Dr Fairley held off strong competition from fellow finalists Daniel Winterstein (Good-Loop) and Pasquale Saviano (Photocert) who had been selected from over 100 applicants from across the UK and industries spanning healthcare, advertising and communications.

Judges from Business Gateway, Scottish Investment Bank and STV deliberated on the three leading entrepreneurs before announcing Dr Fairley of Talking Medicines, a health tech company that brings medicines to life for improved insight into how patients take their medications, as the winner.

Dr Fairley will take home not just the title, but also a fully-funded place on FutureX’s Silicon Valley Accelerate programme and a business support package worth over £220k from Johnston Carmichael, AAI EmployAbility, STV, The Herald, Dentsu Aegis Network and IBM.

The Silicon Valley Accelerate programme takes a select group of rising UK tech leaders to Silicon Valley. There, they have the opportunity to connect with leading global players in the tech industry and pitch to potential investors.

Previous cohorts have met with executives from Airbnb, Facebook, SurveyMonkey, RocketSpace, Y Combinator, Waze, and Threshold.

Dr Fairley said: “We are so excited to have won the Startup Summit Competition. It is fantastic timing for us as we raise our profile and mission to capture the voice of the patient and drive the effective use of medicines around the world. We are delighted to be partnering with media companies STV and Dentsu Aegis Network - with their support, we will have a much stronger voice.”

Touching on her upcoming trip to Silicon Valley, Dr Fairley added: “We are excited about our trip to the US as we love the fast pace and can-do attitude there. We look forward to broadening our network, and meeting with investors and potential exit partners.”