Hey everyone, a bit of everything this week. Tandemâs got some firepower ($100M) in the scribe race, $40M for Evvy working on the vaginal microbiome and Appleâs bought some cool new magnetic field sensor (likely for a new wearable).
Enjoy.
James.
News Bites đĽŞ
đ¤ Tandem raises $100M Series B, Europe writes a cheque: Every so often, us Europeans (yep, Pigeon still identifies as European) get tired of watching American AI companies eat our lunch, so we do things like whack $100m into Tandem Health from our âŹ5bn Scaleup Europe Fund. Tandemâs currently across 14 European markets and about 10,000 care organisations. Biggest market is the UK, where NHS clinicians are already leaning on it daily and the Accurx partnership has a lot to do with that. CEO Lukas Saari says the point is to set European standards rather than import American ones. You can expect to see a lot of similar sovereignty messages start creeping into healthtech company messaging as realisation sets in that one day (maybe quite soon) the US could flick a few switches and turn off a lot of our healthcare infrastructure.
đŚ Evvyâs Vaginal Microbiome Platform Banks a $40M Series B: An oversubscribed $40m Series B into the worldâs largest clinical-grade vaginal microbiome dataset. Evvyâs at-home test already serves 100,000+ patients and 3,000 practitioners, cuts bacterial vaginosis recurrence by around half, and reaches a diagnosis in over 90% of symptomatic patients. Next stop? Fertility, preterm birth, cervical cancer, endometriosis and PCOS, in that order. Founder Priyanka Jain summed it up⌠âWomen hear âunexplainedâ constantly. It really just means medicine wasnât built to measure female biology.â
𧲠Apple Bought a Nerve-Magnetic-Field-Reading Chip. Cool cool cool: In dystopia weekly, Appleâs picked up the assets of Sonera, a Berkeley spinout. Price undisclosed, obviously and we only know about it because of a Digital Markets Act disclosure to the European Commission. Hmm... Cool tech though. Sonera's S1 chip reads the magnetic fields thrown off by nerve and muscle activity without touching skin, so in a world where every consumer wearable sensor currently needs skin contact, a chip that picks up neuromuscular signal through air is LEVELS above (if it works). And a bit sci fi, which is cool. Apple plainly does not want to be asked what it's for yet. đ
đ§ The Mental Health Bubble Just Got Priced, and It's 1/10: Bit of an odd one. You probably heard that Sword Health is buying Headspace, all cash (reported at up to $300m), closing in Q4. In the context of Headspace and Ginger merging in 2021 at a $3bn valuation, it all feels weird. Seems that consumer subscription meditation and employer-funded coaching coming together didnât work. Anyway, a musculoskeletal company now owns the world's best known mindfulness brand, so whatâs clearly becoming valuable is the care delivery layer. VirgĂlio Bento says Sword is "pioneering a new model of mental health care that understands each person, remembers their history, and anticipates their needs, 24/7.â Is that new? Theyâre on one of the many roads leading to Rome.
đââď¸ Cycle-Syncing Your Workouts. But is there evidence?
Google searches for âcycle-syncingâ are up 740% since 2022 and there are now 55,000+ TikTok videos telling women exactly which workout to do on which day of their cycle. According to Leeds Beckett researcher Kelly McNulty, itâs âa trend based on marketing rather than any kind of research or evidence.â As menstrual cycles vary wildly between women and cycle to cycle, a one-size-fits-all phase plan could have very real costs. Dr Faye Bate warns that telling women theyâre inherently weaker at certain points in their cycle risks a nocebo effect, and Kelly mentions that routinely easing off strength training could work against womenâs long-term bone health. Current advice from experts is to track your own patterns and stay âcycle-aware.â
đĄ Your Charging LED Might Be Remodelling Your Heart: This is a very bizarre one but Iâm including it to show that when it comes to technology, thereâs a lot we donât know and you need to have an open mind to make sense of the world. 11,071 UK Biobank participants wore wrist light sensors for a week, had cardiac MRIs roughly three years later and if you were exposed to 3 lux (a bit of light) overnight, you had heavier left ventricles, thicker walls, smaller chamber volumes and worse flexing on both sides. Slept in near darkness? None of that. And to be clear, 3 lux is not a bright room. Weâre talking about a streetlight through thin curtains, a charger LED, the lit up number on an aircon unit - that kind of thing. Correlation or causation? Thatâs the question. Shift work (sleeping in the day), deprivation, living somewhere bright, all thatâs on the table for an explanation⌠More work needed.
𩸠400,000 Reddit Posts Found Rogue Ozempic Side Effects: This is why the LLMs trawl Reddit⦠a (health) information goldmine. A Penn Engineering team ran five years of posts from nearly 70,000 users and mapped them onto MedDRA terms. 44% described at least one side effect, and nearly 4% of those reported menstrual irregularities including intermenstrual and heavy bleeding, with chills, hot flushes and fatigue also over-represented against trial reporting. Raises questions about modern pharmacovigilance and what a genuine upgrade might look like.\
And finallyâŚ
đ Ozempic for Mice, Who Now Refuse to Die: Longevity bros are about to get really excited. Semaglutide given to old, healthy mice extended lifespan while improving memory, muscle function, glucose control and a spread of ageing biomarkers and ffects reportedly went beyond calorie restriction. That means the mechanism might not be weight loss and might be something far more exciting. But just in case youâre about to have a decision failure and attempt something weirdâŚ
THIS IS IN MICE. YOUâRE NOT A MOUSE.
This fortnightâs Pigeon Insider edition asks âWill the NHS Waste the AI Moment?â
It comes out of the last SomX event with Rt Hon Sir Jeremy Hunt MP. Everyone in the room agreed AI is the moment, but we didnât agree on who pays, who carries the risk, or what happens when the pilot funding runs out. Hunt was very candid about what he'd do differentlyâŚ
Will the NHS waste the AI moment?
In 2012, a few months into the Health Secretary job and with no background in health whatsoever, Jeremy Hunt started doing half-day shifts at Watford General, washing beds between patients in A&E.
What to listen to đ
Loved this chat with healthtech OG, Nader Alaghband of Ampersand Health. We chatted about how clinicians and healthtech companies can and should build for patients, what they care about and specifically why Crohn's and colitis patients measure their own wellbeing by whether they can hold down a job and see their family, not by inflammation markers. Good stuff in here about what that means for how the NHS adopts new tools.
Moderna and Merck's mRNA cancer vaccine breakthrough, then a proper sceptical takedown of wearables overclaiming clinical accuracy. "A ring cannot measure EEG," which is basically Pigeon's personality in a sentence.
MHRA chief Lawrence Tallon and Professor Henrietta Hughes go deeper on the recent 44-recommendation report, including a proper look at ambient voice tech in pharmacy.
A harrowing account of how a UTI turned into sepsis and quadruple amputation, and a sharp reminder that "women's health" isn't only hormones and cycles, a lot of the time it's being taken seriously, fast enough.
Events đ
Life Sciences Week 2026
đď¸ 21-25 September
đ đŹđ§ Birmingham.
A week-long showcase of UK life sciences and medtech, from early-stage research through to scaled-up manufacturing. Useful if you want the bigger picture beyond just software.
LSI Europe â26 Emerging Medtech Summit
đď¸ 28 September-1 October
đ đŞđ¸ Barcelona.
Europeâs leading emerging-medtech investor summit, matching founders with VCs, PE and strategics. Sunny, well-connected, and squarely aimed at getting deals done.
HETT Show 2026
đď¸ 29-30 September
đ đŹđ§ ExCeL London.
The big one for UK digital health, two days of NHS trusts, vendors and policy folk all in one hall. If you only make it to one healthtech show this autumn, this is probably still the one, and after this weekâs MHRA report expect every stand to have âAI governanceâ bolted onto its pitch.
Womenâs Health Week Europe 2026
đď¸ 7-8 October
đ đŹđ§ Emirates Stadium, London.
Given the week weâve just had, with Evvy, Lilly and a wave of womenâs health cash all landing in the same seven days, this one couldnât be better timed. Two days dedicated entirely to a sector that keeps getting told itâs âfinally having a moment.â
HTN Health Tech Awards 2026
đď¸ 7 October
đ đť Online.
UK digital healthâs own awards night, celebrating the trusts and vendors actually shipping things rather than just talking about them.
TechBio UK 2026
đď¸ 13 October
đ đŹđ§ Kings Place, London.
A day on the collision of biology and technology, aimed at founders and investors betting that AI genuinely changes how drugs and diagnostics get built.
Transforming the NHS 2026
đď¸ 20 October
đ đŹđ§ One Great George Street, London.
The MHRA just handed the sector 44 new things to think about, so a conference specifically about transforming the NHS has never felt more on the nose. Expect a lot of panels quietly rewriting their slides this week.
Frontiers Health 2026
đď¸ 20-21 October
đ đŠđŞ Berlin.
Europeâs big digital health innovation gathering, mixing pharma, payers and start-ups in a way thatâs more useful than it sounds.
BMJ Future Health Europe 2026
đď¸ 29-30 October
đ đŹđ§ The Brewery, London.
The BMJâs own take on where health tech is heading, heavier on evidence and policy than most vendor-run conferences.
AI in Health Summit 2026
đď¸ 4 November
đ đŹđ§ Royal College of Physicians, London.
A day entirely on AI in healthcare, which after this week should have plenty to talk about.
Visit the SomX events page or subscribe to SomXâs events roundup for everything else.
Opportunities đ°
đ¤ Senior AI/ML Engineer, Flo Health: Floâs in front of 80 million monthly users, so your decisions shape the AI behind cycle predictions and health notifications for women all over the world.
𩺠Global Clinic Operations Lead, Neko Health: Own the pipes between company and a clinical workforce scaling fast in multiple countries. Change management nous essential, healthcare background preferred.
đ Head of Data Engineering, Numan: Numan bundles diagnostics, meds, supplements and doctor consults into one consumer health platform. Lead a team of 2 and own the pipelines, data models, quality monitoring and access controls.
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See you next week, Pigeon fans âđź
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