland’s leading obesity clinic before expanding into selected European markets.
For me, success isn’t measured by the number of countries we’re in but by the number of lives we’ve genuinely helped change. What is the single most important piece of advice you would offer to a less experienced entrepreneur? Entrepreneurship is a craft, much like surgery. You don’t 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.
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