#186 - The Zen of Minor Surgery 😌
The one-minute healthtech roundup
Hi friends,
This week: AI’s latest targets — pricey healthcare bills, missed appointments, and…nurses?
News Bites 🥪
✍️ Sign the Equity Charter: Standing up to discrimination in Digital Health – Let’s get straight to the point: there’s no room for discrimination in this world, least of all in healthcare and digital health. In the wake of Frank Hester’s racist and misogynistic comments, some of the industry’s leading lights are calling for an equity charter to outline the standards this industry must hold itself to. Please sign, and share with others, so that they can, too.
🤖 Nvidia Wants to Replace Nurses With AI for $9 an Hour – Success in healthtech is ultimately defined not by the quality of the solution but by its uptake and adoption. However you rank the latest initiative from health-AI-hypecrew Hippocratic AI* on quality, it’s a bold move to pick one of the most trusted professions in the world and replace it with….well, go look for yourself….
🥧 BeiGene spin-out Pi Health raises $30m to uptick cancer trial enrolment – Investors are back to throwing big money at companies looking to improve recruitment, adherence and outcomes in clinical trials. Pi Health has turned to generative AI to strengthen it’s platform, a SaaS service that helps streamline administration and pair patients to trials.
❌ NHS expands AI to help tackle missed appointments, improve wait times – It’s raining outside, there’s traffic on the way to the hospital, and it always takes longer to find the oncology department than people think. AI knows this, and it knows you’re inherently too disorganised to work it out yourself. Deep Medical’s solving this issue, so it doesn’t matter quite so much if you don’t show up to your doctor’s appointment.
🍌 Skin-like wearable with LED screen to track health, diagnose diseases – Neuralink, eat your heart out….it’s out with the implantable chips and in with the stretchy, circuits that can be worn on the skin and could change the way our brains interface with the rest of our body, and other systems too; unless, of course, it’s raining. Solve that teeny problem (and a few others) and could we be looking at a glimpse into the future?
🧠 Meet The Health Tech Founder Using Algorithms To Tackle Mental Illness – The best clinical mental healthtech solutions help patients find a treatment that works for them faster, and gives clinicians the space to be thoughtful and creative in how they treat complex problems. Options MD is trying to do that, and their founder’s desire to have a positive impact will no doubt chime with any founders reading this.
💽 New research exposes security, privacy, and safety issues in FemTech systems – A fair chunk of literature has been published recently about the trillion-dollar opportunity in women’s health – but it seems there’s a dark side to this opportunity, as outlined by a new study into an industry which appears to have some, at best, laidback approaches to data privacy and security.
💰 Milu Health Raises $4.8M for AI-Driven Health Savings Platform – Let’s get real for a minute: healthcare can be a bit of a racket. Milu Health knows this, and they’ve built a snazzy AI designed to help you save money, reduce costly bills and basically avoid getting screwed. Pigeon approves, and so does legendary VC Andreessen Horowitz, so maybe there’s something to this idea.
😌 Virtual reality headsets calm NHS surgery patients at Medway Maritime Hospital– Ultimately, Pigeon’s not pulling our investments out of the anaesthetics industry just yet**, but as far as drug-free alternatives go, could VR earn its place in the anaesthetists arsenal? No word on what the eight environments are that patients can choose from, but we’ve got visions of a peaceful clearing, filled with medtech hardware.
What to listen to 🔊
🐦 The Healthtech Pigeon Podcast — Join Jessica, Belle and Medic Footprints’ Dr Abeyna Bubbers-Jones as they take a deep-dive into the week’s healthtech news and views.
🔊 The Healthtech Podcast #342 Everything you need to know about genome sequencing, with Patrick Short from Sano Genetics — James is joined by Patrick Short, co-founder and CEO of Sano Genetics. Sano Genetics are accelerating the world's transition to personalised medicine by revolutionising the medical research participant journey with engaging digital experiences, easy-at-home testing, and a privacy-first approach.
Events 📅
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 🕵️♀️
💙 Digital Healthcare Development Manager, Bupa — Make digital health insurance a reality at one of the largest providers on the market. If you’re a digital transformation and change specialist, this could be the role for you.
⛽️ Business Development Manager – MedTech, Sisu Health — Passionate about preventative healthcare? Got a track record of sales and new business? Then head on over to Sisu Health and help them bring their ‘self-service health stations’ to a wider audience.
📲 Delivery Manager, Healthy.io — The wound management heavyweights at Healthy.io are looking for someone to help rollout these products, working with clinicians to help them get the most from the company’s tech. Project manager looking for an exciting new role? Apply now.
🎓 Associate Professor (Teaching) in Digital Health & Entrepreneurship, UCL — Ready to shape minds and teach the next generation of health entrepreneurs? This role at the Global Business School for Health will be competitive.
🚀 Field Engineer, Neko Health — The body-scanning tech company founded by Spotify’s Daniel Ek (you remember it, it looks like it came straight out of star trek…) is hiring. Better get a move on…
🌍 VP & Director roles (healthcare), Lincoln International — Money makes the world go round, and investment banks make …money… go round? Either way, if you’re a senior-level healthcare sector exec looking for an in on the world of M&A and capital advisory, reach out to Matt Greenwood at Agora Talent to find out more.
✏️ UK Medical Lead, HeliosX Group — Clinical operations expert? Passionate about healthtech? Got the experience to prove it? There could be few places you were better suited to than on the team at HeliosX.
*Which, by the way, just grabbed another $53m in funding, but Pigeon is legally prevented from sharing more than three raise stories from the same company in less than 12 months.
**If we really had investments in the anaesthetics industry, do you think we’d be writing this newsletter, and not on a beach somewhere?
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.