Mike David Fischer

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

is the co-founder of the computer company RM plc. Fischer graduated with a

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

degree from

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...

. In 1973, with Mike O'Regan (who had an

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

degree from

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

), Fischer co-founded Research Machines, a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

microcomputer and then

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

company for the educational market. He was CEO for 24 years and became a non-executive director and lifetime president in 1997. He stood down as a non-executive director in 2004, but retains his position as lifetime president of the company. Fischer is a founder of the Fischer Family Trust which runs projects in health and education. In education, the key project of the Fischer Family Trust has been to change the way school performance is measured in England. Fischer is also Director of SBL, a (Community Interest) Company dedicated to improving patient treatment options through high quality, collaborative and clinically focused research, and co–founder of

Alamy Alamy (registered as Alamy Limited) is a British privately owned stock photography agency launched in September 1999. Its headquarters are in Milton Park, near Abingdon, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. It has a development and operations centre at ...

Ltd, a stock photography agency. Fisher is also co-founder and Chair of Videoloft Ltd, a cloud video surveillance software platform. He and RM co-founder Mike O'Regan were awarded honorary degrees by the

Open University The Open University (OU) is a British public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study off- ...

in 2002.

Personal life and education

Fischer completed an undergraduate degree in physics at

in 1971 and a second undergraduate degree in physiological sciences at Oxford University in 1978. He has also been awarded an honorary doctorate from the

in 2002 with the other RM cofounder, Mike O’Regan. Fischer was awarded a

for services to Business and to Charity in 2006.

Business Ventures

RM

Fischer and Mike O’Regan founded RM (as Research Machines) in 1973 as a mail-order supplier of electronic components. The company has since been expanded to provide information technology products and services to educational organisations and establishments. Fischer was CEO for 24 years and became a non-executive director and lifetime president in 1997. He stood down as a non-executive director in 2004, but retains his position as lifetime president of the company. After studying Japanese companies, Fischer was heavily influenced by the excellent manufacturing quality standards facilitated by a systemised approach to quality and improvement. This approach is championed by the studies of

William Edwards Deming William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. Educated initially as an electrical engineer and later specializing in mathematica ...

and Joseph M Juran, a.k.a. Six Sigma. According to Fischer, “ensuring high-quality manufacturing standards was the key that would unlock RM's expansion”.

Alamy

Fischer is the co-founder with James West of

, an online stock photography agency launched in 1999. Alamy was acquired by PA Media Group in February 2020.

Videoloft

Fisher is co-founder of Videoloft, along with James West of

and Tim Pearson of RM. Videoloft's software cloud-enables traditional CCTV systems, making them inherently more secure and adding powerful business intelligence.

Philanthropy

FFT and the Fischer Family Trust in Education

Fischer is best known for his work in the education world with FFT. FFT is a non-profit organisation established in 2001 as part of the Fischer Family Trust. It works to provide accurate and insightful information to schools which enables pupils to achieve their full potential and schools to improve. Since 1991, the Fischer Family Trust is one of the foremost charities in the UK dedicated to improving the educational outcomes of the most vulnerable segment of pupils in UK schools. The trust is mainly involved in undertaking and supporting medical research, education and conservation projects in the UK. It has been the leading UK organisation in highlighting the link between failure to gain foundational skills in literacy by the age of seven, and the impact of this failure on later life chances. The Fischer Family Trust Apex Project was set up by the trust to work intensively with a small number of core schools and apply a structured improvement process with the objective of eliminating ‘avoidable’ early literacy failure. The project is unique in that it applies a rigorous ‘Deming-Juran’ method to systemising improvement. In 1992, the project identified the elimination of avoidable early literacy failure as the single most important improvement to be made in UK education. Fischer is also known for his work with

Success for All Success for All (SFA) are standards-based Comprehensive School Reform curricula for early childhood through middle school, produced by the nonprofit organization Success for All Foundation (SFAF) of Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Psychologist Robert Sl ...

, a classroom improvement project developed by US educationalists

Robert Slavin Robert Edward Slavin (September 17, 1950 – April 24, 2021) was an American psychologist who studied educational and academic issues. He was known for the ''Success for All'' educational model. Until his death, he was a distinguished professor ...

and Nancy Madden. Fischer is a trustee of Success for All UK.

COVID-19 Testing and Vitamin D

Fischer directs SBL, an independent non-profit medical research laboratory in Oxfordshire. Following suggestions from his team, he converted the lab to testing for

Covid-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...

in March 2020. The lab was quickly able to provide 250-500 tests a week to local

NHS The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

health care workers with a half-day turnaround. After seeing the impact that testing at SBL had on the local area, Fischer wanted to encourage other labs to follow the example, and created the Covid Volunteer Testing Network, with the hope that it would expand these services and help fight the battle against

across the UK. Fischer worked with entrepreneur Tim Perkin and the Fischer Family Trust to provide support in the form of a supply chain of reagents. This later became the Covid Testing Network that has supported UK government Pillar 2 and Pillar 4 testing as well as workplace testing across the UK. The Fischer Family Trust through SBL has supported research into

Vitamin D Vitamin D is a group of fat-soluble secosteroids responsible for increasing intestinal absorption of calcium, magnesium, and phosphate, and many other biological effects. In humans, the most important compounds in this group are vitamin D3 (c ...

which has become particularly important in the COVID-19 era.