Hi friends,
This week: big-tech one-upmanship, biotech IPOs, and a dystopian future Pigeon can get behind.
News Bites 🥪
🏇 UK Consortium unsuccessful in its bid for £480m Federated Data Platform - Following the announcement, bookies quickly updated their odds on Palantir winning the contract from 1-0 to….well, 1-0. (that’s 100% for anyone who has never set food in Paddy Power.)
📲 Pancreatic Cancer UK: Our new app is dedicated to helping patients with pancreatic cancer - Medli Health joins forces with Pancreatic Cancer UK to help plug data gaps that could help improve survival rates - if you or anyone you know are living with the disease, download the app and share your experiences to help researchers.
💰 Diagnostic imaging company raises over £9 million - Insurer Aviva’s venture fund takes the lead on the funding round for imaging company Scan, which does exactly what it says on the tin. If fence varnish icons Ronseal’s lawyers are reading, that’s not Scan’s official strapline - so get back in your box.
🐋 Digital health revolution: Almost half of people in Wales using technology to manage health - It is the year 2035. Only the over 60s and the last four people without a smartphone ever leave the house for in-person healthcare. The rest of us stay indoors, asking GP-T* if we should be worried about that new mole and rabidly consuming online healthtech news fed to us by a sassy anthropomorphic pigeon. As dystopian futures go, this one works out well for Pigeon and that’s all that matters.
🥷 Google, Microsoft and startups test out generative AI in healthcare - when it comes to the future of generative AI in healthcare, the pattern of big-tech oneupmanship is well and truly in full swing. Fierce Healthcare explores the latest moves in an even fiercer healthcare-AI battle royale.
🤖 Epic, Microsoft Partner on Generative AI-Powered Solutions - In the Blue corner, Microsoft expands it’s deal with Epic to harness the benefits of AI in developing more powerful EHRs….
🦉 A responsible path to generative AI in healthcare - while in the red corner, our friends at Google have the skinny on some of their most powerful applications for AI in healthcare, from streamlined insurance claims processing, to AI assisisted medical imaging, and their new Medical Large Language Model, Med-PaLM 2 .
🚪 Check out these 12 digital-health startups that could be acquisition targets in 2023 as founders seek IPO alternatives, according to Dealroom data - Is an IPO a bad idea for high value healthtechs? Could an aquisition make more sense for the successful founder looking for an exit? Does anyone want to make us a sweet offer for a Pigeon-themed newsletter so we can finally fly south for the winter and never come back? Insider’s Riddhi Kanetkar answers (most of) those questions.
📈 Acelyrin files IPO – is a biotech comeback on the way? - On the subject of IPOs, Pigeon doesn’t like to count his chickens before they hatch, but Acelyrin’s filing could be a sign that things are picking up for biotech in 2023. Keep your eyes peeled for more filings in the coming months.
🔍 Define Ventures raises $460M to invest in early-stage digital health startups - Pigeon googled ‘Define Ventures’ and all it said was:
“Venture
noun
plural noun: ventures
a risky or daring journey or undertaking.
"pioneering ventures into little-known waters"“**
❓DTAC survey: Tell us about your compliance needs - Compliance, eh? Love it or hate it, it’s certainly a thing you have to do. The lovely folks at Acorn Compliance want to hear your experience of healthtech compliance and all things DTAC. Share your views to be in with a chance of winning some free consultancy support!
What to listen to 🔊
🐦 Big-tech Battle Royale - Join James, Huw and Indi as they take a closer look at some of the stories behind the headlines so you don’t have to, presumably saving valuable clinical time based on everything we know about the readership of this newsletter.
🔊 #299 Ethics and Engineering Cells: Exploring the Boundaries with Dr Mark Kotter - We revisit episode 204 with Dr Mark Kotter, to discusses the ethical considerations surrounding cell engineering. Mark shares his view of "respect for life" and how it should guide the use of cell engineering for the greater good.
Events 📅
🗣️ SomX Healthtech Talks with Google Cloud - We're back for our next SomX Healthtech Talks, talking all about Medical Imaging. Joining Dr. James Somauroo will be Benjamin Irving, Director of Medical Imaging at Huma, and Katerina Spranger, PhD CEO & Founder of Oxford Heartbeat. Register now before all the spaces get snapped up.
🌎 Med-Tech World London Meetup - The Med-Tech World team bring all the fun and insights of their annual Malta event to Google’s London HQ. Please can they bring the weather with them too?
Opportunities 🕵️♀️
🧑💻 Chief Technology Officer, Ethical Healthcare Consulting - Pigeon always encourages people to be very clear about what they do and what’s important to them. Ethical Healthcare Consulting clearly didn’t want any confusion when they named themselves - if you don’t either, maybe you’ve found your one true job.
🧪 BiteLabs Healthtech Fellowship Summer Batch 2023 - Got your sights set on becoming a leader in the healthtech field? BiteLab’s healthtech fellowship programme is designed to help you achieve this goal.
🌶️ Executive Assistant, Peppy - We’ll skip the jokes about not needing to be Peppy to work at Peppy, but we assume it helps. Either way, hit the apply button now.
🧑💼 Chief Technology Officer, Woodrow Mercer - Woodrow Mercer are working hard to improve health and care delivery. If you like the sound of that mission, why not take a closer look.
🏦 Venture & Growth Finance Associate, Natwest Group - Ready to make your mark on Natwest Group’s venture funding operation? This role is for you!
🦅 Head of Marketing, Birdie - Our love affair with the awesome team at Birdie continues: 50% based on healthtech, 50% because we’re both ornothophiles. If you’ve got the marketing nous to talk about them better than we have here, head on over to their jobs page.
*As far as Pigeon can tell, no company has yet developed an AI physician called GP-T. If I’m wrong, and you have, send Pigeon a time-stamped screenshot of your product and we might buy you a half-pint (£2.50 limit, not necessarily of a drink you’d want). If not: come on founders, do better.
**At this point, Pigeon worries he’s walking a fine line between cutting humour and lazy trolling. [you crossed that line a while ago. Not sure why we keep you around tbh. - Ed.]