#267 It's a blackout
The one-minute healthtech roundup, brought to you by SomX, and kindly sponsored by Whereby - secure video calls for telehealth.
Hi friends,
This week - AWS meltdowns led to global service shutdowns, including those in healthcare. Meanwhile, smoke signals of some good news in the endometriosis field, and big tech and government get cosy.
đïž Fancy this in podcast form?: Listen to SomXâs Belle and Helen from the BMJ (yep, the actual BMJ - look at us with our fancy guests) chatting through this weekâs stories on the Healthtech Pigeon podcast.
And itâs on YouTube for the whippersnappers among you.
Integrating video calling into digital health can be a challenge and in reality, âgood enoughâ, rarely is. Security gaps, clunky experiences, and unreliable connections all risk eroding patient trust. Whereby is different. For over a decade, weâve partnered with healthcare professionals to move away from mediocre by delivering secure, reliable, and easy-to-use video consultations. Our flexible API makes it simple to embed video calls directly into your platform, reducing engineering overhead, leaving you to focus on what you do best.
News Bites đ„Ș
đïž Alphabetâs Verily Launching New AI Health App for Data Sharing: Verily announced their launch of a new AI-powered health app - Verily Me - this week, which lets users access and share health records with clinicians to offer real-time insights and tips. Given that the average personâs health data is probably scattered across eight different patient portals within different âecosystems,*â this seems to be an attempt by Googleâs sibling to fix data interoperability for the average person, rather than revolutionise healthcare infrastructure. As weâre talking about an Alphabet company here, you can bet privacy watchdogs are grabbing their binoculars.
đ©ž Scientists develop breakthrough approach to detecting endometriosis in menstrual blood: The folks at precision medicine org Endogene.Bio have identified a novel way of detecting endometriosis and uncovered critical new information about its biology, paving the way for tailored treatments and a non-surgical diagnostic test that involves isolating cells directly from menstrual blood. Currently, the only definitive way to diagnose endometriosis (which affects an estimated 1 in 10 women worldwide) is invasive, costly surgery, with an average time to diagnosis taking a soul-crushing 7-10 years. Endogeneâs partnership with industry giant Exeltis also means theyâre serious about getting this to market (Pigeon thinks the sooner, the better). [Worth noting⊠whatâs linked as a âclinical studyâ in the article is actually a pre-print. That is NOT a clinical study. Itâs reeeeeally important that media orgs get better at calling this out - otherwise everyone will cry wolf with a preprint, real science suffers, and itâs absolute chaos. The signs might be great, but preprints are preliminary reports of work that have NOT been certified by peer review and calling them clinical studies is misleading and unethical. Have a listen to the podcast below for way more context on thisâŠ]
𧏠Cyclana Bio raises ÂŁ5m to boost womenâs health: Speaking of womenâs health, while Endogene is tackling diagnostics, Cambridge-based Cyclana Bio is focused on new drugs acting at a cellular tissue level. The pre-seed fundraise will help Cyclanaâs mission to find new, non-hormonal, and super-targeted drugs by acting on the environment the cells live in, not just the cells themselvesâŠ
đ€ Hyro secures $45 million to scale AI automation in US healthcare: More fundraising news, with US-based startup Hyro securing cash to deploy AI agents across hospitals and health systems. This is all about tackling the administrative bloat and staff burnout thatâs crippling hospitals. By automating up to 85% of these routine tasks (and integrating with EHRs like Epic), Hyro frees up human staff to deal with the urgent, complex cases. For patients, it means a âdigital front doorâ that is, they say, actually open. Pigeonâs take here is that many roads seem to be leading towards an AI automation layer across healthcare, and itâs doubtful there will be just one winner.
đ Major NHS AI trial delivers unprecedented time and cost savings: The largest AI trial of its kind globally in healthcare, involving more than 30,000 NHS workers, has shown how new technology could generate unprecedented time savings for NHS staff and lead to better care for patients. A pilot of Microsoft 365 Copilot across 90 NHS organisations found AI-powered administrative support could save the NHS, on average, 43 minutes or more per staff member per day (thatâs 5 whole weeks of time per person annually, FYI), equating to millions of hours every year to allow staff to focus more effectively on frontline care. If Pigeon were a cynical bird, they might question the lack of peer review here, and wonder if this functions largely as a showcase for a big tech company, but the UK Government wouldnât do that, surely?
đ©đ»âđ» BUT⊠itâ ainât great news for all things AI in healthcare, because a New study shows AI chatbots systematically violate mental health ethics standards: The research led by Brown University computer scientists, working side-by-side with mental health practitioners, showed that chatbots are prone to a variety of ethical violations. This includes inappropriately navigating crises, providing misleading responses that reinforce usersâ negative beliefs about themselves and others, and creating a false sense of empathy with users. It shows that just because an AI can talk like a therapist, it doesnât mean that anyone should be treating it like one.
âïž AWS Down: The Billion-Dollar Impact of Cloud Dependency: Youâve seen the headlines in real-time, but hereâs a retro on the consequences of the AWS outage, highlighting the troubling reality that digital infrastructure relies on surprisingly fragile foundations. Beyond the memes (and yes, that was a SomX-AWS crossover doggo on the error page đ¶, heâs a good boi), this was a fire drill for the entire healthtech industry. Expect âmulti-cloudâ and âredundancyâ to be the hottest buzzwords at your next board meeting.
đȘ Bridging the Conflicting Team Priorities in Telehealth for Better Care - In the modern healthcare world, the responsibility of using telemedicine is to get it right. Whatâs the most important feature? How do you align different teams in telehealth? Wherebyâs latest report is the result of conversations with over 160 industry leaders and found that different teams have different challenges, and, when thereâs friction, even good intentions can pull projects (and pigeons) in opposite directions. If you want to know where those gaps show up most often, and how leading organisations are closing them to deliver excellence in telemedicine - read onâŠ
What to Listen to đ
Hi, James here⊠you might be wondering⊠is he really putting in a second podcast of himself into the newsletter? Yes. The reason, though (insatiable-attention-seeking), is that I get asked a LOT about the transition/journey from medic to founder of SomX. This answers that FULLY, so if you want to know, or you get asked and want to direct people to a resource, go take a listen - some great people on those episodes đđŒ
Events đ
Global Health Exhibition
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October 27 - 30
đRiyadh Exhibition and Convention Center (Malham)
Stage Two Berlin
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October 28 - 30
đBerlin, Germany
Transforming Rare Disease Detection Across Clinical Care â An initiative around HPP in adults
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October 30
đOnline
8th ZIMAM Digital Health Forum
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November 4 - 8
đDubai, UAE
OHT London: Monthly HealthTech Breakfast: Spotlight on Health Equity
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November 4
đ Hale House, London
NXGN The Launch Equation @ Hale House (sponsored by Alethira)
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November 5
đ Hale House, London
HealthtechX
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November 5
đ Hurlingham Club, London
IEEE Global Public Health Forum 2025 â Powering AI for Climate-Ready Population Health
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Nov 6
đLondon, UK
BMJ Future Health conference
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Nov 6 - 7
đ London
đĄ Save 20% off the ticket price with the code PIGEON20
Opportunities đ”ïžââïž
HSJ Digital Awards | Entries open - Deadline Friday 14 November
Are you a healthtechy or an NHSer that has done a thing? Well, you should win an award for that thing. The HSJ Digital Awards 2026 is out to recognise the NHSâ most ground-breaking digital projects, services, and teams.
There are 25 categories around improving patient experience, driving innovation, and boosting productivity, so if youâre not doing one of those, then, frankly what on earth are you doing otherwise.
đ Enter here (itâs free)
đ View the categories and download the entry guide
Not a great Q3? Performance review ainât performing? Take a look at what weâve found on offer this week for your next career pivot:
Senior Group Leader in Clinical and Diagnostic Virology at the University of Oxford
Associate Director Medical Information at Novartis
Digital Advanced Clinical Practitioner at Doctor Care Anywhere
SERM Scientific Director at GSK
Director, Medical and Scientific Strategy at IQVIA
* I think âecosystemâ might actually be the most overused word of my entire career. Iâm never not building one, in one or trying to leave one. Mostly the latter.