Hi team. Plenty of good news this week….
The best news is that we’re hiring at SomX. If you’re very junior or very senior and looking for a role in healthtech comms, marketing, media or creator management, get in touch 🙏
In other news, the trend I’m noticing is a booming consumer health sector and hugely blurred lines of where healthcare systems start. I haven’t included it below because I’ve literally just seen it as I’m hitting publish but even Grindr just acquired a HIV prevention telehealth company. People are being met by access to healthcare where they are (i.e. in apps they use every day) and this is a really important element towards the success of preventative healthcare. Price isn’t the only barrier at all.
I remember watching a panel at HLTH a couple of years ago that were talking about the community wanting LGBTQ+ specific systems and pathways to emerge due to specificities and nuance in their care that the most experienced clinicians treating them understood. On the face of it, this looks like progress and what modern preventative care could become for more and more communities.
I do think more bridges between the public and private sectors to spread learning would make it easier to support private sector initiatives more broadly.
James
Shameless self-promotion? Absolutely. But if you read this newsletter then (1) you have a sense of humour and (2) you know healthtech. That means you might be ideal for one of our open roles:
Whichever role you go for, you'd work across strategy, content/social, PR, events, media production and creator management for our healthtech, biotech and pharma clients. If you’re creative, understand science and tech, and/or you can keep a client calm at 6pm on a Friday, we'd love to hear from you. And if you found out about the role from Pigeon, let us know in your application.
News Bites 🥪
💊 OpenEvidence raises $250M at $15B valuation: I remember writing something similar last time OpenEvidence came up in Pigeon, but if you want to feel seriously unproductive or like a really subpar founder, just know they’ve added about £300m of valuation every few weeks since founding in 2022. It’s an AI search tool that answers clinical questions using NEJM, JAMA and the guidelines, more than half of US physicians use it regularly, and it sits inside Epic at Mount Sinai and Sutter Health. It’s free for doctors and funded by pharma advertising. Sometimes it really doesn’t need to be complicated.
💍 Oura cancels their IPO due to ‘uncertainty in the market’: Last week we said the IPO was on, aaaand now it’s off. On paper, Oura was an ideal listing. Profitable, heading for 5.7 million paid members and 90% revenue growth this year (its own figures). Then literally one day before it was due to hit Nasdaq at a whopping $15.6bn valuation, it pulled the IPO because of a jittery market. What does that really mean? Well, 73% of the shares you’d be able to buy as a member of the public were from existing holders cashing out big, and loads of money was earmarked for tax. And when it looks like people won’t get as rich as they’d like, turns out they’re willing to jilt. For legal reasons, I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about.
🚨 Martha’s Rule Goes to Every A&E (So Who Answers the Phone?): Martha Mills was 13 when she came off her bike in 2021 and suffered a pancreatic injury. She was admitted to King's, developed sepsis and died, after her parents repeatedly raised concerns that went unheard. The coroner said she probably would’ve survived if she'd been moved to intensive care sooner. Martha's Rule gives patients, families and staff a 24/7 phone number to an urgent review by a separate critical care team, and it's now live on 221 acute sites. NHS England is extending it to every A&E and waiting room by March 2028, after pilots in 7 trusts produced 69 calls, some of which ended in emergency surgery or an ICU transfer. Innovation comes in many forms.
💷 The NHS Is Leaving £33bn a Year (and 20,600 Lives) on the Table: Most of this we do already know, but it’s validating to see it in one place. The Health Foundation’s NHS Productivity Commission reckons a national data strategy, a single patient record, systems that actually talk to each other, protected staff time to implement change, and switching off legacy kit instead of piling new tools on top could save £33bn a year by 2040 and prevent up to 20,600 deaths a year.
🫀 UltraSight Raises $24M for Cardiac AI Ultrasound: Imagine real-time computer vision that guides ITU nurses and A&E staff into capturing diagnostic-grade images. It exists and it’s just raised $24m in a Series B2 (we’re adding numbers now apparently) from Mayo Clinic Ventures among others. Sceptical? Me too, but a JAMA Cardiology study found novices using the system got images good enough for automated detection of moderate-or-worse aortic stenosis, with 93% sensitivity and 96% specificity. It's FDA 510(k) cleared, live at 10+ sites, and they’re expanding into ICU, VAD and ECMO workflows. Not sure whose neck is on the line when there’s a missed tamponade, but sounds cool.
🧬 One CRISPR Shot, a Year of Halved Cholesterol: I see your statin and I raise you a genetically edited liver from a one-shot CRISPR therapy that halves your cholesterol for a year. This thing called CTX310 switched off another thing called ANGPTL3 in the liver and it cut LDL by 52.5% and triglycerides by 47.8% at 12 months, with no serious treatment-related adverse events. It’s 15 patients, and yes, the trial is sponsor-funded, but those results are hardly on the fence. The permanent edit comes with 15 years of FDA-mandated follow-up which is an interesting (appropriate) quirk.
🤖 The FDA Writes the Rulebook for Surgical Robots: If you want to build a healthtech robot and bring it to market sometime soon (who the hell doesn’t), now there’s a guide from the FDA that covers everything from clinical data and human factors to cybersecurity, interoperability and reprocessing. I feel like they could’ve made this way cooler, very easily, but, dry as it is, it does prevent a few of the more dramatic apocalyptic doomsday scenarios. e.g. Manufacturers have to actually show what happens when you need an emergency stop mid-procedure. Could’ve easily been in a very readable chapter called “Kill Switch” but apparently the FDA’s more interested in accuracy and safety than hype and marketing. Nerds.
And finally…
🚀 Why Outer Space Makes You Constipated: Houston, we have a poopy problem. Metabolomics (what a word) on blood from 52 ISS astronauts (NASA, published in Nature) found that gut bacteria switch to fermenting protein after launch and do so until landing, which fits with slower transit in microgravity. A ludicrously expensive laxative study and the takeaway is basically “more fibre.” The authors say the value is the analogue with bedbound patients, which will surprise absolutely nobody who’s been on a ward for more than 60 seconds. Next up… blasting an F1 into orbit and seeing if they get stressed when all the alarms go off at once.
What to Listen to 🔊
The process of feeling pain has always fascinated me, ever since I learned how to divert the feeling of my eyebrow hairs being ripped out from my face to my hands and feet (by gripping the chair arms and almost breaking my toes from clenching). Amy Baxter explains how pain gets from your body to your brain, and how to cut the signal off without reaching for opioids. So interesting, and could help you out with something seriously chronic, or vain pain like mine.
AI in healthcare seems to be a near constant debate. It can be good, okay, and bad all in the same breath. This pod begins with the classic ‘AI wiping out humanity’ fear to lure you in, and then examines how worried we should be as the robots continue to penetrate our healthcare systems. The National Commission into the Regulation of AI in Healthcare, which advises the MHRA, has just called AI one of the biggest opportunities to improve healthcare in a generation. But, it IS two people who sat on the commission essentially reviewing their own homework, so take it with a pinch of salt. I personally worry more about a Matrix-esque AI takeover than the healthcare debacle, but maybe I just watched the film too recently.
James sat down with the MD of healthtech and biotech investment company Tenmile, Steve Burnell, and drilled into how his background in marine ecology, putting satellite trackers on whales, led to where he is today. I love an investor who admits a miss, and Steve talks about one in detail… have a listen for the whole story.
Events 📅
HTN Health Tech Awards 2026
🗓️ 7 October
📍 💻 Online
An awards ceremony you can watch from your desk at lunchtime, cheering on the NHS teams actually shipping things. I’ll be keeping an eye on the digital inclusion and health inequalities category, because that’s the one I’d hand the trophy to first.
Women’s Health Week Europe 2026
🗓️ 7-8 October
📍 🇬🇧 Emirates Stadium, London
Women’s health at a football stadium feels right for a sector that keeps being told it’s finally having a moment. I’m most curious about the wearables session, given Oura couldn’t make it onto the stock market this week. Tickets are £499, so this one’s probably one to expense.
Hash It Out: Uncharted territory - Entering new markets
🗓️ 13 October
📍 🇬🇧 Hale House, London
Every founder hits this question eventually: what happens when you try to sell somewhere new? Good timing, in a week when OpenEvidence decided drug development was its new market. I’ll be there (obviously, its at Hale House), so come and say hi.
Visit the SomX events page or subscribe to SomX’s events roundup for everything else.
Opportunities 🕵️♀️
🩸 Integrated Marketing Manager (12 Month Contract), Flo Health (London). The app that’s been tracking mine (and my friends’) periods almost since we started them, is now looking for someone to bring that same trust right with us through to our 40s. Flo wants someone on its Brand team to make perimenopause the next thing it owns, a condition that GPs often misdiagnose or miss altogether. Finally a hot flush mention that my mum will be happy about.
💬 Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Accurx (London). After this week's EMMA saga, it's clear the phone robots aren't quite ready. Accurx does triage online instead, it's already in 98% of GP practices, and this is the job building the brain behind it. Add an in-house chef and a dog-friendly office, and I'd be surprised if applications aren't already flooding in.
🎓 Professional Education Trainer, CMR Surgical (Cambridge). Does designing the training that teaches surgical teams to set up and run a surgical robot sound like the right amount of Black Mirror for your liking? If so, and you’ve got the theatre experience to back it up, CMR wants you designing its training, VR sessions included. Just make sure they know what to do when the robot needs to hand back control (please).
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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.