#73: New Year, Same Ol' Pigeon👌

Hey friends, 

It’s 2022! Here’s to pretending things change when the year does. With the third year of a global pandemic on the cards, let’s hope that 2022 doesn’t go the way of “2020 too”. Relax with a nice cuppa and enjoy the last few days of bank holiday bliss. Our New Year’s resolution was to stop reading listicles but a bird’s gotta work! Here are our favourite two listicles (not healthtech related) that showcase the good (What went right in 2021: the top 26 good news stories of the year) and the bad (The worst technology of 2021) of what 2021 had to offer. Before we leave the year behind us, any guesses for the Word of the Year? It’s not a trick question…

This week: a star-studded edition where we share the views and expertise of healthtech aficionados, Professor Sam Shah, Dr Daniel Kraft and Artur Olesch. Serial healthtech “matchmaker” Hassan Chaudry opens up in his latest podcast feature. Fancy innovating at one of the world’s largest employers (we ain’t talking about McDonalds, sorry)?

News Bites 🥪

⏩ The Future of Health & Medicine: Looking Ten Years Back & Ten Forward... - Healthcare futurist Dr Daniel Kraft reflects on the past decade and looks forward to another. What are your predictions for the future? Can we realize a new 'Health Age' or is it one step forwards, two steps back? If anyone can predict the future, Dr Kraft can. He’s a Stanford and Harvard trained physician-scientist, inventor and entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience and the Chair of Exponential Medicine.

🧩 Most puzzling questions about digital health - Digital health journalist, Artur Olesch reveals the public’s most frequently asked digital health-related questions, according to AnswerThePublic. Although the infographic is a bit messy and difficult to read, it provides a big picture perspective and insight into general trends. (Are the “who” questions actually referring to WHO aka World Health Organisation?)

🧠 New Groundbreaking Alzheimer’s Prevention Trial in Young People - A new international clinical trial aims to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, in people with a genetic predisposition to develop the condition at a younger age. This trial will enrol people before the condition has taken hold, up to 25 years before expected onset, with participants as young as 18 years old taking part. Exploring the earlier stages of Alzheimer’s, the trial is stress-testing the amyloid hypothesis which has influenced research for the past 30 years.

🏥 What’s a smart hospital? - Chief Medical Strategy Officer, Professor Sam Shah speaks with Mark Davies, Chief Medical Officer at IBM about his recent publication on smart health systems. Seasoned medical strategist, Sam reflects on his international colleagues’ experiences with smarter buildings around the world.

💼 How To Go from Being a Practicing Physician to a Medical Advisor in HealthTech - Healthtech is great, but we’re biased! Wouldn’t you like to make impact on a large scale? Dr Claudia Pastides, Medical Advisor at Flo, lays out how and why she made the transition. She provides an actionable, multi-step guide (patent worthy!) to switching from clinical practice to tech, and shares the essential skills that Healthtech professionals need to succeed. This article is gold dust - save it now!

🍷 13 longevity startups to watch, according to top investors - What’s the key to living longer? Some swear by their daily Sudoku habits, whilst others claim a small glass of wine works wonders. Reversing and slowing the ageing process is a budding sector, with the global market predicted to grow to $600bn by 2025. Top investors reveal the European startups who they are backing to extend their lives…

What to Listen to 🔊

😍 The Improver: Episode 7 - Have you fallen in love with the problem? - In this episode, Lara Mott and Dr Na'eem Ahmed talk to Hassan Chaudhury about “good” innovation, real-world data, the DIT First 100 and falling in love. Hassan explains that you not only need to own the problem you’re trying to solve and “get your hands dirty”, but you also have to distance yourself to get the full perspective. And always listen to the data! If anyone knows the lay of the land, it’s serial healthtech “matchmaker” Hassan Chaudhury who promotes the UK Digital Health sector to international audiences. (He must rack up some serious air miles!)

☁️ MedCity Pivot: A conversation with the Chief Medical Officer of AWS - What do clouds have to do with healthcare? The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of tech by the healthcare industry, with cloud computing transforming healthcare. Taha Kass-Hout, the Chief Medical Officer and Director of Machine Learning at AWS, reveals how machine learning can be leveraged to harness data and improve outcomes.

Opportunities 💰

📈 Clinician + Entrepreneur - Holland & Barrett, the UK’s leading health and wellbeing store is entering the preventative medicine market. The company is looking for talented doctors to drive the brand new ‘Diagnostics’ side of the business. This role is for someone who has scaled from scratch before, whether in a start-up or in a larger company and is interested in building and scaling with the benefits of a trusted brand, significant resources and reliable infrastructure. The team are hiring for a Diagnostics General Manager and Diagnostics Proposition Manager, who will work to establish a Diagnostics proposition within H&B and unlock its full commercial potential.

🤖 Innovation Product Manager - Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust’s award-winning Innovation and Intelligent Automation Team (the future is here!) are recruiting. The team was set up to lead innovation efforts for the NHS, by the NHS! The individual will put people at the heart of everything they do, managing platforms and apps that have been developed by the in-house team.

🎤 ‘Managing the digital health revolution’ event - Join PUBLIC on Thursday 10th February 2022 at 11am GMT for the launch of their Advancing Digital Health Series. Kicking off with a virtual panel session hosted by Simon Eccles (National CCIO and Deputy CEO, NHSX) and joined by ICS leaders and Healthtech innovators, the event will explore how ICS leaders can effectively manage their digital transition and engage with the ‘What Good Looks Like’ framework. Following the discussion, leading Healthtech startups will showcase their innovative technologies. For more info, head over to the event page.