The Healthtech Podcast

James is joined by Zoe Blake, CEO of Xenzone. Zoe is on a mission to provide improved access to clinically excellent mental health services across England and beyond via digitised counselling - powered by humans and backed by AI and analytics. Her rich background in technology and leadership, and the personal tragedy of losing her mother - a mental health nurse - to suicide are what drive her to use technology for clinical good. She has built XenZone into the largest digital mental health platform in England, available in its 100th NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) area - making its services free for children and young people across more than half of England and making substantial impact to the current NHS landscape. James and Zoe talk about Zoe’s background and her 25 years in tech businesses, her personal experience of mental ill health in her family, why you shouldn’t judge a company by what they raise, how she has scaled Xenzone and how digital could be the answer to the huge demand for mental health services. https://xenzone.com/

This week, James is joined by Vincent Grasso, a surgeon, software architect and medical informaticist. He’s currently Global Practice Lead for IPSoft where he designs Cognitive Health Agents and their integration by leveraging the ‘Amelia' virtual agent. Vincent completed his surgical residency at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine Manhattan Program and whilst at Yale University on a fellowship programme, he worked with NASA on Extreme Telemedicine, effectively putting an ER at basecamp of Everest in the 1990s and pioneering the field of telemedicine. Vincent has previously built his own EMR, he’s built startups, he's been mentored by a Wall Street Legend and he's passionate about solving the opioid crisis with technology. James and Vincent talk about all of this and more on this week's episode. 

James is joined by  Eric Mayes, serial nanotechnology entrepreneur and CEO of Endomag.  Eric has 20 years of experience in technology. He was named the Royal Society of Chemistry’s ‘Entrepreneur of the Year 2003’ for his founding role in NanoMagnetics. He is also an advisor to the University of Texas at Austin’s ‘Texas Health Catalyst’ and the European Healthtech Translation Advisory Board (HealthtechTAB).  Eric believes that everyone deserves a better standard of cancer care and so joined Cambridge-based healthtech start-up Endomag as CEO. They manufacture a metallic seed, smaller than a grain of rice, which uses magnetism to help doctors locate breast cancer tumours to be removed. James and Eric chat about Eric's previous companies, his journey to healthtech and discuss some lessons learned in adoption of new innovation across healthtech. http://www.endomagnetics.com/

James is joined by Max Parmentier, founder and CEO of Agetech startup, Birdie. Max has previously scooped $15M from investors including Bill Gates to work on start-up Wambo, an Amazon-esque marketplace that pools medicine procurement so developing countries can get cheaper drugs. He’s pitched at the White House, and worked at the UN; he’s done five years at McKinsey and even helped the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to plan against deforestation — all before he was 30. Birdie recently raised a $7M Series A and digitalises notes taken by care workers during visits which can be more easily shared between professional carers, other health practitioners and family members, helping to coordinate care and keep an older generation out of care homes or hospital beds. But the vision goes much wider and on the podcast, Max talks about tackling the stigma of ageing and normalising support in peoples' homes and James and Max chat about social purpose and meaning in healthtech, how Birdie plans to capture the agetech sector and how to build a truly socially conscious company.

This week James is joined by Andrew Elder, Deputy Managing Partner at Albion VC. Andrew initially practised as a surgeon for six years, specialising in neurosurgery, before joining the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as a consultant in 2001. Whilst at BCG he specialised in healthcare strategy, gaining experience with many large, global clients across the full spectrum of healthcare including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, service and care providers, software and telecommunications. Andrew now focuses on medical technologies, digital health and technology-enabled services to the life-science sector, and has served on the boards of companies ranging from diagnostics, imaging and software to pharmaceuticals and biomarkers. He joined Albion Capital in 2005 and became a partner in 2009. He has an MA plus Bachelors of Medicine and Surgery from Cambridge University and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (England). Andrew also oversees the management of the UCL Technology Fund in collaboration with UCLB.  https://www.albion.vc/

James is joined by Tania Boler, the cofounder and CEO of Elvie, a health and lifestyle brand developing smarter technology for women. Elvie takes the best of medical technology and turns it into premium consumer products that women love to use. Together with her co-founder, Alex Asseily (co-founder, Jawbone), she has raised > $50M in investment, most recently their $42M Series B round led by IPGL and supported by Octopus Ventures and Impact Ventures UK.  Their first product, Elvie Trainer, is a category-defining Kegel trainer and is sold in major retailers, including Nordstrom and John Lewis and their latest product is the Elvie Pump, a breast pump that made its debut on the catwalk at London Fashion week. James and Tania talk about her background, coming from UN policy into entrepreneurship, the importance of design in healthtech, how to launch a B2C medical device and the ever growing femtech space in health.

James is joined by Sina Habibi, founder and CEO of AI dementia-tech startup, Cognetivity. Sina simplifies complex challenges and develops compelling and collaborative ways to solve them and in addition to business executive roles he has experience in research (nano-technology and synthetic biology), product management, and high-tech consultancy (big data and fin-tech). Sina has been an active member of Cambridge University Entrepreneurs (CUE) since 2010 and chaired the society in 2013-2014. Cognetivity has patented and pilot-tested a software-based platform technology for assessing mental health. Early diagnosis and management of cognitive disorders, including dementia, holds the promise of transforming peoples’ lives and bringing clarity to international healthcare management provision. The early diagnostic sector is starting to gain significant commercial interest as it offers metrics to the pharmaceutical industry in the development of new therapeutics. Additionally the markets for early screening and home monitoring offers significant health economic benefit to payors. https://www.cognetivity.com/

James is joined by Mir Imran, an Indian healthtech inventor, entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He has had over 20 medical device companies that he has sold to the likes of Ely Lily, Medtronic and Abbott. His first medical device was a world first - the implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD), which, after being spun out, was acquired by Boston Scientific for $27bn.  Mir invented the BIS monitor, used to measure depth of anaesthesia, the Dorsal Root Ganglion (DRG) Stimulator and many other devices. He now has an applied research institute and a venture fund for medical devices and you can hear his fascinating story right here. https://www.incubevc.com/team/mir/

It's Mental Health Awareness Week and James is joined by Dr. Tim Rogers, who is a medical doctor, consultant and sport psychiatrist. He regularly consults with elite athletes in the UK across a wide variety of sports, including athletes involved in Olympic and Paralympic competition. Tim is a leading advocate for the promotion of athlete wellbeing and mental health and recently joined mental-health-tech company, Big White Wall, as Clinical Director. James and Tim discuss his journey into technology and how new mental-health-tech is reshaping the way that athletes and others are accessing mental health services. https://www.bigwhitewall.com

James is joined by Robin Farmanfarmaian - healthtech expert, global speaker and author of Amazon No.1 bestseller The Patient as CEO: How Technology Empowers the Healthcare Consumer. Robin is an angel investor in healthtech, backing companies like Dance Biopharm who are doing clinical trials for an inhaled insulin vaporised from a liquid and unicorn MindMaze VR who have raised >$100M (in part from Leonardo di Caprio) and are valued at $1B. Robin talks about her younger years dealing with an autoimmune disease and how she became motivated to positively impact 100M patients through healthtech innovation, how she built an ecosystem round herself through giving and adding value to others and how through her new book, The Thought Leader Formula, she's teaching others in health to become exactly that. https://www.robinff.com/