#242 - Welcome to the Pigeon’s Den 🐉
The one-minute healthtech roundup, brought to you by SomX.
Hey friends,
This week: a strong week for AI scribes, Woebot shutters its app, and Priory adds a digital front door for mental health
Your friends all listen to podcasts. Feel like you’re in on the conversation by listening to the Healthtech Pigeon podcast ➡️ Huw and Amy from SomX break down the best stories from this week’s newsletter with help from Tandem Health’s, Dr Katie Baker. Available now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
News Bites 🥪
🤝 Accurx and Tandem Health roll out AI scribing tool across the NHS – More than 100 AI scribes have hit the market since ChatGPT rolled out and everyone asked the question: ‘Ok, but how do we use this in health?’. Tandem is one of a small number of genuine standouts in the space, each of which seem to have a different GTM strategy. And we can’t help but think an Accurx partnership is a strategy that could be hard to beat.
✍️ Ambient voice technology guidance launched by NHSE to support adoption – A boon for the ambient scribe community as the centre goes all-in on the technology for use in the NHS, and finally gives those who had been holding back the guidance they were looking for on how to implement and use these tools.
🤖 Woebot Health is shutting down its app – Could this mean no more Woebot? Unlikely, with the company distinctly focusing their user-focused messaging around the shuttering of the app itself, and has declined to respond to journalist requests for comment. It’s hard to believe that Woebot’s chatbot won’t still be accessible in other forms, but given the state of the DTc market over the last couple of years, anything’s possible.
📲 Few digital health technologies can address multimorbidity – “There’s an app for that” declared Steve Jobs when the app store launched in the mid 2000s. It’s a sentence that’s truer than ever: there’s hundreds of apps for helping patients manage individual conditions. Sadly, health issues rarely occur in isolation, and you’re going to need to load up your phone if you’ve got more than one.
🔦 AI healthtech startup Spotlight Pathology wins £425k funding to help its work on blood cancer diagnosis – Promising noises from the Manchester based startup, which aims to use computer vision models to diagnose lymphoma and leukemia faster and more accurately. The business has an ambitious to-do list for how they’ll use the funding, including regulatory approval in the UK and pilot-launches across Europe and the US.
💰 US DJ Steve Aoki, celebrities fund healthtech firm's series A – Pigeon won’t lie: we take all our investment tips from celebs. We’re going to back Superpower because Logan Paul likes it; we backed that wellness app Matt Damon invested in, and you probably didn’t know that we sit on the board of Goop. Jokes aside (we’re haven’t backed any of these companies, and the only loser from that is us), Superpower’s 150,000 strong waitlist for subscription based blood tests and health assessments is a model to watch.
♀ Telehealth company LifeMD accelerates push into women's health market with acquisition deal – The scoop up of Optimal Human Health’s assets will give LifeMD what they need to break into the women’s health market – the latest example of companies’ growing or expanding their presence in the space through acquisition.
🧠 Psyomics and Priory partner to revolutionise access to personalised mental health care – Psyomics continues to march onward, bringing its digital front door for mental health services to new partners, and this one – which sees the company partner with mental health giant Priory – will help patients access care faster.
What to listen to 🔊
Events 📅
Breaking Barriers: How Society Shapes Mental Health Outcomes
⏰ May 9
📍 London
Mena Telehealth & Virtual Care Expo
⏰ May 13-14
📍 Riyadh
Hash It Out: Secrets to Success in Healthtech
⏰ May 13
📍 London
Women in Biotech - Edinburgh
⏰ May 14
📍 Edinburgh
SXSW London
⏰ June 2-7
📍 London
Radical Health
⏰ June 3-7
📍 Helsini, FInland
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 🕵️♀️
Head of Innovation in Mental Health, Wellcome — If Pigeon had any of the qualifications, we’d be first in line for what could be one of the most rewarding roles at one of the industry’s most exciting employers. Lucky for you, we don’t. So you probably stand more of a chance.
Head of Clinical Pharmacy, HealthHarmonie — For pharmacy/healthcare service leads with experience and understanding of prescribing and overseeing prescribing of medicines, and a an interest in clinical systems innovation, this one is a must look.
Consultant Psychiatrist (Adult ADHD) — Personalised mental health app Augmentive wants a consultant psychiatrist to join their team, and make a different for patients with ADHD and Autism.
Research and innovation associate, Concentric — Bit of a health research expert? Know how to get to the mean of a thorny problem? Digital consent gurus Concentric are looking for someone to take on a problem and run with it.
Clinical operations coordinator — Two jobs from Concentric? Pigeon’s really spoiling you now. If you thrive off human connection and understand the healthcare space like the back of your hand, this role helping to manage customer accounts is for you.
Senior Medical Device Specialist, Microsoft — If you know the regulatory landscape for medical devices, have experience working testing and validating software and can work with teams across a business to push tools to market, there could be few better places to do that Microsoft, right?
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.