The Healthcare Today Podcast

This week's guest is Kavita Parmar, a former optometrist and the co-founder of Word360.

Kavita saw firsthand how much can go wrong when patients and clinicians don't speak the same language - and how often that gap gets papered over rather than properly solved.

That frontline experience led her to launch Word360, providing multilingual support across the NHS, so patients and clinicians can understand each other safely.

Now, Word360 has launched Wondaa, an AI-powered interpreting tool built for everyday clinical conversations, designed to cut delays and improve access wherever language barriers get in the way.

With AI evolving fast and the NHS under constant pressure, today we’re digging into what good language support really looks like in practice…

Our guest this week is Paul McKeown, Head of Product at NEC Health - one of the NHS's most significant technology and data partners.

NEC delivers national programmes for newborn hearing and diabetic eye for the national screening service in Ireland; and the tracking/failsafe software for national newborn screening in England – with more than ten million babies screened to date… In short, Paul has a front-row seat to how data moves through the system, and where it breaks down.

So today, we’ll be asking how do we stop building tools that feel like admin and start building tools that feel like support? And crucially, how do we design technology that actually fits the complexity of the NHS, rather than asking the NHS to fit the technology?...

This week's guest is Dr Rahul Goyal, a practising GP and Clinical Executive at Elsevier, a global leader in advanced information and decision support for science and healthcare.

With many clinicians reaching for whatever AI tools are free and available, often with little institutional guidance, the burden of working out what's safe and what's not is falling on individuals who were never trained to do that.

So today we're asking: what should every clinician know before trusting an AI output? How do we move from individual vigilance to organisational responsibility? And how does this shift change the relationship between clinicians and patients, who are increasingly arriving at appointments with AI-generated information already in hand?

Today, we're looking at one of the most urgent issues affecting women's health in the UK: The fact that Black women are still nearly three times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than White women.

However, there are innovations in medtech that are starting to change the picture, particularly around simulation-based training for the obstetric emergencies that disproportionately affect Black and minority ethnic women.

To explain more, we’re joined this week by a guest who covers both the clinical and technical perspective…

Rhonda McQuire spent more than 14 years as an NHS midwife before moving into resuscitation specialism at Laerdal Medical, where she now works with healthcare organisations to improve clinical practice and outcomes…

Our guest this week is Antoine Pivron, Vice President of Withings Health Solutions, where he leads the global B2B healthcare division across Europe and the US, working with more than 300 healthcare partners and supporting more than one million patients in remote monitoring programmes.

Today, we're talking about GLP-1 therapies, the weight-loss drugs that have captured global attention. But, beyond the headlines about shedding pounds, there's a bigger conversation unfolding about how we monitor, engage and support patients over the long term.

Antoine's organisation is working in partnership with Novo Nordisk and has also partnered with Juniper in the UK, bringing together pharmaceutical expertise and hardware technology.

In this episode, we’ll explore how remote patient monitoring, body composition data, and new models of care are shaping the next phase of GLP-1 therapy, and what this means for patients, clinicians and healthcare systems...

Our guest this week is Christoph Lippuner, founder and CEO of private healthcare platform Semble.

Clinician burnout isn’t just about long hours, it’s about spending those hours wrestling with disconnected systems instead of caring for patients, with every lost referral, billing delay and manual follow-up adding friction and risk.

Today, Christoph talks about why connected systems are the missing link for AI, how Semble’s new CQC Companion makes compliance less painful, and what a 1,000-person survey reveals about rising patient expectations for proactive and preventative mental health support…

Our guests this week are Professor Niels Peek, Professor of Data Science and Healthcare Improvement at The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute at the University of Cambridge; and Dr Ben Brown, GP partner in Salford, Clinical Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester, and a Medical Director at OneAdvanced Ltd. Ben is also the primary investigator on the ‘Using AI to help prioritise urgent GP care requests project’.

Artificial intelligence is often presented as the answer to general practice's biggest pressures - from skyrocketing demand to workforce shortages… With online consultation systems now available in most English GP practices, the rising volume of digital patient requests has created both an opportunity and a challenge.

Today, we’ll be talking about how practices prioritise the most urgent cases when dozens of forms arrive at once, and asking if AI can really help, or if it just adds another layer of complexity…

Our guests this week are Dr. Sheila Bond, Wolters Kluwer’s Director of Clinical Content Strategy; and Christian Cella, Vice President and General Manager of Wolters Kluwer Health's international segment.

As we stand at the precipice of a massive information transition - the era of artificial intelligence - the very nature of knowledge is shifting… It's becoming dynamic, fluid, and context-dependent.

This raises an urgent question: In a world where AI can generate answers in seconds, how do we ensure that the knowledge we act on is still trustworthy?

Joining us are two leaders who are at the heart of this work and - as we discuss AI, knowledge, integrity and how a 100-year-old company like Wolters Kluwer has seen this wave coming - they'll walk us through the risk, the promise, and the practical path forward…

Our guest this week is Dr Lizzie Tuckey, a practicing clinician and the UK Managing Director of Scan.com.

The United Kingdom has historically been cautious with scans… GPs often refer to specialists before imaging can be requested, while in some European countries patients can self-book directly. The result is that waiting times in the UK can stretch to six weeks, while others get answers in days.  

New NHS reforms such as mandatory Advice & Guidance aims to reduce unnecessary referrals, but some argue they're adding extra steps and delays… Particularly in areas where imaging should come first.

Scan.com has pioneered a self-referral model offering scans and reports delivered within seven days. But as Lizzie explains, speed of diagnosis is only half the story; what matters just as much is what happens next.

So today, we're exploring the state of UK imaging, the barriers to faster diagnosis, and what a more integrated system could look like…

Our guest today is Steve Roest, CEO and co-founder of PocDoc - a rapidly scaling health technology company working with NHS partners and major pharmacy retailers across the UK.

Today, we're talking about the trials and tribulations of scaling a healthtech company inside one of the most complex health systems in the world: the NHS.

We’ll be talking about the real mistakes founders make and how preventative care can tackle health inequalities...