#302: The Wrist Is Coming for the Ward
The one-minute weekly healthtech roundup, by SomX
Hello pigeoners. Not the most enthralling news week, but a few regulatory stories this week show that healthtechâs maturing, Claude Science launches if you have any energy left for new AI capabilities and a load of cool pods, jobs and events coming up. Enjoy.
News Bites đĽŞ
đ˘ TORTUS clears UKCA Class IIa and the ambient-scribe category grows up: TORTUS is now the first ambient voice tool certified Class IIa on the UKâs own UKCA route, arguing (rightly) that a tool which actually writes the clinical note is doing device-grade work, not glorified dictation. Tandem was first to Class IIa via the EU MDR back in May, but to be honest, by what route or who did what âfirstâ isnât really whatâs important here. Itâs that âcertified,â âregisteredâ and âself-declaredâ mean three very different things, and buyers shouldnât keep treating them as the same. If youâre procuring an ambient scribe on a Class I while Class IIa options exist, someone should be asking why.
đ¨ The MHRA is receiving AI-written inspection responses that cite guidance which doesnât exist: Literally everyoneâs using LLMs for their homework arenât they?Straight from the MHRA Inspectorate, companies are now submitting GxP inspection responses drafted by AI, referencing MHRA guidance that was never written. Completely wrong regulatory frameworks have been cited and in at least one case responding to a serious, patient-safety-impacting deficiency with material inaccuracies and invented references. One response ran to 90+ pages and addressed none of the actual findings - lolz.
đď¸ MHRA chief takes personalised medicine and AI to a parliamentary committee: Finishing off MHRA week, the chief exec presented evidence and recommendations on personalised medicine and AI to a parliamentary committee. Worth mentioning only because of the direction of travel, which was shared accountability, mandatory post-market surveillance and evidence before deployment. Regulation really isnât backstage anymore, so if youâre building healthtech, the MHRA is now a stakeholder you design for from day one.
đ Anthropic wants to make its own drugs: At an SF event on 30th June, Anthropic launched Claude Science, an AI âworkbenchâ wired into 60+ research databases, and said itâll run its own preclinical drug programmes aimed at neglected diseases. Love the vision of helping the underserved. Donât love that itâs all preclinical, no disease targets named, and no word on what happens if they actually find something. Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan is on the board and essentially said âenough bold proclamations, now show results for patients.â Good luck to them, I think. Letâs revisit when thereâs a molecule and a peer-reviewed thing to read.
đď¸ Moorfields and UCL link one million eye images to patient records to build AI tools: Moorfields and UCL have linked a million retinal images to patient records to⌠you guessed it⌠develop AI. Anterior segment conditions like cataracts blind millions, yet barely feature in imaging datasets, so theyâve released 945,243 images from 22,482 patients, linked to clinical records and gated properly with a patient advisory board and the Five Safes framework. Open health data done right. A biiiiiit unsettling was reading that one model can predict a patient's age and biological sex from a single scan, which means routine images carry signals we can't see and never agreed to hand over, but useful for research and worth watching what comes out of it.
đ FDA lets Whoop keep its blood pressure feature after all: Remember when the FDA sent Whoop a strongly worded letter last July over its Blood Pressure Insights feature marketing itself as medical-grade? Well, Whoop tweaked a few things and the FDA updated its wellness guidance to carve out blood pressure as a ânon-medicalâ metric. Whoopâs CEO called it a âmajor developmentâ on LinkedIn, which is an interesting way to describe successfully lobbying your way out of a warning letter.
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⌠Getting AI regulated. A not so practical guide.
I go through changes happening to the regulatory landscape and how tech stacks with AI and LLMs within them are getting regulated⌠and continue to iterate and keep getting regulated, which hasnât really been possible until now.
If youâre an analyst and want to get ahead of the curve with valuing the latest investment deals, I suggest picking this one up.
What to listen to đ
Shravan Nageswaran is co-founder and CEO of Atman Labs and an all-round excellent human. Atman Labs is an applied-AI research company building diagnostic AI that reasons like a doctor and we cover why LLMs fall short on real clinical reasoning, what "safety" actually means when a system takes a patient history, and how reinforcement learning over a medical knowledge graph could reshape primary care.
Jordan Sollof sits down with Moorfieldsâ Dr Peter Thomas (yes, that Moorfields⌠see news above) and Alder Heyâs Kate Warriner to wrestle with the single patient record.
All that compute weâre constantly on about has to live somewhere, and it turns out "somewhere" is a less affluent area with a permanent hum and a massive water bill. Dr Jacoby Wilson walks through what actually happens when a data centre lands next door - useful reality check for anyone building the shiny stuff.
Events đ
Health Creators Connect (a SomX event, in partnership with Micropharm)
đ
13 July, 7 to 9pm
đAtom Coffee, London W3
We (SomX), alongside MicroPharm, are bringing together the people who quietly run the UK's healthcare content machine for an intimate, invitation-only evening. Itâs off the record, itâs honest, itâs real and itâs a heck of a lot of valuable info if youâre a creator. Jessica from SomX is giving candid talk on the actual business of it - negotiating, working with brands, cash versus equity, hiring, getting paid properly, then a live AMA. If you make, shape or fund health content in the UK, get your application in. All will be revealed on why SomX can confidently talk on this, too⌠đ¤Ť
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.
Safe Enough? Building Trust in AI for Mental Health (MHIN)
đ
10 July, 9:30am to 1:30pm
đ đŹđ§ Hale House, London
The Mental Health Innovation Networkâs morning of honest debate on one of the trickier corners of the AI conversation: how much trust mental health tools have actually earned. Given half this weekâs bites are effectively a seminar on AI safety and the limits of the evidence, itâs well timed. And Hale House events are always worth a look.
Digital Health Summer Schools
đ
16 to 17 July
đ đŹđ§ UK
Two days with NHS CIOs, CCIOs and CNIOs, with three national digital leaders already confirmed. Less polished-keynote, more how-do-we-actually-do-this, which is the useful kind.
Womenâs Health Week Europe
đ
7 to 8 October
đ đŹđ§ Emirates Stadium, London
A way off, but flagged now because pre-agenda pricing (savings of up to ÂŁ600) ends midnight Friday 26 June. If itâs on your list, todayâs the day to book.
Visit the SomX events page or subscribe to SomXâs events roundup for everything else.
Jobs & opportunities đľď¸ââď¸
𩺠Clinical Innovation Lead, UK Public Sector Healthcare, AWS: (London) Clinically-trained-only role shaping AWSâs multi-year NHS bets - agentic triage, genomics, population health. If you can survive a ministerial briefing and an architecture review in the same afternoon, check it out.
đ Senior Editor, The Lancet Global Health (part-time, fixed-term): Lead acquisition and peer review at one of the worldâs most-cited global-health journals. For the clinician-academic whoâs spent years muttering âI could edit this betterâ at other peopleâs papers, hereâs your chance to prove it. Fair warning⌠thereâs an editorial test, so dust off your critical appraisal.
𩸠Many roles, Hertility Health (London, hybrid). The CQC-approved at-home hormone and fertility testing company is hiring across clinical and commercial as it scales its âreproductively responsibleâ employer play. Bonus for readers hunting specifically in this space⌠the In Womenâs Health job board might be a useful bookmark.
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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.