#220 - Swings & Roundabouts in Unicorn Land
The one-minute healthtech roundup, brought to you by SomX.
Hi friends,
This week: ups and downs for healthtech’s biggest companies, Quadrivia emerges from stealth and 23andMe announces its latest bit of bad news.
Love healthtech, hate reading? 👀 Listen to the Healthtech Pigeon podcast ➡️ Jessica, James and Huw from SomX break down the best stories from this week’s newsletter. Available now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
News Bites 🥪
🔙 What happened at Forward Health? – One year ago, AI healthcare unicorn announced it had raised a further $100m to support its rollout of “CarePods”, subscription based primary care hubs deployed in public spaces. So the news that Forward won’t be moving…forward?...marks a sharp twist in their tale. Clearly they ignored the old adage to not try and put people in boxes.
🗡️ $3 billion startup Sword Health cuts some physical therapists as it ramps up AI to treat more patients – Another health unicorn makes cuts to its clinical workforce while going hard on AI. As one unicorn shuts down, this one plans to go public as soon as 2025. It's all just swings and roundabouts in unicorn land.
🚀 Ali Parsa launches Quadrivia: I have stepped back from LinkedIn for almost a year, but we have not been idle – Much has been written about Quadrivia in the few days since erstwhile Babylon Health leader Ali Parsa announced his emergence from stealth. Pigeon felt it was only right to share the words of the man himself. Grab the popcorn, we can’t wait to see where this latest journey takes us (mostly because it looks quite cool).
🐢 NHS doctors could ‘spend more time with patients’ thanks to AI helper – Admit it. You want an AI helper for your job. But few need one as much as the average doctor. As the clinical scribe arms race continues, Tortus seems to be out in front in UK healthcare.
🦾 J&J’s Ottava surgical robot to begin clinical trial after FDA nod – Fans of Da Vinci’s surgical robots (we know you’re out there) will know, up to now, there have been few challenges to its market dominance in soft tissue surgery. But the Da Vinci era [you mean the renaissance? - Ed.] could be coming to an end, as J&J begin clinical trials for their own robot tech.
🗃️ UK 'not maximising the benefits of health data', says Sudlow review – Despite the rollout of the federate data platform, secure data environments, countless interoperability initiatives and multiple government strategies, a review says we’re not doing enough to make health data accessible to trusted researchers. How about we all just staple our medical records to our coats and let researchers give chase. Might be more efficient.
🙈 Facial recognition tech for pain management trialled in Bedfordshire – No more putting a brave face on, as a new trial has seen positive results in using tech to recognise pain in vulnerable adults in social care. Its one of two social care innovations that picked up NHS cash earlier this year, alongside Robopets. Yes…robopets.
🤖 What are the effects of 'robopets' on the health and wellbeing of residents in care homes? A systematic review of qualitative and quantitative evidence – You didn’t think Pigeon would see a reference to Robopets and not go looking for more info did you? No it’s not news in the traditional sense (this review is from 2019), but who can argue with findings such as “It is clear that not everyone will respond positively to robopets”. Personally Pigeon feels very positive to them.
This seal (retailing at £6000) is an occasional visitor to care homes, and “a pleasure to be with”.
🙅 23andMe to shut down its therapeutics division – We’ve known for a while that 23andMe leadership has had a love-hate relationship with its therapeutics division. Even before CEO Anne Wojcicki tried to take the company private last month, the business had been mulling splitting the company into two. Sadly, thats no longer an option, as that division has ceased operations with the loss of 200 jobs.
💍 Oura’s Perimenopause Report Shows the Gap in Women’s Health Research – Few articles are quite as thought provoking as this. Pigeon took a while to get past the whole ‘only humans and whales experience the menopause’ fact. We did (eventually), and dived into some uncomfortable facts on which Oura – to their credit – are shining a light.
🔮 What’s Next For Femtech: Charting A Path For Women’s Health Innovation In The U.S. – From now until January, expect millions of words to be committed to the internet on how Trump’s election impacts X topic. Given what happened last time, that question is particularly important in the context of women’s health issues. Goddess Gaia Ventures’ Priya Oberoi considers what could happen this time.
What to listen to 🔊
Events 📅
BMJ Future Health 2024 - Use the code INNOVATION20 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 🕵️♀️
👻 Managing Director, Medicines Optimisation, Spirit Heallth – Potentially the top company to work for in UK Healthcare (not our words, Carol, the words of Best Company magazine), Spirit Health are looking for a proven healthcare leader to help build up and run a key division.
🏡 Senior Product Manager, Heim – Heim bring healthcare to patients, meeting them at home. The company is looking for a product sage to work as part of cross-functional team and continually develop the platform.
🧦 Founder Associate, Heidi Health – One for all you aussie Pigeons: health AI and clinical scribe platform is looking for a Founder Associate to be the CEO’s right hand person.
🧑💻 Senior SDET (Software Development Engineer in Test), Semble – Fresh off a big raise, connected healthcare company Semble are looking for a SDET to develop and maintain software that does what it says on the tin.
🚲 Senior Product Manager (Cycle Tracking), Flo Health – Flo continue to go from strength to strength, and they’re looking for a product specialist to lead their cycle tracking feature.
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.