The winner of our Business & Entrepreneurial accolade in the 2024 King’s Distinguished Alumni Awards, Andreia founded Enhanced Fertility, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) and remote fertility diagnostics service for clinics. Here, she opens up about the inspiration behind her company, receiving the prestigious Purple Plaque from Innovate UK and more.
Why King’s?
When I came to the UK, I wanted to study in a foreign language. As soon as I discovered the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing, I knew I had to study there. Florence Nightingale is such an inspiration to nurses.
What’s your favourite memory of King’s?
When I arrived at the Waterloo Campus, I remember feeling at home. I enjoyed getting to know nurses from other hospitals and learning about their challenges and motivations. Going to Nando’s together was also a highlight! As a Portuguese person, my go-to dish would be the chicken wings.
What’s the key lesson you learnt at King’s?
King’s inspired me to be an advanced nurse and opened up a world of opportunities. It empowered me to become a leader and it gave life to my ideas.
Congratulations on winning our Business & Entrepreneurial Award. How did Enhanced Fertility begin?
I was diagnosed with infertility when I was 17. It took so many years to get a diagnosis of Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH) Syndrome (a rare condition which affects the female reproductive system). Many doctors are not aware of MRKH and no one expects to be infertile. I remember the day of my diagnosis very well. It was like the world disappeared beneath my feet. I wasn’t trying to get pregnant, but I always thought I’d have a big family and, in that moment, I felt a huge loss.
My journey over the last 20 years has been about self-discovery: Who do I want to be? Can I be happy despite this diagnosis? Can I do something positive with it? That’s how Enhanced Fertility started.
Did your background as a nurse aid this journey?
Being a nurse makes me a better entrepreneur. We’re used to working with patients and understanding their needs. We work with all healthcare professionals and understand how the whole system works. We’re in a perfect position to identify the problem and test solutions.
As nurses, we witness life being born and we’re with people when they’re dying. Nothing is as bad in business as it is in healthcare. This gives me perspective, allowing me to be a better leader.
What were the challenges you faced setting up Enhanced Fertility?
Accessibility to fertility care is a challenge. Around the world, one in six couples are infertile. Less than 2% of these couples can access a diagnosis. At Enhanced Fertility we have to be creative and come up with solutions for clinics and patients, which makes diagnosis easier, faster and more affordable.
But the life of an entrepreneur is a rollercoaster. One moment you can be celebrating a huge success and in the next hour worried about the future.
As a woman, I’d say I faced more challenges. There is a lot to do in this space, because women don’t lack ideas, ability, or motivation but the entrepreneurial environment is not supportive of female led businesses. Women in business are treated differently and a lot of the funding still goes to teams founded by men. We need to change this reality.
What’s your proudest achievement?
I’m proud to have built this company across Europe and the UK as a solution for fertility clinics, shortening diagnosis waiting times from years to weeks.
To get here, there are so many small wins along the way. This includes obtaining regulatory approval and successful clinical studies. And when one of our patients has a baby, we add this to a ‘celebration board’ in our office and ring a bell – these are our proudest moments!
Receiving the Purple Plaque was a huge honour. I knew I had to choose a place to install it and I felt it had to be King’s. The unveiling was last year and it was such a powerful experience. Teachers from my time at King’s came to the ceremony, as well as a previous intern from King’s Accelerator Programme (who now works at Enhanced Fertility). It was almost like closing the full circle of my journey.
My goal is to make everyone who walks past the plaque think, ‘I can do it, too.’
What’s next for you and Enhanced Fertility?
We are working on developing our AI and machine learning solution further and exploring entering the US market. There are still a lot of people who need our help and a lot of clinics are struggling to help them. We’re only just getting started.
How can we make entrepreneurship more attractive to women and girls?
We know that girls and women don’t lack ideas or motivation. What is lacking is the world around them not believing in them. That needs to change.
Accelerator programmes like Kings20 can be transformational. We also need more funding for female entrepreneurs. In the UK, around 1% of funding goes to female founders, which is unacceptable.
Any advice for aspiring nurses and entrepreneurs?
Figure out your ‘why?’. This should be your driving force. For me, my ‘why?’ is wanting to give meaning to my experience of infertility and transform it into something positive.
Inspired by Andreia’s story?
Visit our King’s Distinguished Alumni Awards website pages to find out more and meet our 2024 winners.