The Healthtech Podcast

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

On today's episode Alex and James are joined by Dr Sohaib Imtiaz M.D., MPH, VP of Innovation at Owaves, a company that aims to optimize your circadian rhythm through calendar-tracked lifestyle modification. Sohaib is a board-certified physician in lifestyle medicine from the United Kingdom who ranked among the top 10 students nationally in statistics, business studies, and information technology. He focuses on lifestyle medicine while exploring technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Sohaib chose to study in his hometown of Manchester in order to prioritize his well-being and relationships. He believes in prevention and in ‘Supra-Health,’ the ability to optimize our health. The team discuss the journey of transitioning from clinician to entrepreneur, public health and lifestyle medicine. https://twitter.com/digitald0ctor https://owaves.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

Stephen Bourke is cofounder of the UK medicines-management and digital pharmacy app, Echo. Not wanting to be defined by his own medical condition, Stephen, a lifelong patient, embarked on a journey to build a solution that empowers patients and puts them in control of their medications, improving adherence rates and making life with a chronic condition much easier. Since its creation in 2016, Echo has gone on to scale nationally and has helped tens of thousands of people to stay well. With Stephen’s firm belief in patient centred-design, along with his background in branding and a team comprised of alumni from Apple, Lyst, Hello Fresh and Badoo, they might have proved that you can, in fact, make a medicines app sexy. We chat design, disruption and digitising the UK health service. Notes: Stephen mentions The Spine, which, for those that don't know, supports the IT infrastructure for health and social care in England, joining together over 23,000 healthcare IT systems in 20,500 organisations. 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

James is joined by Will Stoddart, a Medical and Tech CEO, with experience founding, growing and scaling Werlabs, a rapidly expanding healthcare internet business based out of Stockholm, Sweden. Prior to Werlabs, Will was a founder, along with his twin brother, at Haploflow; focusing on helping individuals make decisions based on data from wearables. Will has experience across software engineering, medicine and finance - plus a few war stories on founding, raising financing and managing very different cultures: think medicine vs product vs marketing. Currently, Will is founding a new consumer healthcare company that is focusing on monitoring, educating and treating age-related decline in functionality. They cover Will's background, overcoming tragedy, his companies, motivations and passion to solve problems in health. Will gives a practical guide to starting a company, setting up a board, how to streamline the process, mentoring and being mentored and also explains why the tech ecosystem in Stockholm is so powerful. Podcast references: - Monkeyglandin.com - How To Stay Young, BBC - The Hidden 40%, Andreessen Horowitz - Physician Innovators, Andreessen Horowitz - The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz - Daniel Eck, CEO of Spotify - Jonas Norlander, Founder of Avito - Bridgewater's Ray Dalio On The Value Of Embracing Your Weaknesses 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 a5JLhnPM0MwY7xN93CU1

James is joined by Alex Gilbert who currently manages large Life Sciences Partnerships at Medopad, one of the UK’s highest-growth digital health companies. Alex is an experienced “Jack of all trades” who has been working within the Digital Health industry alongside healthcare, pharmaceutical and tech organisations. Through his experience at Medopad, he has launched national projects, defined product proposition and helped grow the company from 8 to >100 people. His passion is the use of technology to empower and engage the patient to take control of their care. The team talk about Alex's background, how he got into digital health, the value of partnerships with the likes of Apple, Medopad's $28M raise, how Alex has helped Medopad scale internationally and Alex's view on the future of the healthtech sector. www.medopad.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