#452: Uncovering the objective truth in health tech journalism with Cate Lawrence, Tech.eu

Speaker A: We've been sitting on an unpublished data set, 66,000 symptom logs from 1,740ft. Women tracked continuously with glucose monitors over 90 days. Healthcare is probably one of the most optimistic reasons for AI. The number one symptom women report isn't what anyone in the industry assumes biggest symptom women we're dealing with is.

Speaker B: Hey Rudy, welcome to another episode of the Health Tech podcast today. Bit of a different flavor for you. Not a startup founder for a change. We are speaking. Speaking to. Well, I'm speaking to a few journalists in health tech actually because, uh, journalists are uh, an interesting breed of people in the health tech space because they cover lots of different things, lots of different stories, really interesting vantage points. The research that has to go into good journalism means that journalists have really interesting perspectives and they have context. And what we like on this podcast is a nice long form conversation with context. And actually I think the art of journalism is something to be respected in this modern day. Most listeners will know that I write Health Tech Pigeon. I've started Pigeon Insider which is another long form deep dive of lots of different info. And I think it's really important that we respect the art of journalism and media in holding industries to account. And actually that's one of the things that I was super passionate about. I used to write for Forbes on health tech as a contributor, as a lot of people might know that. Listen to this. Um, and so I've got a real respect for the amount of research that goes into it, the integrity that you have to uphold and actually the impact that you can have. And I have someone with me this week. Delighted to welcome Kate who writes for Tech eu. And Kate is a wonderful example of all of those things I would say. I've read your work for a long time, Kate. The luminifying Ukraine and doing um, lots of sort of crisis based journalism I guess. Um, you report on raises like ditto that I wrote in Health Tech Pigeon recently. Um, a real sort of patient empowerment example. Um, you've written about women's health about cgms company called hello Inside recently. So yeah, looking forward to talk about all of that with you. But first of all, welcome. And how are you?

Speaker A: I'm very well. Thank you so much for having me. Looking forward to it and look forward to a great chat.

Speaker B: Awesome. And you're Europe based on you. So you based Austria. Germany.

Speaker A: Germany. Um, yeah, but I'm not German. My accent might give me away. I'm actually Australian.

Speaker B: Awesome. And how did you, how did you end up as a journalist. What was your, what was your route into it?

Speaker A: Um, a very unconventional one. Um, basically my previous job to this was um, I co founded a um, NGO in Australia focusing on sustainability in rental accommodation. So how renters could be sustainable when they weren't necessarily having a lot of decision making power in terms of how they lived and were being left out of and you know, policy wise, legislative wise, everything. The sustainability movement.

Speaker B: Nice.

Speaker A: So we did lots of things, we did lots of lobbying, we did uh, hundreds of workshops, we did um, government programs, you know, local government, not sort of, you know, big national government. We would have a better um, state of sustainability for renters in Australia. Bunch of different things, A lot of stuff with refugees and new migrants. And we did that for about seven years. And um, there was really a direct crossover with sustainability because when we were doing it in the 2010s, Australia was rolling out its smart energy home m. Uh monitoring so that you could, you could um, measure the efficacy of your um, appliances at home, but also your meter and all those things and get that data to your. At the time it would have been um, web based, but later on of course an app. But we were one of, if not the first country uh, to do that. So it really had this sort of direct impact of new tech and ushering new tech to um, a somewhat, you know, at times a very skeptical audience. You know, um, sustainability is still very loaded as a concept in Australia. And so you know I do a lot of um, sort of tech education sort of stuff, um, with that and when I moved to Europe, which you know, was basically for a sea change, bit of burnout, um, was asked to do some writing around tech and obviously having done the smart home stuff the IOT side of it, my first job, just purely coincidentally, or main job was working as an IoT journalist for a Silicon Valley publication. So that's how I kind of got into it.

Speaker B: Amazing. And you write about lots of different stuff, don't you? So you write about tech broadly, I guess, health tech obviously being one of those things. What's your, what's your passion with, with health tech? What's your relationship with health tech? How do you feel about health tech in comparison to those other sectors? Because I mean the reason I ask is because obviously, you know, listeners, this podcast will be very much within the health tech space. And it's all we know, it's all we talk about. We actually, we used to do something in health tech where we used to, we used to compare the numbers, like the investment numbers in Q1, Q2, Q3 with FinTech. And we had this sort of like unofficial, not that they knew or cared, but this sort of race with FinTech to who was going to be performing the best in terms of financial numbers in pigeon. And obviously HealthTech was. It actually did okay for a lot of it. But fintech obviously winning majorly in terms of uh, definitely people claiming exit.

Speaker A: It's funny you say that, um, I've actually got to write up a report later in this week about um, FoodTech and the numbers really, you know, I mean they're better than they were but they're not great. You know. So sometimes you can. Part of a journalist is often we do have things that we're interested in, um, and you champion them yourself here in your own kind of way. And sometimes when the data doesn't match, you kind of get. Yeah, and Health Tech is a really good example of that because, you know, starting off, you know, back in the 2010s, you know, IOT obviously it had the synergy with um. Yes. Right. Including data driven wearables for health, um, health biometrics and so forth. And back then it was just, you know, there was so much optimism about it. I wrote about it a lot. I tested a lot of. A lot of wearables I have. I had for a long time a little graveyard of redundant wearable was the platforms went. Oh yeah, many, many, most. I get most. Um, and actually gave those to a hacker. Nice eventually to play with. But you know, it was a time when um, you know, the idea of the quantified self, you know, biohacking became such a, such a, such a thing. The idea that we could actually get this information that previously maybe was only done through more invasive metrics. Whether it was, you know, blood tests or um, other ways of, you know, a sleep test or something that was quite invasive. Suddenly we could become, you know, our own agent of health and have that agency to find insights. Um, and you know, some of it kind of worked, a lot of it didn't work. Where it kind of comes full circle now, and this is, I mentioned this very intentionally, is that there's a kind of a renewed optimism because AI and you know. Yes, I'm sure you talk about AI a lot. One of the best things AI for me as a journalist in this space is that a lot of things that were promised that didn't quite work now work.

Speaker B: It's so true. I've actually just written down, it hasn't actually changed a lot, but it's true that that Initial excitement. And it's funny how terms come and go as well, like in the Internet of things IoT. I remember that term, um, and as if it was yesterday. But that term is definitely gone. Like, it's hard, it's hardly ever used if, if at all now. Yeah, exactly. But it's. It's funny, isn't it, that the.

Speaker A: It's also because a lot of the wearables that were created, we don't need.

Speaker B: Because that's so true. That's so true. But it has meant. You're absolutely right, that the optimism has always been there. And even thinking about, you know, the piece that you wrote on. Hello, inside the, you know, continuous glucose monitors, you know, metabolic insight, um, you know, someone there, the founder, his family had diabetes, but he used the continuous glucose monitor anyway just to see his insights and he found loads of insights and then he thought, you know, how can we apply this to other things? Then women's healthcare, it's like we've, we've always. It's like this frontier bit of the quantified self has kind of been there since the Iot days. Because you're absolutely right, the technology is getting way better, but therefore, so are our expectations of it and our belief in what can actually be done. And that's, I guess, what's so nice to write about in a way, particularly if it's a passion of yours, because there seems to always be a story and that isn't really going anywhere. Because even if you look at. I mean, have you been following much of, like the Google stuff? Whoop. Like the, all the, all the bands of. Just now everyone's like, moving towards this, almost, almost becoming health care ecosystems. They're all going to the same place, aren't they? Like, everyone's going to a place where you've got a wearable and AI layer and then an actual health care layer of telemedicine and everyone seems to be, like, going to the same point. So I don't know, it's a fascinating space.

Speaker A: Yeah. And the intelligence layer as well, of what we do with that data, how we apply that, how we, how we make sense of it, who makes sense of it, you know, and where does it go exactly? Like, is it. You know, I think one of the most exciting things Apple ever did was when they released their Apple health kit so that people could actually become participants in research, you know, that, uh, citizen science kind of thing, um, where, if you, um. I can't think off the top of my head any particular conditions, but they were actively Scouting for areas where there had been, you know, a pain point of not having enough patient data to actually be able to, whether it was, you know, control people or, you know, people that were in the study to actually make, um, make outcomes. And now it's that, now that's sped up 10 times. You know, you have all this data which again has its own challenges. You know, how we, how we collect and collate and clean the data and all that other stuff, which is where AI is also coming.

Speaker B: When you're looking at like all of this stuff, obviously there's the good. There's the good, the bad and the ugly, isn't there? Uh, and you, yeah, you make a habit of actually covering quite a lot of that spectrum I've seen, particularly the stuff with the Ukraine or the rest of it. But there's also the element of, when it comes to data and security and making sure that things are done right, when you write a piece like the hello, inside piece that covers all that stuff, you've got a responsibility, haven't you, to your readers to essentially to make sure everything's facts checked and correct. But also there's a lot of, I mean uh, this seems like a grandiose term, but there is a lot of power that a journalist has because things will get written, things will get syndicated, opinions will form. We'll report it in health tech pigeon, we'll talk about it on our podcast and then people talk about it at an event and people will then say that to me. So, you know, a lot, a lot can happen, you know, butterfly effect wise from an article. So a lot has to go into it. How do you write when you, when you, when you're writing about a startup in the health tech space, like, like that. What's uh, your process, can you talk me through your process of how you even get. Because you, you wrote a lot in there about the business model and their insurance stuff and you know, everything that they were touching, it was, there's a lot that must go into it.

Speaker A: You know what, um, maybe I'll tell you a little bit about how that piece came out, came about and it might be interesting to any startups or scale ups listening that are kind of a bit about, oh, how do you pick journalists and you scare people and you know, and the biggest barrier, barrier to us is where small teams with large inboxes fall when um, you know, not a lot of time because we also have to do other work like go to conferences and um, a bit of commercial work on the side usually to stay, um, Stay afloat. So, yeah, basically, um, someone had read another piece I had written about a company called TrialMe, which is a Nordic company focused on getting, ensuring that women are participants in um, health trials. Sorry, for new healthcare. Whether it's um, drugs or it's um, therapeutic methods or um, treating women's health conditions. Because the data is that they're not. And for a long time they weren't even um, required to be active participants in testing things, which is beyond the pale. And so, yeah, they'd read this piece I'd written with um, an interview and said, hey, um, I've actually got this, um, this is what they said to me. I'm just doing a quick look. Firstly contacted me on WhatsApp, which was fine because they knew someone I knew. And they said, we've been sitting on an unpublished data cent. 66,000 symptom logs from 1,740ft. Women tracked continuously with glucose monitors over 90 days. And I'll just read this little bit very quickly. Some of the findings surprised us, starting with the fact that the number one symptom women report isn't what anyone in the industry, um, assumes and what it was. It's actually, you know, the notion is that people go to sort of these um, platforms looking to quantify self and they're um, often the biggest thing they're looking for is weight loss. But they actually found that when they went through the data the biggest symptom women were dealing with was fatigue. So super interesting. And you know, and so they basically were talking about, you know, we realized that, you know, a lot of this, problems around this are about medicine, built around male biology and um, you know, what happens. Our data actually shows when you measure women at state, at scale and that the, the assumptions might not be accurate. So that kind of stuff. That was a COO who contacted me. That's where it comes.

Speaker B: It's really. And that was interesting, isn't it, that, that approach. Because it's m. It's very intentionally and cleverly worded, isn't it? To grab you. To grab to. Very unusual. Quite.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: There's no kind of begging, there's no, there's no, there's no pleading to, oh, please cover this. It's, it's. Here I've, I've uncovered an objective truth that I think aligns with what you like and what you like to write about for the impact that you want to see in the world. And um, for people listening, by the way, that is how you speak to a journalist because that is what Journalists like yourself, I imagine, are trying to do. You're trying to use the pen to see into the world what you want to see. And also this, it's this, it is the search for truth journalism, isn't it, ultimately? Because that's, that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to investigate things in order to uncover truth so that the public and, and people know about it. Because that's ultimately who you're working for, I guess, in a way. I mean, yes, you have jobs and you, and you have people that, you have publications that pay you, but the goal, the goal that you're trying to reach, I imagine I don't put words in your mouth, but a goal, especially with, I know what you write about, you're trying to uncover truth that people need to know. If I've got that right.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's also just that there's a story there that's underreported. You know, it's having something that people aren't talking about. And what was most, you know, one of the things that was interesting about this story as well is that it had a very direct win, which was the company had. Actually their program is now being delivered through one of Germany's biggest health insurers. Um, in Germany, where I live, health insurance is compulsory. Um, so you have to pay for it. It's quite expensive. And, um, this program is free. And so it actually gives. It's like the holy grail for a healthcare startup of how do you get to the customer, how do you get to the end user? Some people go through, um, B2B. B2B2C. Like this example. Um, but it really, it shows that, you know, there is a way to achieve this. And that to me was also interesting. That's also an interesting story. There's this story about, because when we talk about health tech, one of the biggest barriers we see when we interview people or I see is the, um, gap between the data and um, the impact. So an example might be, I could have a wearable that's tracking a bunch of different metrics. I go to my doctor here in Germany and the doctor says, well, yeah, uh, I don't believe any of that. You have to do your own test here. And the waiting list for the test is six months. That could be, that could be quite normal. So that, you know, the fact that you're not getting, you know, um, a meaningful way of getting your, your tech recognized and that's, that's bad for both the user and the um, the company. And so I always ask people things like well, how do you get people using your tech and how do you get that impact? Particularly because a lot of it, um, some of the tech we cover in health tech is stuff that um, um, the clinic or the hospital or what have you buys. So there's those procurement cycles, um, so it's often about what happens there, how do you do all that? And um, one thing that one of the biggest wins people tell me is actually um, research. So it's getting your tech um, into some type of research, um, paper. So it is covered, it is validated, it is found to be um, you know, legitimate. And so therefore that gives it a leverage. So when you're doing, which is what hello Insight did. So when you're looking at getting a health insurer as a customer who interestingly you think they would be doing a lot of this kind of preventative health stuff, you know, data and you know, um, they work, you know, um, it gives you that leverage. So often there's the story within the story of how do you do it because you know there's a lot of companies doing similar things and the story is how do you do it?

Speaker B: It's interesting, isn't it? I mean that's why I'm finding it increasingly fascinating that the big AI companies, the OpenAI's and Anthropics, um, they're becoming interoperable with EPRs now as and they're trying to sit as the intermediate. It's like, it's like we talked about the, the you've got the wearable, then you've got the AI layer and then you've got the healthcare system. It's funny that the Anthropics and the open AIs with their ChatGPT for Health and Claude Healthcare and these types of things, uh, uh, are being that kind of.

Speaker A: The conduit.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. The conduit. Yeah, exactly. By like connecting it all. And also Abbott now investing in WHOOP as well and you know, big pharma, big incumbent, you know, health care, health care. Like uh, companies are investing in these wearables and you can see how that, that bridge between where we are now, where a primary care physician or secondary care physician is going to be like I do not trust your wearable data. And it's like. Well actually I can tell you that that WHOOP data has been used by Abbott to infer this medical device or this algorithm. So actually I suggest you do take heed of it because it's going to reduce a lot of the, of work you're going to have to do downstream and cost and actually is this a way exactly that. Is this a way that we start to approach the sustainability of healthcare from actually a completely different angle that no one kind of saw coming five years ago, which I think is fascinating.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean and it's. There is things that I think are coming that you know, the solutions now are good but they will get better. Like one of the things that interests me about um, the use of AI in tech, um, for diagnostics, for example. Like we um, have um, there's a number of um, clinics now where you can go and get sort of a full, a full checkup, um, looking at your 3D scans and things like that. Um, the stuff that's done to identify skin cancer is very interesting, particularly you know, moles that might be at risk and things like that. As an Australian, of course, super interesting to me because half our population has skin cancer at some stage in their life unfortunately. Um, but then you still becoming this disconnect where I could use one of those apps myself. I can identify a mole. That's very risky. But it could take me six months to get an appointment and I do say six months very intentionally because that's how long it takes you um, to get an appointment with a dermatologist. So I think that the next step will be easing that, whether that's through telemedicine, um, which I know is being used for a lot of other executions, um, so to alleviate some of those pain points for the um user.

Speaker B: The other thing that I just want to point out with your work, uh, particularly this article, but also the work in Ukraine is, I mean quite literally the amount of legwork that can go into researching and understanding a space, a company, even down to an article. And so talking about the um, like luminify for a second, um, can you tell me a little bit about that? Because you met those founders in key in Kiev, didn't you? Um, and, and you really invest in this kind of on the ground reporting. And I just, I just want to make this clear before you answer this as well to people listening, that this is the, this is the art of journalism, this is the work of journalism. This is why, this is why I have such great respect for journalists and actually the, the field quite frankly, because in order to find objective truth, in order to tell the public that you have to do a lot of work, including going to Kiev to interview founders that are doing something interesting in health tech. So do you want to just explain a bit of that to me.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And look, you know you can, of course we are in a digital world. I can interview people remotely, but. Of course, yeah, but you don't always get the same conversations. Um, I've been to Ukraine a few times since the full scale invasion from Russia. Um, I think four times, five times. Um, I was in Kiev a couple of weeks ago actually and Espiechi is um, a company that's made a product called Lumify. So it's a product in a product, I guess that's their VR platform. And um, basically it's um, a way of um, using AI to help um, in a clinical setting, um, help clinicians to guide immersive VR. Um, particularly one of the use cases that's become more prevalent is for soldiers with post traumatic stress disorder or other types of mental health conditions, which is completely valid and completely understandable. And it's a very structured program. Um, when we write about a lot of this sort of stuff like VR and healthcare, um, Psychotropics would be another example. People often think of it as a bit of a wild west when it's actually not. It's incredibly regulated, this stuff. You know, these are very structured environments, um, where everything is done with full clinicians and regulation and you know, permissions and things like that. And um, what's interesting about this company, um, sbts and their Lumify, I'll call it Illumify because that's the name of the product, you know. Um, was that the guy starting it originally was in automotive, doing sort of mixed reality automotive stuff, things for the, for the, for the dash dashboard. Right. Or the windscreen which again is a super interesting issue because they're literally using that in defense now for um, for tanks and stuff. So you can see um, what's outside. So super interesting. Um, and cars in battle and things like that, vehicles. So basically um, he was someone. And this is something I've heard a lot from Ukrainians. Um, when the full Stell invasion kicked, he decided he was going to do something else. You know, he was going to pivot to something with impact for Ukraine, building something for Ukraine in Ukraine. Um, this is a very, you know, and, and people often think about Ukraine tech like oh, you know, you're writing about Ukraine because you know the, the war, there's a war, you know, and it's a bit like no, we've always written about Ukraine. There's always been this massive tech sector. It's been going for a very long time and it's extremely successful. So you know um, it's always been there. And so basically he was, his m. Aim was, you know, I'm using this VR, I know this stuff. We can use this as a tool to help people um, improve their emotional state. You know, it also solves the problem of um, stigma when it comes to accessing mental health care. And also just ah, um, the challenges of you know, being um, in an environment where, where things are not always happening, you know, in a way that you can plan, you know, there's not always a lot of um, certainty, let's put it that way. And again with this, this company, what was interesting was the data it got, it got a lot of data that they were able to verify the efficacy of the treatment, um, for veterans, for example. Um, and again publishing that data, they found a, um, 20, 30% reduction in anxiety and depression.

Speaker B: Huge numbers. Huge numbers.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing they did, this is kind of a weird one right, was they also are used in the U.S. um, in assisted living and nursing homes for old people and stuff like that, um, as a way to kind of deal with um, uh, you know, deal with you know, different emotional states and things like that. But it shows that you can, you can use one, you can, you can pursue different markets simultaneously and you can probably use one to fund something else. And so I think that's a clever ploy and also being able to do it in the U.S. once you're, if you can do something in the U.S. you can do it anyway. Right? Regulation wise. Absolutely.

Speaker B: It's interesting that I, I know obviously journalists often look for, particularly the nationals will look for human stories as well, because we can all relate to that sort of stuff. It's interesting when you're, when you're talking there about someone who is building tech that eventually ends up in defense tech and in tanks, that then this sort of thing happens and then pivots towards health tech and therefore, you know, they find themselves building in health care. It must be interesting as a journalist because you view, you view new cycles and you become kind of expert in um, where attention lives, if that makes sense. And so I'm interested then in. With what you write. There's almost like a Venn diagram of what, what you want to write about, what's good for the world, but then also what gets attention. And I'm interested in what is the middle of that Venn diagram. What is in inverted commas, the perfect story for you.

Speaker A: I think it has to be novel and it has to have impact. Um, for example, uh, if I think of A health tech example, I get pitched a lot. It would be medical transcription software.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: I was literally, I won't mention the event but I was at an event recently with booths or exhibitors and there was at least, and they were all you know, local, relatively local companies. I think there was at least five doing medical transcription software. You know, um, it's become kind of one of those easy. I don't mean to make light of it or the efficacy of it in the slightest. I think it's a, you know it's a super interesting, useful idea. But I think the fact that you're looking for someone who's doing something different that someone's not doing like we write a. And you know we also at uh, Techieu become and this is partly to do with um, because we do cover all of Europe, the uk, Ukraine, a few outliers like Moldova and um, Armenia. Um, it's, it's a big market and so if we, if we were to just do features the um, the publication would be a little slim, you know, because it takes a while to do them. Um, so we do funding rounds because we do this for a bunch of different reasons. And I mentioned this. I'll go back to why I'm mentioning this in a sec. Um, it really demonstrates where a market is going, where is the money going. And particularly if you're the one writing the stories or your colleagues are writing stories, you see where in Health Check the money is going. Um, and you could just say oh, but it's like no, no, it's a bit more than that. You know, it's more nuanced and you also get to see um, trends. So within that um, who are the investors, what are they investing in, um, what, what regions ah, are really coming up in particular spaces. Like obviously that the Nordics has always been a uh, great health tech space because of the obvious um, companies that are present there, the larger companies that have their own investment arms, the CDCs. And also it's just you know like we get a lot of biotech for example so um, funding for drug discovery, um, a lot of funding for things like um, creating sort of cell based therapies for the undruggable. It's quite common now. We get, there's a lot of um, tech targeting cancer, there's a lot around Alzheimer's, uh, drug resistant depression. So a variety of different things where you know these are being funded and it, it's good because you can look back over the last five years and goes oh well what happened to that company? You know, and I think the psychedelics is a good example of that because, um, they are. And these, these kinds of companies in the biotech sector, it's long innovation cycles. So if you're, if you're being a journalist a little while, you follow that and see where it's going. And you know, it also gives the reader a feel of like, you know, what are the changes here and what, what's going to happen in the next few years? Are we going to get a bunch of um, companies, you know, combining forces? Are we going to get uh, different regulations? Like what, what's it going to look like?

Speaker B: I know I've got to let you go very shortly and thank you so much for giving us the time that you have. Um, I got a couple of questions left. The first one is you obviously cover a lot of Europe. You've mentioned loads of different geographies there and you cover, you know, cross sector through tech as well. It's not just health tech. How do you feel about Europe versus the US in tech and particularly health tech, with what you see, with what you're pitched with, you know, what you're seeing in terms of growth and growth stories, exits, even like all of that sort of stuff. What's your feeling on Europe versus the US at the moment?

Speaker A: Okay, the, probably the biggest trend, I would say there's a huge movement at the moment around digital and data sovereignty, keeping things built um, in Europe. For Europe, um, it doesn't mean to be very clear. You can't scale to the US or um, if you're in a smaller region, like maybe you're in Poland or you're in Moldova. You can't start with the US as your first market. But it's also about recognizing that there's a huge desire at the moment to divest away from US and um, Chinese big tech. Basically. You know that, that part of the data stack, um, whether it's, you know, it's not, it's certainly not saying you can't use things, but it's about looking a little more critically and looking at, well, you know, what happens if someone dive, um, removes um, access to that tech, for example. What does that mean for Europe? Um, and Starlink is an example, for example, um, you know, if they. Salic. There's larger parts, uh, sorry, large areas of the world dependent on Salic for Internet connectivity. What happens if that. If um, on a whim, Elon Musk decides to withdraw that.

Speaker B: Yes, not great.

Speaker A: And you would have, even in health tech, a lot of critical, um, uh, Things that would need to would be inoper operable during that time.

Speaker B: And so my final question would be based on that and everything else that we've talked about, are you optimistic for the future of health tech? You see a lot of human stories, you see a lot of impact, you write about a lot of impact stories and so I imagine that you're one of the more optimistic people. Although there are doomsday scenarios with particularly the AI side of things that we have talked about at length on here. Um and even very well respected people are putting uh, ah, existential crisis that wipes out humanity's people probably about 20% likelihood at this point. So yeah, that's positive. That's positive because 80% the likelihood was we're all going to be fine. We do get a lot of this but in terms of a journalistic view on this based on what you write about and what you see, although this is a lot of opinion, um, how do you feel?

Speaker A: Okay. Um, optimistic. Yes. I'll also tell you one thing. Um, my, I have an. I share an office in Berlin with some writers. Few doors down we have a cryogenic amazing startup.

Speaker B: I say that don't know what they're betting on. That's probably not so amazing.

Speaker A: They do humans and now pets as well. Wow.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: And um, they also, they, they're also um, they're all doctors. They're not you know, dodgy. They're. They're it's. It is regulated. Um, and they do also have one in, in the US Probably California maybe wrong there. Um, so there is that side of it where people don't know what is going to happen in the future but they want to bet on it just in case something better is going to happen. Freeze themselves. The best bit, um, anecdotally one of the best bits is they have an ambulance that they use to collect the um, the bodies.

Speaker B: Pre or post frozen. Pre. Post frozen. Where do they freeze you pre.

Speaker A: Right. Switzerland. Yeah they have a little ambulance out the front that's branded.

Speaker B: Oh my goodness.

Speaker A: Giggle a little bit when I see it. So yeah, so obviously there is a lot of people betting on the future. Um, I am also positive because I think um, the access that's been done in genes and cellular medicine and um, even things like reducing complexity in um, surgeries, different tooling. Um, meet a lot of companies working on tooling now. Ex surgeons that are looking at I need this tool when I'm doing brain surgery or something like that. Very interesting. Um, there's a lot of. Yeah there's A lot happening. Um, it is really just that a lot of it probably is. It doesn't get to your general person because all they hear about AI is um, that you can use it instead of Google and it's going to take your job.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Healthcare is probably one of the most optimistic reasons for AI, particularly things like your drug discovery, um, and genetics.

Speaker B: I also agree. Uh, one thing that I just do want to mention as well that I really appreciate about what you've written about recently is you wrote about, ditto, raising money, which is a health tech company. Um, and so whilst we can be very optimistic about the long arc, which is the drug discovery, the gene therapy, the cell therapy, all of, all of that stuff, we can be optimistic about that. There's also a more nearer term about um, simply patients understanding what happens in a consultation. Do you know what I mean? Like that for me, I wrote about it in health Tech pigeon like it just feels like basic, basic patient accessibility of just knowing, knowing what happens.

Speaker A: You know what, I was an event in, um, Saudi last year, um, longevity, lifespan, health kind of stuff. And they were talking about um, health education, patient education and saying in the US they have to gear it to a 4th grade reading level.

Speaker B: Interesting.

Speaker A: That's got to be very hard to execute in a way that you're explaining this incredibly complex um, health needs, particularly with people with dual, um, dual complexities.

Speaker B: At least they're taking it seriously enough to put that policy down.

Speaker A: Um, it's quite shocking.

Speaker B: Okay. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for giving us your time, which I know is very valuable, um, for people that want to get. I mean you hear from us all the time. Right? Um, as an agency, but you obviously like hearing from startups themselves. And I say this to, I say this to people that don't have agencies. Journalists love to actually hear from you. Absolutely correct. So for those people you can just,

Speaker A: you don't need to pay someone to contact us. You can send me a Message on, on LinkedIn, you can email me. My email is in my LinkedIn. You know, um, it is very doable. We are not scary people. This is our job. We are paid to talk to you.

Speaker B: I love that. It's got to be novel. It's got to have impact. Right? And those are your two perfect.

Speaker A: Think about what. Why would someone read it? That's your number one.