Hi friends,
This week: consumer wearables take a seat in consultation rooms, VR is supporting mental health treatment (and it’s quite good at it), and is anyone not raising right now?
Tired eyes? 👀 Listen to the Healthtech Pigeon podcast ➡️ Huw and Belle from SomX breakdown the best stories from this week’s newsletter, and discuss The Health Foundation’s work on AI with HF Associate Director Tim Horton. Available now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
News Bites 🥪
👀 WHO launches initiative to advance digital health across Europe – Hear ye, hear ye! The WHO is giving healthcare a digital check-up with its new Strategic Partners' Initiative for Data and Digital Health (SPI-DDH). This initiative, spanning 53 countries, aims to enhance digital health solutions and foster collaboration for future healthcare advancements — largely, it seems, because half of them don’t seem particularly bothered about healthtech at the moment.
💰 Shopify of digital health, Huma, raised $80M Series D – Their name may be Huma, but they seem pretty serious to this Pigeon*. Fresh off an $80M raise, they’ve launched their Huma Cloud Platform, an ecosystem designed to support the company’s own digital health initiatives and empower others to launch and scale their projects efficiently.
🚺 Digital health needs women at the heart of it – Hey Siri, play that Beyonce song! On a serious note, it's encouraging to see increasing recognition of the need to prioritise women's health issues to ensure care reflects differences in disease risk and treatment. The next step? We must bridge the gaps in digital health by improving recruitment and progression in technology, bringing more women into leadership roles.
🇺🇸 US-based mental health startup Headway to close funding at $2.3B valuation – One in four Americans have a treatable mental health condition, but most don’t receive care due to the costs. One company is aiming to make ‘Headway’ on this issue, but tackling the big issue of expensive mental health care head-on (get it?). Headway are developing a network of therapists who accept insurance, making it easier for people to find affordable care. A $100M funding round suggests the team are moving in the right direction.
⌚️ Consumer wearables could make ‘positive contribution to routine care’ – Time was, that wearable was just a device for runners who wanted to bore their friends with their latest personal best. Has the time come for consumer devices to actually help address real health system needs? New research published in Nature Medicine reveals these devices can match standard hospital tests in monitoring heart rate and physical activity for atrial fibrillation (AF) and heart failure. Could this mean that your doctor will soon be asking for your wearable data? Find out on the next episode of Pigeon Ball Z…
❓ Will the new government pass the test of leadership on health inequalities? – Pigeon has got to say, it can't be easy running a country. Three weeks on the job and the people are already demanding major answers from the new government. Let’s face it, they probably haven’t figured out how the office microwave works yet, so a health inequalities strategy may be a while off.
👾 Advances in the use of virtual reality to treat mental health conditions – VR is making waves in mental health treatment. People can experience immersive environments that offer controlled, ‘real-feeling’ experiences that help in managing conditions like anxiety, PTSD, and depression. A recent review explores how VR-based treatments work and how gamification can boost therapy effectiveness.
🧪 AI outperforms clinical tests at predicting Alzheimer’s progress – Researchers at Cambridge University have been busy: They’ve created an AI tool they claim can predict with 80% accuracy whether individuals with early signs of dementia will remain stable or develop Alzheimer’s disease. That’s not all! The algorithm is about three times more accurate at predicting progression to Alzheimer’s than the current standard of care.
What to listen to 🔊
Events 📅
World Congress on Healthcare and Technologies
🕣 Aug 8-9
📍 London
Intelligent Health: Basel
🕣 Sept 11-12
📍 Basel, Switzerland
Healthtech Innovation Day
🕣 Sept 17-18
📍 Paris, France
Hardian Health Tech Summit -(tickets available to newsletter subscribers only)
🕣 Sept 19
📍 London
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 🕵️♀️
🐢 Research Intern in Clinical AI Safety, TORTUS – There's nothing slow about the work the team over at TORTUS are doing, Pigeon can tell you that. As a result, they are on the hunt for a whizz with large-scale datasets and data cleaning to share their experience working with machine learning to support them on their mission to make medicine smarter, faster, and kinder with AI. So, if you have completed a research project related to ML in which you played a major role, get in touch with the team today!
⭐️ Customer Success Manager, Peppy – If you have proven track record in customer success, the ability to leverage insights to drive adoption and looking for your next role in building strong relationships with stakeholders, Peppy may just be the place for you!
👨💻Senior Software Engineer, Headspace – Software Engineers, listen up! If you’re looking for a role where you are building, developing and writing well designed, efficient code, it’s your lucky day…
👩⚕️Clinical Associate, Anterior - Keen to blend your clinical knowledge with the weird and wonderful world of AI? Well you’re in luck! Anterior are on the hunt for someone who can conduct detailed clinical assessments of AI outputs across all parts of their product life cycle and be the go-to person to translate information between the technical, non-technical, clinical, and non-clinical teams. Sounds like something you’d be up for? Apply today!
*We’re so, so sorry. We’ve fired our joke writer, and we promise he’s never coming back (until next week, at least).
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.