#100: Healthtech 1 - 0 Fintech 🌱

The one minute healthtech roundup. Now also in 30 minute podcast flavour.

Hi friends,

This week: Fintech plays second fiddle (poorly probably), blood test startups are back, and how switching thinking from biotech to techbio could unblock the sector. Podcast version below!

News Bites 🥪

↺ The Biotech to Techbio Shift - Having just about wrapped my Pigeon brain around biotech, the industry is shifting to techbio, a tangential change in how scientific data is harnessed, processed, and translated into functional insights. Genuinely fascinating.

🏗 £175million in funding to be invested in improving data infrastructure - £200M was also released in Jan, to try to turn the UK’s status as a global life sciences superpower by enhancing research.

🌱 Seed stage funding up in June - Things Pigeon is unnecessarily competitive about: board games, pub quizes, beating Fintech each month in the biggest seeds. So, Fintech Excel nerds, maths me this. Which June funding number is bigger €118m (Healthtech) or €77m (Fintech)? No seriously, tell me. I can’t count.

🩸Blood test startup Aware raises $15m seed round - Will blood testing ever recover from Theranos-gate? If the hotel was called Watergate, why isn’t the scandal called Watergate-gate. Big questions. Aware buck the sector trend with a solid seed.

🪜 Steve Barclay is NHS leadership’s worst ‘nightmare’ (£) - It may have escaped your attention, but Boris Johnson, a man who won a Readers Digest competition in 2019 to pretend to govern a country for a bit, half stepped down this week, having appointed Steve Barclay as Health and Care Sec. HSJ takes a dim view of Barclay.

✅ Looking at why cross-sector working will help ICSs meet virtual ward targets - Headline buzzword bingo cards out, pals. We’ve got “cross-sector working” & “virtual wards” in the same sentence, that’s almost a full house.

What to Listen to 🔊

📱 What Do Patients Really Think About Data? - Pigeon’s friends at the Faces of Digital Health podcast discuss who should own data, and the ethical implications.

🐦 The Healthtech Pigeon Podcast - Want to be a guest? Get your applying boots on. Then apply here. No point just putting the boots on. That would be ridiculous.

Opportunities 🕵️‍♀️

🚺 Vantage launches growth programme for UK Female Founders - Six interactive in-person workshops over six weeks – designed to get female entrepreneurs ‘investor-ready’.

🫀Novartis Biome UK Heart Health Catalyst 2022 - Novartis UK has launched it’s first health-tech investor partnership to address cardiovascular care along with Medtronic, RYSE Asset Management and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust with £3 million in funding and expert support from the Novartis Biome and NHS ecosystem on the table.

🩺 Clinical role in a women’s health start up - Mysterious…Dr Michelle Griffin put the call out this week for a GP or O&G doc looking to switch it up. Pop her a message.

💊UK Clinical Pharmacy Lead, HeliosX - HeliosX claim to be a group of healthtech companies on an ambitious mission to change the way healthcare is delivered, but as Pigeon has mentioned before, they sound like a space mission. They’re looking for a new astronaut Clinical Pharmacy Lead.