#290: Mo' Data, Mo' Problems
The one-minute (ish) healthtech roundup, by SomX.
Hi healthtech friends, exciting week this week. Pigeon Insider launches for those of you that canât get enough Pigeon and thereâs all this in the newsâŚ
This week: A waist-worn wearable designed for women launches in Lagos, a wrongful death lawsuit asks some very uncomfortable healthtech questions, AI psychosis is a new clinical pattern we need to understand, nobody knows who should own our data (the top two contenders are Palantir and the government, believe it or not), and you might be swapping your stethoscope for a POCUS probe.
đ Fancy this newsletter in podcast form? đ Well⌠This week, Jessica, James and Hugh Harvey talk about everything âbig tech regulation.â And a lot about wearables too.
Click this linky link to get the pod on Spotify. And itâs on the SomX YouTube channel if you like to look at the faces of people when they talk.
News Bites đĽŞ
đ¤ Google updates Geminiâs mental health safeguards: A really sad case has thankfully led to some change. A wrongful death lawsuit was filed in March saying Gemini spent weeks manufacturing a delusional fantasy for a 36-year-old Florida man before framing his death as a âspiritual journey.â Google have responded with a redesigned one-touch crisis hotline interface, a âhelp is availableâ module developed with clinical experts, and $30 million over three years to global crisis hotlines. LLM-induced-psychosis is a relatively new, but very real clinical concern. It shouldnât have required a lawsuit to unlock safeguards, but here we are. A great Substack read below on the topic by a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry for those interested.
âď¸ UK NHS staff are refusing to work on Palantirâs ÂŁ330m data platform: A quiet rebellion is underway inside the UK NHS with staff refusing to engage with Palantirâs ÂŁ330m Federated Data Platform because of their ties to US defence contracts and its CEOâs âpolitical positionsâ (Trump immigration cheerleading). As one senior NHS official put it: âPeople are saying, âI refuse to work on this software. You have to find something else for me to do.ââ Worth noting the FDP is already live across many, many NHS trusts and itâs central to the 10-year planâs data ambitions, so this is a right mess. Who knew⌠values matter to people in healthcare.
đ Meet BèbèdĂ: the waist-worn wearable built for women, launching in Lagos: Built for women, starting in Lagos, BèbèdĂ tracks temperature, movement, posture, cycle patterns and sleep from the waist, which is both culturally grounded (waist beads have tracked the body for centuries in West African tradition) and clinically interesting (the waist is one of the first places the body signals change). The AI companion app builds your personal baseline from your own data rather than population averages and the AI companion app promises "no scores, no performance metrics, no optimisation" - just clarity about what your body's actually telling you.
đ§ Can AI generate psychiatric training cases? Kind of. [Study]: Iâm willing to bet most med students with side hustles have had this idea - use LLMs to generate case vignettes and question banks. Turns out it is actually more complicated than âjust ask ChatGPT.â This npj Digital Medicine paper had three board-certified psychiatrists rate ChatGPT-5 Proâs ability to generate psychiatric vignettes involving patient chatbot use. Relevance and diagnostic sufficiency = high. Safety ratings = lower. That last bit matters because in mental health education, a vignette that gets it 90% right might teach the wrong 10% in exactly the wrong direction, so unfortunately for your unit economics, you are going to have to keep that human in the loop.
đ BMA calls for GPs to remain in control of single patient record data: The fight over who controls your medical data is heating up, and itâs not just about Palantir. NHS England thinks GPs controlling a multi-service, single patient record wouldnât be âappropriateâ and that all your GP notes, hospital records, and mental health data are best kept in the hands of the government. Hmm... GPs want to keep control of their bit, arguing they need to âact for the best interests of our patientsâ and âmaintain confidentiality.â Is Pigeon missing something? How is this even a debate?
â ď¸ When âvirtual monitoringâ isnât enough: the tele-ICU lawsuit raising hard questions: A warning. Healthtech is only as good as the service itâs part of. Conor Hylton, a 26-year-old UConn dental student, died at Bridgeport Hospital in August 2024 after being admitted with pancreatitis and alcohol withdrawal. The lawsuit alleges no on-site doctor assessed him from ICU admission until after he experienced seizure-like activity and his care described as âsporadically monitored remotely on a TV screen.â The hospital says their tele-ICU model pairs virtual monitoring with bedside teams. The familyâs lawyers call it a âfake ICU.â Tele-ICU is a legitimate, valuable model, but it requires rigorous design, clear escalation protocols and serious attention to human factors.
đŤ HeartFocus and Inteleos launch the first AI cardiac POCUS certification pathway: POCUS has been on a quiet innovation run for years. I remember (many moons ago) writing about the launch of Butterfly IQ and how they rewrote the hardware economics by swapping piezoelectric crystals for semiconductors (if you understood that sentence, you, too, did some really unnecessary medical exams), which unlocked a wave of downstream innovation in bedside imaging. Now you can actually get certified in AI-guided cardiac POCUS, so, in theory, perform diagnostic-quality heart scans at the bedside without needing a specialist cardiologist or rad in the room. Will an ultrasound probe around the neck be the new stethoscope?
Itâs here. Pigeon Insider launches today.
Five years of writing this newsletter and thereâs always been a version of it I couldnât quite fit in - the one where I go down a rabbit hole of research, questioning everything, getting off the record takes from people and trying to find answers to how we actually make things better through healthtech.
Thatâs what Pigeon Insider is. Fortnightly. Longer. No headlines to hide behind.
Each edition will do one of three things: spot a signal early and explain why it matters, tell a founder or operator story with the detail that makes it actually useful, or take a clear position on something the industry is dancing around.
This version of Pigeon is going nowhere. Always free. Every week.
Insider is for people who want more than just the news summaries and want the analysis. Founders, investors, operators - if you read Pigeon because you want context, not just content, Insider is the next step.
In this weekâs edition:
An $8.9 billion corporate collapse, what it tells us about where healthtech value actually sits and how a new model unlocks it
A NICE-approved treatment for a condition affecting millions that fewer than 0.5% of clinicians offer
Why the governmentâs 10 Year Health Plan might - might - matter this time
What I think this means if youâre investing, building, operating, clinically involved, or running NHS transformation
Hope itâs useful.
James
What to listen to đ
I sat down with Dr Yath Prem, Medical Advisor at Flo Health, to get into a very topical question in healthcare right now: why NHS doctors are leaving for healthtech, whether the content creators cheering them on are doing anyone any favours, and what "clinical product" actually means once you're in it.
In this one, host Tara gets into the 2026/27 GP contract, the uncapping of GP salaries within ARRS (which Finn thinks is the biggest risk to additional roles, and he's probably right), and why cutting appointment slots from 20 to 10 minutes looks good on a spreadsheet and absolutely nowhere else.
Events đ
The Future of Prevention: Who Pays, Who Delivers, Who Benefits?
đď¸ 28th April
đŹđ§ Hale House, London
SomX and Neko Health are convening a closed-door, Chatham House Rule evening for senior leaders from the NHS, government, investment, and healthtech industry to grapple with the prevention agenda - who actually pays for it, who delivers it, and who benefits. Features a fireside between Neko's Hjalmar Nilsonne and Dr Nikita Kanani MBE, hosted by yours truly (Dr James Somauroo). Not a product pitch, not a sales event - just the right people in the right room having the difficult conversation. Places are very limited (120 max) so make sure to apply soon.
RADIANT-CERSI Impact Showcase Event
đ
16th April
đŹđ§ Brunel University London
This showcase will bring together the partners, funders, academics, and industry partners who have been part of the work RADIANT are doing to make the regulation of digital health and AI products more navigable, evidence-based, and fit for the pace of innovation.
DMEA 2026
đ
21â23rd April
đŠđŞ Messe Berlin, Germany
Europeâs leading digital health event - around 900 exhibitors, 20,500+ visitors and 470 speakers across three days. If youâre building, selling or buying healthtech on the continent, this is where the conversations happen.
BioSolutions UK
đ
21st April
đŹđ§ Glaziers Hall, London
Engineering biology meets industry - covers the biotech you know and love as well as food, agriculture, chemicals, materials, environment and biofuels. Startups, scale-ups, investors and policymakers in one room. Good if youâre building at the intersection of biotech and the bioeconomy.
The Future of Medical Grade Wearables
đ
23rd April
đŹđ§ Royal Society of Medicine, London
Explore how wearable technologies and bio-sensors are transforming health monitoring, clinical care, and creating powerful tools that improve patient outcomes.
Mental Health Innovation: Choosing the âRightâ Capital
đ
24th April
đŹđ§ Hale House, London
A practical map of the funding routes genuinely available to mental health ventures in the UK right now: what different funders actually want, which route youâre realistically on, and how to make capital decisions that donât compromise clinical quality or long-term sustainability.
Opportunities đľď¸ââď¸
đ Director of Growth, Voy (Do Health) â Mobile-first preventative health product inside Voy, co-founded by Dr Rangan Chatterjee. Own the full growth engine from scratch, zero to nine figures ARR. Rare latitude, high bar.
đ¤ Medical Operations - UK, Tandem Health â Tandemâs AI clinical notes software is rolling out to 200,000+ NHS clinicians via Accurx. This role is the sharp end of that deployment. Clinical background essential.
đą Product Manager (Social & UX focus), Doctify - Doctify connects patients with verified providers across 6 countries. This role owns the social and networking product roadmap. 5+ years in product required.
đĽ Chief Clinical Product Officer, Dyad - Senior exec role owning product direction end to end at an NHS-focused healthcare AI company. Medical qualification strongly preferred, lived NHS experience essential.
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We review everything editorially - if it is not right for our audience, weâll let you know - everything has to be valuable to this glorious community.
See you next week, Pigeon fans âđź
Healthtech Pigeon is produced by SomX - the media-led communications and creative agency for healthcare. We help healthtech, biotech, pharma and public sector organisations tell sharper stories through strategy, PR, content, design, events and media production. Built by clinicians, scientists and creatives who know the space. Work with us.
Thanks for the shoutout! Yes, indeed, shouldnât have taken a lawsuit to implement some change!