#218 - Under the Magic Money Tree
The one-minute healthtech roundup, kindly sponsored by SciQ: Healthtech recruitment, by ex-industry professionals.
Hi friends,
This week: The UK Budget brings a good news/bad news situation for healthtechs, AI transcription tools get creative (and we’d rather they didn't), and some exciting lessons on capital restructuring, courtesy of Kry.
Love healthtech, hate reading? 👀 Listen to the Healthtech Pigeon podcast ➡️ Jessica and James from SomX break down the best stories from this week’s newsletter. Available now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
This week’s edition of Healthtech Pigeon is powered by our friends at SciQ, the HealthTech Recruitment Specialists. SciQ connect the best candidates with organisations that make the biggest impact to the health of current and future generations. Find the talent your business needs to scale.
News Bites 🥪
🦷 'A kick in the teeth' or 'necessary'? UK tech reacts to tax hikes and exit relief scheme changes in the Budget – Budget day in the UK brought with it the traditional semi-annual moment of fun for UK healthtech, as founders did their best to work out whether they net-benefited or net-lost, in an announcement that, among other things, had some big numbers in for NHS funding.
💵 Healthtech SaaS Semble raises $15m Series B — It’s hard not to get behind Semble’s mission to “amplify the impact of healthcare professionals”. Yet where Pigeon attempts to do just that while standing outside hospitals with a megaphone, Semble take a more strategic approach. Presumably, fewer people tell them they’re wasting their time.
📚 BVP explore the State of Healthtech in 2024 – Pigeon’s old enough to remember when direct to consumer healthtech ran out of steam, but has it found the wind in its sails once again? Bessemer Venture Partners’ latest report suggests so, while also sharing exhaustive insights into what else is going on in healthtech generally. including some worrying stats on companies graduating to the next round on their funding journeys.
🤖 Hospitals use a transcription tool powered by an error-prone OpenAI model – Pigeon won’t lie: sometimes, during an awkward conversation, we’ll say something inappropriate to fill the silence. It’s fine when we do it (we’re Pigeons after all); but when an OpenAI model designed for use in a clinical setting does it, and decides to fill the gaps with…extreme content…it’s probably a sign something’s not right.
🧾 UK Data (Use and Access) Bill: Key changes impacting the digital health and life sciences sector – Pretty much every forward-thinking suggestion to improve the NHS involves using your data. These suggestions typically require that your data is usable by people who don’t belong to the institution that originally collected it. In a lot of cases, that’s still shockingly difficult. Here’s a little rundown of how the new data use and access bill might change that.
🫀 AI model can predict health risks, including early death, from ECGs – Electrocardiograms, eh? Who knew how useful they would turn out to be? (Facetious, us?). But it turns out the humble ECG may have been hiding things from us, as a new AI model can be used to dig a little deeper and support diagnosis of a range of conditions at a much earlier stage.
📕 AI Governance in Health Systems: Aligning Innovation, Accountability, and Trust – It’s common knowledge that Pigeon thinks about healthcare AI once every six seconds. More specifically, we’re continually wrestling with questions around trust and accountability that keep us up at night. The Team at Duke Health took a moment to explore these issues in more depth and develop a framework for assessing the strength of AI governance. Finally, a good night’s sleep.
🖥️ Bayer Partners with Impli to Advance Real-Time Hormone Monitoring – Move over biomarkers, a new monitoring obsession is born, as pharma and tech partner up to bring a sophisticated hormone monitoring device to market. While it remains to be seen how long it’ll take before the device enters patients’ hands, the potential is huge, and comes after Impli won a Bayer Innovation challenge at HLTH back in June.
🧑🏫 Dilution, dissatisfaction and de-risking: Why healthtech unicorn Kry has changed its capital structure – Don’t shoot the messenger (carrier pigeon?) but it’s possible we all got a little bit carried away with our valuations and investment back in those heady days of 2020-22. Honestly, everything got a little bit confusing, so we can’t really blame Kry for doing what they need to do to clean up their cap table. With any move like this comes a bit of dissatisfaction. Nonetheless, this one’s worth a read for any funding nerds (Pigeon knows you’re reading…)
💰 ARPA-H Awards $110M to 23 Startups and Innovators In Women’s Health, Jill Biden Announces – The full weight of the US public investment machine comes down behind 23 startups in the women’s health space, as a mix of early stage and close-to-market startups (working on everything from cancer to gynelogical, cardiovascular and neurological conditions) benefit from a cash injection, plus an invite to private investors to get involved.
🚪 More layoffs at gut health startup Zoe as company restructures teams – It’s been a rough year for Zoe, which is going ahead with its second round of layoffs in the space of six months. After the first round, the company admitted rapid user churn was among the biggest challenges the company faced – has the company been unable to plug the leak?
🧠 World’s first ultrathin graphene-based human brain implant maker INBRAIN Neuroelectronics secures $50M – Real big brain energy (BBE) on show from INBRAIN, as it picks up a massive raise, less than a year after its graphene-neural interface for Parkinson’s Disease picked up FDA breakthrough device designation. It’s both transformative technology and further proof that graphene is finding uses cases everywhere.
What to listen to 🔊
Events 📅
EHRCON24 - first annual openEHR International Conference
🕣 Nov 6
📍 Reading, UK
Future-proofing healthcare: Embracing innovation and tackling new technology
🕣 Nov 6
📍 Online
Digital twins (part 2): Ethics and clinical uses
🕣 Nov 6
📍 London
Med-Tech World, Malta
🕣 Nov 6-8
📍 Malta
Medica 2024
🕣 Nov 11-14
📍 Düsseldorf, Germany
BMJ Future Health 2024 - Use the code SOMXFH50 for a little Pigeon treat.
🕣 Nov 19-20
📍 London
From Treatment to Prevention - How will new policy affect Mental Health Innovation
🕣 Nov 22
📍 London
Digital Health Conference
🕣 Nov 28
📍 Berlin
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 🕵️♀️
🏎️ Accelerator Programme, Alzheimer's Society –working on a product that could help improve the treatment of Alzheimers? It’s time to stand up and be counted (and helped to develop your product further). The Alzheimers Society is offering up to £100k of funding and access to expert support to help you make your impact faster.
📲 Senior Product Manager, Cera – Who wouldn't want to work for the UK’s biggest healthtech. If you’re a product specialist interested in the role of technology in improving home healthcare, Cera’s one of the best places for you right now.
🙊 Head of External Affairs, NHS England – An irresistible role for any well-trodden wrangler of external relationships, with a passion for health, and who presumably isn’t personally responsible for sifting through the ‘public suggestions’ area of the Change NHS platform. If this sounds like your bag, get on it.
🩻 Project Manager, Magentus – Fancy a role in a global healthcare technology company, with a strong track record of working with the NHS and other healthcare organisations to transform care? Take a gander at this role.
🐤 Product Marketing Lead, Birdie – Our bird-based affinity with the Birdie team will never falter, so we can’t not encourage product marketing specialists to check out Birdie for their next role.
🧑⚕️ Senior Transformation Manager (FTC), DrDoctor – If you’re a transformation specialist with a knack for supporting customers and stakeholders with the adoption of new technologies, then DrDoctor are one of the most exciting healthtechs in this or any space right now. Head over and register your interest now.
🧷 Clinical Safety Officer (Part Time), DrDoctor — So you’re a fastidious, incredibly organised clinician with knowledge of everything to do with clinical safety risk management, eh? And you’ve got experience working with health tech product teams, managing stakeholders across and outside of an organisation to ensure development that’s fully in line with requirements? Great. Hit apply now.
💡 Head Of Strategic Partnerships (Healthcare & AI), Beam – Among the UK’s most well known and transformative #techforgood companies, Beam is on a mission to solve big social problems. As their offer broadens and begins to further integrate with healthcare, they’re looking for someone to help forge deeper connections.
Got news, jobs or events you think is worth coo-ing over? Let us know! Email us: news@healthtechpigeon.com
Healthtech Pigeon is curated and produced by SomX, the 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.