Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: Listen to Podcast 🎙️

Is Your Smart Ring Gaslighting You?

SomX — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 05:00:00 GMT

James and Jessica dive into this week's healthtech headlines, a CRISPR therapy that halves cholesterol in a first-in-human trial, the Health Foundation's £33bn case for better NHS tech, Oura scrapping its Nasdaq IPO, and why Jessica has broken up with her smart ring.

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📖 Learn more about the SomX team at https://somx.health

500 Companies, One Very Big Drop

SomX — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Belle and Elin dive into this week's healthtech headlines: Time's Top 500 Healthtech Companies list, Sword Health's discount buyout of Headspace, why cycle syncing workouts have women split, and what's at stake as the FDA weighs approval for the first psychedelic medicine.

00:00 - Intro
02:58 - Time's Top 500 Healthtech Companies & Headspace's $300m Sale to Sword Health
16:37 - Menstrual Fitness: Why Some Women Are Cycle Syncing Their Workouts
30:27 - FDA Hearing Weighs Access and Safety for Psychedelic Medicine
39:50 - Outro

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Who Owns Your Health Data?

SomX — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Jessica and James sit down with pharmacist and NHS non-exec director Mark Duman to talk wearables, patient data, and why AI scribes might be missing the bits that matter most.

00:00 - Intro
04:04 - Wearables Recap
13:33 - AI Scribes May Fail to Capture Patients' Experiences
32:52 - IPremom Raise 15M to Help Pregnancy Care

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📖 Learn more about the SomX team at https://somx.health

Jeremy Hunt on AI in the NHS: What He Actually Said

SomX — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 05:00:00 GMT

James and Jack Needham break down last night's Health Tech Talks panel with Rt Hon Sir Jeremy Hunt MP and Tara Donnelly — including the parts that didn't make it into anyone's LinkedIn post.

00:00 - Post-Event Debrief: Behind the Scenes with Jeremy Hunt & Tara Donnelly
13:00 - AI in the NHS: Adoption, Procurement Red Tape & AI Sovereignty
37:00 - Craft Over AI Slop: Why Doing Hard Things Matters

When does AI stop being special?

SomX — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Jessica and James from SomX chatted through all the best news from this week.

00:00 - Intro: This Week's AI Health Tech Roundup
01:00 - Are Wearables Lying to You About Sleep?
15:00 - NHS Rolls Out At-Home Cervical Screening
21:00 - Brain Surgery, Therapy Bots & Life-Saving Drones
34:00 - Jeremy Hunt Showdown

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📖 Learn more about the SomX team at https://somx.health

Everything You Didn't Know About the Federated Data Platform

SomX — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Jessica and Jessica from SomX chatted through all the best news from this week with help from Barlett Data's Tom Bartlett.

00:00 – Intro & setup
06:38 – Why Tom spoke out
35:15 – A coordinated campaign?
50:49 – Where FDP falls short

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The AI Mental Health Reckoning

SomX — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 06:00:00 GMT

Jessica from SomX chatted through all the best news from this week with help from Aahuti Rai.

Mental Health Innovation Showcase, Hale House — 15 September, London
https://harleystreethealthdistrict.com/event/mental-health-innovation-showcase-returns-to-harley-street-health-district/

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How do you sell a business without selling out?

SomX — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 20:35:06 GMT

James is joined by Dr Tommy Perkins, co-founder of Medics' Money, days after he and co-founder Dr Ed Cantelo sold the business outright to Pastest. Tommy tells the whole story: founding Medics' Money on the day his first daughter was born, the free tax rebate guide that has now saved doctors close to £80m, and the deliberate decision to bet on email and podcasting long before either was fashionable. It is a masterclass in leading with value, building a genuine community rather than a mailing list to sell to, and earning the trust of a hard to reach audience.

Then they get into the exit itself. Why sell a profitable, bootstrapped, 100% owned business at all, why Pastest (a family business that has supported doctors through exams since 1972), and what the next two years look like for Tommy inside a bigger company. Tommy also gives a refreshingly candid, practical walkthrough of how anyone can estimate a private company's sale price using Companies House data, typical industry margins and EBITDA multiples. James returns the favour with the real numbers behind Healthtech Pigeon and where SomX is placing its bets.

Along the way: the doctor creator economy and the four levels of monetisation, why vertically integrated creators win, how AI now lets a two person team do the work of ten, the death of legacy media and the rise of niche distribution, the case for building in public (and why Tommy didn't), and why he is still practising medicine two and a half days a week through all of it.

Connect with Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommy-perkins-138864149

Learn more about Medics' Money: https://medicsmoney.co.uk

Medics' Money x Pastest: https://www.pastest.com/pages/medics-money

Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.com

Subscribe to Healthtech Pigeon: www.healthtechpigeon.com

Get in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.com

This podcast was brought to you by SomX - https://somx.health

Resources:

Medics' Money - https://medicsmoney.co.uk

Pastest acquires Medics' Money (BusinessCloud) - https://businesscloud.co.uk/news/edtech-pastest-acquires-financial-platform-medics-money/

Pastest - https://www.pastest.com

Companies House - https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk

GP Bullhound - https://www.gpbullhound.com

Can One Website Help Patients Beat NHS Waiting Lists?

SomX — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 05:00:00 GMT

James and Jessica from SomX chatted through all the best news from this week with help from Dr Mustafa Ghafouri, creator of https://hospitalwaits.co.uk/

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Are we tracking too much, or not enough?

SomX — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Jessica and Anna from SomX chatted through all the best news from this week.

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What happens when NHS waiting times become searchable?

SomX — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Jessica and James from SomX chatted through all the best news from this week.

00:00 - Intro
01:49 - A doctor built the NHS waiting-times comparison the e-RS dashboard won’t give you

14:03 - Pastest buys Medics’ Money, and the “doctor life-admin” stack quietly consolidates

21:02 -Meanwhile, the NHS throws £8m at AI to shrink those same waiting lists

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HLTH Europe 2026 Recap & What Did Midjourney Announce?

SomX — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 17:00:00 GMT

James from SomX chatted through all the best news from HLTH 2026, with Motic's Harvinder Power.

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How do we get digital health beyond the pilot phase?

SomX — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Jessica from SomX chatted through all the best news from this week with Heather Cook, Fiona McCormick and Toby Croft.

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Can patients trust pharma with their health data?

SomX — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Jessica from SomX chatted through all the best news from this week with Coulter Partners' Ian Coyne.

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What happens when sport, longevity and biohacking collide?

SomX — Sun, 31 May 2026 05:00:00 GMT

James from SomX chatted through all the best news from this week with Freyr Health's Dr Tomasz George

00:00 - Intro
05:08 - The Enhanced Games are real, and they’re equal parts entertaining and concerning

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Can AI fix the NHS workforce crisis?

SomX — Sun, 24 May 2026 05:00:00 GMT

James from SomX chatted through all the best news from this week with Patchwork's Dr Anas Nader

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Wearables, Whistleblowers & a Resignation We Did Not Plan For

SomX — Sun, 17 May 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Jess and James are back from a brief hiatus to break down three of the biggest stories shaping healthtech right now.

First, Whoop hires its first in-app doctor and Google launches the Fitbit Air - signalling that consumer wearables and primary care are converging faster than anyone expected. They get into what happens when your health data lives across competing ecosystems, the case for portability standards, and a viral TikTok in which a Whoop user catches her boyfriend cheating via Strava kudos.

Then: the Palantir saga rumbles on. A leaked memo published by the FT and the Guardian confirms that contractors were granted access to identifiable patient data on the Federated Data Platform before pseudonymisation. James and Jess disagree - loudly - on how to read it.

Finally, Berlin-based Ditto raises €7.6M from Heal Capital to build the patient-side equivalent of an ambient AI scribe: record your appointment, get a plain-language summary, share it with the people who matter. Plus a kicker: Wes Streeting resigned as we were recording.

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Can ChatGPT really be trusted by clinicians?

SomX — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Belle and James from SomX chat through all the best news from this week.

Stories:

Palantir's NHS break clause is suddenly very much on the table

OpenAI launches ChatGPT for Clinicians, a free AI tool for physicians, NPs and pharmacists

The Women's Health Strategy arrived with a £1.5m FemTech fund and a very quotable Streeting line

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Can the NHS walk away from Palantir?

SomX — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Jessica and James from SomX chat through all the best news from this week with Dr Jing Ouyang CGO and Co-Founder of Patchwork Health.

00:00 - Intro
09:10 - FDP: An Insider's Perspective
28:21 - WHOOP affiliate selected for CMS innovation program

Stories:

https://www.bartlettdata.co.uk/post/blog-coming-soon

https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/whoop-affiliate-selected-for-cms-innovation-program-to-expand-tech-enabled-care-for-medicare-patients

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What does the future of healthtech regulation look like?

SomX — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Jessica and James from SomX chat through all the best news from this week with Hardian Health's Dr Hugh Harvey.

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📖 Learn more about the SomX team at https://somx.health