#164 - Hot-takes, retreats and greenlights 🔥
The one-minute healthtech roundup
Hi friends,
This week: AI-powered patients, a £30m solution to 42 different crises, and can you get a brain scan while listening to Led Zeppelin deep cuts on the move?
News Bites 🥪
🚗 Buckinghamshire sees benefits from population health digital dashboard – Plugging the ICS share care record into the surgical waiting list dashboard? Sounds ... sensible. When do the rest of us get access?
🔌 The AI-Empowered Patient Is Coming: Are Doctors Ready? – For years, Doctors have dreaded seeing that patient who’s googled their symptoms and has self-diagnosed. This piece asks if Doctors are even needed when people have access not just to information but expertise too…..although Pigeon scoffed slightly at the implication that GPT can be considered to have ‘expertise’...
🦾 Medical robotics firm Automata picks up £33m funding – For one moment, let’s stop asking will AI replace Doctors, and start asking real questions, like ‘Will robots replace lab technicians?’ Pigeon’s guess: Sure, why not? (Lab technicians, we’re joking. You do great work, and now you’re getting a robot friend.)
🛑 Biogen confirms closure of Biogen Digital Health, retreat from Apple Study – You could argue that creating and then shuttering a digital health business unit in the space of two years is symptomatic of short term outlooks, but – to be fair – if we’d dropped $7.3bn acquiring a pharma company, we’d be looking for savings elsewhere, too.
🎧 Niura’s EEG-implemented earbuds scan your brain health and recommend music to your mood – The next big earphone technology could give your consumer earbuds the ability to monitor your brain health. Pigeon would be well into this, but our support comes with a warning: if it’s a choice between brain health scanning and a 5 star audio quality review from What-HIFI Magazine*, you can probably guess our preference.
💰 ICSs invited to bid for share of £30m government medtech investment - Med-Tech Innovation – Look, Pigeon makes sarcastic comments about every government healthtech funding announcement, and if you thought this one would be any different, that’s your error, not ours. Come on ICSs, why not apply for a few quid from the latest funding to help solve problems you’re facing 8 weeks from now.
🚦CMA clears £1.2bn NHS healthcare tech deal – Since US firm UnitedHealth’s acquisition of everyone’s favourite EPR system was provisionally greenlit earlier this year, Pigeon has been on tenterhooks waiting for the final confirmation, which arrived this week.
🏃🏻♂️We know how to regulate new drugs and medical devices–but we’re about to let health care AI run amok – As far as hot takes go, ‘regulators can’t save us from AI’ has the potential to cause third-degree burns. But the warning comes from a very credible place….Pigeon will let you make your own mind up on whether it’s time to panic.
What to listen to 🔊
🐦 Healthtech Pigeon - SPECIAL: One flew over the Pigeon’s HETT - Join Huw and Jess for a special edition of the Pigeon podcast, as we head to London’s HETT show to speak to some of the most exciting people working in healthcare, live from this year’s event.
🔊 The Healthtech Podcast #323 Is it unethical NOT to be using AI in healthcare? With Dr Dom Pimenta from TORTUS - James is joined by Dr Dom Pimenta, CEO of TORTUS. Dom was formerly the lead specialty research physician at Richmond Research Institute, running clinical trials in digital health and AI, publishing original research in everything from in-human physiology studies to artificial intelligence and cardiac imaging to Big Data and the relationships between food and health.
Events 📅
MedFIT - Fostering Innovation in Medtech
🕣 October 10, 8.30am-6.15pm
📍 Strasbourg Convention Centre, France
MedTech World Summit
🕣 19-20 October
📍 Valletta, Malta
Use the code ‘FlyingtoMedTechMalta’ for 25% off your ticket.
The Healthtech Podcast Live
🕣 9 November
📍 TBC
Opportunities 🕵️♀️
🚒 Engineering Manager - Woebot Labs – Woebot Health is a Pigeon-favourite company and is absolutely nailing it in the mental health space. The team are looking for an engineering manager to….manage engineers, we suppose. If you’ve done that before, this could be a good option for you. If not…less so.
🕴️Vice President of Product - HeliosX – In some cases, Vice President is a non-role. Not so at HeliosX, which aims to increase the accessibility and affordability of healthtech. Go forth, Mr Vice President.
🤝 Partnerships Manager at Locum's Nest – Locum’s Nest are helping NHS and private healthcare organisations tackle their workforce challenges. Want to help make those connections? This is the job for you.
🧾 Accounts Assistant, Dr Doctor – Everyone knows that a scaleup is held together forward by its finance team. What? Everyone doesn’t know that? Well know they do. Join the team at one of UK healthtech’s big success stories.
🧑💻 Engineer (mechanical, biosensor), ZiO Health – Like building things? Things like biosensors? Then apply to this job. You won’t regret it. (We can’t promise that, but it probably does seem like a good fit.)
If you’ve noticed that this week’s jokes are even more niche than usual…good spot, we’ll do better next week.
Got news, jobs or events you think is worth coo-ing over? Let us know! Email us: news@healthtechpigeon.com
At SomX, we are clinicians, scientists, creatives and communicators dedicated to elevating healthtech and biotech. For our clients, we provide communications strategy, multimedia content marketing, public relations, events and branding/design services. Get in touch to find out how we can support your healthtech company.