Bettering Lives Through Technology.
Dr Jaffly Chen
Sydney School of Entrepreneurship Alumni
I’ve had a pretty varied career so far. I have a medical background, meaning that I worked in clinical medicine most of the time, but definitely, in keeping with the theme of my big year, I think My Big Year was 2018 and that was my last year of med school. I started realizing that I wanted to do more than just clinical medicine.
The Big Year for me was realizing that there was a whole other world out there that wasn't just medicine and coming into contact with people from all different backgrounds, from a legacy of very diverse backgrounds, with very, very diverse ways of working with different kinds of opinions and how things should work, or what things should be built, was incredibly exciting for me.
What is your organization?
LyfVR! A digital health social enterprise aiming to provide senior citizens with a new lease on life through virtual reality technology to engage nostalgic memories and create new ones. We currently serve residential aged care homes in the Orange area but are looking to expand further into the NSW Central West as our operations expand!
My daily job however is that I work on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic as Clinical Director of the Tamworth Respiratory Clinic. And by night, I'm a consultant for the Australian Digital Health Agency, and an incoming Schwarzman Scholar at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.
What inspired you to get into Medicine?
So for me, I'm the kind of person that wants to go in and help people. When I was younger, I looked up to doctors and I just thought, ‘Oh my God, you're saving people's lives’. So I was interested in medical science, I thought it was a really cool career, and one that I thought I could see myself doing for 50 odd years. I really liked learning about medicine and the health space. And at the moment I still enjoy being a doctor, but I also feel like there are so many different ways you can help people!
What inspired you to start LyfVR?
There are millions of ways you could go out and help people. And that's kind of the reason why I wanted to pivot to something that's less clinical and more in that entrepreneurial space.
If you think about it, a lot of the time in medicine, we just put bandaids on people and then send them back into the kinds of environments that led them to need healthcare in the first place - such is the strain on our system. But if you can tackle some of those root problems, then you’re really helping a much larger amount of people for a longer amount of time.As a doctor, I might be able to see say 40 people a day. Over a lifetime that's maybe thousands of thousands of people, but I feel that there's such an impressive power for technology to be able to affect many, many more lives in a shorter amount of time.
LyfVR was born because I was witnessing a lot of depressed and lonely elderly people in the hospitals that I was working at. I didn't really know my own grandparents very well. My parents came separately to China and I was born in Australia and well, grandma and grandpa either passed away before I was born or I couldn't really speak their language anyway.
Everyone has lived an incredible life and everyone has so much to share, but as a society we kind of forget about the elderly. I saw that there was a problem and I felt I could do something about it. If I could do something about it and it might have a big impact, why wouldn’t I go for it right? Though to be honest, before I had been involved with SSE, I would have never challenged myself to try and do this!
What challenges have you faced?
I alluded earlier to how, when you start studying medicine, you tend to stay in a medicine bubble. It's hard to explore other areas of the world and if you want an opportunity to do something different, you have to search for it; no one is going to hand it to you just because you’re working in a similar area! SSE, to me, was a lucky break because when I saw the Facebook ad, I knew I had to just give it a shot. It was a place I hoped to find like-minded people and entrepreneurial mentors that would help me get started on this wonderful journey of learning,
One of the challenges I faced was having the confidence to go ahead and try making LyfVR work knowing that I didn’t really have the technical skills necessary. But it was because I believed in the impact that LyfVR could have that I persevered.
The use of virtual reality to help bring nursing home residents back to their childhood, wedding, honeymoon, but also to new destinations and experiences such as hot-air ballooning, has been absolutely incredible! Obviously it’s not exactly the same thing, but for many, it can be pretty close - including me! One of the most memorable moments was an eldery gentleman who had dementia but really, really loved racing cars when he was younger. Even just getting him into a 360-degree video in the driver’s seat with a fake wheel to hold onto was enough to bring tears to his eyes.
Unfortunately, COVID has put a lot of these experiences on hold, but they won’t be gone forever!
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What have been your biggest resources?
PEOPLE! I’ve met some pretty incredible people at SSE, and made some pretty incredible friends to boot. A lot of us actually went through a few of the courses together, and we have near unbreakable bonds now! Now, I really lean on many of these people for support to keep me going, and I often find myself doing the same for them.
Apart from the emotional support, you’ll also find that often you’ll have to rely on these people for their operational skills as well. When I first started pitching this idea to nursing homes, not many were receptive of the potential benefits. It took some brilliant connections and a few sounding boards to be able to mold the vision of LyfVR to one that nursing homes could get on board with. It also helped that I always saved the resources from the SSE courses so I could go back and learn even more from them! You truly learn something new every time you revisit the course content.
You can read as many books about entrepreneurship as you want, but you won’t keep it with you until you actually apply it to the real world and put it into practice. SSE was one of the most comprehensive and enlightening courses out there that I’ve done and there’s nothing I could ever do to repay the SSE staff for selecting me to be a part of their program!
What advice do you have for your peers?
Say yes to challenges and think of challenges as opportunities. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the world to be impactful, but you do have to care about the problem you are trying to solve, and think about the people you are trying to solve that problem for. With the way we idolise entrepreneurs and success stories, even I feel imposter syndrome at times. There’s no need to look back with regret if something hasn’t worked. If you’re going to look back, look for what can be learnt and used to help you improve for the next moonshot!
Chase your dreams. Don't get too bogged down in finding the absolute safest path if there’s something you really want to do. No one leaves this Earth wishing they spent less time being creative after all.
Why did you join SSE?
I remember seeing SSE for the first time on Facebook being advertised as this cool, new, innovative program that was helping bring together really quite talented people to learn and grow. I was also referred by a friend who had completed the original Navigator program and it really shows how important it can be to build good networks so that you're in the loop for opportunities such as SSE!
How did SSE influence you?
One of the things that SSE and this whole experience has taught me is just the importance of building relationships in any scenario. You gotta when it comes to entrepreneurship, you really have to build a vision, but also be able to sell that vision to other people so that they want to come on board and help you achieve your dreams.
I've completed every course that SSE has offered and each one has certainly added a new perspective to the work I'm doing. Whether it be running a start-up such as LyfVR, or working in more established organisations such as hospitals, there's always an opportunity to apply something new you've learned. For example, Ideation was crucial for conceptualising LyfVR and ensuring that I was meeting a need in the community, whilst Activation helped me gather the necessary buy-in and support I needed to succeed as an intrapreneur, especially as the COVID pandemic started and we in the healthcare space needed to adapt rapidly.
Why would you recommend SSE
SSE was incredible not only because of what I learned, but who I met and who I learnt it all from! It's truly about the people, and I have certainly made some incredible friends along the way - shout out to the SSE Angels! There's such a diversity of opinion, background, skills, and ideas that no conversation ever becomes stale, and it has all definitely illustrated for me that I cannot succeed as an entrepreneur or intrapreneur without understanding how to work with people, especially those who might not completely agree with my ideas!
Where you can find Jaffly!
LyfVR: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lyfvr/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jafflychen/?originalSubdomain=au