#240 - Frankenfood: Dawn of the Nuggets
The one-minute healthtech roundup, brought to you by SomX.
Happy Easter, healthtech friends,
This week: lab-grown chicken nuggets, billion-dollar investments in AI startups, new laws for mental health chatbots, and smartphones staving off the onset of dementia.
Your friends all listen to podcasts. Feel like you’re in on the conversation by listening to the Healthtech Pigeon podcast ➡️ Amy and Taffy from SomX break down the best stories from this week’s newsletter. Available now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
News Bites 🥪
🇺🇲 Medical device maker Belluscura expects 20% tariff on products sold in US It seems that Trump’s tariffs are already ringing alarm bells in the med tech sector, with medical device maker Belluscura expecting to pay a serious surcharge on its US product sales. The company has downgraded its economic outlook for 2025, as many of its components are sourced from China. Pigeon wonders whether this will spark a wave of companies sourcing components and manufacturing products elsewhere to cut down costs and stay competitive.
💰 Fierce Healthcare Fundraising Tracker—Hellocare.ai banks $47M; SignalFire raises $1B to invest in AI startups – There’s been some serious investment activity going on in the world of health tech this week, with SignalFire investing $1 billion into high-growth AI startups. Hellocare.ai has also raised an impressive $47M for its AI-assisted virtual care for patients in hospitals.
💉 Innovative Blood Testing Tech Could Spell the End of Needle Phobia – This joint venture between Thriva and Tasso offers a virtually painless form of blood testing technology, allowing blood collection to take place at home without needles or finger pricks. This could be a game changer for patients with needlephobia, which affects 1 in 10 UK adults. Being used as a human pin cushion in a doctor's surgery could well be a thing of the past.
🤖 Utah Enacts Mental Health Chatbot Law – The use of chatbots in mental health care has been a controversial issue for some time, however, our friends across the pond have now placed restrictions on their use. The new legislation prevents the sharing of confidential patient data, the use of advertising, and requires full disclosure that tech is AI and not a human.
📲 Smartphone users may have sharper minds in old age – A major new study suggests that people who use smartphones regularly typically have better brain health, which can stave off the onset of dementia and cognitive decline in old age. This challenges the idea of digital dementia that technology like smartphones, computers and the internet make people mentally lazy and less cognitively active.
🧬 The potential of digital health and AI for transforming rare disease care – Rare diseases have been a Cinderella sector for some time, overshadowed by other treatment areas like oncology and dementia. However, digital health technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly being combined to transform the care of rare diseases, addressing longstanding challenges in diagnosis, management, and patient support.
🦀 MedTech looking to eliminate skin cancer fatalities raises £15m – Could robot dermatologists help us skip past the awkward “is this mole concerning?” question to our doctor” A London-based MedTech company is on a mission to eliminate skin cancer, and has ambitious plans for international expansion in countries with acute shortages of dermatologists.
😷 NICE approves 11 robotic surgery systems for use in the NHS – These cutting innovations (pun intended) have the potential to transform patient care, leaving the surgeon to focus on polishing their scalpels and updating their coworkers' software. Precision is crucial when going under the knife, and this new medical technology enables movements far more precise than the human hand.
🐔 Lab-grown chicken ‘nuggets’ hailed as ‘transformative step’ for cultured meat. Researchers in Japan are reporting a potential breakthrough in lab-grown meat, with the creation of nugget-sized chicken pieces. This innovation could offer an ethical alternative to traditional chicken, potentially hitting store shelves within the next five to ten years. This 'Mary Shelley meets McDonald’s' culinary concoction certainly intrigues Pigeon. One can only hope this 'Frankenfood' lives up to the flavour of the legendary chicken nugget.
What to listen to 🔊
Events 📅
Neuroscience and Neurotech Networking Event
🕣 April 24
📍 London
National Health-Tech Innovation Conference
⏰ April 23-24
📍 Vancouver, Canada
LSX World Congress
⏰ April 28-30
📍 London
Future of Women's Health Innovation, Research + AI - Expert Panel + Networking
⏰ May 2
📍 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 🕵️♀️
🩻 Quality Manager - AI Medical Devices, Hyfe — Are you an experienced quality manager with an interest in AI health tech? This role will involve working for a global leader in AI monitoring technology and providing quality assurance for two innovative medical devices.
🩸 Senior Healthcare Technical Officer (SHTO), NHS Blood and Transplant — This role will play a pivotal role in ensuring the delivery of vital blood products and tissues to hospitals across the South East. It involves monitoring storage conditions, maintaining equipment, and supporting the smooth running of the healthcare supply chain.
🧑⚕️ Healthcare Solutions Specialist, Uniphar Medtech — Do you have experience in bringing new software products to market? If you are an experienced healthcare solutions specialist interested in supporting the launch and adoption of cutting-edge quality, regulatory, and safety software solutions in the NHS this could be the perfect role for you.
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.