#246 - It all Hinges on this...
The one-minute healthtech roundup, brought to you by SomX.
Hey friends,
This week: UK healthtech comes out swinging, the NHS learns from Amazon, and Hinge Health goes public.
Your friends all listen to podcasts. Feel like you’re in on the conversation by listening to the Healthtech Pigeon podcast ➡️ SomX’s Huw Penson and Amy Thomas dive into the weeks’ healthtech stories. Available now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
News Bites 🥪
📈 UK health tech startups worth £32bn, report finds – Pigeon’s no economics expert (we know, we always seemed so financially literate…), but £32bn sounds like a lot. With the number of healthtech’s reaching exit more than double those failing, there’s some reasons to be positive in a sector – even as the authors call for procurement reforms to drive growth.
💰 Hormona, a HealthTech startup enabling women to track, understand and optimise their hormones, raises €7.8 million – Women’s health is a trillion dollar opportunity, researchers have claimed, so it’s welcome to see investors putting their money behind some of the most exciting companies in their space.
💵 Finnish MedTech startup Surgify Medical raises €7 million to make bone surgery safer with tissue-selective technology – “Is that soft-tissue or hard-tissue?” – a question Surgify wants to help surgeons answer more easily so they can make the right choices. To do so, they’ve picked up the backing of one of the ZEISS group, which seems to be awfully excited about Surgify’s burrs…
🏥 Joe McDonald: ‘The single patient record is too big to succeed’ – Sure, it’s one side of a bigger argument, but McDonald – who’s done his time in the shared records space – believes we’ve got bigger problems than just records. Care is still too disconnected, while deployments of these platforms work best when they focus on communities.
🚀 ‘Amazon-style’ prescription tracking goes live on NHS App – Great news: you can stop calling your pharmacy every 5 minutes to check if your prescription is ready to collect (it’s definitely great news for your pharmacist, at least). Although it’s probably best we don’t describe NHS-app features as ‘Amazon-style’, lest people start having visions of Penny Dash blowing the NHS budget on sub-orbital rocket trips for her mates. No one else made that leap? Oh, Ok.
🚪 Hinge Health goes public, raises $437.3M in IPO – It’s taken three years for Hinge Health to go from announcing its intent to list to actually going live on the public markets, but it's finally happened. By the close of the first day, things were looking up – could this be a sign to the market that anything’s possible and healthtech IPOs are back on? Pigeon wouldn’t dream of being that optimistic.
5️⃣ Five Lessons From [another] Failed HealthTech Startup – Look, when a startup fails, a few things invariably happen: 1) they disappear for a bit and come back with a new idea to ‘radically transform’ a totally different sector they have no experience in and spent 3 days researching before announcing their launch. 2) They share a ‘lessons learned’ post with all the depth of a custard cream biscuit. This insightful blog isn’t either of those – and is worth a read for anyone entering the dementia space.
What to listen to 🔊
Events 📅
Not one, not two, but three featured events… and as they say, three’s a charm 🪄
FEATURED: Techsperts, this one’s for you. Google Cloud’s Future of Health and Life Sciences Tech Forum - June 6th, 2025, London
Calling all technical experts, data scientists, machine learning engineers and founders at the forefront of healthcare, life sciences, and biotech - Google Cloud is throwing open it’s doors and you’re invited. Prepare for a day full day of practical insights, deep technical sessions, and exclusive hands-on-access to Google’s frontier technologies.
FEATURED: Get in, we’re going to Amsterdam - 2 weeks until HLTH Europe! - June 16-19th, 2025, Amsterdam
We’re officially in June - which means its HLTH Europe month…. IN LESS THAN 15 DAYS. Which also means its less that 15 days until the European healthtech community descends on Amsterdam for 4.5 days of the continent’s best innovation event. Pigeon won’t stop banging on about it until you’ve booked your ticket -HE25_SOMX250 gets lovely 250 euros off your ticket. What are you waiting for?!
FEATURED: The Glastonbury of Healthtech is coming to Oxfordshire! Join us at THE FIX! - September 18th, 2025, Harwell Science Campus
Tickets are flying off the shelves (shelves are a metaphor, but the sales are real) for this healthtech festival like no other. WIth a bunch of new partners onboard, and a host of existing sessions planned (we’re trying to work out what an NHS reverse pitch is!) and a former government health minister on DJ duties (don’t worry, he’s got the chops), it’s probably not one to miss. Use the code SOMX15 for 15% off your ticket price.
SXSW London
⏰ June 2-7
📍 London
Radical Health
⏰ June 3-7
📍 Helsini, FInland
Money 20/20
⏰ June 3-4
📍 Amsterdam
Agentic AI in Healthcare
⏰ June 4
📍 London
London Tech Week
⏰ June 9-13
📍 London
HMISS Paris
⏰ June 10-12
📍 Paris
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 🕵️♀️
💗 Growth & Partnerships Lead | Health, Quantium – Quantium’s health division is hiring again, and this time it’s for someone who can drive their grown and build partnerships with clinical leaders and healthcare transformation teams. If you’ve got the requisite knowledge of UK healthcare and 4+ years of sales under your best, hit the apply button.
💊 Senior Manager, Digital Health Technologies, Regeneron – Know your eCOA systems development processes? Big on digital health technologies? Understand trial management systems? Of course you do. Why not go join Regeneron to bring new digital platforms into their research and study processes.
🧾 Account Manager, 8fold Governance – Our friends at 8fold are looking for a customer service professional with a background in healthtech and health innovation to help build and nurture their pipeline of awesome clients. If this sounds like you, head over to their website and apply.
💿 Data Analytics/Science Lead | Microsoft AI – Microsoft’s health AI team are on a bit of a recruitment drive from the sounds of it, as they look to hire yet another key player. This time, they’re looking for a data scientist with proficiency in python to beef up their consumer work.
😷 RCS England vacancies — Royal College of Surgeons – From Press officer to project manager, BizDev to exams officer, there’s a whole bunch of roles going at the Royal College of Surgeons. Go take a look and see if there’s anything that suits 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.