The Healthtech Podcast

How do you build an AI company in healthcare? What can AI in radiology actually do? What should it be doing? Are clinicians ever going to be replaced? What does the future look like in healthcare AI? This week, James is joined by Dr. Hugh Harvey, who was a consultant radiologist before entering academia and completing an MD research degree in computational analysis of prostate MR, and winning science writer of the year twice in a row. Hugh worked as a consultant radiologist in the NHS (Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Trust), and sat on the Royal College of Radiologists committee for medical imaging informatics as well as the AI working group. He now acts as a consultant and advisory board member for AI start-ups in the UK, EU and America within the imaging and healthcare space, as well as sitting on several AI and academic committees including the KSS Academic Health Science Network AI Core Advisory Group. He has co-authored several white papers and reports on AI in healthcare, alongside bodies such as Reform, an independent think-tank, and Health Education England and is an associate editor at Nature: Digital Medicine. He acted as co-chair of the Topol Review, a seminal independent report for the UK Secretary of State for Health into preparing the healthcare workforce to deliver the digital future - read my take on the Topol Review for Forbes here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamessomauroo/2019/02/11/nhs-announces-workforce-plan-for-genomics-ai-and-digital-medicine/ And Hugh has deep start-up experience both as the lead for regulatory affairs at Babylon (recently valued >$1B) and then the Clinical Director at Kheiron Medical ($22M series A raise), where they developed deep learning software to improve breast cancer screening, and were the first UK company to receive the CE mark for a deep learning application in radiology. Hugh's unique career enables dynamic bridging between the medical, technical and business worlds, with academic, clinical and operational expertise in cognitive digital solutions. He’s a pragmatist, a realist and incredibly refreshing and entertaining on social media @DrHughHarvey | hugh@hardianhealth.com For more information and content, check out our website www.hs.ventures. You can follow us on Twitter @HSVenture, on Instagram @hs.ventures, on Linkedin at HS. and you can email us at info@hs.live  You can get our host, Dr. James Somauroo, at www.jamessomauroo.com and you can follow him on Twitter @jamessomauroo, on Instagram @j_soms and on Linkedin at james-somauroo

Can you grow a beating heart in a lab? Could you test cardiac drugs on it? Could you transplant it into a human? This week, James is joined by Dr. Kevin Costa, Co-founder & Chief Scientific Officer at biotech firm Novoheart, the first company in the world to have developed miniature beating human hearts from stem cells which are being used to change the way drugs are able to be screened for cardiac effects. The company itself has worked on a multi-phase research partnership with Pfizer and has filed IP on its proprietary system which can create healthy as well as sick mini hearts and combines organoid data with AI to screen for drug toxicity and efficacy with an exceptionally high degree of accuracy. As well as his work with Novoheart, Dr. Costa is also the Associate Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. novoheart.com | Kevin.costa@novoheart.com For more information and content, check out our website www.hs.ventures. You can follow us on Twitter @HSVenture, on Instagram @hs.ventures, on Linkedin at HS. and you can email us at info@hs.live  You can get our host, Dr. James Somauroo, at www.jamessomauroo.com and you can follow him on Twitter @jamessomauroo, on Instagram @j_soms and on Linkedin at james-somauroo

This week, James is joined by Arjun Panesar, founding CEO of Diabetes Digital Media (DDM). Arjun founded Diabetes.co.uk whilst still a student at university in 2003 after his grandfather’s quadruple heart bypass and diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. Since then, Arjun has led Diabetes.co.uk to become the world’s largest diabetes support community. He holds a first-class honours degree (MEng) in Computing and Artificial Intelligence from Imperial College, London, with his award-winning Masters research demonstrating the benefit of intelligent systems in improving user experience through collaborative machine learning and data mining. Arjun's focus lies in empowering patients with innovative digital health services that augment traditional healthcare. Today, Arjun leads the development of DDM’s evidence-based digital health solutions which harness the power of big data, machine learning and behaviour change to provide precise and personalised patient care to patients. This is delivered through insurance companies, health agencies, and governments worldwide – including the NHS. This scalable, effective and engaging approach is redefining chronic disease and wellness, with over 1.2 million members across all platforms. Arjun has written a book titled Machine Learning and AI for Healthcare which explores how artificial Intelligence and machine learning can be used to improve patient and population health. Arjun’s book is due for release on 2nd February via Amazon https://amzn.to/2EAHCtv ddm.health | arjun@ddm.health | https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunpanesar/ For more information and content, check out our website www.hs.ventures. You can follow us on Twitter @HSVenture, on Instagram @hs.ventures, on Linkedin at HS. and you can email us at info@hs.live  You can get our host, Dr. James Somauroo, at www.jamessomauroo.com and you can follow him on Twitter @jamessomauroo, on Instagram @j_soms and on Linkedin at james-somauroo

This week, James is joined by Jacob Haddad, cofounder of AccuRx, a UK-based startup using clinician-to-patient messaging to bring patients and their healthcare teams together. They make patients healthier and the workforce happier. AccuRx raised £8.8 million in Series A funding in February 2019 and their vision is for anyone involved in a patient's care to easily communicate with everyone else involved in that patient's care, including the patient. Their flagship product, Chain SMS, is used by GP practices to communicate with their patients. Chain SMS is completely free; the focus is on learning and developing ideas for powering communication across the healthcare workforce. It's now used in over 1 in 3 GP practices, all by word of mouth. On this week’s episode, James and Jacob talk around a huge range of useful topics for entrepreneurs: bottom-up field sales in healthtech, pivoting and the importance of testing your assumptions with humility (AccuRx was originally built to solve a problem in antibiotic prescribing), business models in primary care (and tips for selling), innovative ways to get a customer’s attention and Jacob tells us of his key tips in healthtech: minimising time to value with every interaction and building a great experience for end-users. www.accurxcom | jacob@accurx.com | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobnhaddad/ For more information and content, check out our website www.hs.ventures. You can follow us on Twitter @HSVenture, on Instagram @hs.ventures, on Linkedin at HS. and you can email us at info@hs.live  You can get our host, Dr. James Somauroo, at www.jamessomauroo.com and you can follow him on Twitter @jamessomauroo, on Instagram @j_soms and on Linkedin at james-somauroo

How do you go from the post room at Virgin Records to becoming a healthtech entrepreneur? How does watching iTunes disrupting the music industry prepare you to disrupt healthcare? In healthtech, why is it so important to delight users with a great experience? All these answered and more on this week's episode where James is joined by Elliot Engers, founder and CEO of Infinity Health, a London-based start-up that has developed a suite of digital tools to improve workflow and task management in healthcare. Infinity Health was founded at the end of 2013 by Elliott and his cofounder, Dr Adam Benton. Elliot has an awesome background, coming from the music industry and watching iTunes disrupt the sector and he's now taken that learning into healthtech and is an expert in managing software products and services. In 2014 the company won a proof of concept grant from Innovate UK to develop digital tools for handover and task management. Over the years this has developed into Infinity Health, a digital platform that provides collaboration and task management for teams at the point-of-care. This takes the form of a suite of digital tools that collect and integrate data, for example patient lists and medical data, alongside tools to communicate this information such as notifications, instant messaging and activity feeds. www.infinity.health | hello@infinity.health | https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliottengers/ For more information and content, check out our website www.hs.ventures. You can follow us on Twitter @HSVenture, on Instagram @hs.ventures, on Linkedin at HS. and you can email us at info@hs.live  You can get our host, Dr. James Somauroo, at www.jamessomauroo.com and you can follow him on Twitter @jamessomauroo, on Instagram @j_soms and on Linkedin at james-somauroo

What's the future of women's healthcare? Gloria Lau, cofounder and CEO of Alpha, believes that the future of health services and product delivery, whether prescription or OTC, insurance-covered or cash, will have a simple and personalised commerce experience supported by a team of AI-assisted doctors and pharmacies. Her current company, Alpha, is a health services brand that enables easy access to online diagnosis and prescription treatment, and focuses on healthcare’s primary decision makers - women. Alpha believes that the healthcare journey starts with basic medical needs - offering hormonal contraceptives, acne & anti-aging treatment, and elective cosmetic therapy. Alpha patients have access to a team of doctors and nurse practitioners, support for both insurance-covered and outside-of-insurance conditions, along with free shipping right to the patients home. Previously, Gloria headed up data products at Linkedin and was VP of Data at Timeful which was acquired by Google. She is also a consulting faculty at Stanford, holds a Ph.D. and MSc from Stanford Engineering & Computer Science, a BSc from UCLA Engineering, is the inventor on 11 patents in the area of recommendation systems and data science and is author of over 40 academic papers on information retrieval systems. gloria@helloalpha.com | www.helloalpha.com | www.av8.vc For more information and content, check out our website www.hs.ventures. You can follow us on Twitter @HSVenture, on Instagram @hs.ventures, on Linkedin at HS. and you can email us at info@hs.live  You can get our host, Dr. James Somauroo, at www.jamessomauroo.com and you can follow him on Twitter @jamessomauroo, on Instagram @j_soms and on Linkedin at james-somauroo

How does a night at the pub give you an idea for the first ever AI drug discovery company? Can you code how humans perceive beauty? Do you want the job title ‘Drug Hunter’ for your CV? Well, this week, James is joined by Prof. Andrew Hopkins, a leader in using AI in the hunt for medicines who will answer all of those questions. A bold claim, but one that can be backed up: Andrew invented the Artificial Intelligence approach to fix the very expensive, very slow, and very risky process of drug discovery, design and development. Andrew's company, Exscientia, works with data scientists, chemists and machine learning engineers that mine huge amounts of data to bring new insights into what diseases are and how they can be treated. Their approach is currently shortening medicine discovery from 5 to 1 year and cutting the cost of drug development by more than 30%. Prior to Exscientia, Prof. Hopkins spent 14 years at Pfizer, where he was frustrated with the slow pace of innovation - so he went back to Academia to found Exscientia as a spin out from his lab in 2012. Since then, Exscientia has discovered 4 pre-clinical drug candidates, with the first drug design by algorithm to enter human clinical trials imminently - and signed over 8 major pharma collaborations with companies such as Celgene, Sanofi, GSK and Evotec, estimated to be worth over $1 billion in milestones and royalties. For more information and content, check out our website www.hs.ventures. You can follow us on Twitter @HSVenture, on Instagram @hs.ventures, on Linkedin at HS. and you can email us at info@hs.live  You can get our host, Dr. James Somauroo, at www.jamessomauroo.com and you can follow him on Twitter @jamessomauroo, on Instagram @j_soms and on Linkedin at james-somauroo

Can AI diagnose skin cancer as well as a dermatologist? The answer is yes and it’s was proved this month by my guest this week, Neil Daly from Skin Analytics. It’s a UK based healthtech company whose DERM product featured in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association for its ability to catch melanomas as sensitive and specific as a dermatology specialist. Skin Analytics’ ambition is to help more people survive skin cancer by using their proprietary AI technology to improve access to high quality skin cancer screening. Neil started the company in 2012, having worked extensively in mobile innovation and strategy consulting for a number of years. He holds a BSc in Physics from the University of Western Australia and an Executive MBA from London Business School. Skin Analytics are working with a number of healthcare organisations in the UK and Australia and the recent study in JAMA was conducted across 7 NHS sites in the UK, led by the Royal Free London NHS Trust. neil@skinanalytics.co.uk | www.skinanalytics.co.uk JAMA Study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2752995 For more information and content, check out our website www.hs.ventures. You can follow us on Twitter @HSVenture, on Instagram @hs.ventures, on Linkedin at HS. and you can email us at info@hs.live  You can get our host, Dr. James Somauroo, at www.jamessomauroo.com and you can follow him on Twitter @jamessomauroo, on Instagram @j_soms and on Linkedin at james-somauroo

This week, James is joined by Darius Shahida, Head of Growth & Chief of Staff at the $1.25 billion valued ultrasound company, Butterfly Network. Darius helps lead fundraising, global health, commercial and strategic efforts. In 2018, and while a student at HBS, Darius raised $250 million dollars for Butterfly Network - the largest medical imaging raise in history. Butterfly is fundamentally changing the way ultrasound is undertaken and you can read all about their brand new device in one of James’ latest Forbes articles (link below) Darius was previously Head of Trading at a Birch Grove Capital, a Global Cross-Asset Hedge Fund which manages over $1BN. In this capacity he was responsible for all trading across Credit, Equities, Convertibles, Bank Debt and Commodities as well as helping the CIO in risk and portfolio management. Prior to Birch Grove, Darius built the Cross Asset Special Situations Desk at Morgan Stanley, where he was amongst the firm’s youngest hires. In this role, he was responsible for sourcing and structuring over $1BN in banking transactions and acted as the Firm’s specialist on Argentina during the default proceedings. Darius holds a MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.S from Duke University, where he studied Neuroscience and Psychology, and worked for Dan Ariely, one of the world’s foremost Behavioral Economists. He speaks five languages, holds three passports and has lived and worked in New York, London, Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo. www.butterflynetwork.com | https://www.linkedin.com/in/darius-shahida-aa05a777/ | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamessomauroo/2019/09/27/butterfly-a-125-billion-heathtech-company-launches-new-ultrasound-technology-in-the-uk For more information and content, check out our website www.hs.ventures. You can follow us on Twitter @HSVenture, on Instagram @hs.ventures, on Linkedin at HS. and you can email us at info@hs.live  You can get our host, Dr. James Somauroo, at www.jamessomauroo.com and you can follow him on Twitter @jamessomauroo, on Instagram @j_soms and on Linkedin at james-somauroo

How bad is the blue light from your devices for your health? What technology is out there to combat it? How do you build a business tackling such an issue? This week, James is joined by Justin Barrett, CEO of Healthe, a company dedicated to improving eye health in a digital world, Healthe’s suite of products, technologies and Eyesafe brand are now being implemented by world leaders in consumer electronics. In partnership with the eye and healthcare community, electronic manufacturers and standards organizations, Healthe develops health-first technologies, standards and products. Justin was a recognized semi-finalist for Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year with Healthe being ranked #5 on the Observer list of Hottest 20 Health Start-ups in 2019. He is a co-inventor on Healthe’s wide-reaching patent portfolio of light filtration technology for digital devices including accessory products, integrated display technology, augmented reality and VR. Previously, Justin was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Fortune 100’s Amtrust. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he and the Healthe team develop technologies and standards in conjunction with the Eyesafe Vision Health Advisory Board including leading ophthalmologists and optometrists. justin@health-e.com | www.health-e.com HS. Health-Tech Talks Event, 31st October: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hs-health-tech-talks-digital-health-tickets-76273475017