The Healthtech Podcast

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/

This week, James is joined by Mark Harmon, who originally studied pharmacology before becoming a buyer for M&S - he was there for 7 years travelling the world. He then worked for Arcadia Group, which includes the likes of Miss Selfridge and TopShop, opening up flagship shops in places like Rio, and because loves sport, he moved to speedo to set up Speedo Beach, which was a business within a business that grew to about $20M in 3 years - he had a team in Australia and some other incredible beach locations around the world, before getting headhunted by Nike to run their $100M sports apparel business globally and worked with the likes of Wayne Rooney, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Mark then had a very moving personal experience  when his son born unwell and his priorities in life change pretty much overnight so he went on to become the oldest medical student through Kings College Medical School, graduated as a doctor and went on this great journey to combine his business and medical acumen to now work for eConsult - a healthtech company that streamlines primary and urgent care through an online consultation platform. www.econsult.net

This week, James is joined by Peter Hames, cofounder and CEO of Big Health, a healthtech company that creates digital programmes to help those with mental health conditions. Not wanting to enter into the potentially vicious cycle of taking medications to help him sleep, Peter, a psychologist by background, was inspired and motivated to start the company when he saw the market lacked any evidence-based, non-drug solutions for his insomnia. Big Health’s first product is, therefore, Sleepio, which is a digital sleep improvement program delivered online or via their app. It gives users techniques from a treatment method called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which means that patients like Peter, who don't want to take sedative medications, can receive an alternative, proven, evidence-based therapy. James and Peter talk about Peter's background as an insomnia sufferer, his awesome founder story and how an innovative business model has led to Sleepio being available to 12 million people globally. Read Peter's Forbes interview - https://bit.ly/2Zxgnbv  www.sleepio.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 Rick Rowan, the patient-founder of Nurokor, a company that creates pain-relieving products that use a technology called microcurrent. Their first product is a device that looks pretty similar to a smartphone, with small electrodes attached that are put onto the skin. It's a Class IIa medical device, FDA approved, CE marked and is selling into 5 different countries, with sufferers of many forms of chronic pain, including Olympic athletes, shouting about positive results. James and Rick talk about Rick’s background as a chronic back-pain sufferer, his motivations from seeing family members in pain to combatting the opioid epidemic and how initially selling B2C has helped the business across healthcare. https://www.nurokor.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 Hamish Grierson, founder and CEO of Thriva, who has raised over £6M to provide a home-blood-testing service to UK consumers (and now some NHS patients). Hamish is a serial entrepreneur and moved into healthtech from fintech and talks about his journey and some of the similarities and differences between the two sectors. Hamish will also be appearing in the Forbes Healthtech Stories series in May, so look out for that shortly. www.thriva.co  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 David Crane, founder and CEO of Smoke Free to talk about how becoming a psychologist led to the creation of the Smoke Free app and gives a lesson to all entrepreneurs in how implementing the theory of behavioural psychology has led to it being downloaded over 4 million times. David is a long-time entrepreneur and has previously founded a development agency, making over 400 apps and websites, a debating association, a company that created insights out of online community forums/blogs and even a cannabis cafe.  www.smokefree.ai  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 Alex and James are joined by Gian Seehra an investor at Octopus Ventures to talk about transitioning from entrepreneur to venture capital, health tech investments and how both founders and investors should approach setting early valuations. Gian focuses on health investments at Octopus and splits his time on deal origination and assessment of investment opportunities. Prior to joining Octopus, Gian spent two years in Canada building a biotechnology company called Pebble Labs tackling vector-borne, animal and plant diseases, and Trait Biosciences within the cannabis industry. Gian holds a degree in Industrial Economics from the University of Nottingham. He spent two months training in Muay Thai Boxing in Thailand and plans to spend two weeks a year training there. Octopus Ventures are one of Europe’s largest Venture Capital teams with £1bn under management. Octopus is a generalist fund but with specialist investments in health-tech. Based in London and New York, they have Venture Partners in San Francisco, Singapore and China. Their typical initial investment is from £1m for Seed to around £5m for Series A. https://octopusventures.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