#279: Mind the Gap (In Your Neural Data)
The one-minute (ish) healthtech roundup, by SomX.
Hello healthtech fans. Yes, I know it’s Monday and this is late and I’m VERY sorry. Had a heck of a day on Friday and forgot to schedule it. As I always say, consistency beats talent any day of the week, so with the state of these jokes, we currently have neither. Anyway, entrepreneurship 101… onward!
This week: A neuro-focused edition for all you brain-fans. Sam Altman wants to read your brain, UNESCO wants to regulate it, and a finger-prick test might catch Alzheimer's 15 years early.
🎙 Fancy this newsletter in podcast form, with some juicy gossip to impress your friends? 👇 Well… click this linky link to go straight to the pod on Spotify. Or click play here…
And it’s on YouTube if you want to look at humans.
News Bites 🥪
🧠 Sam Altman Wants to Read Your Mind (No, Literally): Another day, another potentially diabolical (or amazing) human-race altering technology. Merge Labs has just come out of stealth with a casual $252 million for BCIs (brain computer interfaces). The plan is to increase the bandwidth and brain coverage of currently available BCIs by several orders of magnitude and much less invasive with it. To do that, they’re going to use molecules instead of electrodes to connect with neurons (!?) and deep-reaching modalities like ultrasound to pass info. They say that it’s focused on medical applications first - “we could restore lost abilities, support healthier brain states, deepen our connection with each other, and expand what we can imagine and create alongside advanced AI.” Create zombie army, second*.
🌍 UNESCO Says Maybe We Should Have Rules About Brain Data? Just a Thought?: ‘The ethics of neurotechnology’, should be a phrase we hear a lot more often. Back in November, you probably didn’t hear that UNESCO announced a global standard for neurotech ethics, which makes a lot of sense as so much of what makes us human is at risk… mental integrity, human dignity, personal identity, freedom of thought, cognitive liberty, and mental privacy… As tech hurtles forward, this article asks - do we need to put on the brakes? Hard to argue.
🇦🇺 Brain mapping AI scaleup raises $36M Series D: And FUN that your government could be a shareholder in your brain too if you’re Australian. Omniscient Neurotechnology has raised a $36M Series D (with $20M from the Australian government**), specifically for AI that maps individual brain connections from MRI scans. On a serious note, it’s pretty cool tech - it helps neurosurgeons to personalise treatment plans instead of using generalised anatomical diagrams. Want to sound insufferably cool? In a large group, announce: “Connectomics is an exciting new field.” Then after the silence, ask “oh you haven’t heard of the connectome?” Then explain this.
🔬 A Finger-Prick Test for Alzheimer's Disease? Yes Please. This is fantastic news and healthtech at its best. It’s being trialled with 1,000 volunteers in the UK, US and Canada, potentially replacing the current options of expensive PET scans or painful lumbar punctures (which these volunteers will also have as a benchmark). It looks for proteins that build up 15+ years before symptoms appear, and it’s so simple that it can be done at home. Almost a million people each year are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. For all of us who may be at risk, this is def giving***. Though, it does bring up the questions ‘would you want to know?’ and ‘what can be done if we do know?’
🔎 GQ Goes Inside the Full-Body Scan Boom: And on the note of ‘knowing,’ British GQ has published a very interesting deep dive into Neko Health, Prenuvo, Ezra and the preventative scanning market, complete with the writer discovering a cyst in his own brain. The healthtech world seems split on the value of full body scans, but in this article, Oliver Franklin-Wallis summarises it poetically… “How you feel about body scans - beyond your ability to afford one - is really a question of your tolerance for worry.” And he coins the most relatable phrase to define who he was in the run up to the scan and the result: “Schrödinger’s hypochondriac: healthy and unhealthy at the same time.” A fantastic long read if you can make the time.
🩺 Eolas Medical Raises £9M to Scale AI in the NHS: Dr Declan Kelly (The Healthtech Podcast alumnus and highly rated around here) has raised £9M for Eolas Medical, a clinical knowledge platform now in 85% of NHS acute trusts. The tech helps clinicians find guidelines and medicines info "up to 10 times faster" than hospital intranets and the latest feature lets them ask questions in plain English. Check out the pod episode here for a deep dive on the tech and the application.
And finally…
🦠 Sanome's Infection-Detection AI Goes Live: Sanome update for those keeping track: their infection-detection AI is now actually live at Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability. Trained on four years of patient data, the model spots emerging infections before they become emergencies, which, given HAIs cost the health service £2.7 billion a year (aka a Jubilee Line Extension, annually), is probably a big deal. For anyone interested in how it differs from a human doing a MEWS score 👇
What to Listen to 🔊
Loved doing this episode with Tharni. An amazing career across healthcare and healthtech, including at Hertility and saw their growth from pre-seed 🌱 Now she’s horizon-scanning for NICE, so if you’re a startup looking to get on her radar, or your interested in how someone puts an epic healthtech career together, give this one a listen.
Two absolute legends 👆🏼
Flipping the doomsday script and focusing on the AI-positives 👆🏼
Events 📅
The Festival of Genomics & Biodata, ExCeL London
📅 28th-29th Jan 2026
🇬🇧 ExCeL, London
Two days of genomics, biodata, and precision medicine, from sequencing and AI-driven discovery to what actually happens when you try to move this stuff out of the lab and into a health system.
World Health Expo Dubai
📅 9-12th Feb 2026
🇦🇪 Dubai Exhibition Centre, Dubai
The big one. Four days in Dubai, 4,300+ exhibitors, 180 countries, three stages covering everything from AI-driven diagnostics to surgical innovation. Formerly Arab Health, now World Health Expo BUT its the same energy, new branding, and a lot of people in lanyards trying to figure out what’s actually going to change the way hospitals work.
Biotech and Beers
📅 12th Feb 2026
🏴 Brewdog Doghouse, Edinburgh (EH8 8BH)
Huge emphasis on community for this one. Agenda-free networking evening, a chance to connect with leaders in the space and (they say) even if it’s just to let off some steam. Lovely.
And our pick at Hale House…
Startup Lab: AI Compliance
📅 18th Feb 2026
🇬🇧 Hale House, London
If you’re a Hale House member, check your Spacemade app to sign up and listen to the legendary Keith Grimes educate you on the core compliance essentials startups need to understand when building or deploying AI.
🚨 And make sure you’re following the Hale House Linkedin page to keep up with all the events coming up at our (healthtech’s) new home in London.
Opportunities 🕵️♀️
🤖 Medical Director, Department of Health and Social Care: Ooof. Fancy £270,000 a year to implement the reforms set out in the 10 Year Health Plan and Dash Review? Might throw my hat in… 👀
🩺 Medical Operations at Tandem Health: Help Tandem scale their clinician copilot/ambient scribe: onboard & train users, collect frontline feedback, and work with product/commercial to get it embedded into real workflows. Full-time London with local customer travel and regular Stockholm trips. You get equity and if you have 2+ years of clinical experience - ideal.
☎️ Growth Specialist at healthtech-1: Love these guys. This one’s building relationships with GP practices, running outreach/campaigns, and generally making sure the product actually gets adopted in the real world (reception desks are the final boss). Get £45k–£60k, equity + commission.
* Joke for legal reasons etc., but they didn’t say they’re NOT doing that. Also, worth clarifying that restoring lost function and many other of the indications are, if they turn out as expected, positively life-changing for those affected, so there’s a huge amount of potential to do good in the world. Playing with the brain is just one of scenarios that many of us, when hearing about it, will have a more than a prang of existential dread.
** Technically, from The National Reconstruction Fund (NRF), which is investing $15Bn on behalf of the Australian Government.
*** If you understood this sentence, I bet your back doesn’t hurt.
This piece really made me think, sometimes I wish I could BCI my pilates instructor.
The Alzheimer's finger prick test sounds like such a win! Massive potential, but it also opens that slightly uncomfortable question of whether earlier knowing helps when our treatment options are still limited. I wonder if people could be treated prophylactically...