#185 - Healthtech's biggest cheerleader 📣
The one-minute healthtech roundup
Hi friends,
This week: Biases, biomarkers and…brownies?
News Bites 🥪
🧠 This biotech startup wants to prevent unhappiness. Here's the pitch deck Matter Neuroscience used to raise $26 million — Ever wondered if there was a biomarker for happiness? Well actually, there’s six of them… sort of. Either way, if there’s a company doing their best to tackle unhappiness, you can bet your bottom dollar that Pigeon’s rooting for them. Have you SEEN the state of the world lately? We need all the joy we can get.
🩺 UK report reveals bias within medical tools and devices — Medical technology? Biased towards women, ethnic minorities, and people from deprived backgrounds? Surely not? Personally, Pigeon blames the parents. The findings of a two year review of bias in medtech and AI tools confirm what many already knew: small training sets, limited trials and testing and other factors mean these groups could be at risk of receiving lower standards of care when certain technologies are deployed.
🏆 Healthtech remains on top and UK takes its crown back: February’s seed wrap-up — As healthtech’s biggest cheerleader, you can only imagine Pigeon’s gleeful beak when we read that healthtech continues to reign supreme in the Battle of ‘Top-Seed-Funding-Sector-in-Europe-in-February-2024’. It’s a niche competition admittedly, but we still can’t resist a few potshots at those nerds in fintech.
📈 As AI develops, health systems need to focus on data quality — In what can only be bad news for the chatbot pigeon is training using only previous editions of this newsletter, it turns out data quality matters. This is perhaps even more true when referring to access and use of health data. Time to start considering this more people!
🚺 Why Women’s Healthcare Technology Is Everyone’s Business — Pigeon will never, EVER, pass up an opportunity to highlight the need for more women in spaces they have in many cases been excluded from. This Forbes article explains far more eloquently than Pigeon ever could, why women deserve to be in more positions of leadership and influence throughout the entire healthcare ecosystem.
💰 Sooma gets €5M boost to expand its tDCS at-home depression treatment — Following a healthy cash injection that will hopefully go someway to lifting the spirits of Sooma’s finance team, the company will use this funding to alleviate depression symptoms without the need for pharmaceuticals. It’s a much better way to spend the cash than Pigeon could think of (a lifetime’s supply of brownies, if you must know).
📝 Everything you need to know to prepare for the EU’s AI Act — While the AI Act has passed its last major hurdle, there’s still a lot that’s up in the air — particularly for healthcare AI builders. This article goes someway to explaining everything you need to know to make sure you’re hitting the new requirements and aren’t getting yourself in trouble this the big dog! You know Pigeon is always going to keep one ear to the ground to give you all the tea.*
💻 Health Secretary announces digital initiatives for NHS productivity — Hear ye, hear ye! £3.4B is on its way to NHS teams imminently, says the Government’s 374th (and maybe final) health secretary in 14 years. The promise: digital technologies, in digital hospitals, with digital operating theatres. Did we mention that they want to make things more digital?
What to listen to 🔊
🐦 The Healthtech Pigeon Podcast — Join Jess and Huw as they take a deep-dive into the week’s healthtech news and views.
🔊 The Healthtech Podcast #341 Are holograms the future of surgery? With Alison Sundset, CEO of Holocare — James is joined by Alison Sundset, CEO of HoloCare, a Norwegian healthtech startup developing mixed reality technology to help clinicians plan complex operations more effectively.
Events 📅
WIRED Health
🕣 March 19
📍 London
TORTUS Primary Care Launch
🕣 March 26
📍 London
Edinburgh Medtech Forums
🕣 March 27
📍 Edinburgh
HLTH Europe Roadshow
🕣 March 27
📍 London
HPN North
🕣 April 23-24
📍 Manchester
Digital Healthcare Show
🕣 April 24-25
📍 ExCel London
LSX World Congress
🕣 April 29-30
📍 Business Design Centre, London
Visit the SomX events page to see all of the best upcoming healthtech, biotech and healthcare events.
Opportunities 🕵️♀️
Programme Manager (Clinical Operations team), Lindus Health — If you have the skills and experience to drive coherence and operational efficiency in a company with a mission to improve human health by revolutionising clinical trials, boy does Pigeon have the perfect role for you.
MedTech Venture Builder Collaborative Centre of Excellence — Want to accelerate the development of your medical technology into a robust, investment-ready healthcare venture? And receive £20,000 to do it? Pigeon thought as much. You’ll want to take a look at this programme run by Kings College London!
Women Empowerment Award, Bayer Foundation — Are you a women entrepreneur and would like to receive a €25,000 grant? Apply for the chance to join this accelerator programme, gain valuable exposure, resources, and a cheeky trip to Berlin! Apply soon, applications close on the 27th of March!
DigitalHealth.London Evidence Generator Bootcamp — While the word ‘bootcamp’ brings Pigeon out in a cold sweat, this bootcamp isn’t all star jumps and obstacle courses. It’s designed to support digital health companies to pinpoint their evidence needs and navigate the challenges of evidence generation, all with expert support.
Principal Computational Biologist, Ochre Bio — Our buddies are Ochre Bio are on a mission to tackle chronic liver disease, and it’s a job that could be difficult without an experienced Principle Computational Biologist in the fold. If you think you lead advanced modelling methods within a functional genomics and imaging team, apply now!
* Heard that’s what the kids are saying these days?
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.