#280: I got 99 problems but AI ain't one.
The one-minute (ish) healthtech roundup, by SomX.
Hello healthtech fans.
This week: ChatGPT for doctors now valued at $12bn; breakthrough in pancreatic cancer treatment and Apple watches are fine.
đ Fancy this newsletter in podcast form? đ Well⊠click this linky link to subscribe to the pod on Spotify or hit play below:
And itâs on the SomX YouTube channel if you want to look at humans.
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
đ©ș Medical AI startup OpenEvidence doubles valuation to $12bn in latest round: OpenEvidence, aka âpeer-reviewed ChatGPT for cliniciansâ has just raised $250m at a $12bn valuation. Thatâs doubled their valuation since October... Let that sink in⊠Itâs free for US doctors so if youâre anywhere else in the world youâd be forgiven for not really knowing much about it. Well, on openevidence.com, ChatGP-style, you type a point-of-care question in plain English and you get an evidence-based answer with inline references if you want to check sources. They have deals with NEJM, JAMA, Mayo etc., and very happy investors at Sequoia, GV, NVIDIA⊠Blink and youâll miss the next few billion in value being created.
𧩠Evaro lands $25m funding boost: With a genius âwhy didnât I think of thatâ business model, Evaro are your outsourced regulatory and process umbrella for prescription meds. That means, if youâre a consumer brand (womenâs health company, Clue, is one of their customers), plug in and you can now add prescription healthcare to your platform, as they say, âwithout the headache.â I got 99 problems, but prescriptions, consultations and fulfilment ainât⊠you get the idea.
đ UK NHS trials ârevolutionaryâ AI and robotics to slash lung cancer wait times: Guyâs & St Thomasâ Hospital gets a gold star from Pigeon for squeezing AI & robots into the same story. Theyâre piloting AI that flags lung nodules on scans, plus robotic bronchoscopy, to biopsy hard-to-reach spots as minimally invasively as possible. The idea is swapping the current âscan â wait â rescan â maybe biopsy â wait againâ carousel for a much more streamlined service and patient experience. Pigeon is all for it - weâve seen AI doing similar in a few different clinical areas and pathways now.
đ Gates and OpenAI team up to pilot AI solutions to African healthcare problems: Rwanda is very keen on technological infrastructure - 97% of a very rural population have internet, for example. Now, Rwandans are supporting AI to create âdecision-support toolsâ for thier 60,000-plus community health workers (CHWs) to improve diagnosis and better anticipate when and where to expect malaria cases. What we want = paid, trained, supervised and supplied CHWs. What we donât want = harvesting data, attention and headlines, without improving frontline conditions.
đ Pancreatic tumours eliminated in âbreakthroughâ mouse study: Spanish scientists say theyâve managed to eliminate pancreatic tumours in mice. The trick is a combo that hits the KRAS pathway at three points: daraxonrasib + afatinib + a protein degrader (SD36) for my clinical homies. Itâs preclinical and turning mouse things to human things is⊠famously, not a straight line, but look, in Spain alone, >10,000 cases are diagnosed each year with a five-year survival rate of less than 10 percent, so letâs celebrate progress and good news when we can.
âïž Apple Watch accuracy: living systematic review + meta-analysis: A new systematic review and meta-analysis in Nature Digital Medicine (is there more credible start to a sentence?) pulled 82 validation studies across 14 metrics and the results are in (TLDR: the watch is good for trends, not good for ITU):
Heart rate looks pretty solid on average (tiny bias) but with non-trivial variability
AF detection is more specific than sensitive. Not ideal for GP waiting lists and a lot more 24h tapes ordered, but good for population level identification and downstream benefit.
SpOâ has low average bias but wide agreement limits.
Steps/sleep are okay.
Energy expenditure (calories) is vibes at best.
If anyone has a clear idea what will happen to the consumer wearables market in a post AI, post truth, pseudotechbroscientific world, Iâd love to hear it. I canât tell whether Iâm going to have a light, airy experience of occasional advice, information, education etc., or the crushing weight of inactionable data, expectations and guilt over every behaviour in my life.
And finallyâŠ
đ« How the confident authority of Google AI Overviews is putting public health at risk: The Guardian has found examples of pretty harrowing AI advice⊠This article and, ironically, a quick Google, will show, you guessed it, cancer-related info thatâs basically the opposite of clinical guidance; life threatening advice that âsome people enjoy bathing with a toasterâ and other funny-if-it-wasnât-lethal advice that surely needs a firm regulatory slap on the wrist/face/bank-account.
đŸ Whoop Bands Banned From the Australian Open: A rare tennis-healthtech-marketing crossover which combines all my worlds. Multiple players were told mid-match to take off their banned Whoop bands, and CEO Will Ahmed did what any modern founder would do: posted through it, framing it as âathletesâ right to their own health dataâ (his line: âdata is not steroidsâ). Net result: Grand Slam for Whoop.
đ§ââïž The hidden cost of âgood enoughâ virtual care tech: Most healthtech teams donât get sunk by one big outage; they get bled out by a thousand tiny compromises. Video that cuts out just often enough to dent confidence. The workflows that âmostly workâ until you scale. The support tickets that become background noise. And the security/compliance corners you didnât mean to cut, but now have to explain.
The punchline: âweâll fix it laterâ quietly turns into engineering tax + slower sales cycles + churn you canât quite attribute⊠and then you end up migrating in a panic, on someone elseâs timeline. (Worth a skim: a Whereby write-up that frames this well.)
What to Listen to đ
I prepped long and hard for this interview with the CEO of Neko Health. Listen to it if youâre interested in the future of preventative health. My favourite parts - they only measure whatâs actionable (this isnât a full body MRI situation), you get tests and results all within 45mins and theyâre fiercely protective of long consultation times to support actual behaviour change. Link to my full opinion post is here.
Fibroids are common. But common does not mean normal. From delayed diagnoses to poor education (for patients and clinicians), Claudia, Emma and Dr Michelle Griffin get honest about how womenâs symptoms have been normalised for far too long.
Stay on top of your regulatory knowledge, folks đđŒ
Events đ
World Health Expo Dubai
đ
9-12th Feb 2026
đŠđȘ 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 whatâs actually going to change the way hospitals work.
Biotech and Beers
đ
12th Feb 2026
đŽó §ó ąó łó Łó Žó ż 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 itâs just to let off some steam. Lovely.
And our pick at Hale HouseâŠ
Startup Lab: AI Compliance
đ
18th Feb 2026
đŹđ§ Hale House, London
If youâre 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.
đš And make sure youâre following the Hale House Linkedin page to keep up with all the events coming up at our (healthtechâs) new home in London.
Opportunities đ”ïžââïž
â Foundersâ Associate, Prova Health: London (hybrid). Youâll be given 'blank-slate' problems with the autonomy to solve them. Measured on outcomes, not hours. Looking for a 3-6+ year ops/consulting/startups type who enjoys ambiguity.
đ„ Founderâs Associate / EA, Healthtech 1: ÂŁ50kâÂŁ65k + equity to run the place like a Swiss watch. Be the calm in the startup chaos. Get greatly rewarded. And work with Pigeon-approved, great humans.
đ©ș Medical Operations at Tandem Health: Help Tandem scale their clinician copilot/ambient scribe: onboard and 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.