The Healthtech Podcast

In this episode of The Healthtech Podcast, James is joined by Jamie Cox, Co-Founder and CTO of Scarlet — Europe's only notified body specialised in software and AI medical devices. Jamie shares how a frustrating experience building AI triage software at Babylon Health led him and co-founder James Dewar to a radical idea: build a notified body from the ground up, designed specifically for iterative...

This week, James is joined by Shravan Nageswaran, co-founder and CEO of Atman Labs, the London applied-AI research company building diagnostic AI that reasons like a doctor — without relying on large language models. They dig into why LLMs fall short on real clinical reasoning, what "safety" actually means when a system takes a patient history, and how reinforcement learning over a medical knowled...

In this episode, James is joined by Cate Lawrence, Senior Journalist at Tech.eu, to explore what the European healthtech ecosystem actually looks like from the press box, how stories get chosen, what makes a startup worth covering, and why the data gap between innovation and clinical impact remains so wide. Cate brings a decade of cross-sector reporting to the conversation, from wearable tech and...

This week, James is joined by Ben Finlay, Partner at Stratt and Advisor to Ranvier.ai, to dig into why mental health is still diagnosed by questionnaire - and what a taste test, a blood biomarker and a continuum view of neurological wellness could change. Ben shares the science behind Ranvier's objective mood measurement, the journey from early intervention in depression through to staving off Alz...

This week, James is joined by Professor Shafi Ahmed — Consultant Surgeon at the Royal London Hospital, futurist, and author of Intelligent: The Evolution of AI Transforming Healthcare — for a candid look at what it actually takes to innovate inside a system designed to resist change. From streaming a live colectomy on Google Glass to 14,500 students in 118 countries, to walking away from 80% of hi...

This week, James is joined by Dr Tom Chambers, anaesthetist and Co-founder & Chief Medical Officer of Theta Sleep, to unpack why an estimated 9.2 million people in the UK are living with undiagnosed sleep apnoea. They get into why sleep medicine is so fragmented, why CPAP has an image problem, and how shifting diagnosis and treatment into the home could fix a supply-and-demand crisis the NHS i...

This week, James is joined by Dr Sujitha Selvarajah, co-founder of Hesta Health, who recently closed a £2M pre-seed round to rebuild postnatal care from the ground up. They get into why most of the women's health gap has nothing to do with reproductive health, why new mothers are abandoned at the moment their care needs spike, and what it actually takes to build healthcare that's both clin...

In this episode, James is joined by Ranjan Singh, who built HealthHero by acquiring six companies in nine months during lockdown. Now covering 35 million patients across four countries and delivering nearly five million consultations a year, it's Europe's largest digital clinic, with three consecutive outstanding CQC ratings to back up the scale. In this episode, he talks James through the acquisi...

This week, James is joined by Dr Kishan Rees, Senior Director for Global Video & Digital Content Strategy at Bayer, to unpack why healthcare's communication problem is now its biggest patient-safety problem. They get into medical misinformation, why patients are turning to AI chatbots over clinicians, and what pharma can learn from broadcast journalism. Connect with Kishan: https://www.linkedi...

This week, James is joined by Dr Tiril Elstad, medical doctor, yoga teacher, and founder and CEO of Endor Global, to explore why chronic stress may be our generation's biggest health risk - and why most wearables are making the problem worse. They get into the science of heart rate variability, the gap between data and actual behaviour change, and why the real opportunity in preventive health...

This week, James is joined by Dr Clare Palmer, Director of Evidence Generation at ieso, to explore what happens when AI is purpose-built for mental health care - and why that's worlds apart from people typing their problems into ChatGPT. They discuss ieso's safety-constrained AI architecture, the striking fact that only half of people with depression or anxiety recover, and how agentic AI...

This week, James is joined by Ahmed Binesmael, Senior Improvement Analyst at the Health Foundation, to dig into what the British public actually thinks about AI in healthcare - and why the people most likely to benefit from healthtech are often the most sceptical of it. They explore the Health Foundation's latest survey data on trust, the NHS app's "doctor in your pocket" function, and why meaning...

In this episode, James is joined by Robert Bunn, Founder and President of Ultrasound AI, who shares an extraordinary story - from multiple failed startups and personal tragedy to building an AI that can predict actual delivery dates from standard ultrasound images. With a De Novo FDA clearance now in hand, Robert explains how the technology works, what the AI discovered that clinicians couldn't se...

This week, James is joined by Dr Yath Prem, Medical Advisor at Flo Health and clinical product specialist, to talk about the growing wave of NHS doctors moving into healthtech - what's driving it, whether content creators are encouraging too many to leave, and what clinical product actually means in practice. They also dig into wearables, AI health assistants, and whether healthtech is genuine...

This week, James is joined by Dr David Neal, Assistant Professor at Amsterdam UMC and co-lead of the eHealth Living & Learning Lab (ELLLA), for a wide-ranging chat about what happens when technology disrupts a healing ritual that hasn't fundamentally changed since the 16th century. They explore why medicine is roughly 150 years behind in understanding the role of humans in healthcare, what...

James welcomes Declan Hadley, the healthcare lead at Cisco, who shares his extensive experience in the NHS and health informatics. The conversation explores the evolution of healthcare technology, the importance of digitisation, and the role of AI in improving patient outcomes. Declan emphasizes the need for collaboration between startups and healthcare organizations, the significance of local own...

This week, James is joined by Ian Wharton, the co-founder and CEO of Aide Health, a design-led chronic disease management platform with retention rates 20x the sector average. In this episode, Ian makes the case that design - not technology - is the missing ingredient in digital health, explaining why only 3–4% of patients stick with health apps after 30 days and what Aide does differently to hit...

This week, James is joined by Dr. Elsa Zekeng, founder of SökerData who shares the story behind building a company tackling one of healthcare’s most persistent blind spots: biased and underrepresented clinical trial data. She discusses her journey from infectious disease research and frontline outbreak response during Ebola, to advising on COVID-19 vaccine uptake, and ultimately founding SökerData...

In this episode of The Healthtech Podcast, Dr James Somauroo speaks with T.N. Giridhar, Managing Director and CEO of SSG Capital, an investment banker and venture capital investor with nearly 30 years of experience spanning public markets, Goldman Sachs-level M&A and early-stage VC. Giridhar draws on a career managing over $17 billion in transactions to argue that the quality of an investment...

This week, James is joined by Dr Saira Ghafur, respiratory consultant, health tech leader, and Co-Founder of Prova Health. She shares her journey from medical training in Scotland to NHS consultancy, policy fellowships at NHS England and in New York, and co-founding two health tech ventures. Saira discusses the realities of scaling digital health, generating credible evidence for innovation, and t...

In this episode of The Healthtech Podcast, we’re joined by Kang Hsu, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Canary Speech, to explore the emerging field of vocal biomarkers and what they could mean for earlier disease detection. Speech is more than language. It is airflow, vocal cord vibration, neuromuscular control and cognitive processing in motion. Subtle acoustic features such as pitch variation, jitter...

This week, James is joined by James Mishreki, founder of Skin + Me, who shares the story behind building one of the UK’s fastest-growing personalised healthcare brands. He discussed the challenges of scaling a regulated DTC business, and how Skin + Me is tackling the dermatology access gap with clinical-grade care delivered directly to consumers. Connect with James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jam...

This week, James is joined by Lawrie Kidd, Consultant Anaesthetist at Gloucestershire Hospitals and Clinical Product Lead at DrDoctor, who shares a candid look at the pressures facing frontline clinicians and how healthtech can help. Connect with Lawrie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawrie-kidd/ Learn more about DrDoctor: https://www.drdoctor.co.uk/ Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.com...

This week, James is joined by Hjalmar Nilsonne, CEO and Co-Founder of Neko Health. With Hjalmar yielding the power to shape the future of healthcare, James asks all the big questions. Can Neko pull off their ambition? What will it take? What lessons have they learned along the way? What challenges lie in their way? Learn more about Neko: https://www.nekohealth.com/gb/en Apply to be a guest: www.th...

In this episode, we're joined by Tharni Vasavan, Horizon Scanning Senior Health Technology Lead at NICE, about how emerging health technologies are identified, evaluated, and prepared for the NHS. From her journey through women’s health research and startup life at Hertility to shaping national foresight on healthtech disruption, Tharni offers an inside glimpse of how innovation meets evidence...