#437: The clinical trial system is broken and here’s why with Dr Elsa Zekeng from SökerData

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 to aggregate more inclusive health datasets.Connect with Elsa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-elsa-zekeng-sokerdata/Learn more about SökerData: https://www.soker-data.com/Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.comSubscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.comGet in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.comThis podcast was brought to you by SomX.

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 outcome is determined almost entirely by the quality of the people behind the company, not the metrics, the market size or the business plan. The conversation covers the real reason most companies fail at the VC stage, the one question every founder should ask an investor before accepting their money, and why the NHS is repeating, at scale, the talent retention mistakes that investment banks identified and addressed decades ago.Learn more about T.N. Giridhar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/t-n-giridhar-9352602/Learn more about ssg capital: https://www.ssgcapital.uk/Learn more about SomX for your healthtech company:https://somx.health/Apply to be a guest on The Healthtech Podcast:https://www.thehealthtechpodcast.com/Subscribe to our newsletter, Healthtech Pigeon 🐦:https://www.healthtechpigeon.com/

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 the challenges of regulating AI in healthcare.Connect with Saira: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-saira-g-943a1b1b/Learn more about Prova Health: https://www.provahealth.com/ Learn more about SomX for your healthtech company:https://somx.health/Apply to be a guest on The Healthtech Podcast: https://www.thehealthtechpodcast.com/Subscribe to our newsletter, Healthtech Pigeon 🐦:https://www.healthtechpigeon.com/

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, shimmer and timing patterns can reflect underlying physiological and neurological change.Can those signals help detect depression, anxiety, mild cognitive impairment or even early neurodegenerative disease?Kang brings a rare perspective. As a practising physician and former Chief Medical Informatics Officer within a major US health system, he led large-scale EHR implementations and AI deployments across a 50+ hospital network. He understands both the science and the realities of adoption at system level.This conversation covers:• What vocal biomarkers are and how they are measured• How 40 seconds of natural speech can generate thousands of acoustic data points• Clinical applications across behavioural health and neurology• Sensitivity, specificity and the limits of current evidence• What makes clinicians trust and adopt new AI tools• Why seamless workflow integration is critical for scaleLearn more about SomX for your healthtech company:https://somx.health/Apply to be a guest on The Healthtech Podcast:https://www.thehealthtechpodcast.com/Subscribe to our newsletter, Healthtech Pigeon 🐦:https://www.healthtechpigeon.com/

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/jamesmishreki/ Learn more about Skin + Me: https://www.skinandme.com/ Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.comSubscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.comGet in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.comThis podcast was brought to you by SomX.

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.comSubscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.comGet in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.comThis podcast was brought to you by SomX.

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/enApply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.comSubscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.comGet in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.comThis podcast was brought to you by SomX.

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.If you're working with AI that you think will be applicable in healthcare within the next 10 years, you can partake in NICE's horizon scanning with this form: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=FNtA1T7OGE2t-3WmXoj3178lLN5iep1Aj4hJbvJXiDRUREs0Q1dVRFJTTTZHSU1HUllSSjYwVllRQS4uConnect with Tharni: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tharnithavasavan/Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.comSubscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.comGet in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.comThis podcast was brought to you by SomX.

This week James is joined by Jacob West, Managing Director for Healthcare and Life Sciences at Microsoft UK, who shares insights on how Microsoft is leveraging AI to enhance healthcare in the UK.Connect with Jacob: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-west-a519404/Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.comSubscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.comGet in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.comThis podcast was brought to you by SomX.

This week, James is joined on the podcast by Dr Madeleine Ballard, CEO of the Community Health Impact Coalition (CHIC). CHIC is a global movement making professional community health workers the norm worldwide by changing guidelines, funding, and policy.Connect with Madeleine: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madeleineballard/Learn more about CHIC: https://joinchic.org/Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.comSubscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.comGet in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.comThis podcast was brought to you by SomX.