#171 - All's Phare in Health and Tech
#171 - All's Phare in Health and Tech
The one-minute healthtech roundup
Hi friends,
This week: How to survive a healthtech apocalypse, an early win for NHS digitisation, and is there anything that links OpenAI’s very public kerfuffle to healthtech?
News Bites 🥪
💊 AZ launches digital clinical trials business – In the face of a slowdown in global clinical trials, a new wave of digital health startups is aiming to solve everything from recruitment to logistics, to patient experience. Now pharma giant AstraZeneca is getting involved, too.
🟢 EPR target for 90% of NHS trusts to go live is met early – A northstar metric for NHS transformation has been met. And it happened early. Pigeon refuses to gloss over what is a hugely positive result for NHS England, and no doubt a very motivating green spot on DHSC’s major projects risk register. Congratulations to all involved.
👁️🗨️ Toku’s AI platform predicts heart conditions by scanning inside your eye – The eyes are the windows to the soul, right? Yeah and the pancreas…and the heart….soon the only thing any doctor will need to diagnose everything that’s wrong with you is a peak at your retina and a six second clip of you singing ‘my body lies over the ocean’.
📲 Zoe’s Tim Spector on the rise of the UK’s fastest growing healthtech and becoming more than a 'diet app' – Zoe is the healthtech that transcends it’s sector. A household name that came out swinging during the pandemic and has continued to build on that brand awareness and trust. But who is the man behind it? Sifted’s Kai Nicol-Schwarz profiles Tim Spector.
☔️ How health-tech founders can survive a brutal 2024 – Pigeon has no doubt we won’t be the first to break this news to you: next year may be a bit s**t. Thought this year was bad? Better get ready for more of the same. How to do that? OMERS Ventures Christina Farr has some practical advice for founders.
🥇 US firm awarded £330m national data contract – We knew it was coming. You knew it was coming. It’s not a super popular initiative, and the reasons for the controversy are far ranging. HSJ’s Joe Talora has the story, and joined Pigeon on a recent podcast episode before the announcement for a full download on how we got to this point.
🤔 How the shakeup at OpenAI underscores the need for AI standards in health care – Pigeon’s been following this ‘stockpile the popcorn’ moment for the past few days, unable to peel our eyes away from a slow motion car crash of a company valued at upwards of $80bn. Now everything’s been resolved, (probably. For all we know, ChatGPT itself could be on the board by the time this is published.) what can we in health learn from this debacle?
👔 Phare Health raises £2.5m to develop AI tools for hospitals – This could be game-changing. Sure, transcribing patient notes and putting therm into EHRs is very useful, but translating these notes into actions for admin, ops and finance teams? This is going to save huge amounts of time and could have a meaningful impact on patient experience in, out and after care…
📝 Hims & Hers Unveils MedMatch in a Bid to Advance Personalized Healthcare Through AI – Would you trust an AI to personalise your care and select treatments that work for you based on those facing similar issues? That’s what Him & Hers are aiming to do with MedMatch. Pigeon’s sure we watched an episode of Black Mirror with a very similar premise.
We’re selecting 4 companies for FREE SomX support 💌
We talk a lot about values - a big part of that is collaborating with purpose-led people and organisations to make positive change. We work across the whole ecosystem with companies of all sizes and areas of focus, but there are some areas we’re really excited about right now.
So, from January we’re offering two free months of strategy and communications support for one company across each of the following categories:
🚺 Women’s health
🍄 Psychedelics
🤗 Mental health
🧬 Rare diseases
Whether your solution is in biotech, medtech, digital health or wellness, we want to hear from you! Interested? Register your interest here. [terms and conditions apply]
What to listen to 🔊
🐦 Healthtech Pigeon - All’s Phare in Health and Tech - Join Jessica, James and Huw as they take a deep dive into the week’s healthtech news and views.
🔊 The Healthtech Podcast #330 What has AI taught us about being human? - James is joined by Dr Harvinder Power, co-founder and CEO at Motics. Born out of a frustration with the current state of physiotherapy, Harvinder and his co-founder developed the technology to enhance the physiotherapy experience, allowing users to transform their phone into a personal physiotherapy assistant.
🔊 Raising Biotech - Episode 2: Ochre Bio with CEO/Co-founder Jack O’Meara and Liver Expert Dr Scott Friedman - In this episode of Raising Biotech, Surani speaks with CEO and co-founder Jack O'Meara of Ochre Bio. Jack discusses their light bulb idea of setting up a company to study the liver and develop novel and targeted gene therapies using human donor organs as preclinical models instead of mice.
Events 📅
Tech Summit
🕣 29 November
📍 Regents Conference Centre, London
FemTech Lab Innovation Showcase
🕣 30 November
📍 Bishopsgate, London
HealthTechX Summit 2024
🕣 28 February - Use HTX24SMITH for 30% off your ticket
📍 The Hurlingham Club, London
Opportunities 🕵️♀️
🎬 Executive Medical Director, Infermedica - Want to play a part in making primary care more accessible? Infermedica’s Medical Guidance Platform helps do just that. If you’re an experienced medical director looking to get involved, this is the role for you.
💵 Financial Planning and Analysis Manager, Oviva - If you’re an experienced financial controller or planner with healthtech experience (or at least interest), this role at behavioural therapy app developer Oviva might be just the ticket.
🧑💻 Senior Software Engineer, Unmind - A company that literally helps build mentally healthy workplaces is 100% going to be a great place to work. Software Engineering bods, apply now!
📊 Data Platform Engineer, Cera - Don’t know who Cera are? Which rock have you been liviing under? The Healthcare at Home provider is looking for a data platform engineer to build or acquire that data that supports their hefty real-world impact.
Got news, jobs or events you think is worth coo-ing over? Let us know! Email us: news@healthtechpigeon.com
SomX is a communications and creative agency for healthcare. We are clinicians, scientists, creatives and communicators dedicated to serving our healthtech, biotech, pharma and public sector clients with services across strategy, content, PR, design, events and media production. Get in touch to learn more.