Talking HealthTech

Medtronic is one of the world's largest medical technology companies, but it came from humble beginnings over 70 years ago. Their first life-changing therapy — a wearable, battery-powered cardiac pacemaker — was the foundation for many more Medtronic therapies that use their electrical stimulation expertise to improve the lives of millions of people. Over the years, Medtronic has developed more core technologies, including the first battery-powered pacemaker, a number of implantable mechanical devices, drug and biologic delivery devices, and powered and advanced energy surgical instruments. Today, their technologies are used to treat nearly 70 medical conditions. The concept of meaningful innovation is at the heart of everything that happens at Medtronic.  In this episode, Peter Birch speaks with a few different guests to get the full picture on Medtronic, innovation and the medtech industry.  You’ll learn about the history of Medtronic, how it maintains it's position as a pioneer of medtech, and how it fost

Yianni Serparnos is a health-tech innovator, digital health advocate, podcaster, and founding CEO of Coreplus, an Australian digital health practice management software for Allied Health providers, clinics and private practices.   He is inspired and motivated to modernise healthcare and achieve a vision of a world of integrated digital health empowerment for all people.  Coreplus's Mission is to connect, help and grow Allied Health providers, with the right tools and empowerment so that the delivery of modern healthcare services can better fit into the lives, schedules, goals and aspirations of healthcare consumers whilst supporting the clinicians and practitioners to practice in a happier way. Check out this episode to learn about the background of Coreplus, and a bit of a pulse check on technology in Allied Health.  Also in this discussion, Yianni talks about his broader connection with the healthtech industry with Healthtech X, exploring the evolution of digital health, and the future for our evolving ecos

Dr Marcus Tan is the Founder, CEO and Medical Director of HealthEngine, one of Australia’s largest online healthcare marketplaces, helping millions of patients connect with thousands of healthcare providers nationally. His vision for HealthEngine is to be a global leading platform that revolutionises the access and experience of healthcare for patients and providers. Marcus is a University of Western Australia medical graduate with an executive MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management.  He is an experienced GP, healthcare executive and company director with over 20 years of clinical and commercial experience. His diverse career spans the health, technology, investment and philanthropic sectors. In this episode Marcus chats with Pete about the history and evolution of Health Engine, their response to COVID-19 and telehealth.  Marcus also shares some wisdom for founders as they scale their digital health startup and look to raise capital.

Dr Ginni Mansberg is no stranger to Australian television and other media - she is a Sydney GP, and has been on shows like Embarrassing Bodies Down Under on Channel 9, Sunrise & the Morning Show on Channel 7, Medicine or Myth on SBS, Things You Can't Talk About on TV on Audible, as well as featuring in a bunch of magazines, radio shows and podcasts.  In addition to this and a heap of other responsibilities, Dr Ginni is also a successful businesswoman, with her own cosmeceutical and beauty-related business, ESK - Evidence Skin Care. Pete and Dr Ginni spoke via livestream video with a live audience, and the audio recording was converted into an episode of the Talking HealthTech Podcast.  Attendees engaged in chat, asked questions, participated in polls, and generally shaped the conversation.   In this episode Pete and Ginni talk all about entrepreneurship - from idea to execution.  Ginni talks about her background, the impact of COVID-19 on General Practitioners, and the story of her own business.  Dr Ginni

Matt Bardsley is the CEO of MedicalDirector, one of Australia’s leading practice management systems for healthcare practitioners. In the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic and the impact it has had on our global healthcare system, technology providers have been searching for ways to add more value to their existing products, create new offerings and enable practitioners to deliver patient care safely and effectively. One of those technology providers in Australia is MedicalDirector.  Their fearless leader Matt Bardsley has been on the Talking HealthTech Podcast once before, and I recommend you also go and check out episode 15 back in August 2019 once you’ve listened to this one.  Click here to check that one out.   Fast forward to today, Matt and the team have a lot of different things going on at MedicalDirector at the moment, but he made time to talk through how they’ve responded to the crisis at hand.  Check this one out to learn how MedicalDirector is supporting clinics during COVID-19, the uptake of telemedic

Dr Cortina McCurry is the CEO and Co-Founder of Caia, a video and text consultation platform which securely connects women and families with vetted women’s health practitioners, treatments, and products to make it easy to navigate each stage of life.  Cortina has a PhD in neuroscience from MIT, and more than 15years experience across healthcare, technology, and operations. Cortina was a Partner at Boston Consulting Group, and traded it all in for the best job of all - founder of a healthtech start up in Australia.  Check out this episode to learn all about Caia and how they are addressing an unmet need in women's health, the role businesses can play in supporting the health and wellness of their employees during the transition to parenthood, why investing in women and families is good for business, and moving the needle on gender equality and how it is more than just flexible work and parental leave.   Pete and Cortina also discuss the real challenges of being a Co-Founder and new parent, and strategies on ho

It feels like it was only a few weeks ago that we were praying for Telehealth to be implemented in GP clinics over the coming years.  We pictured a gradual roll out, drip fed slowly by types of service, or locations.  It was the type of thing that could only be implemented in baby steps.  There was simply no other way to disrupt the GP workflow to bring Telehealth front of mind. Then the day before recording this episode, the baby just not only took some steps, it did a triple backwards summersault while running a marathon in under 2 hours - as in, it was announced that we now have universal Telehealth available in Australia.  As Greg Hunt our health minister said - it is a decades worth of work in a matter of days.  It seems pretty apt that the only way to implement a disruptive solution like Telehealth was to have a disruptive problem like COVID-19.   Many of the tools that GPs need to enable all of this, are created by healthtech providers.  It goes beyond the obvious things though, which is just giving a

Joel Friedleander is the founder of Cliniko, which is practice management software used by more than 30,000 people in over 70 countries.  Joel has a software development background, and started Cliniko with his wife who is an osteopath back in 2010. As many organisations around the world grapple with the concepts of adapting to remote work due to social distancing, Cliniko has been doing it for over 10 years - with an entirely remote team spanned across the globe.  This is no ordinary podcast episode, this was the first Talking HealthTech Livestream Webinar recorded to an audience who not only listened to what Joel had to say, but also engaged with polls, chat, and even a few came ‘on stage’ and spoke with Joel directly about some important topics.   In this episode you will learn about the history of Cliniko, the company culture, and how they break some of the corporate norms you might see in other organisations. Pete and Joel also delve into the challenges of social isolation due to COVID-19, and how Clinik

In this episode are interviews with some of the biggest names in Australian health policy influence and clinical leadership. Earlier this month, at Baker Mackenzie in Melbourne, Australia, the Medical Software Industry Association (MSIA) hosted its March Forum for members.  If you didn’t know, the members of MSIA are providers of technology to the healthcare industry in Australia.  When the MSIA puts on an event, they get the very best of the best in key opinion leaders and experts into the room to provide some really meaningful and actionable insights foe members.  They also do a bunch more outside of events like essentially being the voice for every software vendor to raise important issues right up through government to influence policy decisions, which ultimately link back to how technology is adopted in the healthcare ecosystem here in Australia. And in this current climate of COVID-19, which is essentially a rapidly evolving crisis situation that is relying heavily on health technology to address a glob

Dr. Bertalan Mesko, is The Medical Futurist, looking at how science fiction technologies can become reality in medicine and healthcare. He is a geek physician with a PhD in genomics, and an Amazon Top 100 author. He is one of the top voices globally on digital health technology and the future of healthcare. Bertalan has delivered hundreds and hundreds of keynotes for governments and organizations including Harvard, Stanford, Yale Universities and NASA.   He’s been featured by dozens of top publications, including CNN, the World Health Organization, National Geographic, Forbes, TIME magazine, BBC, and the New York Times. And now of course, Talking HealthTech His website The Medical Futurist has had more than 5 million readers, and he is one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices in Healthcare. He is a member of Mensa International and has been selected by the Huffington Post as one of the 30 biotech thinkers with the biggest global impact.  Tune in to hear all about Bertalan’s perspective on Artificial Intelligence in healt

For those familiar with the format of theTalking HealthTech Podcast, you would know that normally its a 1:1 conversation between me and someone else in the healthtech scene.   Recently we upped our game, and thanks to the support of Hub Australia, we hosted our first ever Talking HealthTech live panel event. This was an opportunity for an audience of around 50-60 people to hear first hand from a panel of 4 healthtech leaders, moderated by Peter Birch, talking about all the important topics in the world of digital health.   This panel discussion was hugely insightful, and highlighted the massive dividends that pay off when companies embrace collaboration to solve big problems - a tool particularly helpful to Aussie healthtech firms who are looking to solve some of the countries biggest challenges using modern and emerging technologies. Enjoy the following panel discussion featuring: Manuri Gunawardena - Founder and CEO, HealthMatch
 Melissa Webster - Founder and CEO, Sleepfit
 Silvia Pfeiffer - Founder and CEO

Dr James Somauroo is Co-Founder at HS. Ventures, a UK-based accelerator and VC that builds, scales and invests in the best healthtech startups.  James hosts the HS. Health-Tech Podcast, featuring 2 episodes a week with listeners in over 80 countries, interviewing inspiring entrepreneurs in this space.  He is also is a contributor to Forbes in the UK. He is an anaesthetics and ICU doctor by training, and held roles in leadership at the NHS, Health Education England and the British Medical Journal and he previously directed an accelerator that provided startups with market access to the NHS.  He also has degrees in biomedical sciences and education, and a guest lecturer on healthtech innovation and entrepreneurship at University College London. In this episode, James talks all about HS. Ventures and why it exists.  He explains what an accelerator and navigator does, and their importance in the health ecosystem.   Listen in for valuable insights from James about what to do and what not to do when you’re trying t

Chris Smeed is the CEO and Founder of Cubiko, a business report and analyst tool made especially for general practices, and they are making a bit of noise here in Australia.   Chris has extensive experience in healthcare, cloud based solutions and accounting services.   He holds a Masters of Business Administration and a Masters of Professional Accounting, and he’s also an accredited BAS agent and certified Xero partner, so he has a lot of first hand experience about every facet of running a clinic - from balancing the books of a medical practice on a day to day, right up to reporting on performance to management and owners. In this episode, learn all about Cubiko how it came together, and the problems it solves for GP practices around Australia, big and small.   Chris speaks about the importance of integrations and API feeds to breakdown silos in healthcare performance measurement, and their ethos towards benchmarking nd keeping clinic data secure.

Karen Borg is the CEO of Healthdirect Australia, working with government partners to deliver innovative and trusted health information and services to all Australians so they can connect to the right care at the right time, wherever and whenever they need it. In this episode, Pete and Karen talk about the different offerings of Healthdirect, the important role they play in supporting the government find new innovative healthcare technology solutions. They also talk about the readiness for telehealth in Australia, where we stand compared to other parts of the world, and the carrots and sticks required to facilitate positive change to address complex health challenges.

Rami Weiss is the CEO of Healthshare.  Their mission is to improve patient health outcomes using digital solutions.   Over the past few years Healthshare has developed a raft of different solutions for Doctors and Patients to ultimately serve up better health information, which leads to happier healthier people. In this episode, Pete & Rami talk about the 10 year history of the company, their raft of products available for Doctors and Patients, and how they manage to market and grow their suite of different offerings to both B2B and B2C.  They also dive into the importance of accessible health information to help patients and doctors make more informed decisions for better patient outcomes, and reflect on how the start up landscape in Australia has changed over the past 10 years.

Sanji Kanagalingam is the Executive Director of Curve Tomorrow, who are at the intersection of healthcare, commercialisation and digital product development. Curve works with organisations, clinicians and medical researchers to bring life changing and award-winning health technology to life, from concept through to care. In this episode of The Talking HealthTech Podcast, Pete and Sanji talk about app development for healthcare, the successes and learning opportunities they’ve had to work out what works and what doesn’t, putting together a good business model around innovation and the importance of using design thinking to solve difficult problems in software development for healthcare.  Sanji also speaks about their ambitious target to impact the lives of one billion people.

Dr Michelle Perugini is the co-founder and CEO of Presagen, who recently launched their first product Life Whisperer; which uses AI to better identify healthy embryos for IVF, and to ultimately improve outcomes for couples wanting to have children.  In this episode recorded live at Startcon. Pete and Michelle talk about how Presagen is changing the way medical data from around the world is connected with artificial intelligence through their Open AI Projects, and how this approach helps them build more diverse datasets and maintain high levels of data privacy for their intelligent health solutions.   Michelle also reflects on how scaling in healthtech differs to other industries, as well as the hype vs reality of AI in healthcare.

Peter Birch speaks with Pete Williams, the co-founder of Medipass, a digital healthcare claiming and payments platform for providers and insurers.  Before starting Medipass in 2016, Pete co-founded Localz, a VC backed startup that powers last mile delivery experiences for major retailers and service companies.  Prior to joining the startup world, Pete led consumer and high-value payments technology - including HICAPS - at National Australia Bank.  He was also employed by KPMG where he worked on financial service and payment projects around the world In this episode, Pete and Pete chat about the complexities of healthcare payments in Australia, how we stack up to other parts of the world, the importance of partnerships with practice management systems and payors for HealthTech vendors, and many more.

Bringing in 2020 with a bang, this is a mammoth show to see in the new year! Back in November at the Medical Software Industry Association (MSIA) 2019 Annual Summit and AGM in Sydney Australia, Talking HealthTech recorded interviews with different speakers throughout the day.  This episode features 5 of these conversations covering a broad spectrum of issues that are pertinent to Australia’s health technology scene today.   The theme for the summit was “Limitless - Health Software Transforming Australia’s Healthcare”.  The event was attended by over 100 members of the MSIA, and had guests speakers from all over the country, as well as a special international guest.   This episode features interviews with:  Iman Ghodosi, Vice President of Asia Pacific at Zuora Igor Zvezdakoski, Chief Product Officer at Message Media Group Dr Ruth Webster, Global Head of Medicine at the George Health Technologies Dr Harry Nespolon, President of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) Steven Posnack, Deputy

David Dahm is a driven, motivated and dedicated individual with a raft of qualifications and experience, and an amazing life story. He is currently the CEO and Founder of Health and Life, the CEO of One Moment Foundation and is actively involved in industry associations across the Medical and Accounting professions. David is passionate about creating a sustainable and socially responsible healthcare system by promoting health and financial literacy in the community.   Most recently David is on a journey to establish the IHSEB - the International Health Standards & Ethics Board - in an effort to implement standards of healthcare delivery across the globe. Listen in to this episode of Talking HealthTech to hear more about the IHSEB, as well as David's story, what Doctors can learn from Accountants, and all about the concept of patient advocacy.