From Stethoscope to Search Engine
Before the night shift, Glasgow 2010
Multiple bleepers era
I'm Dr. Adrian Raudaschl, a physician turned product manager. I started out in Glasgow's NHS, rotating through general medicine, A&E, surgery, obstetrics, and gynaecology. Night shifts meant juggling five emergencies at once with multiple bleepers around my neck — a crash course in prioritisation and calm under pressure.
Ward Round app featured in BMJ
Between shifts, I returned to programming for the first time since childhood. I'd put technology on hold during medical school and clinical training, but now I was self-teaching Objective-C with dreams of creating something for the iPod Touch. Ward Round emerged — an app to help junior doctors prepare for stressful teaching sessions.
It wasn't glamorous, but it worked. It even won me the Junior Doctor Representative of the Year Award from the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Glasgow. More importantly, this became a huge turning point: technology could scale impact beyond one patient at a time. That realisation was the bridge from medicine to product management.
Medikidz: Comics, Games & Health Education
From there, I joined Medikidz, where we set out to explain complex health concepts to children. We created superhero comics, digital games, and even clinical trial adherence software for kids — bringing clarity (and a little fun) to some of medicine's toughest topics. We were experimenting with augmented reality for insulin education long before AR went mainstream.
This chapter taught me how to adapt communication for any audience, whether a seven-year-old learning about chemotherapy or an executive trying to understand AI.
Bringing medical education to life - the Medikidz team at a school event
Mendeley: The Search Breakthrough
At Mendeley (part of Elsevier), I came in to improve acquisition and onboarding. This was my masterclass in understanding academic workflows — how researchers discover, store, and use papers to write their own. I learned proper product management: A/B testing, cross-team collaboration, implementing onboarding flows that actually improved retention.
My first major project was rebuilding Mendeley's search from the ground up. The hypothesis was simple: better search meant better acquisition and retention, giving users a genuinely valuable tool to build their research libraries. This deep dive into search technologies would later prove invaluable for my AI work.
Initial interface sketches
Query architecture
Team culture
The redesigned homepage
The final search experience
Celebrating failures and successes with the Mendeley team at Elsevier
This experience taught me everything: understanding user behaviour, measuring product success, identifying real needs versus assumed ones. Most importantly, I learned how search technologies work — knowledge that would become the foundation for everything I'd build with AI later.
Elsevier & Scopus AI
Today, I'm Principal Product Manager at Elsevier, where I lead the development of Scopus AI — an AI-powered assistant that helps millions of researchers discover knowledge faster.
Early AI architecture planning
Project Sebright - early prototype
Sharing the Scopus AI story, 2023
From early GPT-2 experiments in 2020, when most thought betting on large language models was risky, to launching Scopus AI in just five weeks, I've worked on pushing AI from hype into real, useful products. Along the way, I've filed patents in retrieval-augmented generation and developed frameworks for AI transparency and ethics.
For me, the guiding principle hasn't changed since medicine:
"Always define what good looks like before you build. Listen first, test carefully, and prioritise under pressure."
Experiments & Essays
I like learning by making, whether through side projects or writing. A few favourites:
- Forget RAG, the Future is RAG-Fusion — my quirky deep dive into search reliability.
- How to Use Tarot Cards for Sprint Planning — surprisingly practical.
- When Life Gives You Cream Crackers, Make Lemonade — philosophy disguised as nonsense.
- The Curse of Success — why failure might be life's best-kept secret.
I've also experimented with medical games, 3D scanning, and gamified education tools. These projects remind me that creativity and play often lead to the best insights.
Deep in development of the Ward Round adventure game, 2013
IAM46 - Live heart rate tracking from Apple Watch, 2015
Life Outside Tech
Taking a break at a local arcade
When I'm not building products, you'll usually find me:
- Wrestling with my chaotic V60 coffee ritual (see evidence below).
- Lost in Terry Pratchett novels or biographies — avid reader, constant learner.
- Managing my extensive Obsidian knowledge graph — years of thoughts, readings, and reflections interconnected.
- Sketching and drawing — comics to explain AI, random doodles, visual thinking.
- Hiking or running with music too good to pause.
- Exploring odd UK traditions like cheese-rolling or solstice festivals.
The chaotic V60 ritual in action
Adrian the Philosophical Barista
My Obsidian knowledge graph — connecting years of insights
Cartoon cats make better sense of complex concepts
My approach to knowledge is like my approach to coffee: methodical, slightly obsessive, and always evolving. The Obsidian vault helps me connect ideas across years of reading and thinking — from Terry Pratchett's wisdom about human nature to biographical insights about innovation. It's my external brain, helping me write, reflect, and occasionally remember where I left that brilliant idea from 2019.
If tech ever stops working out, you'll find me as Adrian the Philosophical Barista, overthinking your coffee order while discussing GNU Terry Pratchett headers in web protocols.
Project Timeline
Early 2000s: 3D art
2011: Medical calculators
2012: Gamified education
Today: AI & innovation
Personal Side
Behind the Scenes
Early Creator Days
Before medicine and product management, I was a kid with coloured pencils and a stack of notebooks. I was obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog — not just the games, but the whole universe and style. I'd spend hours creating my own characters, inventing backstories, designing levels on graph paper. This wasn't just fan art; it was world-building, narrative design, and my first taste of creating experiences for others.
"That love of creating never left. Today, I channel the same energy into building products that aim to help millions of people."
My childhood Sonic-inspired character designs
Fashion Adventures
I'm also a bit of a fashion geek. Clothes, to me, are storytelling you can wear. Sometimes I experiment too much — like the time I walked out in a blue outfit that made me look like an extra from Dune. Or when I decided working from home was the perfect excuse to embrace my inner T-Rex.
"Fashion is just another form of design thinking — except the user is yourself and the use case is self-expression."
The Dune phase
WFH attire level: expert