The translation problem
Competent engineers and competent clinicians, shipping the wrong product anyway. What gets lost in the handover between them, why a requirements document cannot carry it, and what changes when one person holds both.
Speaking / Available
I talk about what happens when a pharmacist learns to build.
Most conversations about health technology have a clinician on one side and an engineer on the other. I am useful on a stage because I am on both sides at once, and because I have shipped something real to the professionals I am describing.
I have also been teaching for a decade, which is the part that matters for a room. Tutorial master through pharmacy school in the subjects students most often fail, and still teaching now, guiding candidates through licensing examinations across the RxHustle communities. I am used to an audience that did not arrive already convinced.
That is the healthcare half. I also speak on AI, software engineering and what it actually takes to learn to build, to technical audiences with no particular interest in pharmacy. Conferences, universities, company events, student societies and podcasts all work.
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Talks I can give
These are arguments I already hold, not a fixed catalogue. Each one gets rewritten for the room it is going into, and if what you need is close to one of them but not quite it, that is usually the more interesting talk. Tell me the audience and the brief.
Signature
Where to remove the edit button
Governance rather than features in clinical software: why an audit log is not a control, when approved data should lock, and how amendments differ from edits. Drawn from building an EMR and a LIMS.
Building RxHustle
An honest build story: one person, a live platform for pharmacists, the architectural decisions that survived contact with users, and the ones that did not.
Also available
Pharmacists who build
A practical case for clinicians learning to ship software: what changes in the product, what it costs you, and how to start without abandoning practice. Built for pharmacy schools and student federations.
AI past the demo
Where a model earns its place in a real product and where it is theatre. The worked example is adaptive study inside a clinical education product, but the argument does not depend on healthcare and the talk is written either way, for a clinical room or a technical one.
Findability as a clinical feature
Technical SEO reframed as a product requirement rather than a marketing one: what it means to be findable at the exact moment a professional needs you, and the structural work that makes it so.
Shipping as one engineer
Flutter, Firebase, and choosing an architecture one person can keep running alone. Drawn from two consumer apps shipped to both stores and a live health platform.
Learning to build as a working professional
For people who did not study computer science and have a full-time job: what to learn first, what to ignore, and how to stay in it past the point where most people quit. Drawn from doing it, and from mentoring others through it now.
Four thousand users before a store listing
What to do when the gatekeeper is slow: distributing a Flutter build directly, running a product out of WhatsApp and Telegram, and arriving on Google Play with the audience already waiting.
Not on the list? Ask anyway. The only subjects I turn down are the ones I have no standing to speak on, and that is a shorter list than this one.
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Appearances & platforms
Tutorial master, then teacher
Nnamdi Azikiwe University, then the RxHustle communities- Taught my own class and every junior class beneath it, every year until graduation, in medicinal chemistry, biostatistics, pharmaceutical calculations, computational chemistry and research software.
- Still teaching: licensing examination preparation across the RxHustle communities, where I also write many of the materials.
Mentoring pharmacists into technology
RxHustle community- Working directly with young pharmacists from the RxHustle community as they move into software and health technology, which is also where the “pharmacists who build” talk comes from.
IPSF World Congress Hackathon: finalist
International Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation- Presented FOSTOREXIA, on gamification in the management of anorexia nervosa, to an international audience of pharmacy students and professionals.
Information Technology Manager
IPSF, The Hague, Netherlands- A year working with regional teams across an international federation: briefing, training and supporting non-technical colleagues on the systems they depended on.
This page lists what I have actually done rather than what would look good. The teaching record is the long one; the conference record is the one that is still growing.
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For organisers
- Short bio
- Michael Anokwulu is a pharmacist and software engineer building technology at the intersection of healthcare, software and AI. He is the founder of RxHustle, a pharmacy education and career platform used by more than 4,000 pharmacists, and he has built electronic medical record and laboratory information management systems for clinical settings. He mentors young pharmacists moving into technology.
- One-line bio
- Pharmacist, software engineer and HealthTech builder; founder of RxHustle.
- Name to use
- Michael Anokwulu
- Link to use
- michaelanokwulu.com
- Lead time
- Two weeks is comfortable; ask anyway if it is shorter
- Fee
- Negotiable, and waived for pharmacy schools and student organisations