Welcome to Global Good’s Impact Interview series. This interview series is designed to tell the stories of the people and companies working to drive impact in society.
For the estimated 300 million people worldwide living with a rare disease, the journey to diagnosis is often measured in years, not months. The average patient sees seven clinicians over five years before receiving an answer. If they receive one at all.
Sara Elgott knows this pattern intimately. After three decades working in the pharmaceutical industry, much of it focused on rare diseases and unmet medical need, she watched patient after patient fall through the cracks of a system that treats symptoms in isolation rather than recognising them as pieces of a larger puzzle.
When her own mother began navigating healthcare challenges, the problem became personal.
In 2023, Elgott founded OpalMedica, a Manchester-based MedTech company building tools to support earlier detection of rare and underdiagnosed diseases. The company is developing two complementary platforms: My Rare Journey, which captures real patient experiences to surface patterns and insights, and Clinical Flags, designed to help clinicians recognise complex disease signatures within routine workflows.
We sat down with Sara to discuss the diagnostic odyssey, why collaboration matters more than technology alone, and what it means to make patients feel seen, heard, and believed.
Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your role?
I’m Sara Elgott, founder of OpalMedica, a Manchester-based medical technology company focused on earlier detection of rare and underdiagnosed diseases.
Before founding OpalMedica, I spent 30 years working in the pharmaceutical industry, most of it in areas of unmet medical need and rare diseases. I kept seeing the same heartbreaking pattern. Patients were spending years moving between appointments, often being told their symptoms were unrelated. By the time many people finally received a diagnosis, the disease had already progressed significantly.
The inspiration for OpalMedica was deeply personal. Watching my own mum navigate healthcare challenges made me realise how frightening and isolating it can feel when nobody joins the dots.
I founded OpalMedica because I genuinely believe we can do better. We now have the data, technology, and clinical insight to identify patterns earlier and support clinicians in recognising diseases they don’t see every day.
How did your company come about and what was the motivation behind it?
OpalMedica really came from a combination of professional experience and something much more personal.
Over the years, I kept seeing patients spending huge amounts of time searching for answers while their symptoms were treated as separate issues rather than part of a bigger picture. Watching my own mum navigate healthcare challenges made that feel very real to me.
I started thinking about how many opportunities there are within routine healthcare to recognise patterns earlier, especially now we have access to far better data and technology than ever before.
That was really the starting point for OpalMedica
Can you describe your company’s mission and values?
Our mission is very simple: fewer people should spend years without answers.
Everything we do is built around patient trust, ethical use of data, collaboration, and supporting clinicians rather than adding to the pressure they already face.
We are passionate about building technology responsibly, while making patients feel seen, heard, and believed
What are some of the most pressing social issues that your company is working to address through its technology?
We are primarily focused on tackling the long delays people face in getting diagnosed with rare and underdiagnosed diseases.
Too many patients spend years without answers, often experiencing worsening symptoms, repeated appointments, misdiagnosis, and a huge emotional and financial impact on their lives.
We are also trying to address inequalities in access to diagnosis and support overstretched healthcare systems by helping clinicians identify complex disease patterns earlier. At the heart of everything we do is improving patient experience and making people feel seen, heard, and believed.
How does your company measure the impact of its work in creating positive change?
Right now, a lot of our impact is measured through the relationships and feedback we are building across patients, clinicians, and healthcare stakeholders.
For My Rare Journey, we look at patient engagement, the quality of insights being shared, and whether patients feel heard and represented through the platform.
For Clinical Flags, the long-term goal is to measure whether we can help support earlier suspicion and referral of rare and underdiagnosed diseases within real-world clinical workflows.
Success for us is about reducing the time people spend without answers and improving patient experience along the way. Even hearing a patient say “I finally felt listened to” is hugely meaningful to us.
In your opinion, what impact will technology have in creating a better future?
I think technology has the potential to genuinely improve people’s lives if it is developed thoughtfully and with experts in the loop and people in the centre.
In healthcare, there is now so much information available, but often nobody has the time or ability to connect everything together across years of appointments, symptoms, and investigations. I believe technology can help clinicians identify patterns earlier and help patients reach answers faster.
What advice do you have for other companies looking to use technology for good and create a positive impact in the world?
Stay close to the problem you are trying to solve and the people you are trying to help.
It is easy to get distracted by technology itself, but real impact comes from understanding genuine human and healthcare challenges first.
I also think collaboration is incredibly important. Some of the best opportunities and ideas have come from conversations with patients, clinicians, researchers, and other founders rather than trying to build everything in isolation.
Finally, build responsibly. In healthcare especially, trust, ethics, and transparency matter just as much as innovation.
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Sara Elgott’s journey from pharmaceutical executive to MedTech founder reflects a broader shift in how we think about rare disease. Moving from reactive treatment to proactive recognition.
Her message is clear: the data and technology to identify patterns earlier already exist. What’s been missing is the willingness to connect the dots across a fragmented healthcare system, and the human-centred approach to ensure patients feel believed along the way.
For founders looking to make a genuine impact in healthcare, Elgott’s advice cuts through the noise: stay close to the problem, collaborate widely, and build responsibly. In a sector where trust is everything, those principles aren’t optional, they’re foundational.
OpalMedica is still early in its journey, but the ambition is significant: a future where fewer people spend years without answers. For the millions currently trapped in the diagnostic odyssey, that future can’t come soon enough.
