How does a frontline nurse end up building compliance software?

An unplanned journey from care work to digital governance, and why frontline experience still matters most

I never planned to be an entrepreneur. I planned to take a year off.

That single decision, made out of exhaustion rather than ambition, quietly set me on a path that has now spanned more than a decade of building digital learning and compliance systems for highly regulated sectors. Looking back, it’s clear that nothing about this journey was linear, polished, or strategically choreographed. But it was deeply grounded in frontline reality, and that has made all the difference.

In this blog, Dr Richard Dune reflects on how an unplanned pause became the starting point of a decade-long journey building digital learning and compliance systems for highly regulated sectors.

It started on the frontline

Twenty‑six years ago, I began my working life as a care worker in a nursing home. Long before titles, qualifications, or strategy documents, I learned what good care actually looks like: consistency, dignity, vigilance, teamwork, and accountability. I also learned how fragile systems can be when staffing is stretched, documentation is poor, or leadership is absent. Those early experiences stayed with me.

When I qualified as a nurse in 2004, I specialised in cardiology at a time when the field was undergoing dramatic change. The dominant metric then was door‑to‑needle time, getting a patient with chest pain into the hospital within 20 minutes for thrombolysis. Many patients never made it to the hospital. Others survived the initial heart attack but didn’t make it home. That was the best the system could offer at the time.

Within two years, our hospital piloted primary PCI, angiogram and angioplasty as standard care. Outcomes improved rapidly. Length of stay fell. Mortality reduced. The NHS saved significant sums. I was a frontline nurse witnessing a fundamental shift in practice, though at the time I didn’t fully appreciate the scale of what was happening. What I was learning, however, was how innovation actually enters clinical systems, not through policy alone, but through training, protocols, governance, and trust.

Learning governance the hard way

I went on to work in clinical research, setting up complex trials in partnership with pharmaceutical companies and universities. These collaborations were still relatively new. We were building governance frameworks, ethics approvals, safety reporting processes, and operational workflows almost from scratch. We learned fast.

We learned research governance, international conventions, ethics, and the realities of implementing protocols inside NHS trusts under real‑world constraints. Patient safety was not an abstract principle; it was the organising logic of everything we did.

Research roles at the time were rarely permanent. Secondments. Fixed‑term contracts. No guarantees. That insecurity meant we couldn’t afford to settle for just enough. In hindsight, it was a near‑perfect training ground for entrepreneurship, though none of us recognised it as such at the time.

A doctorate that changed how I think

I later completed a doctorate in innovation strategy, focusing on the adoption of clinical decision support systems in the NHS. It was one of the most demanding periods of my life. There were moments when I nearly walked away. Anyone who has submitted a thesis will recognise the strange emptiness that follows, and the tension of waiting for a viva that feels as though it could undo years of work. But the process permanently changed how I approach problems.

Doctoral research forces you to sit with complexity. To question assumptions. To understand why technically sound solutions fail in human systems. It taught me that adoption matters more than novelty, and that governance, culture, and capability are often the real barriers to progress.

My intention was to return to the NHS to work in R&D and innovation adoption. Instead, I was exhausted. I turned down post‑doctoral fellowships and NHS roles and decided to pause. That pause changed everything.

From ‘a year off’ to a business

During my doctorate, I joined a programme on commercialising academic research. By the time I finished, I had started doing consultancy work almost by necessity, helping small and medium‑sized healthcare organisations adopt digital tools, comply with Care Quality Commission (CQC) requirements, and develop their workforce. 

There was no grand plan. I took the work that came in areas I understood deeply. Governance. Training. Regulation. Workforce capability. By the end of 2015, we had the foundations of a small business. I still fully intended to take a year out and return to academia or the NHS. That year became ten.

Why ‘basic’ is often the hardest part

Today, I lead a business focused on governance, compliance, and workforce development. Much of what we do could be described as basic: training records, policies, competency tracking, audit trails, and regulatory alignment. 

But here’s the uncomfortable truth. Without these basics done well, organisations fail to meet minimum standards. They fail inspections. They expose staff to risk. And ultimately, they fail the people who rely on them for safe, effective, responsive care.

I used to hesitate calling myself an entrepreneur. Imposter syndrome, perhaps. Or a belief that entrepreneurship had to look a certain way, funding rounds, accelerators, glossy decks. None of that was our reality.

What we built was rooted in lived experience. In the frustrations of frontline staff. In the gaps that inspectors repeatedly highlight. There is a disconnect between policy intent and operational reality.

Bootstrapped, by design

We didn’t attend boot camps. We didn’t receive early funding or formal mentorship programmes. We bootstrapped everything. That constraint turned out to be an advantage.

It allowed us to build based on frontline reality rather than investor expectations. To prioritise usability over hype. To design systems that work in care homes, clinics, hospitals, and training rooms, not just in board presentations.

Every stage of my career fed into this work. Care worker. Student nurse. NHS clinician. Research nurse. Doctoral researcher. Reluctant founder. Nothing was wasted.

And despite the uncertainty, I wake up every day to do work I care deeply about. I am an entrepreneur whose roots are in nursing. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

For clinicians considering their own path

Many clinicians believe they need permission, funding, or a formal programme before they can build something new. You don’t.

Your clinical and research experience is your greatest asset. Start with problems you understand from your own practice. Build solutions that matter to the people you’ve worked alongside. And trust that the messy, unconventional path is often the most honest and most impactful one.

What’s your story? I’d genuinely love to hear how you got here.