Our Co-Founder and Managing Director, Sam Horwill moved to the town of Machynlleth in Mid Wales in the summer of 2012, following nearly a decade of work in and around the NHS in England. As a citizen of a community at the juncture of three Health Board areas, and through her review of Technology Enabled Care in Wales for the Mid Wales Healthcare Collaborative, Sam soon started to notice the challenges and potential of health and social care collaboration across the country:

• Variation in approach and provision of services and support
• Silo working where organisational culture often failed to place the citizen at the centre of care
• Good work was happening in pockets, but examples of national “Once for Wales” implementations were rare

The Yma story started in early 2019 when Sam brought together a group of like-minded GPs for a two-day conversation: slowing down, connecting with each other, and mulling over some important questions:

• What do we care about?
• What are we seeing in the environment we are working and living in?
• What is most important?

By the autumn of 2019, the seed had been sown. Yma had a founding team, a purpose, a plan, and on 18th March 2020, the company was formed with the ultimate test of collaboration just upon them. A week after the excitement of things being official, lockdown happened and Sam was now home-schooling two young children and trying to get a start-up off the ground.

“We spent our time slowing down,walking, listening to each other,understanding our uniqueperspectives and exploring.”