The Healthtech Podcast

Dr. James Somauroo
  • 4.6 (5)
  • Medicine
  • Updated Weekly

The Healthtech Podcast covers the latest in health and technology through interviews with disruptive healthtech startups and leaders. Whether you’re a patient, founder, investor or simply interested in healthtech, The Healthtech Podcast has it covered. 🌍 Listeners in over 150 countries. 🎙 New episode every week. 🗣 Hosted by Dr James Somauroo. www.thehealthtechpodcast.com | www.somx.health | www.jamessomauroo.com

  1. 6d ago

    #463: Real world evidence & the metrics patients care about in healthtech

    Nader Alaghband co-founded Ampersand Health with two NHS gastroenterologists, Dr Gareth Parkes and Dr Bu Hayee, and has spent about eight years building it. His argument here is uncomfortable and worth hearing. Too much of a hospital appointment is spent on the things doctors care about, and not enough on the things patients care about. People living with Crohn's and colitis do not measure their week by an inflammation marker. They measure it by whether they held down a job and kept up with their kids. Nader and Dr James Somauroo get into what that means in practice. Nader explains why Ampersand moved from clinical decision support into real world evidence, and why pharmaceutical companies and payers benefit from watching the movie rather than looking at a few stills. He is blunt about UK health policy, pointing out that countries doing this well are not running their health systems on seven different people's vision in ten years. He is equally blunt about the innovator's problem of not knowing which of five competing NHS frameworks will turn out to be the one that matters. James brings his own view from intensive care and from working in policy at NHS England and Health Education England. They close on how you survive eight years of this, which for Nader means a hard separation between work and everything else. Nader Alaghband on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nader0102/ Ampersand Health: https://ampersandhealth.co.uk Produced by SomX: https://somx.health

  2. Sep 10

    #462: Dr Nikita Kanani, Global Medical Director at Neko - Neko's Year 3 Prevention data & Insights from 80,000 scans

    Dr Nikita Kanani MBE is Global Medical Director at Neko Health and still a practising NHS GP. Before Neko she was medical director for primary care at NHS England, through the pandemic and the vaccine rollout, and she and Dr James Somauroo start there because it explains everything that comes after. She is precise about what those years were actually like. Two or three in the morning on Teams in her pyjamas, her daughter building a diorama of the Roman empire beside a call with the Prime Minister, and her mother running the family pharmacy without PPE while her father shielded. She was asked to join the vaccine programme the week before Diwali, argued for delivering it through primary care rather than around forty hospitals, and ended up with thousands of sites and a map on the wall. The second half is Neko's year three data, which James had read on the train in and came armed to argue about. More than eighty thousand scans in 2025. Life threatening findings holding steady at about one percent across three years, which is her answer to the charge that scanning more people only finds more noise. Five or six dermatology referrals to find a melanoma, against fifteen or twenty in general practice. People with a chronic condition improving two and a half times more than people without one.There is also an honest stretch on why she thinks worried well is the wrong argument, and where an NHS partnership might go next. Dr Nikita Kanani on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drnikkikanani/Neko Health: https://www.nekohealth.com Apply to be a guest: https://thehealthtechpodcast.com Produced by SomX: https://somx.health

  3. Sep 2

    #461: Deborah Cohen, BBC & ITV journalist: Has the Internet Hijacked Our Health?

    Deborah Cohen is a medically qualified investigative journalist, formerly science editor at ITV News and health correspondent at BBC Newsnight, where she led the programme's COVID coverage. Her book, "Bad Influence: How the Internet Hijacked Our Health", shortlisted for the Royal Society science book prize, started from one question: are influencers making us sick? She spoke to more than 200 people to answer it, and the answer turned out to be more nuanced than the title suggests. She and James get into what happens when health information travels through people rather than institutions. Where companies get into trouble, which she puts at the point the hype outflanks the evidence. Why the Advertising Standards Authority is playing regulatory whack-a-mole, and how a prescription only migraine drug ended up advertised in her feed by a Kardashian, in a country where that advertising is banned. Why she would ban the words anti-vaxxer and anti-masker before she banned anything else. And what she thinks would actually help, from a register of influencers working with companies to better health literacy and real transparency about where our information comes from. James puts himself in the frame too, on the Instagram ad promising employers a better bottom line if their staff take GLP-1s, and on the work SomX turns down. Deborah's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborah-cohen-journalist Deborah's Book: https://oneworld-publications.com/work/bad-influence/ Apply to be a guest: ⁠www.thehealthtechpodcast.com⁠ Subscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: ⁠www.healthtechpigeon.com⁠ Get in touch with James: ⁠www.jamessomauroo.com⁠ This podcast was brought to you by ⁠SomX⁠.

  4. Aug 26

    #460: Why healthtech still hasn't had its big exits

    This week, James is joined by Dr Sai Narimetla, an A&E doctor who simultaneously works in investment banking at SSG Capital, to ask why healthtech hasn't produced the exits that biotech and medical devices have. They get into fragmentation, why the deals that are happening don't make headlines, and what a clinical lens actually adds when you're diligencing a company. Connect with Sai: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sainarimetla/ Learn more about SSG Capital: https://www.ssgcapital.uk/ Apply to be a guest: https://www.thehealthtechpodcast.com Subscribe to Healthtech Pigeon: https://www.healthtechpigeon.com Get in touch with James: https://www.jamessomauroo.com This podcast was brought to you by SomX.

  5. Aug 19

    #459: What if we monitored everyone that leaves hospital care?

    Martin Ratz co-founded Doccla after a heart attack at forty-four that he had no reason to have. Lying in a hospital bed in Stockholm, he noticed something obvious. Inside the building you are monitored constantly, and the minute you leave, nobody is watching at all. He and Dr James Somauroo trace what Doccla became from there. A research study at Northampton General that COVID shut down, then a virtual COVID ward stood up in a fortnight, then integrated care boards across England, plus Ireland, Germany and Austria. Martin is precise about who these patients are: multimorbid, mostly older, several long-term conditions each, and nothing like the customer of a consumer wearable. He is equally precise about what is actually blocking this, which is not the technology. It is commissioning. Doccla can take activity out of a hospital, but somebody still has to take the cost out, and the trust losing the income has no reason to help. There is also a good exchange on the something-is-better-than-nothing argument, where James revisits a position he now thinks was wrong about AI and mental health, and Martin's answer to the safety objection, which is that the alternative to a virtual ward is usually not a hospital bed. Doccla: https://www.doccla.com Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.com Subscribe to Healthtech Pigeon: www.healthtechpigeon.com Get in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.com

  6. Aug 5

    #458: Fat loss or weight loss? The number one GLP-1 question

    This week, James is joined by Dr Kapil Savania, Medical Lead at Voy (formerly Manual) and a practising NHS GP, for a candid look at the fast-blurring line between healthcare and wellness. They dig into who should own preventative medicine, what TRT actually is — and where it gets abused — and why "fat loss," not weight loss, has to be the goal in the GLP-1 era. It's an honest conversation about holding both hats: the NHS clinician and the industry medical lead. Connect with Kapil: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ksavania/ Learn more about Voy: https://www.joinvoy.com/ Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.com Subscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.com Get in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.com This podcast was brought to you by SomX.

  7. Jul 29

    #457: Should medical education let AI in?

    This week, James is joined by Yasir Sacranie, pharmacist, content creator and founder of MicroPharm, the education platform helping thousands of trainee pharmacists pass their registration exam. Yasir talks candidly about bootstrapping a healthcare education business alongside a demanding NHS role, the family moment that finally pushed him to leave the NHS for good, and why he's deliberately keeping AI at arm's length in his business. They also get into why he still works one day a week as a barista — and what that teaches him about craft. Connect with Yasir: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasir-sacranie/ Learn more about MicroPharm: https://www.micropharm.uk/ Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.com Subscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.com Get in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.com This podcast was brought to you by SomX.

  8. Jul 22

    #456: Half of babies with heart problems are missed - AI in ultrasound is changing that

    In this episode of The Healthtech Podcast, James is joined by Professor Reza Razavi, Professor of Paediatric Cardiovascular Science at King's College London and CEO of Fraiya, an AI ultrasound software company. Reza shares the deeply personal story behind Fraiya — including his own daughter's near-fatal undiagnosed heart condition as a newborn — and explains how AI applied to the routine 20-week anomaly scan could close the gap between the 50% of congenital heart defects currently missed and a detection rate approaching 97-98%. They get into what it actually takes to build AI that clinicians trust, why the NHS financial environment makes or breaks adoption, and how a team of 14 people is on the verge of launching across six European countries. Connect with Reza: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reza-razavi-a50967265/ Learn more about Fraiya: https://www.fraiya.com/ Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.com Subscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.com Get in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.com This podcast was brought to you by SomX.

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About

The Healthtech Podcast covers the latest in health and technology through interviews with disruptive healthtech startups and leaders. Whether you’re a patient, founder, investor or simply interested in healthtech, The Healthtech Podcast has it covered. 🌍 Listeners in over 150 countries. 🎙 New episode every week. 🗣 Hosted by Dr James Somauroo. www.thehealthtechpodcast.com | www.somx.health | www.jamessomauroo.com

Information

  • Creator
    Dr. James Somauroo
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    475
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Dr. James Somauroo
  • Show Website
    The Healthtech Podcast

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