The Healthtech Podcast

Declan Hadley, Cisco healthcare lead and former NHS health informatics director with 35 years' experience, discusses digitisation, interoperability and clinical IT. He talks about moving from nursing into informatics, how startups should engage trusts, local ownership of AI and balancing rapid innovation with patient safety. He also reflects on building regional AI capability and practical tips for working with the NHS.

Ian Wharton, co-founder and CEO of Aide Health and design-led product maker, discusses why design often beats shiny tech in healthcare. He explains how patient-centered design boosts retention, the role of conversational AI in daily self-management, and the origins and aims of Mirror, a patient-facing scribe born from personal experience. They also cover trust in AI and why regulation and safety matter for scaling.

Dr Elsa Zekeng, infectious-disease scientist and founder of SökerData, builds inclusive health datasets to reduce bias in clinical trials. She recounts outbreak fieldwork, COVID vaccine advising, and how those experiences led her to aggregate data for women and global majority populations. The conversation covers trial inclusion criteria, biomarker differences by ethnicity, use cases in stroke and breast cancer, and where policy can drive change.

T.N. Giridhar, Managing Director and CEO of SSG Capital with nearly 30 years in investment banking and VC. He recalls moving Goldman-style rigor into early-stage investing. Short takes on why people trump metrics, how investors steer strategy, NHS talent and retention issues, and the one question founders should ask before taking money.

Saira Ghafur, respiratory consultant and health‑tech leader who co-founded Prova Health, shares her NHS-to-New York journey and startup pivots. She talks about generating robust evidence for digital health, practical health‑economics for startups, scaling and implementation challenges, and the regulatory and safety debates around AI in healthcare.

Khang Hsu, Chief Medical Officer at Canary Speech and physician-informaticist, discusses vocal biomarkers — how tiny acoustic features in 40 seconds of speech can reveal neurological and behavioural changes. He covers clinical screening in primary care and telehealth, integration with wearables and EHRs, privacy and consent, and novel uses like aggression detection and workforce screening.

James Mishreki, founder of Skin + Me and builder of a £37M personalised dermatology brand. He tells how poker-shaped risk instincts met healthcare regulation, why prescription-grade personalization mattered, and how vertical integration, clinical trust and subscription ops closed the dermatology access gap. He also teases a new stealth consumer health venture.

Lawrie Kidd, consultant anaesthetist and Clinical Product Lead at DrDoctor, blends frontline practice with healthtech product work. He talks about everyday IT frictions that pile up for clinicians. He explores misaligned tech/business models, the hidden human and environmental costs of solutions, and how co-design and embedded teams can rebuild trust and deliver practical pathway improvements.

Hjalmar Nilsonne, Co-founder and CEO of Neko Health, builds preventive health scanning and longitudinal data systems. He describes Neko’s £299 full-body scans, mole mapping and cardiovascular bed tests. Listens to how they built custom imaging, shifted to consumer-first clinics, use AI to aid clinicians, and aim to scale prevention and prove ROI for broader access.

Tharni Vasavan, Horizon Scanning Senior Health Technology Lead at NICE, shares her journey from women's health research to healthtech innovation. She discusses the crucial role NICE plays in evaluating emerging technologies for the NHS and explains Early Value Assessment for promising solutions. Tharni highlights the importance of horizon scanning to identify disruptive technologies and underscores the exciting opportunities in femtech to address health data gaps. Her advice for innovators emphasizes early engagement with NICE for successful evidence planning.