Discover more about our members and digital health community.
Health Foundry Newsletter: August 2022
Our August newsletter is here! Click through to read about our upcoming events, industry events and more this month, as well as our member feature on the online clinic for kids, Strivy Health.
Happy August members & friends
We hope you're enjoying the sunshine and can't wait to connect with you all at our events over the next few weeks.
Follow the link here to read about our programming this August, as well as upcoming industry events, digital health opportunities and our member feature on the online clinic for kids, Strivy Health.
If you haven’t already, follow the link below to sign up to our mailing list to get our monthly newsletters straight to your inbox!
Member Feature: Curenetics
Click through to read more about our member of the month who are working hard to personalise cancer treatment using their AI-based platform.
Each month, we highlight one of our amazing members doing amazing things in digital health and beyond. Our July member feature is written by and about on one of our newest members, Curenetics.
Curenetics was founded by Sola Adeleke, a cancer specialist with over 10 years experience in the field. He is a clinical oncology registrar in the southeast London training pathway. Curenetics is aiming to work towards personalising cancer treatment using AI algorithms.
What are Curenetics doing?
Cancer treatment over the years has got more clever, sophisticated and effective. Most of the advances in cancer therapies have been due to our ability to better understand the cancer genome and in finding ways to target cancer cells and destroy them. However, it comes at a price; cancer treatments have become more and more expensive and even unaffordable to many. Beyond just the cost of treatments, cancers often find a way to beat the treatment and eventually relapse. This shows cancer genomics-based treatment alone might not be the answer. At Curenetics, we have developed an AI-based platform that can better analyse the cancer genomic profile in greater detail than what has been developed before. This will be combined with patient imaging data (their scans) and their unique clinical histories to identify the best treatment options which will be most suitable for a patient. In summary, cancer treatment is not one size fits all and curenetics aim to personalise cancer treatment for each patient’s unique body.
In the last year, we have secured multiple grant funding which has allowed us to hire a team of data scientists and cancer biologists to work on various AI-driven cancer diagnostic/predictive tools. For instance, we have now developed a simple, AI-driven blood-based test for diagnosing 11 common cancers. This has been shown to have an accuracy of >90% and will now move into clinical trial testing. One of our other projects is the use of our AI platform in the prediction of Graft versus host disease in patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplants. We are developing these products with some of the top London hospitals and academic partners.
What is next for Curenetics?
Curenetics is aiming to raise seed funding (over the next 3 months) to expand our R&D and validation work. We also plan to forge partnerships with hospitals and academic institutions nationally and internationally to expand our customer base. We will be filing our first patent application at the end of the summer.
Words: Curenetics
We’re excited to have Curenetics join the Health Foundry community. If you’d like to connect with Sola and the rest of the team, contact them here.
Special Feature: Health Foundry Reflections
Click through to read this month’s Special Feature written by one of Health Foundry’s founding members, system connections and up until recently, Programmes and Partnerships Lead, Will Nicholson.
It's with a heavy heart that the Health Foundry team and members say farewell (for now) to one of our founding members and former Programmes & Partnerships Lead, Will Nicholson. From the very beginning to date, Will has been a big part of building and supporting Health Foundry and it’s vision to enable innovation in healthcare.
It's with a mixture of real sadness, excitement and pride that I'm going to be saying goodbye to Health Foundry to start the next chapter of my life in Northern Ireland with my family.
Health Foundry has been a huge aspect of my working life - I've been part of the furniture here from 'pre-birth' to celebrating its 6th anniversary this year! I was part of the team that worked on setting it up and have been a member, host, system connector and most recently, Programmes and Partnerships Lead, since it's inception
During my time at Health Foundry I’ve been extremely privileged to have met so many wonderful people doing amazing things in the digital health - all of them bound by the same inspiring mission to improve health and wellbeing through technology. There are way too many to list but I’ve captured a few standout memories to bring to life the special time I’ve had as part of the Health Foundry community.
In the summer of 2016, I was with the team at Guy's and St Thomas Foundation and Architecture00 as we first conceived the idea of a healthtech community and co-working space in Waterloo, We, rather like naming my children, spent many hours debating a name before agreeing on “Health Foundry” which, by the way, (from my very biased and proud parent position) is pretty darn good!
For me, the name captures perfectly what we set out to achieve - a melting pot establishment where health is moulded into all sorts of different things in varying shapes and sizes.
I remember the launch event fondly. We had over 200 people visit us over several days which created a lot of buzz and really put us on the map. We got to hear from the great and the good in the world of digital health, and I specifically remember hearing from Ivo Gormley, the Founder of Goodgym, who inspired me with his talk about “tech for good”. I’ve now done over 100 missions for Goodgym, supporting the local community in Lambeth, as well as keeping myself fit in the process!
At the beginning of Health Foundry, I got to meet Tom Whicher, Perran Pengelly and Rinesh Amin, the Founders of DrDoctor. They were one of our first members and a great success story of Health Foundry - I’ve loved watching them grow from a team of 13 to around 100, with the DrDoctor patient engagement platform now embedded in over 30 NHS Trusts across the country. I also met Dr Isabel Van De Keere, another one of our other founding members and CEO of Immersive Rehab. Isabel epitomises the ethos of the community at Health Foundry - she's always happy to deliver a Lunch and Learn, take part in our Randomised Coffee Trials or meet other members to give them valuable support and insights.
Arden and Ross Tomison, Co-Founders of Thalamos, also share this same community ethos. Despite being two of the hardest working people I know, (our FILO members - first in and last out each day!) they are always willing to find time for others, whether it is offering mentoring to earlier stage entrepreneurs or filling out our member surveys with invaluable feedback.
I’ve also loved making connections for our members and local community. Introducing Kerstyn Comley, Sharmaine Malik, Michael Mclaren and the rest of the team at MeeToo to various local stakeholders via the Great Lambeth Mental Health Day Walk and to King’s College London, as part of a young person’s mental health event, particularly stand out. Similarly making creative connections has been a lot of fun too, for example, introducing the team at Doctors in Distress to the Florence Nightingale Museum who share a similar interest in supporting the health and wellbeing of nurses.
One of the things I’ve enjoyed the most about Health Foundry has been partnership working. As a neutral space, Health Foundry provides such a fantastic opportunity for doing things together that we couldn’t do on our own. It’s been a real privilege to work with Freya Hickman, Founder of re:mind, and one of our Community Supporters, Sophie Scholar of Claim Capital. Both wanted to do more to raise awareness of, and address, the significant issue of gender inequality in the healthtech sector. Since February 2022, we have worked with Freya and Sophie to create a Female Founders Network and have convened 5 in person and online events with over 50 participants!
Another real highlight of the power of partnership at Health Foundry has been our regular monthly networking event focused on health data catalysed by Nick Nettleton; self-professed data geek and Founder of Loft Digital. We have now run 8 events since September 2021, attracting over 200 attendees in total. The partnership combines the subject matter expertise and passion for data at Loft with Health Foundry’s neutral physical space, events management expertise and convening power. The third event added an extra layer of partnership as we coincided a meetup as a fringe event to one of our members' GIANT Health’s Annual Conference in November 2021.
Above everything, what I love about these events is that they provide the chance to meet new people and to bump into old friends. Serendipity has led me to making some wonderful connections and friendships over the years, as well as some late nights having in depth discussions about changing the world with Melissa Holloway (SmartStart), Ina Burgstaller (Bionabu) and Sharmaine Malik (MeeToo), to name but a few!
Speaking of partnerships, I want to thank Gail Macdonald and Emily Oliver and the rest of the team at Guy's and St Thomas Foundation for making Health Foundry possible. Without their investment and tireless support over the years, none of the above would have happened. Their efforts, alongside the creativity of Sarah Hollingsworth and Alice Fung at Architecture00, have transformed an unassuming ground floor space at the bottom of a block of flats and brought the vision of Health Foundry to life.
As an ‘experiment’ to test and learn about the conditions necessary to support innovation in healthtech, it has far exceeded our expectations. It's so exciting to think about the next steps for Health Foundry and how we can build on the learnings from these last 6 years. It has been a real privilege to be part of discussions about 'HF2.0' and life beyond Royal Street. There is a truly wonderful opportunity for Health Foundry to be an integral part of the SC1 Life Science District - so watch this space!
And of course I couldn’t finish without a special mention for my amazing colleague Natalie Archer. She really is the glue that holds the whole place together (and held me together!) and I'm delighted that she is stepping up to be the General Manager of Health Foundry. I’m so excited to see where she and Chris French, the new (and much improved) Programmes and Partnerships Lead take Health Foundry next, and I wish them every success.
So after 6 years at Health Foundry, I leave with a real mixture of sadness as I say farewell to so many friends and colleagues but also with huge pride as to what has been accomplished in this time. What next for me? I’m just excited to see where the wind takes me in the Emerald Isle!
Health Foundry Northern Ireland anyone? ;)
Words: William Nicholson
This isn't goodbye Will, but see you later! Stay connected with Will on LinkedIn here.
Health Foundry Newsletter: July 2022
Click through to read our special features this month, as well as upcoming healthtech events, opportunities and more.
Happy July members and friends!
June saw a lot of changes at Health Foundry and we’re really excited for the months ahead.
The Health Foundry team may have changed but our mission is still the same - to continue building a supportive, inclusive and collaborative community to enable digital innovation in healthcare.
Are you a healthtech entrepreneur or SME? Want to connect with other individuals and organisations in digital health, or benefit from our range of programming and expertise?
We're still offering free taster days for anyone interested in joining the Health Foundry community. Come spend a day in our coworking space in London and meet the Health Foundry team!
If you'd like to book a taster day for you or your company, or you want find out more about membership, drop us an email and tell us a little bit about yourself and how we can support your journey.
Click link here to find out more about Health Foundry membership, and follow the link here to read our July newsletter including special features, upcoming healthtech events, opportunities and more.
Special Feature: Introducing our new Programmes & Partnerships Lead
Click through to read more about our new Programmes and Partnerships Lead Chris French.
Hello!
I’m Chris and you may have already seen me hanging around the Health Foundry, sitting with Natalie and Will over the last month or so but it’s now official - I’ve joined Health Foundry as the new Programme and Partnerships Lead.
This is a role undertaken by Will and, as most of you know, he is heading to new pastures in July. I’ve known Will for several years now and I’m under no illusion of the size of the shoes I have to fill, but I’m really excited to be joining this community and working alongside Natalie and the rest of the team.
I am a Lambeth resident, having lived and worked in the area for over 10 years now. I came to London via a number of places but now call it my home. Work wise, my most recent role was for a large consultancy in their Government and Healthcare Industries team, working on large projects for the NHS and other public and private sector clients.
Prior to that, I worked for a healthcare regulator (Allied Health Professionals) as the International Registration Manager and then as the Fitness to Practice Operations Manager.
Outside of work, I chair two LGBTQIA+ charities, one of which I founded and the other a national infrastructure body. I’m very active in my local community and ran (unsuccessfully!) in the recent London local elections. Community is very important to me, and I’m heartened by what I’ve already
seen at the Health Foundry in that sense.
When I find the time, I love long walks, one of my favourites being a loop of the South Downs Way from Eastbourne. Any recommendations, let me know!
If you’re a Health Foundry member, please expect an invite from me in the coming weeks, or feel free to just come up and say ‘Hi!’ - I’ll be working two days a week in the space but you’ll likely to see me around more than that.
I’m looking forward to getting to know you all and about your passions in healthcare!
Words: Chris French
We're really excited to have Chris join the Health Foundry team. Connect with him here.