#150 - Failure is a type of exit, right? 🚪
The one minute healthtech roundup.
Hi friends,
This week: Primary care quick-fixes, an AI cash boost for NHS trusts, and Pigeon gets an origin story.
News Bites 🥪
🛕 Digital health company Babylon Health to go private in merger with brain tech company MindMaze - The Fall of Babylon™ drags on, in a saga that continues to bring uncertainty to the company’s employees, its investors, and now - in a cameo role only - Leonardo DiCaprio.
🤳 NHS digital health check-ups launched 'to ease pressure on GPs' - Good news for fans of in-house NHS digital projects, the NHS will roll out the NHS Digital Health Check nationally. After the system was trialled in Cornwall toward the end of last year, this week’s announcement is curiously lacking any information about the success of that trial….like whether it achieved in Cornwall what they say it will nationally.
🧾 New report highlights role of digital in managing the interface between GPs and hospitals - Shared referral pathways, incentivising adoption of clinical decision support systems, better communication; on the face of it, all of these are good ideas from Policy Exchange. If Pigeon was the NHS, we would simply….do all of it. But as we all know, one does not simply walk into Mordor.
🍟 A Human Genome Project for the nervous system? BIOS Health raises fresh funding - A big raise story without a firm number attached means we have to focus on other things. Yes, the article references the brain implant BIOS Health put in a pig in 2017; what it doesn’t mention is that three years later, they put one in a Pigeon, and thus, everyone’s favourite healthtech newsletter was born.
🎞️ Healthtech investor NLC announces new €20m fund to take startups from lab bench to exit - Could some of the most important health innovations of this century be languishing in development-hell, left on the cutting-room floor? Venture builder NLC thinks so, and they’ve raised a modest war-chest to fund their crusade to turn patents into practical applications.
💸 UK touts £21M fund to extend AI deeper into the National Health Service - £21m? Should be enough right? Job done, let’s move on. But seriously: we all know healthcare budgets are tight. Staffing costs alone are going to have to rise, as are equipment, facilities and estates. But when single suppliers are winning £25m ‘transitional’ contracts, £21m spread across 215 trusts sounds like lip service to this Pigeon.
🏠The telehealth services we all relied on during COVID are fading away — but telemedicine may be entering a new era as providers look to bring the clinic home - Telehealth post-pandemic: Where are we, why are we here, and what’s next. Here’s a short sharp summary from Insider on what’s still working, and what, frankly, isn’t.
🔎 Google Health’s Karen De Salvo says trust is ‘job one’ - The health information gap is easily one of the biggest challenges HCPs are facing today, and Google Health seem to be trying to close it from all angles. The company’s Chief Health Officer has a rundown of what they’re trying to do to build trust.
What to listen to 🔊
🐦 Healthtech Pigeon - Failure is a type of exit, right? - Join James, Jessica and Medic Footprints’ Abeyna Bubbers-Jones, as they take a deep-dive into the week’s healthtech stories.
🔊 The Healthtech Podcast #309 - Preventable deaths and health equity, with Ghalib Khan, CEO of Written Medicine - James is joined by Ghalib Khan, an NHS Innovation Fellow and founder of Written Medicine. They aim to revolutionise medication information accessibility by translating healthcare information into languages patients can understand, positively impacting the lives of many.
Events 📅
🤖 Global HealthTech Live - Dr. James Somauroo (The Healthtech Podcast) and Peter Birch (Talking HealthTech)
🕑 July 13, 9am
📍 Online
🤖 Helping patients feel seen and and teams feel heard: How can AI relieve the pressures on primary care? - Klinik
🕑 July 13, 12-1pm
📍 Online
Opportunities 🕵️♀️
🌊 Senior Digital Marketing Executive, Phlo Digital Pharmacy - Phlo Digital Pharmacy are shaping the future of pharmacy in the UK. Here’s a great role, where the successful candidate will help them get the message out.
𐂫 Head of Operations (Founding Member), Athena - A new fertility clinic is launching in Amsterdam, and they’re looking for a Head of Operations to get them off the ground.
📡 Customer Success Manager, Radar Healthcare - Looking for a role with patient safety at its core? Radar healthcare (and by extension, you) will help customers meet regulatory standards.
🕵️♀️ Senior Discovery Manager, UCL Partners - In this role, you’ll work with UCL Partners’ partners to define problem statements (not problematic statements, those are different) and support the team’s early innovation and discovery work.
🗺️ NHS Navigator, DigitalHealth.London - At Pigeon, we love a vague job title, and there’s none vaguer than NHS Navigator (at least in this week’s newsletter). That said, it sounds like a great role at one of the premier accelerators.
Got news, jobs or events you think is worth coo-ing over? Let us know! Email us: news@healthtechpigeon.com
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