#133: Special K at your desk? 🥣

The one-minute healthtech roundup.

Hi friends,

This week: Kry (Livi) is now profitable, chemotherapy is now airborne, and there’s a showdown brewing over the NHS Federated Data Platform.

News Bites 🥪

👓 Spex Capital launches Spex Venture HealthTech Fund - Spex Sells. Or more accurately, it invests in early stage healthtech. Now it’s putting €100 million into a closed-end fund and an exclusive partnership with UK life sciences cluster Med City to invest in new companies.

🧠 Ketamine-Assisted Therapy Coming Soon To An HR Department Near You - Pigeon has long been an advocate of consuming class-B drugs in the workplace. Now I finally have the evidence I need to get HR to sign-off.

🔴 After 25 years of AI health tech research computers are slowly beginning to listen to patients - AI is listening to us. But… it’s a good thing, claim researchers at the University of Birmingham, who say that it shows how important patients are to managing their own health conditions. Who’d have guessed?

📈 After 8 years of losses, digital health scaleup Kry is heading for profitability in 2023 - Nordic giant Kry’s move to a blend of telehealth and in-person care is starting to pay off, which proves that sometimes the best way to move forwards in life is to look backwards (… but only if you’re a business. If you’re human, it’s best to look where you’re going.).

🙏 Five healthtech ideas VCs want you to pitch in 2023 - Sifted’s Kai Nicol-Schwarz asks 5 VCs what their dream investments are in 2023. Pigeon thought about keeping this article under his hat while he got his paediatric super-app pitch-ready, but was told that no company needs a 6 foot pigeon on their ‘Meet the Team’ slide. 

🩹 Medical body NICE backs online mental health treatments - The NICE recommendation means a) there’s 8 new solutions that could help to tackle the gaping mental health backlog and b) Pigeon can finally stop pouring his heart out to ChatGPT every night. Frankly, it already knows too much, and as therapists go, it’s a bit of a pushover.

🤔 Prioritising where technology can realistically help the NHS - When there doesn’t seem to be any money (or time) for even the most basic digital transformation in some areas of the NHS, former NHSX Director of Innovation (and all round nice bloke) Iain O’Neill makes his case for where priorities should lie. 

💊 Northumberland hospitals test drone flights for medical supplies - big news for readers who aren’t lucky enough to be endowed with a set of wings. Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is piloting the use of drone flights to transport chemotherapy treatments between hospitals. (Get it? piloting…as in running a trial AND flying the drone?  Pigeon’s wit truly is wasted on the short form news bulletin format.)

Meanwhile, in accelerator-land 🏎️

📨 DigitalHealth.London Accelerator opens for applications - The list of notable alumni for DigitalHealth.London’s flagship accelerator programme is as long as Pigeon’s wing*, and pretty much all them speak highly of it. You know what to do.

📨 …and the P4 Precision Medicine Accelerator is also inviting applications - this time for companies specifically working on precision medicines.If you’re working on preventative (precision) medicine, make sure to check it out.

What to listen to 🔊

💬 The Healthtech Pigeon Podcast - Join Jess, Jessica, Huw, and Certific’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr Johnny Andrews, as they plough into a family-size variety bucket of this week’s healthtech stories.

💬 The Healthtech Podcast - James is joined by PhD computational biologist and myota co-founder, Dr Thomas Gurry. Thomas shares his journey from academic to entrepreneur, a leap made possible through his research exploring dietary fibre and its influence on the gut microbiome.

Events 🎈

🧭 Digital Health Rewired 2023 - This annual celebration of all things digital health concludes with a showdown between Palantir’s Louis Mosely and Foxglove’s Cori Crider who will go one-on-one over NHS plans for the Federated Data Platform. Pigeon’s hoping for a ringside seat as feathers are sure to fly.

Opportunities 🕵️‍♀️

🌱 Solution Delivery Manager, Vine Health - Clued up on your clinical pathways? Good at delivering solutions? This could be the role for you.

🏁 Product Manager, Patchwork health - Fresh off an impressive series B raise, HSJ’s Staffing Solution of the Year is looking for someone to bring to life their product vision of a more humane and supportive approach to workforce management

🧪 Group Product Manager - Science & Recommendations, ZOE - ZOE wants to make members’ experience of the app even better. Could you be the person to help them do it?

👩‍💻 HealthTech Lead, Informa Tech Founders - Love London Tech Week? Want to make the healthtech part even healthtech-ier? This one’s for you.

#⃣ Data engineer, Vira health - Vira Health is on a mission to make personalised menopause care the norm.

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*Sadly, Pigeon isn’t on that list. Something about our Human-to-Pigeon transformation technology being “not scientifically viable” and “a stupid idea, get out of my office.”