The Healthtech Podcast

In this episode of The Healthtech Podcast, James is joined by Steve Bulera, Chief Scientific Officer for Safety Assessment and Toxicology at Charles River Laboratories — one of the world's largest CROs, and a company that almost every new drug passes through on its way from lab to human trials. They dig into one of the most significant shifts in preclinical drug development: the move away from traditional animal testing towards virtual control groups, AI-assisted decision-making, and what Steve calls "new approach methodologies." It's a candid conversation about where the science is, why the regulators are cautious, and what it actually takes to change a decades-old industry from within.

Connect with Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-bulera-245234a9/
Learn more about Charles River Laboratories: https://www.criver.com

Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.com
Subscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.com
Get in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.com

This podcast was brought to you by SomX.

In this episode of The Healthtech Podcast, James is joined by Jamie Cox, Co-Founder and CTO of Scarlet — Europe's only notified body specialised in software and AI medical devices. Jamie shares how a frustrating experience building AI triage software at Babylon Health led him and co-founder James Dewar to a radical idea: build a notified body from the ground up, designed specifically for iterative software development. They explore why the current regulatory system creates artificial bottlenecks for health tech founders, what it actually means to regulate an LLM as a medical device, and why making certification faster and cheaper could fundamentally reshape who gets to bring products to market.

Connect with Jamie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-cox-01458b3a/
Learn more about Scarlet: https://www.scarlet.cc/

Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.com
Subscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.com
Get in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.com

This podcast was brought to you by SomX.

This week, James is joined by Shravan Nageswaran, co-founder and CEO of Atman Labs, the London applied-AI research company building diagnostic AI that reasons like a doctor — without relying on large language models. They dig into why LLMs fall short on real clinical reasoning, what "safety" actually means when a system takes a patient history, and how reinforcement learning over a medical knowledge graph could reshape primary care. A genuinely different take on the "can AI be a doctor?" question.

Connect with Shravan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shravan-nageswaran-8961801a1
Learn more about Atman Labs: https://atmanlabs.ai
Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.com
Subscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.com
Get in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.com

This podcast was brought to you by SomX.

In this episode, James is joined by Cate Lawrence, Senior Journalist at Tech.eu, to explore what the European healthtech ecosystem actually looks like from the press box, how stories get chosen, what makes a startup worth covering, and why the data gap between innovation and clinical impact remains so wide. Cate brings a decade of cross-sector reporting to the conversation, from wearable tech and women's health data to Ukrainian healthtech and the growing push for European digital sovereignty.

Connect with Cate: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catelawrence1/

Learn more about Cate's work: https://tech.eu/authors/catelawrence

Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.com

Subscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.com

Get in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.com

This podcast was brought to you by SomX.

This week, James is joined by Ben Finlay, Partner at Stratt and Advisor to Ranvier.ai, to dig into why mental health is still diagnosed by questionnaire - and what a taste test, a blood biomarker and a continuum view of neurological wellness could change. Ben shares the science behind Ranvier's objective mood measurement, the journey from early intervention in depression through to staving off Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and a candid look at where pharma, policy and AI are heading next.

Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benfinlay/

Learn more: https://www.ranvier.ai/

Apply to be a guest: www.thehealthtechpodcast.com

Subscribe to Healthtech Pigeon 🐦: www.healthtechpigeon.com

Get in touch with James: www.jamessomauroo.com

This podcast was brought to you by SomX.