#7 How to Get Into Healthtech: Dr James Somauroo - CEO, Podcaster, Healthcare Communications

0:00Dr James Somauroo:Welcome to the Health Tech Podcast. Here we talk about everything healthcare and technology and I'm your host James Somauroo.

0:11Dr James Somauroo:So Keith, welcome to an episode of your own series, How to Get Into Health Tech. So today we're going to talk about what you've learned over the last few episodes. So I have caught up with the episode, so I am fully aware of what everyone said and it's super interesting. interesting i will kick this off with saying that i mean i was gonna you know i was gonna actually start with the question so so how do you actually get into health tech but the the obvious answer is that there's there's no there's no one path yeah my first question though i guess would be having heard everyone what do you think about the type of people that are therefore in health tech is everyone in health tech therefore some sort of risk taker or some sort of non-traditional or some sort like are we are we a cohort of people that is searching for something different or looking to take risk or what of the people that you've spoken to what's been your what's been your vibe of the overall i guess impression of them and of us i don't know i mean it's like um it's been really really interesting like hopefully if people listen to the series they'll they'll hear a lot of different stories in there and have some of their you know assumptions challenged because i went into this thinking maybe exactly as you said that you know we're going to get some people that were never a close fit and didn't know fit in and everything like that and then bumped into technology and a light bulb went off and where they went but i think what i was happening there is i was maybe thinking about you know my background and and and where people come in what i've learned from this is that there are people that have made it in who have felt like outsiders um and never quite found the fit within medical school although not everyone we spoke to was a sort of traditional clinical background we had randeep coming from outside that area um but but what is interesting is that people got into health tech i don't think any of them really said that they knew that health tech was a potential destination for them some of them had interests in technology some didn't but but there was a realization along the way that there was something about what health tech allowed them to do that kind of unlocked something that was unanswered in medicine for them as well you know that sort of collaborative working that product side of things um the ability to be able to design solutions in a restricted space that kind of thing um came out as well so i think health tech maybe wasn't in their heart of hearts despite my probing about interest in tech from before, because that's my own assumption, it arose along the way.

2:50And I suppose the first thing is that health tech is maybe a much broader church than I thought. Within that, there's the entrepreneurs and so on. And maybe we're the ones, I'm an entrepreneur, you're an entrepreneur, we're the ones that make a lot of noise and everything. But within that, there are people working away tirelessly in different areas. And that gives me hope.

3:10Dr James Somauroo:Yeah. yeah i there's something about what you just said about health tech not existing and and like when when these people made career decisions because i feel that so viscery that nothing that i do now nothing that i do now existed when i gave a talk at my old school a couple of weeks ago this is exactly what i said to them which is the podcaster health tech marketing agency like these things did not exist at the time of making any substantial career decision or choice about what i went into or choice about my a-levels or choice about my degree or any of that sort of stuff i think what's ended up happening is that the people that you interviewed in this series have all in their own way gravitated towards impact and now this is something that said a lot the word impact i look you know i'm trying to scale my own impact that's why i go to health tech or like i love making impact impact impact impact we hear it a lot and it can it can feel a trite people saying it but i had this reflection on actually another podcast i recorded earlier today health tech i.e technology coming into health care that area for me is probably the biggest delta between what's currently happening and what is possible for the benefit of many many people that is the space where the biggest delta is and so for me i think part of what is attracting people into health tech is there is so there's such a volume of problems that can be solved in a way that's probably actually naively seems quite easy to solve and therefore there's this huge delta of like where we are now and where we could go to so therefore there's a huge amount of opportunity it's sort of like i could kind of go in and do anything like there's just so much that i could do that i can sort of go in and find my way once i'm there depending on what my personality is i think that's what came through in the interviews that you did to your point it's a broad church no longer do you have to be an entrepreneur to enter health tech i know that was that was very much the thinking sort of 10 years ago ish or eight years ago ish even that yeah when you talked about health tech you had to be an entrepreneur the thing that i got from your interview series is that that is firmly not the case anymore that is firmly not the case health tech is such a big industry now and still growing that you can move towards it learn about who you are and what you like and then go towards that and actually find your place within the industry which i think is so exciting and actually i don't i it's never felt that tangible for me until i listened to your interviews that there seems to be a place for everyone in health tech if you would agree I do agree.

6:14And I'll come back to that is true about industry, but it is not true about the healthcare system. And that is the biggest gap here. So we'll come back to that in a wee moment. But the first thing to say is like, so technology allows people, us, to achieve impact at scale. I remember hearing many, many years ago, someone was talking about cybercrime. And he was a very engaging speaker. And he said cybercrime is a really interesting thing because crime is like, being a criminal is the easiest thing in the world. It's like the easiest job to get into. All you have to do is get a knife and hide in an alleyway and you can jump out and mug someone.

6:53I mean, he was joking about this, but anyone can start up that way. He said, but cybercrime is basically technology has allowed one person to hold a knife to the throat of the world. The scale. You can scale attacks on security and everything like that. So if I wheel it away from something unpleasant, like crime, we move towards healthcare. The technology allows us to help everyone, conceivably. one extreme of it is is in part true and then there will be some people who were motivated to get into health care of some sort of their doctor whatever and they want to be able to help people and within that group there'll be some people that really want to help at the widest scale possible technology does unlock that in a way that it couldn't before because what could you do before you could rise into leadership or you know government or or systems you know but you'd only ever be helping the person in front of you some people that's entirely what they want to be doing and that is absolutely fine for other people they maybe look slightly broader on this um and so i think health tech is a is an area that's growing and you're right within industry that initial thing where there wasn't even an industry so you had to be an entrepreneur to create the industry now there are roles within the industry so there's places to go into but yeah like what roles are there in health tech inside the nhs tumbleweeds bcio cnio you know innovation lead the techie person at the practice you know the person that's good with spreadsheets in the world like it's difficult for a person to say you know i still want to be working in this system but there's nothing there's no way for me to go or they'll bolt on a role on the outside of it and that that just has to change because otherwise all that will ever happen is all those people these brilliant brilliant people who can achieve amazing things at scale are always going to leave unless there's a place for them to do it internally so that comes back to where I continually think about like a professional

8:54Dr James Somauroo:like track that people could follow um that you'd be able to retain them and the nice thing is that people could leave but those that stay are operating at scale so they balance that out Does the system need that? Does the system need within the NHS a track? Is there benefit in people having to really make the decision to go? Do you think there's any utility in that? yeah well i mean i'm pretty supposed to say yes for this because i would have jumped if someone said keith you could be a digital health doctor you do your undergraduate training you do your foundation and then you could be a specialist in digital health and then you're going to be a digital health consultant working within the organization that may be a ccio or may help with implementation but critically can help the system design its own solutions as well this is the other thing we talk about co-production why shouldn't the nhs be building its own solutions why does it have to go to industry?

9:49Industry makes great solutions, don't get me wrong. But we need that expertise within the system as well, because there'll be some problems that are non-commercially viable to solve. I remember Harris Schwade talking about this when he was talking about the AI fellowship, and he was saying, we need to build technologies to allow for models to be spun up for tiny, tiny groups, like the five children with complex art conditions that would be very difficult to build a business around because of the vanishingly small number of people that might be affected that but it's no less important to address that so so who builds those solutions who does that who implements those who monitors those it's within these sort of larger organizations and um so i i absolutely think it's needed beyond uh um increased appreciation on a foundation level of digital health technology, data science, artificial intelligence, because these are already as important as your drugs, your operations, and so on.

10:53And if people don't realize that, then they're not looking at how important this technology has become.

10:58Dr James Somauroo:Of the people that you interviewed, did anyone surprise you with anything about their job, about their role, about how they got there? What sticks in your mind from the series? There was a lot in there. I mean, you know, some people I know already, so I know some of their stories, but everyone told me something particularly new. I think when I look back on the people that I spoke with, I think Josh talking about where he came from, from school, he achieved very well in a state school and then came into medical school in Newcastle, I think it was, and then talked about that sense of feeling othered.

11:38He was outside the normal cohort in there as well. And now I didn't have the same background as him in terms of the schools I came from, but I felt very different in terms of my interest in technology and so on. It was really, really interesting to hear that because it made me feel a bit sad for all the brilliant people that can't make it into health tech. I always like the idea of people who are non-clinicians coming into health tech because they offer a new way of a new insight new ways of solving these problems and so so josh's story was interesting i think dave's story his his period in service uh when he worked in the armed forces um i knew at the sort of superficial level about that but just beginning to hear some of the detail um really really really really made me think so deeply about what that kind of background brings to a person's ability to deal with stress and changeable environments and work as part of a team, bringing that in.

12:39Stephanie's story about working in ICU and the role that she had there was really interesting. Everyone brought interesting things. Even learning about Arash's story, I know Arash reasonably well and hearing bits and pieces about his journey along the way and you know everyone came to health tech with slightly different routes and then dropped back in across um so there were some fascinating things in there but there was i was expecting everyone to say those that went to medical school oh i always felt like an outsider and but no some people were very had a very kind of standard experience of all of that i don't think there's very few people that go to medical school i think that know exactly what they want to be when they get through it and good luck to them.

13:24I think maybe a lot of people's stories, they're not entirely sure. So that they came to health tech afterwards was a wee bit of a surprise. I suppose for me, I always knew it was to be technology and healthcare, but at that point, it really didn't even have a name to it at all. It was just computers in the room. And if you're good at computers, there you go.

13:43Dr James Somauroo:So what is your advice then based on the people that you've spoken to in this series and just what you know generally from from everyone that is in our industry what would you say to people that have listened to this whole series they've looked they've they've maybe taken bits from some people's stories but they're still unclear about what their next step is what would be your advice on how to get to health tech how to get into health tech first of all if you're earlier in your career don't stress don't don't worry that you're missing out on some secret course or secret opportunity that's going going to stop you getting ahead because everyone said much the same thing they went through lots of different roles and everything and started to move towards it so i think if people are feeling pressure that they have to jump immediately because the pace of change and of course i understand that you see how fast ai is moving people may have a fear of missing out on this i think people can maybe relax a little bit um i'd say that if you are in health care if you're a nurse or a doctor a physio or allied health professional i still think i now think more than ever that that's still a really critical part of what you can bring to health tech within you'll have that and then there'll be some other area i'm always delighted to find that everyone has their own little special interests and then they dive into that thereafter so you know spend time there and understand what it is to be a clinician in a health care system i think that is utterly critical for working in if this is where you're coming from your background if i'm speaking to clinicians here or um don't don't dismiss that there was often a sort of talk about people like what transferable skills do you have you know you're adopted but you can also do x y and z and what's transferable that your uh healthcare professional is transferable there's ways of thinking experience that that come from that um so i'd say don't fret you're not missing out but But at the same time, connect.

15:42The health tech community, as you know, is really open and interesting and interested in people. And get out there and start speaking to folk. And yes, network. And some people may find that easier and some people might find it harder. But you can do it in your own discreet way because that unlocks areas of interest that you can pursue. and the other thing to say as well is that even though i just spent a few minutes saying how terrible it was the health nhs doesn't have spaces for these roles there are always bits of work that are techie um wherever you are just put yourself forward because a lot of people don't want to do it so you'll you know you you it's often an easy role to get into the you know the sort of the tech implementation here or there within the health service um because even if you ultimately want to end up in industry side if that's what really motivates you that you've had experience on the you know the procurement deploying implementation side makes you incredibly

16:43Dr James Somauroo:valuable one thing i want to give a shout out to as well is um very very specifically is quality improvement projects now obviously i'm biased because this was my route in but i've on on this podcast i've heard this from multiple people i think now is a really interesting time for this because what you have as a clinician if you want to get into health tech what you have as a clinician that so many non-clinical people want is access behind the front door of a hospital that is invaluable to any entrepreneur that wants to be building something in health tech you have access to the inside of the hospital now that's not access to deploy a large language model willy-nilly and see what happens no it's access to people it's access to knowledge it's access to being able to put a little project together where you use something and get a bit of ethics approval or get the approval of the clinical director to try something it doesn't need to be some outrageous just national potential startup that's going to change everything it can be doing something with technology to give you a start to give you a bit of leverage when you message that startup and you attach your one page a pdf on the quality improvement project that used their technology or use something that looked very similar or used even a single feature on a single patient and you got some quantitative or qualitative feedback even of how they found it that is enough to just give you a foot on the ladder that goes eventually up to okay you leaving medicine and doing that thing or whatever it is but leveraging that access and to your point Keith about like you know it's such a wonderful thing being a clinician and being able to have that skill set and all the rest of it like you have so many assets at that point to do that thing and and do something on the ladder with that quality improvement project and then that as i say can give you a route into talking to people absolutely i think that's i think that's just such an interesting place to start the other thing that i just wanted to say is actually when i was listening to stephanie talking about product and the nuances of product within health tech and why she liked product and linking that to her personality and and and all of that type of thing i think for the for the person that has maybe done a load of quality improvement projects one after the other and they've and they've they've iterated based on like what they like and they're like oh i like this i like this technology because i like this clinical area because or i like this feature because or i like doing this thing within the project because all of that is learning about yourself and that gives you the route in because you learn what you're what you like what you don't like what you're good at what you're not good at and that basically starts pointing you at the product role at a communications company that's helping primary care speak to secondary or whatever it is right the the women's health company that's doing epigenetics the this like whatever it is but the more that you do you're gonna start to figure that stuff out and i think that's really important like josh does it through research and like all of that type of thing and then and you know through his coding and all the rest of it and then eventually but it's doing the thing starts to give you an impression of who you are that you can then find your place because as you say as a broad church there's so much going on it's not enough to just want to be in it i just want to be in health tech it's kind of you're going to be you're going to be bouncing around for ages and swimming around for ages without that specificity so just by doing something i think can give you that leverage and i definitely picked that up from the likes of stephanie and randy like there's something in everyone's journey to to to that to that end yeah and so so you can find that within the health care system you're absolutely right the quality improvement but also things like professional development and so on and all these little projects and audits that you're meant to do and you know very frequently people just sort of throw them away and say what's the easiest thing that i can do i just need to get out of the way but you have a guilt-edged opportunity to say actually what audit or quality improvement work that i'm being asked and given time to do anyway can i do in tech inside this setting and then you're off to the races you know there's a lot that's in your control here um the other thing um that being in the clinical side offers you is um time with patients and ultimately yes ultimately it all comes down to that and that That is something that, you know, those outside the healthcare system are trying to build solutions.

21:28My goodness, they really, really need and want that. And you have patients coming to you and speaking to you and their families. And you get to hear their stories and hear how the world, it's not just about their diabetes or their asthma or whatever it is. You get to hear about how their world impacts on them. and this is something that is very very hard for people who haven't been in that situation to appreciate and therefore they'll come up with a very simple solution here you go there's the problem here's the solution and you will see in a fraction of a second you're like well that's not going to work because the person can't take their child down to this place or you know that they can't afford to pay for data on their phone or whatever it is and this can sometimes come across when you're speaking to people building that you're a sort of naysayer on this, but this is not to stop you solving their problem.

22:23It's just to add a light curve to how you solve it because what you're trying to do is solve that problem. And the changes from what the initial thought is might be upsetting if you're so attached to that initial thought, but that's what makes it even more delicious and interesting because you're wrapping in this complexity. You get to think in a very deep way. but it all starts with spending time with patients and their families and their struggles and you know and your role because when you come into health tech you're still doing that you're just

22:54Dr James Somauroo:doing it with different tools yeah so i have funny questions to ask you so let's say yeah let's say you're 23 years old now you're an f1 in the time in 2025 you're a 23 year old f1 you need to do f1 because you you're 23 you've got no money you've just paid your way through medical school so you need an income so you can't just leave and do charistica you can't you can't just do that stuff but you know you're interested in health tech as you are as interested as you are what do you think you would be doing right now um i'm going through foundation years just now let's say i'm just kicking off on that um i would be desperately fighting my urge to try and find my way to do something techie i'll just recognize that out uh up front so you'd be trying to make you'd be trying Might you be trying to...

23:40Well, my gut would be pushing me towards that because of my interest. I'm just going to say that out loud.

23:45Dr James Somauroo:Yeah, yeah, fine. But I'm not going to advise people. I'm going to advise people don't do that. Yeah. Right? Because you've done all this work in medical school, and now you actually, the rubber is hitting the road, and you're seeing and feeling what it's like to actually be inside the healthcare system. I would be working very hard to get as much out of the experience of being a clinician during that time as well. And with all the unpleasantness and pain and difficulties and joys and interesting things as well, that is really critical. So don't wish it away. That is the bedrock of what happens next.

24:22Now, that doesn't mean to say that you can't try and find techie things to do in between times and keep up to date. And God knows if you're going to find the spare time to do anything, you know, any extra courses or anything. But don't wish that time away. That's really, really important. Of course, within that, you're then going to have to make decisions about what happens next, if you're going to go into specialist training as a resident, I think the terminology is now, or whether you're going to sort of continue looking around. I think some of the stories that we heard were people who'd actually sort of moved around without going into specialist training.

24:54Once you get into specialist training, I think the wheel, you know, you start locking into a track, and it's harder to get out into something else. so maybe i'd be thinking foundation work and then if there were some clinical areas that i was interested in that i you know that i was still enjoying that i could explore that maybe allowed me to do some other tech on the side i'd probably be trying to do that if i was being thoughtful at the same time i'm going to recognize the fact that my tummy would still be saying

25:24you've actually got more time than you think everyone you know like well i'm 52 right it took me a long time to get into this and there's there are some shortcuts i'd like to have taken but i like to think that the kind of doctor that i am right now is the product of everything every single thing good and bad that happened along the way and that makes me particularly good at some things now and maybe you know uniquely good at some things you whoever's listening to this will be uniquely good at something too but those foundational years are very important so yeah i would say

25:53Dr James Somauroo:What tech stuff would you be trying to, would you be like, would you be like vibe coding handover apps? Would you be, I mean, you'd probably be all of the above, right? You'd be vibe coding stuff to make your life, to make your own life easier. Would you be trying to like. I've been MacGyvering everything. Yeah. Well, that's what I did at medical school anyway. And that's what I did as a junior doctor. I spent my time hacking together the technology that I had to solve the problems that I did. And I felt very pleased with it and was showing it all off. I didn't know how to build it in a way that was generalizable or scalable they were all very unique to me yeah um and i learned over you know that you have to learn that but um when i was uh working at babylon and we'd interview doctors wanting to come to the clinical ai um fellowship and then the digital health fellowship um i'd always ask the question at interview like tell me about a problem that you've solved um in an interesting way in your work and i remember um one doctor came in and uh she was from taiwan and um chunan and she'd said that she was wanting to be a surgeon and she struggled to get time operating.

26:55And so she assembled her own laparoscopic training kit out of a pizza box and used to spend time with pizza boxes and chopsticks and cutting up bits of jelly and everything like that to spend her time. Now that's not terribly techie, but what that shows is this is a person who's thinking laterally. This is a person who's like facing a problem and thinking, I'm not going to just take no for an answer i'm gonna work my way around it um so you know maybe within you is that sort of solving thing and uh you're gonna have to make sure that you just vibe you vibe code yourself into in front of the gmt you know you gotta be careful but um but there are ways of exploring solutions and then you'll learn about compliance and safety and products naturally um that will that will get you through those clinical years if you're itching to jump yeah because i think one

27:46Dr James Somauroo:thing when i speak to people looking to to break into health tech this question often comes up of should i be trying to do things or should i be trying to intern at other places or should i be trying to get a job part-time or should i be offering my time for free or should i be like should i should i should i and there's no i struggle with that because i actually don't know i don't know the answer i always sort of default to like what do you what what do you want to do because if you any route there i think can lead to health tech really you could intern at a startup that has an obvious end goal you could academically do a course and introduce yourself to some people and go in that you could do it that way you could also just vibe code your way not to the gmc but you could vibe code your way into a lot of knowledge and information that ends up either as an entrepreneur or you learn so much about the regulatory process for for people coding that you end up as a regulatory expert and you have a regulatory consultancy company or you go and work for one like it's that there it's it's so difficult it's so it's so difficult to answer that question i think that's the thing with with your with your series is it is so varied you do just have to follow your interests because i heard this i heard this yesterday actually that it's only actually through following your interest that you're going to have the level of execution that actually gets you to where you want to go it was someone telling a story that i think they were a banker and they and they were doing this presentation and they were they were next up and they heard the previous person's presentation and they just said to themselves i am never going to care about this as much as that person and they just quit because they were like i i cannot compete i want to be the best at what i do i just cannot compete with that and so whatever it is if you find what you're interested in and you actually follow that whether it is interning at the startup whether it is doing the course and academically learning stuff whether it is vibe coding and coding full stop or whatever it is whether it's the adoption piece whether it's literally convincing one person to pilot something because you built a relationship with them and you're really good at that like whatever it is it seems to me that the for me the answer of how to get into health tech is to learn about yourself and follow your interests relentlessly relentlessly yeah and yeah i think so but um at same time when you're earlier in your career um it can be very very hard to know what actually it's remarkably hard to say what you like yeah um it can take some time and so you know you're going to have to go and try a few things so i'm going to again come back and say try not to stress out about it just try a bunch of different things as well you do genuinely have some time you're not going to miss that like i've done all sorts of crummy jobs uh along the way and things that i didn't like and um you know they didn't direct that what they didn't that that wasn't the route to where I am right now.

30:33But what I learned in doing this crummy thing definitely informs how I do what I do right now. And you never know what role is going to unlock that particular interest in you as well. The people I speak to, not just in this series, but elsewhere, people working in testing or content, like content creation, not in terms of podcasts, but just like actual medical writing or journalism or anything. um they weren't they weren't you know the ones that went to journalism weren't at the sort of university paper um they just ended up doing something and then found they had a talent for it and they quite liked it or they they got very interested in this and um so when you get those kind of signals dig into them because to get to become good at these things um to become good at anything is hard and you're going to go through some pain and difficulties and backward steps and everything uh it becomes even harder if you don't like it if it's if you don't want to do it um so once you start getting a signal of the things that you think oh i'm quite i like this okay you know and don't worry that other people don't like it you know if you like it go for it you dig into that and that will take you through and then before you know it you've kind of i always find that you know you start out doing something and no one knows who you are then all of a sudden people say oh you're the person that's really good at this and you don't know how you made it from a to b and it's just through plugging away and um like you said earlier on the jobs that you and i are doing now didn't really have a definition before so it's maybe foolish for us to think that we can define what the next jobs are going to be um so you know those jobs that you're thinking about now may be totally different to what we're doing talking about now that is so true that is so

32:15Dr James Somauroo:true and i think just getting close to this industry i was going to say this earlier actually one thing that did come out when you were when you were talking to people and talk about their journeys is that you don't have to make the next job you don't have to let load a load of pressure onto the next job as being like that's the thing you're going to do forever as long as you're one step closer doing something that you prefer this year than you did last year that's the right path because to your point everything is changing and for us and it is foolish you're absolutely right It's foolish for us to sit here now and try and give advice to a 23, 24-year-old about what their career path might be or any of that because those jobs are clearly, I mean clearly, not going to exist yet.

33:02Dr James Somauroo:Clearly not going to exist yet. Yeah, very different. But if you're learning skills, if you're doing something that you enjoy, then I think you're on the right path. I think you're on the right path. It's just a very unsatisfying answer when it's just like, do this course and then get this job here because they hire straight out of it. It's just not that way in health tech, unfortunately. yeah i always um whenever we discuss this sort of thing i'm always reminded of the scene with gandalf in the minds of mario and he forgets which way to go and he sits there for a while and then he stands up and moves off one way and they say how do you know he says this way smells less foul that's all he knows so sometimes that's as good as it gets you're like well this is this is the least crummy option but you know ideally ideally you have a sort of rough destination but yeah like the overarching thing is you're not missing out it may feel that way you you're really not um a little bit of just choosing a direction that smells less foul uh keeping your mind open and uh you know when you get those little things like oh that's interesting oh i'm quite good at that um yeah just going into it i love it keith thank you for the series um looking forward to the next one whatever that may be whenever that may be but um yeah ideas already it's been it's been a pleasure thank you yeah and thank you very much to all the guests and james for allowing me to uh use all your skills skills and your team they've been fantastic you're very welcome mate hey everyone thanks for listening and making it all the way to the end of this episode remember to subscribe rate us and leave a review and you can head to the description of this episode to follow me on all of my social media so you don't miss out on any of the latest health tech content.