#300: Your phone can now spot cancer (Class III style). The hot tub cannot.
The one-minute weekly healthtech roundup, by SomX
Hey friends. Sorry itâs an hour late, I was figuring out how to embed that Midjourney video below, which was 100% worth it and youâll see when you get to it. AnywayâŠ
Guess what? We just hit⊠Three. Hundred Editions. And Eight. Thousand. Subscribers.
Jokes (and readers) in their thousands and not a single comedy award, so if nothing else, weâre living proof that consistency beats talent đŠ
Thanks to all you superb humans for reading and rest assured that weâll stave off the robot revolution in the written word for as long as possible.
Weâre not ones to dwell on our milestones when fittingly hilarious stories remain un-broken-down, so letâs crack onâŠ
And hereâs to the next 300 and 8000⊠(if the robots let us) đ„
James đ«Ą
News Bites đ„Ș
đ Midjourney now wants to scan your whole body in a hot tub: I honestly had to read this in 4 separate places before I believed that a company built on the premise of creating fake images is now going to be involved in creating medical imaging. Ultrasounds to be exact. Loads of them. While youâre in a bath. In a spa. Kind of. âđŒ Thatâs their promo video and itâs wild. This is genuinely a full-body ultrasound scanner that images you in about 60 seconds while you descend through a (kinda glorious) pool of golden light. The grand plan is a flagship âMidjourney Spaâ in San Francisco by the end of 2027, scaling to 50,000 scanners doing a billion scans a month by 2031. Yes, this is alongside the day job. No, Iâm not sure what the evidence base is. Yes, this does feel similar to full body MRI hype. No, I will not be getting one just yet.*
đ©ș The AI that has caught 20,000 cancers now runs on your phone: Skin Analytics stole the show at HLTH Europe by announcing that DERM Zero is now certified to Class III, the EUâs highest medical device bar, i.e. the same one pacemakers and other lifesaving interventional and diagnostic mega-devices sit in. It autonomously assesses a skin lesion from a standard smartphone (no dermoscope and no hospital appointment needed). Frankly, these are words that usually cause oneâs pelvic floor to involuntarily contract if youâre of a regulatory persuasion, but Neil Daly has been at this now for the past 13 years and has the credibility and results to prove it. DERMâs run inside 24 NHS hospitals for the last 6 years, assessed 230,000-odd patients, picked up more than 20,000 cancers, and every one of those is validated against histopathology. Low-concern lesions get definitively cleared without a second clinician looking. Now is the time for care to be reorganised.
đ Children Aren't Small Adults (Their Prescriptions Finally Agree): From my days as an anaesthetist, I remember paediatric prescribing being a nightmare of weight-based maths, age-specific formulations and precise calculations with a horrible, looking threat of error, historically done by manually transcribing the dose into either the EPR or some rogue app on your phone coded by the âinnovative oneâ on the ward, just hoping you didn't fat-finger a decimal point or some internal calc was off. Thankfully, West London Children's Healthcare is now the first NHS org to embed all four of the RCPCH/NPPG safe-prescribing requirements into a live workflow, so patient-specific orders go straight into Cerner, with the clinician doing the final sign-off. If youâve worked in paediatrics, youâll understand how a study of 1,808 orders found error rates that went from 7.1% to 1.2% when this very sensible tool was used.
đ The Wegovy pill is here. The MHRA approves the UKâs first GLP-1 weight-loss tablet: Here we go. The MHRA has approved oral semaglutide (Wegovy in pill form), so the UK is now the first in Europe to greenlight a GLP-1 weight-loss tablet. Credit where itâs due, in OASIS 4** the daily pill matched the weekly jab at around 14% weight loss. There is a slight faff in that you take it fasted, with a sip of water, then nothing by mouth for half an hour, or absorption tanks, but thatâs nothing compared to a needle. Needless needles means itâs now needleless*** which is WAY easier. Now you pull a wave of new demand into a system that's already rationing the jabs, and this one still isn't on the NHS, with NICE yet to rule and a private script running about ÂŁ150 a month. Which means, predictably, the people who get it first are likely going to be the ones in the richer postcodes. The Inverse Care Law playing out in real time, right in-front of us. A cheaper, friendlier pill, same two-tier problem.
đȘđž Spain is putting âŹ18m behind womenâs health research: Pedro SĂĄnchez has tripled Spain's women's health R&D budget to âŹ18m a year, under the bluntly titled (slight loss in translation) "We are. We count: Ending discrimination against women in health research." I know, I know, âŹ18m is a rounding error in any kind of national science spending and if it was the UK Iâd be quick to judge, so please do file it under the usual âthatâs a good amount because it sounds like a lotâ political theatre. But I like the fact that the Prime Minister of Spain has said out loud that there is a programme to âend discrimination against women in health research.â And that trials were run on men, drugs tested on men, diagnostics built for men⊠we all know the evidence backs him. Small money, (hopefully) loud signal and more to come.
And finally...
âïž Remember That 5% You Promised Back In 2014?: Sword Health, Portugal's MSK-focused virtual care unicorn, is (not so) casually being sued for up to âŹ200 million by A2 Academy, an accelerator that baby Sword joined in 2014 in return for (what is now a whopping) 5% of the company. Those shares never materialised, and now that Sword is worth a fortune, someone at A2 mustâve recently turned round in a meeting and said âwerenât they on the accelerator?â**** And they would now very much like their cut. To be fair, who wouldnât? Much of the fight hinges on whether the statute of limitations has expired, plus an accusation that Sword quietly spun up a Delaware entity without flagging it. Remember, folks, the term sheet you scribble in the early excitement has a habit of resurfacing when youâre worth a few billion. But hey, whatâs a couple hundred million at that point anyway đ€·đ»ââïž
Pigeon insider is the upgraded newsletter for those of you that want deep research, analysis and to steal the ideas to sound incredibly smart in front of everyone else.
This weekâs is epic, if I do say so.
Has venture capital worked in healthtech? Yes and No.
I deep dive whatâs worked, what hasnât, the past, present and future of venture capital in our space, as well as the myriad of other mechanisms to fund a business. There are bootstrapped healthtech companies with their tech at 90 NHS sites and there are companies worth $4.2B through venture rounds now worth nothing. Thereâs no right and wrong, but there is a right and wrong for your business and this moment in time.
Read all about it.
What to listen to đ
This week I chatted with long time friend, Ben Finlay, to dig into mental health. Specifically why patient-reported questionnaires are still used (and what we lose because of that), and what a taste test, a blood biomarker and a continuum view of neurological wellness could change. This oneâs a very candid look at where pharma, policy and AI are heading next.
For our 300th Pigeon, we couldnât resist. If you havenât listened to it yet - ok i'tâs majority not healthtech, but itâs epic. For this ep, Michael and Hannah stand beside a working Tesla coil, explain the physics behind the miniature lightning, and then tell the genuinely true story of how Nikola Tesla fell for a white pigeon he claimed to love "as a man loves a woman."
Events đ
đŁ Hash It Out: Real-World Innovation Implementation
đ
Tuesday 23 June, 17:30
đŹđ§ Hale House, 76 Portland Place, London
Hale Houseâs community evening on what it actually takes to move healthtech from pilot to adoption. Free, and going fast.
HIMSS AI Leadership Summit + AI in Healthcare Forum
đ
24 June (Summit), 25â26 June (Forum)
đșđž Renaissance Boston Seaport District, Boston
The Summit is an invite-only gathering of senior healthcare executives working through AI governance, implementation and risk, with no keynote theatre, just structured roundtables and a private dinner. The open Forum that follows goes deep on real-world AI across clinical, operational and enterprise domains.
UK Longevity Festival + Womenâs Health Summit (led by Hertility)
đ
26â27 June
đŹđ§ London
The UKâs first longevity festival, with womenâs health front and centre via a dedicated Summit led by Hertility, plus an expo, headline talks and a B2B conference for founders, investors and clinicians. Given Spain just put real money behind womenâs health this week, the timing could not be better.
Kingâs Fund Digital Health and AI Conference 2026
đ
Tuesday 30 June
đŹđ§ The Kingâs Fund, Cavendish Square, London
A full day cutting through the AI noise: what is real, what is next, and what is at stake. Expect the NHS App as digital front door, ambient AI, and a mini hackathon, with the MHRA chief exec and NHS Englandâs AI policy lead on the bill.
HealthTech Integrates 2026
đ
1 July
đŹđ§ ARC, West London
An in-person day on healthcare technology innovation, integration and the networking that actually moves things forward.
Women in Biotech, Canary Wharf
đ
8 July, 16:00â20:00
đŹđ§ 25 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London
An evening on how biotech leaders build and navigate relationships with investors, hosted by the BioIndustry Association. Insight, connection and conversation, with a glass of something in hand.
AireFest 2026
đ
9 July
đŹđ§ Leeds Aire
Logicâs healthtech festival heads to Leeds, a welcome reminder that the sector exists north of the M25. Worth the train.
Visit the SomX events page or subscribe to SomXâs events roundup for everything else.
Jobs for humansđ”ïžââïž
đŹ Director, Clinical Science at WHOOP: WHOOP wants someone to build out the clinical evidence behind its wearable, with a heavy focus on Software as a Medical Device. You'd own clinical strategy across the whole product lifecycle, from feasibility and study design through to FDA and CE Mark submissions and post-market evidence. Boston-based and on-site, so you'll need to fancy the commute.
âïž Director, Clinical Operations at WHOOP: The sister role to the Clinical Science gig. If that one âđŒ designs the studies, this one runs them. You'd own study execution end to end, from startup and recruitment through monitoring and closeout, across both in-house decentralised trials and CRO-managed work, all under GCP and ISO 14155. It's the operational engine behind WHOOP's push to make its wearable claims regulator-proof. Also Boston, also on-site, also a generous equity package if you're tempted.
đ ïž Ditto is hiring two engineers: We mentioned Ditto last month - theyâre the Rotterdam team building an app that records your medical appointments, summarises them in plain English and lets you share the lot with loved ones. It launched in July, hit #1 in the Dutch App Store, picked up backing from insurer Menzis and is past 50,000 users, so this is early-and-moving rather than early-and-hoping. They want a (Senior) Infra/Backend Engineer to own the backend end to end, infra through devops, security baked in from day one, and a Senior Mobile Engineer to take full ownership of the iOS and Android apps in SwiftUI and Kotlin. Both are Rotterdam hybrid.
Jamesâ editor notes:
* A few things worth noting before you cancel that MRI. The actual imaging physics is licensed from Butterfly Network, so the clever bit isnât really Midjourneyâs. The MRI-quality and picometre-resolution claims have also had precisely zero independent validation, and for now it only produces âbody composition mapsâ because anything diagnostic needs FDA clearance it does not yet have. Is the spa the funnel and the real product a billion bodiesâ worth of training data? I donât know, but Pigeon will book a slot the day a peer-reviewed paper lands. Not a moment before.
** Thereâs a joke about the band / taking pills in there somewhere but, itâs late and I need to get this out.
*** Did you get your head around that one? OGs will remember the time I put that in a Pigeon headline.
**** This is 100% a dramatisation and does not reflect real events and Pigeon does not want to be dragged into the law suit.
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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.