#281: Diabolical, biological & neurological tech
The one-minute (ish) healthtech roundup, by SomX.
Hello healthtech homies.
This week: Boosts for: womenâs health, girlsâ mental health, over 60sâ health, family health and another potentially diabolical Black Mirror scenario that will probably be fine, or it wonât be đ
đ Fancy this newsletter in podcast form? đ Well⊠Jessica and Harry from SomX chat through all the best news from this week. Click this linky link to get the pod on Spotify. And itâs on the SomX YouTube channel if you want to look at them while they say things.
News Bites đ„Ș
đ Ananda Impact Ventures shooting for the stars (and bottom of the sea): Although the first close on their 5th fund came in at a cool âŹ73m, Zoe Peden, a partner at the firm, made it clear that the number isnât the priority. Biosecurity, ocean technologies and naturetech are some of the healthtech-adjacent areas Zoe wants to change on a systemic level. As a (very successful) exited-healthtech-founder-turned-VC, weâre sure Zoe has a soft spot for anything overlapping into healthtech, so donât be shy if youâre after pre-seed or seed cash in Europe. Either give Zoe a shout here or scour your LinkedIn connections to skip the queue with a warm intro.
đ€ UK Dept. for Science, Innovation and Technology parters with Anthropic: Navigating the gov.uk website isnât high on anyoneâs list of enjoyable activities, but great news - a massive AI company, Anthropic, is integrating agentic AI to create the âGOV.UK AI assistant,â which will seamlessly guide you through the experience of ordering a new bin, paying an unjust parking ticket and helping you come to terms with the state of your passport photo at renewal. It might not be purely healthtech, but if getting an AI agent into government systems that consistently make you want to throw your phone out the window is step 1, tackling the NHS is surely step 2âŠ
âFitbit founders unveil a new platform to track the health of the whole family: FitBits are the OG wearable, but since being bought by Google, fair to say less cool these days. Not quite resigned to having âthe Nokia of their generation,â on their CV, the founders have a new venture, Luffu, which collects and records health data from across platforms, tracks medication, diet, sleep and does the âAI-powered alertsâ thing. Pigeonâs guess is that there will be many players like this in the AI layer between you and your wearables, each with their own flavour. Luffu, for example, are specifically tailoring to the family unit. Is it a match made in heaven? Or more Fit(Bit)ingly*, a match made for the family group.
đŠ Womenâs health clinic Midi Health raises $100M in Series D to scale nationally: The blessing** of womenâs health unicorns has grown, with Midi Health closing their Series D funding this week - even more impressive at just five-years-old. A startup focusing on perimenopause and menopause reaching this kind of valuation is promising, exciting, and frankly kind of a big deal, because this area, like many in womenâs health, so often feels like an afterthought. As if we needed to repeat ourselves again (we do), another mighty ÂŁ1 billion valuation proves yet again, WOMEN AND WOMENâS HEALTH ARE NOT NICHE.
đ Wysa secures ÂŁ5.3m to support girlsâ mental health in rural India: Challenges for adolescent girls in rural India look very different to what we might be used to in the west - with restricted autonomy, limited tech access, lower literacy, stigma, and family gatekeeping topping the âproblems to solveâ list. âAI + humanâ is broadly the answer, like it is in many areas of clinical support, but the interesting part is also the less glamorous one overall - how do you make mental health support usable when the phone isnât really yours and privacy is⊠aspirational? The plan - map the barriers, co-design the delivery with academic/community partners, then test it properly in real-world LMIC settings. One to follow for the learning and its potential global impact..
đ” Lateral, a healthcare platform targeted at over 60s, raises ÂŁ2.5m in seed funding: Theyâre going after the massive (and usually patronised) market of 14m+ UK over-60s who need help navigating healthcare and financial wellbeing. Their first product is the Lateral Health Plan: one policy combining private healthcare cover, nurse-led navigation (including NHS + private options), and âstay-healthy benefitsâ like an annual check. The founders (ex-Zego MD Laura Ashforth and ex-ManyPets CEO Steven Mendel***) are basically saying: retirement isnât frailty, itâs admin, so letâs make the admin less grim, with simple, transparent pricing and actual humans you can call. Time to get the fake ID out again, because honestly, sounds ideal.
đ§ Reply and the University of Milan begin experimental work exploring biological computing: We could easily have a Black Mirror section of this newsletter where we add all the news that puts us closer to a utopia/dystopia coin toss.**** On that note, a company called Reply and the University of Milan are leveraging the processing capabilities of living human neurons and integrating them with software systems. The aim is efficiency and itâs kinda working - a few years ago, neuronal cultures (cute name for tech-enhanced brain matter) learned the game Pong in just a few minutes using significantly fewer training examples than conventional artificial intelligence systems. Now theyâre replacing GPUs. What a time to be alive.
What to Listen to đ
Refreshingly candid from Lawrie about whatâs crushing frontline medical teams - heâs a consultant anaesthetist and Clinical Product Lead at DrDoctor and this isnât a âbuild cooler AIâ episode, itâs a âreduce cognitive load, respect workflows, nail the basics, and stop treating the adoption of tech by clinicians as a footnoteâ episode.
Steveâs latest guest, Sara Roberts (4x healthtech founder and founder of Well Purposed), talks about building companies with long-term impact, the trade-offs founders donât always say out loud, and how to scale without losing your values (or yourself) in the process đđŒ
A really timely conversation with Deborah Cohen, (who, fun fact, came to one of our SomX team days as our guest speaker) on how online health info can both empower and mislead - and why wellness influencers are increasingly trusted over traditional health institutions.
Events đ
Techscaler Health & Medtech Innovation Summit
đ
24th Feb 2026
đŹđ§ Edinburghâs Futures Institute, Edinburgh
Half-day meetup for Scotlandâs health and medtech community to connect with founders, investors and ecosystem partners. Has a very healthy emphasis on sharing practical learnings and building useful relationships.
Radiology AI Summit
đ
24th-26th Feb 2026
đŹđ§ London Institute for Healthcare Engineering, London
Big-names-galore summit bringing together clinicians, academics, industry and policy voices to focus on what it takes to move AI from promising demos into real diagnostic and clinical workflowsâŠ
And our pick at Hale HouseâŠ
Hash It Out: The Clinical ROI Gap in HealthTech
đ
17th Feb 2026
đŹđ§ Hale House, London
A structured discussion on how to translate clinical insight into adoption and commercial outcomes - moving beyond late-stage validation to the kinds of input that can shape product, evidence, and go-to-market earlier.
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 Community Engagement Manager, Hale House: Youâll run the member experience and events programme at the hottest spot in London healthtech and act as the connective tissue between founders, NHS/industry partners, and the wider district. If youâre good at turning a building into a network, curating the right rooms, the right intros, and the right moments, this is a solid gig.
đ Product Lead (Healthcare), Anthropic: Oof this is a big one. San Francisco / New York City (hybrid). Youâll own and define Anthropicâs healthcare strategy end-to-end, build AI products that meaningfully reduce inefficiencies in the US healthcare system, and represent the company in healthcare forums. Itâs a 0 to 1 role with broad cross-functional ownership, for someone with deep domain expertise and strong execution.
âïž Clinical Governance Lead, Numan: London (hybrid). Youâll lead and embed clinical governance systems to ensure safe, efficient, compliant care across Numanâs digital health services while managing risk, audits, incident response and safeguarding, looking for someone with strong clinical governance and operational experience.
đ Innovative Health Discovery Lead, Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine: Very nice innovation role focused on improving the clinical trial operating model: identifying pain points across the clinical portfolio, building an intake & prioritisation process, and scouting internal/external solutions that can genuinely improve patient/site experience, timelines, and cost.
* Weâre off to a flying start with the jokes this week
** Yes, âblessingâ is the correct collective noun for unicorns. Yes I did look it up. Yes I am now quite interested in what my targeted advertising will show me.
*** Good pedigree đ
**** When the end of the world comes and the AI uprising happens, I do wonder whether weâll look back at the moment where we let AI morph with brain calls and think - ah maybe that was the bad thing. Or, for all the potential research and future therapies, do we look back and think it was the beginning of so many good things? âIn drug discovery, for example, researchers could test how neurons react to different compounds in real time, potentially speeding up treatments for diseases like Alzheimerâs and Parkinsonâs. Unlike traditional cell cultures, which exist in static environments, these neural networks behave like actual brain tissue. Scientists wouldnât just be observing chemical reactions; theyâd be studying cognition in action. That level of biological realism could make clinical trials faster, cheaper, and more effective.â yankodesign.com
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