The Healthtech Podcast

This week, James is Joined by Alex Menys, CEO and founder of Motilent. Motilent’s mission is to change the way we see the gut. We have spent the last 5 years developing new imaging technology that is helping researchers and clinicians understand how the digestive tract works. Our key clinical focus area is Crohn’s Disease, a debilitating inflammatory condition affecting people of all ages and our first product GIQuant aims to help clinicians to identify earlier when patients stop responding to immunotherapy. Alex founded Motilent in 2013 to expedite collaborative research in his field of medical image analysis for gastrointestinal (GI) disorders. Since then, Motilent has grown to working across a range of GI specialties in research and has produced it's first clinically available product for Crohn's disease monitoring - GIQuant. Alex holds master degrees in Biochemistry and Medical Physics, a PhD in MRI imaging and spent 2 years on the board of an AIM listed UK medical device company. https://www.motilent.co.uk/ | https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-menys-83675b75/ js@somx.co.uk | www.jamessomauroo.com

This week's Sunday Session is all about AI in radiology and the announcement that Qure.ai, a healthtech company specialising in artificial intelligence (AI) has deployed its COVID-19 progression monitoring software in a UK hospital. This is a big moment for AI in radiology in the UK and could be a pivotal moment for the adoption of AI in healthcare. Read the article in Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamessomauroo/2020/04/27/qureai-deploys-ai-radiology-software-in-the-fight-against-covid-19/ js@somx.co.uk | www.jamessomauroo.com www.qure.ai

This week, James is joined by Dr. Harpreet Sood, an NHS GP with a lot of special interests! Harpreet has collaborated with organisations on healthcare projects internationally - in the US, France, Israel and Asia. Early in his career he has also founded two healthcare startups. Harpreet is currently a practicing primary care doctor in London at University College Hospital. He is also Co-Founder and strategic advisor to the NHS Digital Academy, a £6m programme to develop a cadre of digital leaders in the NHS. He served as the first national Associate Chief Clinical Information Officer at NHS England and prior to this was Senior Fellow to the CEO of NHS England where he advised and led on health innovation and technology policy including advising the Secretary State for Health on NHS digitisation. Harpreet is a board member of Health Education England and Digital Health.London. Harpreet sits on the editorial board of the British Medical Journal Health and Care Informatics and has written on health policy for the BMJ, The Lancet and Guardian. Harpreet is an advisor, speaker and consultant on digital health, clinical application of AI and the future of work in healthcare. www.jamessomauroo.com | js@somx.co.uk | https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-somauroo/

This week, I heard that a previous colleague tragically lost his life to COVID-19. I saw all the tributes to him on social media and hope that his family and friends are doing as best they can. Beyond the statistics are real people with families who are having their lives turned upside down by this and frontline NHS workers are literally giving their lives to serve the public. Please stay at home and stop the spread 🙏🏼💙 NHSx have released extremely helpful guidance for healthtech companies, talking about how they are assessing healthtech relevant to COVID-19 right now. So wherever you are in the world and you want to get your COVID-19 solution into the UK system to help, what you need to know is in 8 simple points in this episode. In summary: If you have a product or service that you would like the NHS to consider as part of our COVID response, or your app is ready for review against the standards, please email dnhsx@nhsx.nhs.uk where the team will review your submission. You can read the full blog from NHSx here: https://www.nhsx.nhs.uk/blogs/how-we-are-assessing-covid-19-apps/

This week, James is joined by Tobias Alpsten, an international health tech executive and entrepreneur focusing on transforming patient care globally. He founded iPLATO in 2000 and is now the company’s Chief Executive. As iPLATO’s CEO, Tobias is responsible for setting overall strategy and for leading marketing, support, product management and engineering. Committed to evidence based interventions in healthcare, Tobias works with leading institutions including UCL, Imperial College, the Department of Health and Public Health England on increasing the evidence base for Health Tech through research. After studies in Stockholm and Paris, Tobias earned an MSc in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology in 1996. He joined Accenture’s Paris office before founding iPLATO in London in 2000. Tobias has worked in Sweden, France, Ireland, Singapore, Japan, the US, and now the UK. https://www.iplato.com | https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobias-alpsten-b95141/ www.hs.ventures Twitter @HSVenture Instagram @hs.ventures Linkedin at HS. email us at info@hs.live Your can get our host, Dr. James Somauroo at: www.jamessomauroo.com Twitter @jamessomauroo Instagram @j_soms Linkedin james-somauroo

Hiring is hard. In healthtech it's even harder. But right now, it's needed more than ever with so many people out of work. The expertise is pretty niche, it's tough finding people that 'get it' in healthtech with public/private sector and clinical/managerial/business nuances, there's specific sales and marketing knowledge, there's no one place to go to find jobs/hires and recruiters still face the same issues. At HS., we've already solved the problem more times than we can count through the podcast and our events and now we've built something very exciting... We've officially launched our HS. Recruit Area 🚀 to help those out of work! Head to www.hs.ventures and click on HS.Recruit to sign up, whether you're a company or a candidate! To really get in our good books, fill out this survey to help us fine-tune the platform: https://hs18.typeform.com/to/bjdkoU If you have any suggestions or questions, email us at info@hs.live!

We're obviously still in the midst of COVID-19 and if you're anything like us at HS., you'll be locked away, thinking, strategising, and coming up with new ideas, new innovations, even new businesses... When we all emerge, you may well be looking for investment and so this episode is a conversation I had a few weeks back with Chris Smith, Managing Partner at Playfair Capital. Chris focuses his investing activities on seed (and pre-seed) deals in the UK and Israel and has a particular interest in HealthTech having gone in for uMed, who you might recognise from a very episode of this podcast and Vine health who recently did a £1M seed round. Chris loves finding companies operating in unloved/overlooked sectors that are ripe for disruption and you can hear all about him, his background and his investing right here. https://www.playfaircapital.com/  | https://www.linkedin.com/in/cdgsmith/ www.hs.ventures Twitter @HSVenture Instagram @hs.ventures Linkedin at HS. email us at info@hs.live Your can get our host, Dr. James Somauroo at: www.jamessomauroo.com Twitter @jamessomauroo Instagram @j_soms Linkedin james-somauroo

This week's Sunday Session is about ideas, innovation and optimism in the face of lockdown and social distancing. Mentioned this week: If you want to join the HS. Office Hours with Ananda Ventures on Wednesday, apply here ASAP. Late applications will be taken forwards to the next office hours, so whenever you're listening, you can apply here: https://hs18.typeform.com/to/fDudbo For a free healthtech design workshop, contact charlie.regis@styliff.com | www.styliff.com Contact James for feedback on an idea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-somauroo/ The Story of Arkeo and Mental Fitness: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-83-the-story-of-arkeo-and-mental-fitness/id1438968893?i=1000470318986

This week, James is joined by Jana Dowling, founder and CEO of the preventative mental health-tech company, Arkeo. Previously a standup comic, Jana Downling found her way to entrepreneurship via a severe depressive episode. In her recovery, Jana started tracking her mental health and based on the data she was collecting on herself, she was back into work within 6 weeks. She then started social enterprise hiring and training other sufferers of mental health issues and eventually wanted to build a mental fitness brand - a Fitbit for the brain. Jana started Arkeo Sept 2018 - initially raised 100k and has now closed £1M in VC funding. jana@myarkeo.com | www.myarkeo.com www.hs.ventures Twitter @HSVenture Instagram @hs.ventures Linkedin at HS. email us at info@hs.live Your can get our host, Dr. James Somauroo at: www.jamessomauroo.com Twitter @jamessomauroo Instagram @j_soms Linkedin james-somauroo

This week's Sunday Session is another update on the healthtech response to COVID-19. This week we heard from NHSX and how they're partnering with big technology companies on a centralised data store to provide decision makers with real-time dashboards of how the virus is spreading and what resources are available in healthcare to deal with it. Also featured this week: Tracking apps/websites - https://covid.joinzoe.com/ (UK), www.tracktogether.co.uk (UK), www.covidnearyou.org (USA) NHSX is calling on all innovators who can support the elderly, vulnerable and self-isolating during COVID-19 to apply for government funding of up to £25,000 to test their solution - https://techforce19.uk/ Car manufacturers are making ventilators - https://apple.news/ALoKnJ2I8Q0yYlVoBbQ3Ppg Elon Musk said he sourced 1,255 ventilators from China and shipped them to Los Angeles as US worries about a shortage in the face of coronavirus - https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-says-he-shipped-1255-ventilators-to-la-coronavirus-2020-3?r=US&IR=T Rock health's portfolio companies making impact -  https://rockhealth.com/10-ways-rock-health-portfolio-companies-are-responding-to-covid-19/ The Coronavirus Tech Handbook (an open source google doc) - https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/ www.hs.ventures Twitter @HSVenture Instagram @hs.ventures Linkedin at HS. email us at info@hs.live Your can get our host, Dr. James Somauroo at: www.jamessomauroo.com Twitter @jamessomauroo Instagram @j_soms Linkedin james-somauroo