Founders · new episode 23 Oct 2026
The Healthtech Podcast
Hosted by James Somauroo
Health technology founders and investors, with a UK view.
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Investors named as guests in the most episode titles on The Healthtech Podcast.
Every episode 480 · page 1 of 16
- 480#468: CEO of Mind, Sarah Hughes - AI and mental health23 Oct 2026 · 1h 3mSarah Hughes▶Show page
About this episode
Dr Sarah Hughes is chief executive of Mind. Aahuti Rai chairs Mind's Mental Health in the Age of AI Commission and runs the Mental Health Innovation Network. The commission exists partly because of something that happened to Sarah. She had been using ChatGPT for around two years, had given it a name, and found it…
- 479#467: Cancer screening at the baseball game, and what the UK is missing14 Oct 2026 · 1h 13mDignity HealthEli Manning▶Show page
About this episode
Michael LaPorta is President of Playbook for Health, the US agency that sits on the healthcare side of the table when hospital groups, insurers and health tech companies partner with sports teams. He and James have known each other since a hostel in Guatemala fifteen years ago, and this conversation picks up from…
- 478#466 : Should pharma fund more healthtech?7 Oct 2026 · 1h 33m▶Show page
About this episode
Tom Keith-Welsh is Client Partner for Healthcare and Life Sciences at Endava, and he has worked in almost every seat in this industry: regulatory affairs at Glaxo Wellcome, pharma sales for Merck, two pharma advertising agencies, marketing at an infection control software company, project management inside two NHS…
- 477#465: Lessons from running a $250M healthtech & biotech fund, with Steve Burnell from Tenmile30 Sept 2026 · 1h 18m▶Show page
About this episode
Steve Burnell is managing director of Tenmile, the health technology and biotech investment business Andrew and Nicola Forrest's Tattarang set up with a 250 million dollar allocation. He is also a PhD marine ecologist who spent his twenties putting satellite trackers on right whales and making natural history…
- 476#464 How to go to market in healthtech - Ross Drynan from We Don’t Consult23 Sept 2026 · 1h 20m▶Show page
About this episode
Ross Drynan has spent twelve years at the intersection of technology and healthcare, almost all of it in go to market, including building the go to market that took a small dental software company to international market leadership. He now runs We Don't Consult, which despite the name is a consultancy, working with…
- 475#463: Real world evidence & the metrics patients care about in healthtech16 Sept 2026 · 1h 12mNader Alaghband▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 474#462: Dr Nikita Kanani, Global Medical Director at Neko - Neko's Year 3 Prevention data & Insights from 80,000 scans10 Sept 2026 · 48 min▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 473#461: Deborah Cohen, BBC & ITV journalist: Has the Internet Hijacked Our Health?2 Sept 2026 · 56 min▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 472#460: Why healthtech still hasn't had its big exits26 Aug 2026 · 1h 33m▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 471#459: What if we monitored everyone that leaves hospital care?19 Aug 2026 · 1h 6m▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 470#458: Fat loss or weight loss? The number one GLP-1 question5 Aug 2026 · 56 min▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 469#457: Should medical education let AI in?29 Jul 2026 · 1h 12m▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 468#456: Half of babies with heart problems are missed - AI in ultrasound is changing that22 Jul 2026 · 1h 2m▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 467#455: Is animal testing in drug development on its way out?15 Jul 2026 · 52 minCharles River▶Show page
About this episode
In this episode of The Healthtech Podcast, James is joined by Steve Bulera, Chief Scientific Officer for Safety Assessment and Toxicology at Charles River Laboratories, one of the world's largest CROs, and a company that almost every new drug passes through on its way from lab to human trials. They dig into one of…
- 466#454: Slow regulation is killing health tech innovation8 Jul 2026 · 1h 7m▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 465#453: Why "can AI replace doctors?" is the wrong question. Shravan Nageswaran, Atman Labs1 Jul 2026 · 1h 45m▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 464#452: Uncovering the objective truth in health tech journalism24 Jun 2026 · 37 min▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 463#451: A new biomarker for depression?17 Jun 2026 · 1h 1m▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 462#450 : What it takes to get a "yes" inside the NHS10 Jun 2026 · 1h 18mGoogle▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 461#449: 9.2 million people can't sleep... and the NHS isn't ready3 Jun 2026 · 1h 4mTom Chambers▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 460#448: We need £2M to rebuild women's health from scratch27 May 2026 · 1h 15m▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 459#447: Can you build europe's biggest clinic in just five years?20 May 2026 · 1h 2m▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 458#446: Is AI giving clinicians empathy back?13 May 2026 · 1h 8m▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 457#445: Why is your wearable shaming you?6 May 2026 · 1h 11m▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 456#444: What does safe, clinical AI for mental health look like?29 Apr 2026 · 53 min▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 455#443: The NHS has trust. AI doesn't. Now what?22 Apr 2026 · 1h 6m▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 454#442: Can ultrasound + AI predict premature births?15 Apr 2026 · 1h 16m▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 453#441: Why Are So Many NHS Doctors Leaving for Healthtech?8 Apr 2026 · 1h 1m▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 452#440: From the 16th Century to AI, with Dr David Neal1 Apr 2026 · 1h 20mDavid Neal▶Show page
About this episode
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…
- 451#439: What 35 years inside the NHS taught Cisco's healthcare lead, Declan Hadley25 Mar 2026 · 54 min▶Show page
About this episode
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…
Who the show talks about
Firms named in its episodes, and people named in descriptions: talked about, rather than on the show.
