Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast HealthTech Hour

Ahead of World Menopause Day on October 18th, Steve Roest, host of the HealthTech Hour and CEO of PocDoc is joined by TV presenter, writer and menopause campaigner, Linda Barker, alongside NHS England’s Menopause Lead, Bukky Ayoade.

This show is a fantastic listen for anyone going through the menopause, worried about the menopause or with any questions.

Both Linda and Bukky share their personal journeys through menopause, tackle disinformation, provide clear, accurate signposting for women in need.

There is also a robust and honest discussion about HRT and non-HRT treatment methods as well as the pros and cons of social media.

In this show, Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc and host of the HealthTech Hour speaks to the inspirational and eloquent Henry Stoneley about how he and his team have built one of the best conference experiences in the world - including the science + art of creating an amazing human experience at HLTH Europe.

From not taking money from speakers to secure speaking slots to outlawing questions to scientifically laying out the conference space to foster connections, Henry and his team have massively raised the game.

Henry is part of the team that brought HLTH, Europe's biggest innovation event, to Europe in 2024. He's still part of the same team, working on bringing a bigger, better bolder, HLTH Europe 2025 back to Amsterdam.

In this show, Steve Roest, host and CEO of PocDoc speaks to Richard Pugmire and Joel Ratnasothy about the incredible area of Open Source software and how a battle is raging between Big Enterprise and the wider software development industry about the best way to rebuild the NHS for the future.

Open Source technology is used across our entire lives, but in health, it's seen as dangerous and too insecure - we dig into why and do some myth busting!

But why are the NHS and other massive institutions so keen on giving away their data to companies that charge them for services which can only take place after they have handed over the data? Is this a real problem or just griping from smaller companies?

Richard Pugmire is CEO at Answer Digital, a digital consultancy working with the NHS to advance digital transformation, with a focus on Artificial Intelligence.

Joel Ratnasothy is CEO of Interneuron, a clinical systems software provider delivering open source technologies to the NHS in particular their Open MCR platform.

Kathrin Folkendt is the Founder and CEO of Femtech Insider, an online publication dedicated to women’s health innovation and a Co-founder at PERLA Health

Kate Newhouse is a Health-tech award-winning entrepreneur and leader. She is COO of Kooth, the UK’s largest digital mental healthcare provider and ex-CEO of DoctorCareAnywhere

Daniel Rooke is Co-Founder of Start Codon which is a revolutionary HealthTech accelerator based in Cambridge. Start Codon is literally creating the companies of the future, building the technology that will be helping cure cancer, genetic conditions and rare/orphan diseases that were previously untreatable. Daniel and Steve Roest cover a huge amount of ground, including the reasons why Start Codon is transforming the early-stage HealthTech landscape in the UK, the companies & technology it is backing, Daniel's own personal journey, how technology like PocDoc is at the forefront of the post-pandemic HealthTech landscape, the motivations that have made him an inspiration in the HealthTech industry and why Cambridge is the epicentre of HealthTech innovation in Europe.

HealthTech Hour this week speaks to Peter Cowley, one of the UK's most prolific angel investors, published author of Invested Investor and founder of www.theinvestedinvestor.com. Steve Roest and Peter discuss angel investing, the key traits that angels look for in companies they back, why the risk/reward analysis for HealthTech start ups is different to other kinds of tech investing and some of the HealthTech companies he's backed, including Psyomics, a ground breaking mental health diagnosis company.

Steve Roest speaks to the inspirational founder and CEO of BioSure, who are the world's first developer of HIV self tests and Covid-19 self tests. As a pioneer in BioTech, Brigette is a huge advocate of FemTech, female founders, startups, entrepreneurs, gender equality in HealthTech and self-testing as a way to empower positive change in personal health. This episode of HealthTech hour is a great opportunity to be inspired by an incredible founder at the forefront of personal healthcare.

What are the main mindset you need to have a chance to succeed as an entrepreneur, or even in a fast-paced, high growth environment? Steve Roest asks Brian Plackis Cheng on this week's HealthTech Hour. For the full show, download it - Ep83!

In this clip from this week's HealthTech Hour, Dame Jessica Ennis Hill explains to Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc, that during her athletic career, even surrounded by the highest quality team, there was no discussion nor support around hormone related issues for female athletes. Partly due to the male dominated coaching teams, but many other factors played a role.

In this episode of the HealthTech Hour, Steve Roest speaks to two people he's known for a long time - Peter Cowley and Craig Maxwell.

Peter and Craig share the same terminal cancer diagnosis and share a similar reaction to this extremely traumatic event - relentlessly focus on how to bring positivity and real impact to other people's lives instead of shrinking back into themselves.

They both opted-in to make the very best of their situation and be a positive role model for positivity in the face of adversity for friends, families and other cancer sufferers.

They both dedicated themselves to a higher cause, a purpose, that is a source of energy when times are tough.

Both are incredibly inspiring examples of Post Traumatic Growth, a condition where the very worst of events brings out the very best in people as a result. In Peter's case, his diagnosis was compounded by some truly terrible events within his family which we discuss on the show.

Peter Cowley is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, publisher and author of his latest book, ‘Public Success, Private Grief.’

Craig Maxwell was diagnosed with terminal stage 4 lung and bone cancer (EGFR) at the age of 40. He has since embarked on a series of extraordinary challenges to raise vital funds for families facing similar battles.

Find Peter's book, "Public Success, Private Grief" on Amazon - https://www.ps-pg.com/

Find and donate to the Maxwell Foundation here - https://maxwell.foundation/

This clip comes from the full interview with Matt Hancock (ep58) and in it, he discloses that he was responsible for stopping Donald Trump and the EU from stealing the UK vaccine's supply. Fiery claims and in light of recent disclosures in the UK media, very interesting to hear!

Female tech founder Lina Chan explains where to find menopause advice on the highstreet (clue: Holland & Barrett) and how Davina McCall broke through the menopause taboo.

Ali Parsa is the charismatic, inspirational founder of Babylon Health, one of the most successful digital health companies ever founded. In this clip from the full show with Steve Roest, Ali talks about the one skill every founder needs to survive - ALWAYS BACK YOURSELF. Enjoy!

Lina Zakarauskaite is a leading VC investor and she explains why as the world is diverse, so too does the industry funding the companies to solve the world's problems need to reflect that diversity

Extract from the full show with Lina Zakarauskaite, lead investor at a major venture capital fund in the UK called Stride VC. In this clip, she and Steve Roest discuss how scientific research has been massively undermined by junk research but blockchain and decentralisation could rescue it from oblivion.

On this week's show, Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc and host of the HealthTech Hour hosts Liam Cahill - a healthcare strategist, advisor and the founder of Together Digital. Liam previously co-founded an impactful, nationally respected social enterprise supporting the NHS to improve care around medicines and prescribing.

Liam has written and spoken extensively about how innovation can thrive in complex systems, with the NHS being one of the most complex single systems in the global economy today.

Liam trains public and private sector organisations on how to do innovation and is a thought leader in this space.

In this episode Steve Roest speaks to Ian Coyne who has spearheaded a major piece of groundbreaking research that compares the personality make-up of HealthTech founders to the personalities of other CEOs and founders in other industries to determine what makes them different and why they've dedicated themselves to scaling innovation in a very hard sector.

Full disclosure: Steve Roest our host also took part in this study with interesting results!

Steve and Ian then go on to discuss the importance of getting the right blend of personalities together at the right time and the incredible impact that can have on company success - and the opposite, if you get the wrong mix!

Ian is a Client Partner at Coulter Partners, the leading executive search firm focused on health, science and technology where he leads their digital health team. As a computer scientist by training, Ian has always worked at the forefront of technology transformation with a focus on talent and culture. Through his work, he is a published author on the topic of change management in business.

In this episode Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc speaks to Sean Ruane, Founder and CEO of Mind Data, an innovative mental wellbeing platform characterised by its data-driven approach, offering real-time mental health insights within universities and organisations.

Steve and Sean get really into the emotional journey of personal mental health crisis that brought Sean to his realisation that his purpose in life was to save 1 million people from ending up in the same situation he had.

Sean's belief is that his Purpose should be Greater than and of the External Circumstances that he goes through.

Listen in!

This week Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc (pocdoc.co) speaks to Steve Sawyer, Managing Director of The Access Group's Health, Support, and Care division, one of the largest providers of digital care to the NHS.

In this episode, Steve and Steve (!) get into social prescribing, mental health, digital tech that helps vulnerable people and try to unpick the conundrum which is finding the truth about the state of the NHS at the moment vs the picture portrayed in the media.

This week Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc speaks to Dr Adam Abbs. Adam is a GP, author, educator and digital health expert, currently Medical Lead at Hurdle.bio with a focus on disruptive models in remote healthcare. Adam was at the forefront of Virtual GP appointments and has put a huge amount of thought into how the NHS and other healthcare systems can embrace and implement technology to improve patient health and save money. Previously he was clinical director at Medicspot and curator of BMJ remote learning guides.

In this show, the final live show before Christmas, Steve and Adam really go on a journey around the major changes that have happened, for better and worse, in the UK healthcare system as a result of technology.

On this week's show, Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc speaks to Raj Kohli and Pete Huang who started Healthtech-1 to automate repetitive processes for healthcare systems. As an example, to bring this to life - it is very common that all patient registrations are done manually. Each registration has up to 100 pieces of discrete information which are manually entered into the GP records. Each year, in University towns, GP surgeries regularly register 5,000+ new patients, meaning each GP surgery is using valuable, time stretched labour to manually enter 500,000 pieces of information, manually, instead of helping patients.

The guys share many more stories like this on the show.

Pete and Raj worked as administrative assistants in Raj's parent's GP surgery while starting their business so they could really understand the problems being faced by frontline staff.

Pete, Raj and Steve have known each other for a few years and the discussion is a really enlightening journey of two mission driven founders who really truly care about making life better for the NHS.

This week, Carmelo Insalaca is Steve Roest's guest on the show. Carmelo is CEO and founder of Rapid Health, one of the next generation of digital front door services that have followed in the wake of Babylon Health. Steve and Carmelo get straight into the recent damning exposee of Babylon and dig into how Rapid Health has achieved a major step up in efficiency for GPs while maintaining clinical standards - and avoiding the pitfalls that caught up with other services.

Jess McCreadie, Principal Investor at Octopus Ventures speaks to Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc on this week's HealthTech Hour.

Jess has spent her career helping businesses finance themselves, grow, scale and is hugely passionate about Venture Capital as a force for good.

In this episode, Jess and Steve cover a huge amount of ground including:

- Jess' journey through male-dominated industries, driven by her passion for finance and watching companies grow - and her views on diversity of gender and of background in VC/finance/startup culture

- The impact of AI on healthcare and why it's not all smooth sailing

- The value of solving a genuine problem and the mistakes founders make in becoming too obsessed with their technology

- Software as an enabler for many health problems - e.g. automation of fertility (Overture) and neuromodulation

- The issues with startup culture and what's good / bad for founders and staff

On this week's show, Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc speaks to Richie McGregor, who is the Head of Digital and Performance for Cumbria Health, a CQC rated outstanding social enterprise organisation delivering Primary and Urgent Care services throughout Cumbria.

Cumbria and neighbouring Northumbria are the two most remote, most rural regions in the UK and have taken a very proactive, leading position on integrating digital and remote technologies in delivering healthcare effectively - when it's over an hour to the nearest GP, the challenges faced by patients and staff are totally different to those in a city or town.

They cover all kinds of ground in this episode, including the recent Darzi report on the state of the NHS.

Chris Bischoff is Managing Director at General Catalyst and speaks to Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc. General Catalyst is the leading investor in early and growth stage healthcare businesses across the UK, US and Europe. Chris has incredible experience across the healthcare sector and takes Steve through his thesis on investing, his investments in Babylon and Livongo, the pros and cons of Value Based Care and what qualities he thinks founders need to thrive in healthcare.

Sophie Park, MD of Bayer G4A Investments & Partnerships speaks to Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc in today's show. Sophie is one of the leading voices for integrating digital health technology into public and private healthcare systems. In addition to her role at Bayer, Sophie has advised 2 White House administrations and her and Steve really get into some heated debate about the role of Pharma in being a force for good and how technology can be accelerated to help make people healthier.

Brian Plackis Cheng is CEO of OpenRad and speaks today to Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc and host of the HealthTech Hour. OpenRad is a company combined of two cutting edge imaging businesses that now brings radiology reporting services to the cloud, enabling all medical imaging interpretation to happen remotely - cutting backlog, enabling radiologists to do more and getting people treated more quickly.

On this show, Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc speaks to Franceska Wuttke about Nen's mission to make tools, games and strategies based on CBT therapy for children with cancer, to learn how to manage their pain. Managing pain is a short term issue but also as Franceska explains, the long term consequences of childhood pain can be devastating, including major mental health issues and addiction in later life.

A very emotional subject with a hugely passionate guest - have a listen!

Will West is CEO of CellCentric speaks to Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc this week. Will and CellCentric are using next generation epigenetic data to create cancer drugs that can stop certain types of cancer at a genetic level. Epigenetics is a hugely fascinating and slight mind-bending area of scientific development!

Dr Claudia Pastides is Director of Medical Accuracy at Flo Health and speaks to Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc in this week's show. Flo aims to build a better future for female health and supports women during their entire reproductive life cycle and has over 48 million active users a month - an incredible number of women - across the entire world. Flo covers not just menstrual tracking, but also provides honest, accurate information about sex, reproductive health and other issues that are often considered taboo. Not just for adults, over 50% of all UK under 18s use Flo.

Liis Narusk from Certific speaks to Steve Roest CEO of PocDoc. Liis is one of the most extensive thinkers in Europe at this moment on the evolution of technology within the GP system, but focused with Certific outside the UK - yes, there is a world outside the UK! Liis co-founded Certific with Taavet Hinrikus, the founder of Wise and Dr Jack Kreindler, doctor, thinker and explorer. In this show, they cover the impact of AI on healthcare, how the regulations are going to struggle with AI, why patients across Europe are still not using digital health records and more!

Chris Yates, CEO and founder of Abingdon Health spoke to Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc in this week's show. Chris has successfully IPO'd 2 diagnostics companies and Abingdon Health is one of the leading lights of the UK's thriving life science and diagnostics industry. One of the major covid test manufacturers, Chris' experience in this sector is vast and his success as a multi-IPO CEO is valuable to any entrepreneurs. Chris is a huge believer in the value of lateral flow testing as a major tool in the fight for better health for all, globally.

Hamish Grierson is widely known as one of the smartest and nicest people in UK healthtech and is the founder of Thriva, a leader in at home diagnostic testing. In this show, he and Steve clearly share a lot of the same values and missions between Thriva and PocDoc, it's a masterclass in self managed healthcare!

Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc speaks to Dr Melanie Lee, CEO of the incredible charity LifeArc which is aiming to donate £1,3bn of funding by 2030 into diagnosis, treatment and cures for motor neurone disease, cystic fibrosis and tuberculosis among other things. Melanie is a fantastic guest with incredible insight into scientific research and how to take research and make it a reality - success for patients and the NHS. She also has some valuable advice for scientists and entrepreneurs as to how to keep going when times are tough.

This week Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc speaks to Tony Nicolaidis the Chief Commercial Officer for Origin AI, a company that invented Wi-Fi sensing technology and is revolutionising smart homes, healthcare, and home security.

This technology is incredible and Tony does a good job of talking Steve through it. OriginAI have developed a technology that can detect the micro disruptions in WiFi signal caused by anyone even breathing in a room with WiFi.

The applications for this technology are huge - from energy, security through to health and ageing.

Sebastian Anastassiou is an ex medic and successful investor at Nina Capital. If you want advice about your startup, listen up! He loves synthetic data, AI and healthtech that underpins healthcare systems. He and Steve Roest talk about Silicon Valley Bank, what entrepreneurs need to survive in the next 2 years and the next generation of exciting healthtech companies...including PocDoc!

Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill is one of the UK's leading sporting heroes and has dedicated her life after her sporting career to women's health, educating women about their hormone levels and what that means for their overall health. An advocate of body-literacy, she founded Jennis, a women's health platform to allow women to monitor their hormone levels more accurately. Dr Michelle Tempest is an advisor and investor in FemTech businesses, including Jennis and is an expert on technology focused on women's health.

Marcel is CEO of Cyted, a unique AI-driven cancer diagnostics company that works with the NHS across the UK diagnosing more people with esophageal cancer, one of the most dangerous forms of cancer.

Sara leads the NHS DigitalHealth.London accelerator, helping introduce and scale digital innovation in the NHS. Sara's background is a 30 year career as a nurse in the NHS.

Lina Zakarauskaite is principal investor at Stride.VC, a leading early-stage investment fund in the UK, who invest in health technology start ups. If you want to hear about how to get funding in the current tough climate, why the NHS is amazing but also very tough, how blockchain can solve the crisis in academic research and why VCs can do better in terms of diversity and female representation - listen here!

Jason C. Foster is the CEO of Ori BioTech, one of the leading companies focused on helping the scale up of cell and gene therapies that can cure cancer - but currently are too expensive to distribute to people in need.

He also serves as a Non-Executive Director for multiple healthtech startups.

Steve and Jason speak about a range of issues, including what Jason looks for in healthtech startups he invests in, advice for founders and thoughts on the NHS.

Lina Chan is the CEO of Parla Health, recently acquired by Holland & Barrett one of the leading high street health retailers in the UK. Lina is an expert on women's reproductive health and in this episode Lina explains how Parla helps support physical and mental wellbeing for women across all stages - preconception, conception, fertility issues, menopause, PCOS, endometriosis and more.

Christoph focuses on investments in life sciences and digital health. He spent 3 years at Bain and Company, then joined 3i in their Healthcare Venture Capital, moving on to General Electric's healthcare division…

Lord James Bethell, former Parliamentary Undersecretary of State at the Dept of Health and Social Care and current member of the House of Lords led the government’s test and trace programme and is a health campaigner

Amanda Lambert is Chief Customer Officer for Nuffield Health, the UK’s largest healthcare charity with a purpose to build a healthier nation

Lucius Cary raised his first science and technology seed fund in 1983, after founding and exiting two successful businesses. He has been investing in startups ever since…

In this episode Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc speaks to Jamie Tomalin, Investment Manager at Triple Point Ventures, who are one of the UK's leading early funders of HealthTech and healthcare technology generally. Jamie is a deep thinker and thought leader in the HealthTech space and the wider startup scene. He has very interesting views on how healthcare systems should and could adopt technology more quickly for the greater good as well as sharing his views on the startup scene. A must for anyone founding a business, founders and ceos in the HealthTech space - and NHS clinicians who want to hear it from the other side!