Paul is an expert ontologist & innovator, specialising in healthcare. Having personally read and manually themed the comments of several hundred thousand patients, employees, and people with mental health challenges, gives Paul a unique expert lived experience perspective.

Akumen the company he founded has now digitally themed and analysed over twelve million patient comments for more than fifty healthcare organisations, including all of NHS Wales. Every day, Akumen processes 10,000 comments, equivalent to 150,000 words, uncovering valuable insights for improvement and innovation, giving patients a collective voice. We balance technology with human insight to deliver systems that support the increasing convergence of Human and Machine.

Paul’s holy grail is the study of meaning and wisdom, the catalyst for this pursuit, a near-death experience which happened in his early farming career. By mapping 40,000 wisdom quotes Paul will uncover the DNA of Wisdom which he hopes will steer Artificial Intelligence towards much needed wisdom.

Adding to Paul's extraordinary story is his background as a farmer. Although his farming days are behind him, he now keeps bees and grow trees on a 5-acre field near the cliffs of North Cornwall.

Outside of work, Paul can often be found hauling plastic waste from North Cornwall’s coves and beaches, sometimes using ropes and a yoke to carry waste for a mile and up five hundred feet. So far, he has collected over five tons of plastic waste and hopes to reach six tons by his 65th birthday.

Paul also enjoys playing guitar, writing songs and poems, cooking, kayaking, and walking in nature.

Speaking Topics

Psychological safety & closed cultures in healthcare.

The £5 billion bottleneck in healthcare: the challenge of mental health patients accessing services.

Better informed better decisions: Triangulation of the “lived experiences” of both patients and employees connecting the board to the ward and vice versa.

Learnings from a pilot project using Akumen’s technology to analyse complex coroner's reports on suicide, highlighting the learning for various agencies and identifying risk and protective factors.