Whilst stores on the high street seem to be suffering from a growing number of customers staying at home to watch the Olympics, the world of online and mobile ecommerce channels is blooming, with a 359% growth in sales via mobile devices reported last year.

UK government have recently launched an initiative that will see the NHS expanding abroad, with some of Britain's greatest hospitals (Great Ormond Street/Royal Mardens/Moorfields Eye Hospitals to name a few) planning to set up outposts in China, Brazil, the Middle East and even Libya in the hope to generate profits for the free health service.

entrepreneurcountry asked four entrepreneurs and healthcare experts what they thought of plans to take the NHS to the world, as well as what the scheme could mean for Britain's growth strategy.

Whether you’re a start-up or an FTSE 100 corporation, your success is tied to your ability to understand, and partner with, your natural allies in the market. You can no longer think of yourself as a silo, or a sole trader, or a standalone business. We live in a networked world. It took 89 years for the fixed-line telephone to achieve an adoption of 150m users, and 38 years for the TV to get to the same point. The mobile phone achieved it in 14 years. The iPod in seven. Facebook in five

When I first began work as a management consultant, I wanted to avoid NHS projects at all costs. Bureaucracy, inefficiency, unmotivated people, frustration were some of the words that would cloud my judgement when looking at the list of projects available.

If you ever wanted to know what a simple family home may look like in the future, smart home tech company AlertMe is now making the vision a reality. 

John Stuart Mill writing in On Liberty in 1859 said “man (humanity) is not built like a machine, that should be set to do the work exactly proscribed to him but should be seen more like a tree, that can grow on all sides depending on the inward forces that make it a living thing”.