Hi friends,
This week: A well-being invasion, period apps continue to fail privacy tests, and definitely-not-a-metal-band Malware as a Service comes to the fore.
News Bites 🥪
🤖 WHO launches world's most extensive freely accessible AI health worker - Digital Health Worker Florence 2.0 will give advice for mental health, healthy eating and even quitting smoking.
🌱 September's hottest seeds - Still second to FinTech, an industry that doesn’t even have a pithy bird-based newsletter, but pulling back ahead of SaaS. Healee’s €2m and Zund’s €6m the highlights.
🏥 Wellbeing start-up banks $35m - An impressive Series B for Aussie startup Sonder that supports employees of corporates, including Woolworths, Commonwealth Bank, Toll Group and Allianz.
⛔️ Healthtech industry wants action on post-Brexit regulations - Peter Ellingworth, CEO of the Association of British HealthTech Industries, on what’s needed for healthtech to progress in a post-Brexit world.
㊛ 18/25 popular period and pregnancy tracking techs fail privacy test - Euki the only app that in the “Best Of” category. Key findings include; no clear stand on data sharing with law enforcement, consent issues, and untrustworthy AI use.
👎 Declining VC Investment In Digital Health - Welcome back to the doom-mongers. The cynics. The misanthropic harbingers of pessimism. Forbes is at it this time, pointing out that funding is down on 2021 levels but failing to point out it’s up on 2019 levels which is the benchmark we should be using
🦠 Malware as a Service emerging in healthcare - MaaS is used to combat the increasing number of attacks on global healthcare IT systems. Predictably many of the companies are coming out of Boston. Which means there’s a mass of MaaS in Boston, Mass.*
What to listen to 🔊
🐙 #276 What healthtech investors are looking for in founders, with Will Gibbs at Octopus Ventures - This week we hear from healthtech VC, Will Gibbs at Octopus Ventures, on the key things investors are looking for in founders, and how they actually support them.
👂Juggling rapid innovation with risk in the healthtech space - This pod focuses on the legal issues arising around healthtech. It’s exceptional work.
🧠 AI in healthcare; what do you think? - Errr. Don’t know really. It’s good I guess. For a more comprehensive answer than Pigeon’s, join Skin Analytics’s CEO Neil Daly, UHB’s Chief Digital Transformation Officer Nick Barlow and some geezer called James Somauroo for this live webinar on Friday.
🇦🇺 Healthtech Pigeon #114: Aussies, AI & a worrying trend - This newsletter. In your ears.
Opportunities 🕵️♀️
⭐️ Intern - Account Executive, SomX - Want to make bussin’ content that low-key hits different? Work on strategies that slap? Bet. Apply now. It’s lit. Don’t worry, I got someone under 25 to vibe-check this.
🥼 Ontology clinical lead, Concentric - They are: used in some of the biggest trusts in the UK, making consent digital, ruddy lovely people. You are: post-foundation doctor, wanting to use your clinical experience, ready for a new challenge. Do I hear wedding bells? No. But I do hear job-applying bells. Yes.
⏩ NHS Innovation Accelerator - In 7 years since its first cohort, NHSIA alum have raised £198m, are used in almost 3,000 NHS sites, and won 185 awards. If you’ve got an idea to transform healthcare, there aren’t many places better to start.