HealthTech Hour

Sara Roberts is a four-time HealthTech founder, strategic advisor and the founder of Well Purposed, a strategic advisory studio supporting post Series-A HealthTech and longevity companies to scale ethically and sustainably.
With over 15 years’ experience operating across the UK, Africa and the Europe, she has built and scaled ventures from early traction to £10m ARR, working closely with founders, investors and executive teams navigating growth, ethics, and operational complexity. Her work is shaped by both lived founder experience and personal motivation. Following the loss of her father to a preventable illness, Sara became focused on building more human, preventative and integrity-led health systems. Through Well Purposed, she advises HealthTech leaders on sustainable growth, leadership resilience and aligning commercial success with long-term outcomes.

Dr Mark Hudson-Peacock is a Clinician turned serial entrepreneur, including being a trailblazer in the field of Pharmacogenomics - finding medicines that work better based on your individual genome.
Pharmacogenomics was included in the NHS 10 Year Plan as a "big bet" to save the NHS.
He is the founder/CEO of Mantara Health Ltd, responsible for launching the first commercially available Pharmacogenomics (PGx) test in the UK.

Dr Taz Aldawoud is a GP, NHS Innovation Accelerator Fellow and founding CEO of Doc Abode, a nationally recognised digital health company enabling the NHS to deliver faster, safer care closer to home.
With over 20 years’ clinical experience and an MBA specialising in Strategic Healthcare Management, he combines frontline insight with a strong record in digital transformation.
He spent more than a decade as Director of Clinical Innovation at West Yorkshire’s urgent care provider, where he pioneered one of the NHS’s first award-winning telehealth services. Taz is currently Chief Clinical Information Officer for the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board and previously served as a Digital Clinical Adviser for NHS England, contributing to national digital policy and innovation.
Through Doc Abode, he works with Integrated Care Systems and provider Trusts across the UK to increase workforce capacity, improve responsiveness and enhance patient outcomes through dynamic care coordination and real-time visibility of clinical resources.

In this episode, Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc speaks to Lord (James) Bethell.
Lord Bethell is an entrepreneur, former health minister and champion for public health. He has a twenty-year track record working across government, media and industry, working at The Sunday Times, the US Senate, and the EU Commission.
He has built and sold communications companies and helped make the Ministry of Sound a global success story. As a minister at the Department for Health and Social Care, he helped lead the UK national response to the Covid epidemic. He is currently a member of the House of Lords, chairman of Business for Health, a Fellow at King’s College London and a senior counsel to several health companies.

On today's show, Steve Roest, CEO of PocDoc speaks to Dr Natalie Banner is Chief Ethics and Engagement Officer at Genomics England, an organisation owned by the UK Government to provide the evidence and digital systems to drive advances in genomic research and medicine, and to support the implementation of genomics in healthcare.
Genomics is being hailed as one of the big developments that will usher in an age of health, wealth and prosperity, but do you really know what it means? And what the ethical issues are around mapping our entire genetic structures?
Natalie is responsible for helping Genomics England navigate the complex ethical challenges that arise at the intersection of genomic technology and care, ensuring that the organisation is a trustworthy steward of participants’ data. This includes oversight for research regulatory compliance, extensive public and research participant engagement work, improving transparency and embedding meaningful approaches to equity across its programmes.
Natalie has over a decade of experience in the ethics, policy and governance of emerging data-driven health technologies. She previously led the ‘Understanding Patient Data’ initiative based at the Wellcome Trust, as well as the research sector Parliamentary advocacy on GDPR as it was being taken up into domestic law. She has a PhD in Philosophy and previously worked on conceptual issues relating to mental capacity and decision-making in clinical contexts.