The Healthtech Podcast

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 

What would you do with a cloned version of your voice? What if it sounded so real, it could turn text into jokes and even sing? What if someone cloned Her Majesty The Queen's voice? This week, James is joined by Dr. Matthew Aylett, a recognized world authority in speech technology research and development and was working at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) at Berkeley, California, before returning to Scotland in late-2005 to co-found CereProc. Matthew helps patients with conditions like throat cancers and neurological disorders to clone their voices and is exploring many other value propositions in health and healthtech. Prior to ICSI he was the senior development engineer at speech synthesis leader Rhetorical Systems (later acquired by Scansoft), which he joined at its formation. At Rhetorical, Matthew was responsible for the design, implementation, and testing of the company's core speech technology. Before Rhetorical, he spent five years at the University of Edinburgh researching speech and dialogue technologies. Dr. Matthew Aylett holds a BA in Computing and Artificial Intelligence from the University of Sussex, and an MSc with Distinction and PhD in Speech and Language Technology from the University Of Edinburgh. info@cereproc.com | www.cereproc.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 Bonnie Roupé, a Swedish-born international businesswoman and social entrepreneur, best known as the founder of Bonzun, a health company providing pregnant women and parents with unbiased evidence based medical information. In 2004, Bonnie started a publishing house and founded the Swedish Golf Magazine for women, Red Tee, the first niched sports magazine for women. In 2005 she was named the most promising entrepreneur of the Year in Sweden and in 2012 she was listed as one of Sweden's super talents. She was rewarded Innovation Against Poverty by SIDA 2012 for Bonzun's work spreading medical information in the countryside in China. In 2001 and 2003 Bonnie sailed on around Svalbard and from Greenland to the United States, making her one of few people to cross the Arctic Sea, Greenland Sea, Labrador Sea and North Atlantic Ocean on a 47.7 feet sailboat! bonnie@bonzun.com | www.linkedin.com/in/bonnieroupe 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

Are you keen to learn the basics of AI and NLP? Are you looking to use NLP in your company? Could you? Should you? This week, James is joined by Valentin Tablan, SVP for Artificial Intelligence at Ieso Digital Health which delivers high-quality cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) online, for people experiencing common mental health issues. Valentin has spent nearly 20 years in the field of Natural Language Processing, Knowledge Representation, and Artificial Intelligence. His team apply advanced AI techniques to Ieso’s vast dataset to determine which evidence-based therapy interventions are most effective. Under his leadership, Ieso has created the industry’s first (real-time) AI-enabled tools that augment therapists’ which in turn increases quality and improves clinical outcomes. Prior to joining Ieso Valentin was the lead scientist on the question-answering service that powers Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant; he is now using that expertise to help computers familiarise with the way patients express themselves during therapy. Valentin holds a PhD from the University of Sheffield and is a multi-lingual language specialist. He is a frequent speaker on deep learning tools and techniques which can revolutionise healthcare applications, medicine and diagnostics. www.iesohealth.com www.twitter.com/vtablan https://www.linkedin.com/in/vtablan/ 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 Natalie Douglas, who has over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare services sector and is an award-winning business leader and entrepreneur. Following a sales and marketing career in the pharmaceutical industry, most notably at Johnson and Johnson, she led and secured an MBO, developed an executed an international growth strategy for the company, building a highly successful business and brand, establishing operations in North America, Europe and India.  Natalie was the CEO of Healthcare at Home Limited from May 2014. She is also the founder of Lucidity LLC which is based out of New York.  natalie@lucidity.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