Always On - a podcast about healthtech from Rory Cellan-Jones: Recent Episodes
rory
Rory Cellan-Jones meets some of the most interesting people and companies in the world of healthtech
This week's Healthy Conversation takes place in a small house in Bristol where an extraordinary experiment is taking place which could help find new drugs to treat Parkinson's. The house is packed with cameras and sensors which record the every move of people who come to stay for five days, as researchers try to find a better way of measuring the progression of Parkinson's. Rory Cellan-Jones talks to Dr Alan Whone and Dr Cathy Morgan about the Parkinson's Big Brother House and what they hope to achieve with their project.
In the latest episode of Healthy Conversations, Rory Cellan-Jones talks to Giuseppe Sollazzo, a key figure in the drive to apply artificial intelligence in the NHS. Giuseppe rejoices in what he describes as the most hipster title in the public sector, Head of Skunkworks for NHSX. But he's far from a hype merchant, stressing the need for caution and transparency in introducing AI to the health service. And he admits that some of the projects he backs - like a system to predict how long patients will stay in hospital - will seem mundane amidst all the talk of robot surgeons and automated cancer scans. But I found his calm realistic approach to AI refreshing - have a listen and tell me what you think. You'll find an article about our conversation on my substack newsletter - subscribe at https://rorycellanjones.substack.com/
Maddy Phipps-Taylor has a mission - she wants to build the future of medical records. In the latest Healthy Conversation with Rory Cellan-Jones she describes a career which, just four years out of Oxford, saw her appointed as an advisor on health policy to Prime Minister David Cameron on. Now she's CEO of Eva Technologies, a startup building information systems for GPs. She warns of a seismic shift coming in the volume of health data, something humans may not be able to cope with.
Pearse Keane is both a consultant opthalmologist at London's Moorfields Hospital and a professor of artificial medical intelligence at University College London. Working with the AI company Google DeepMind he's developed an algorithm which can assess retinal scans for eye conditions as expertly as medical professionals. In this episode he discusses with Rory Cellan-Jones how he got involved in AI, the huge challenge of dealing with the torrent of scans which arrive from High Street opticians, and why four years after his algorithm was unveiled it's still some way from being put into use.