#196 - A chronic case of eLung

The one-minute healthtech roundup

Hi friends,

This week: faster tech adoption! Alcohol and women’s health! IPOs and buses!

Tired eyes? 👀 Listen to the Healthtech Pigeon podcast ➡️ Aahuti and Huw from SomX breakdown the best stories from this week’s newsletter, with help from FemTech Lab’s Karina Vazirova and Kate Nikityuk. Available now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

News Bites 🥪

🏎️ NHS England and NICE announce plan to speed up innovative tech adoption – Another day, another announcement about plans to speed up innovative tech adoption in the NHS. The difference? This time there’s an opportunity to share your views. On the face of it, the proposals are sound, but we know innovators everywhere will want to offer their 2 cents. 

🫁 Oxford healthtech Brainomix gets FDA clearance for e-Lung AI software – While e-Lung sounds like a breathing problem experienced solely by people who’ve spent the majority of their adult lives working in server rooms, Pigeon confesses to being quite excited about its potential – In that regard, FDA clearance and impressive study results in stratifying patients with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis certainly pique our interest.

🍸 Seek Launches First At-Home Test for Alcohol’s Effects on Women’s Health – There’s no moralising here… Pigeon would be the last person to tell you to put down that drink. We just think that any initiative that helps women better understand their health and track the effects of external factors (in this case, alcohol) is a positive one.

🤖 Woebot, a Mental-Health Chatbot, Tries Out Generative AI – Pigeon’s got a lot of time for the Woebot team. Maybe it’s a reflection of our own existential angst, or maybe we just appreciate a good pun – either way, we enjoyed this recap of the team’s exploration of whether LLMs might add to their offer. The answer? ...’maybe'.

💬 How Women’s Health Conversations With Investors Have Evolved – Women’s health isn’t exactly a niche concern. But tell that to investors, who haven’t always splashed the cash when it comes to femtech and women’s healthcare companies. But is the landscape shifting? These company leaders think so, and they’re pointing squarely at improving gender equality in larger VC firms as the reason.

📈 Healthcare payments firm Waystar eyes IPO, plans to raise about $1B – Digital health IPOs are like buses: you wait for ages for one to come along, and then two come at once (readers will recall Tempus AI filed for their IPO last week). The only difference is that when you’re waiting for new buses to appear, you probably aren’t seeing other, earlier buses aggressively de-list from the timetable. 

😥 Monitoring diseases through sweat: new device eliminates need for exercise – Pigeon wishes to clarify: the new device only removes the need to exercise to produce sweat for monitoring biomarkers. Exercise is still very beneficial for other reasons. Could this electro-stimulated drug-filled hydrogel see sweat-testing take blood’s hard earned diagnostic throne?

🩻 Microsoft Announces New Foundation Model For Digital Pathology, Diving Deeper Into Clinical Medicine – Microsoft continue to throw everything but the kitchen sink at health AI. GigaPath is the tech giant’s new offering for pathology teams and, once Pigeon waded through the thick layer of hype that runs through this story, we were still interested to know more.

What to listen to 🔊

Events 📅

Health.tech
🕣 Jun 5-6
📍 Munich

Decoding the Future of Women 2024
🕣 Jun 10-11
📍 London

London Tech Week
🕣 Jun 10-12
📍 London

NHS Confed Expo
🕣 Jun 12-13
📍 Manchester

HLTH Europe
🕣 Jun 17-20
📍 Amsterdam

Visit the SomX events page or subscribe to SomX’s events roundup to see all of the best upcoming healthtech, biotech and healthcare events

Opportunities 🕵️‍♀️

📊 Accountant, Ada Health – Look, if there’s any accountants reading this newsletter, we want to say: a) thank you b) your patience has paid off – your ideal job in healthtech has just presented itself.

🏫 Senior Licensing & Ventures Manager - Life Sciences, Oxford University Innovation – Strong contender for ‘Pigeon’s job of the month’ here. If you’re a dab hand at translating scientific innovation into commercial products, then this one’s perfect for you. 

👍 Health Coach - Face to Face, Oviva – Health coach? Keen to support patients with weight related conditions to keep their diabetes at bay? Apply now. 

🧬 Head of Education, Helix Centre, Imperial College London – Pigeon can see multiple perks to this job. Chief among them are: 1. Lead on the delivery of some fascinating education modules about the role of design in healthcare, 2. Take your passion for human centered design and pass it on to the next generation, and 3. Tell people you ‘work for the Helix Centre’, and see how many assume you’re a bond villain.

🧑‍⚕️ eHealth Practitioner, University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust – Know clinical IT systems like the back of your hand? Don’t mind working with clinicians day-in, day-out? What are you waiting for?

💊 Prescriber, Numan – Men’s health experts Numan are making the most of digital to bring remote advice and support to their patients. They’re looking for a prescriber with excellent creds and experience.

💽 Lead Genomics Data Scientist, Genomics England – If you can blend genomics and data science with the best of them, then Genomics England want you to apply. Play a guiding hand in impactful projects and lead a team of experts.

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Got news, jobs or events you think is worth coo-ing over? Let us know! Email us: news@healthtechpigeon.com

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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.