Helping People Breathe Healthier Indoor Air with Dr. John McKeon

September 28, 2023 donlee Uncategorized 0 Comments

As an emergency room doctor, John McKeon often recommended allergy and asthma-friendly products to his patients. One patient’s mother, while trying to take in all the details, told him it would be so nice if someone would just put a label on these products so that she could know which ones met his specs. That single comment was enough to ignite the latent entrepreneurial tendencies that John had always had.

Now, John is the CEO of Allergy Standards Ltd (ASL), a company on a mission to help people breathe healthier indoor air. John and his team do this through science (ASL Standards), education (iAIR Academy), and innovation (iAIR Institute).

On this episode, we talk with John about his journey from the “expected” path of being a medical doctor to his inevitable path as a serial entrepreneur and business leader. This, of course, was not an easy endeavor but John knew there was value in going upstream and addressing health problems at the root cause. We discuss key learnings along the way, including:

  • How key partnerships can lend credibility to early-stage companies.
  • The challenges of measuring the ROI of prevention and dealing with its extremely long feedback loop.
  • How to use leading measures or KPIs to support your claims while keeping an eye on the longer-term clinical and economic outcomes.
  • The process and science behind ASL’s certification, verification, and licensing.
  • Finding the intersection of business and health that allows you to do well by doing good.
  • Confronting the realities of economics and resource allocation in healthcare.
  • The psychology of business and behavior change
  • The importance of whole-brain thinking in innovation

This is a wide-ranging conversation and John shared a ton of insights from his journey that will be useful to all of you who are out there innovating, building, and trying to make a difference.

Links and Resources

Dr. John McKeon

John is principal at the iAIR Institute, a medical entrepreneur and currently the CEO of Allergy Standards Ltd (ASL), an international standards and certification body, a company he founded while working as an Emergency Room Doctor.  As the founder he has led the development of an international intellectual property portfolio of patents and trade mark applications and negotiated complex licensing agreements with multinationals such as P&G and 3M. Along the way he has secured significant equity investments as well as academic and industry grant awards.  As a serial entrepreneur, John is involved in a number of successful healthcare related ventures.

In addition to his entrepreneurial and business activities, John maintains an interest in university research and knowledge exchange practices. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Practice and Healthcare Innovation, Entrepreneur in Residence in the Faculty of Health Sciences, guest lecturer at Trinity College Business School, and a member of the Knowledge Transfer & Innovation Committee, Trinity College Dublin.

John qualified as a doctor from Trinity College Dublin, is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and also holds his United States Medical Licensing exams.  He maintains a keen interest in clinical medicine and has had several publications in medical journals.  After medicine John graduated first in his class from the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) Business Incubator Programme, graduated with distinction from the DIT business school with a post graduate diploma in International Selling, and won the Docklands Innovation Park lead entrepreneur award. 

More recently John completed the Strategic Management of Regulatory & Enforcement Agencies Program, with Harvard Kennedy School, and the Creating Shared Value Program with Harvard Business School, in addition to post-graduate executive education programmes in innovation and medical entrepreneurship at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford Medical School, the Stanford d.school, Harvard Business School, and IESE Business School. 

John was recently selected to participate in the Enterprise Ireland (EI) Leadership for Growth Program. His company, ASL, completed the EI Innovation for Growth Program with the Irish Management Institute and MIT Sloan School of Management. In the same year ASL won the American Chamber of Commerce Innovation Award.  John was awarded a US Congressional citation by Congressman Brendan Boyle for his collaboration with The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHoP), culminating in successful enhancement of an asthma intervention and education project.

John is on the Board of Industry Research and Development Group (IRDG), and a Member of the Innovator Circle, Social Innovation Fund Ireland, the Entrepreneurship Society Working Group of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS), the Institute of Directors, the Royal Academy of Medicine, and of the vibrant life sciences innovation network in Ireland collaborating with Enterprise Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland.

As an expert in healthcare entrepreneurship John works with health care entrepreneurs, professional managers,  and business owners in life sciences, biotechnology, and medical device sectors to develop strategies to build profitable businesses, clarify their business models for scalable growth, and ultimately improve lives. 

Allergy Standards Ltd (ASL)

Established in 2000 by Founder and CEO Dr. John McKeon, Allergy Standards Ltd (ASL) has an international footprint, working with global brands, and educating manufacturers to improve indoor air quality, and to help people breathe healthier indoor air. We work to improve lives by empowering people to create the healthiest possible indoor environment through science (ASL Standards), education (iAIR Academy) and innovation (iAIR Institute)

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