Kayla Manthey, Author at 91̽ /author/kayla-m/ Startup News UK and Tech News UK Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:00:14 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.2 /wp-content/uploads/2023/04/cropped-techround-logo-alt-1-32x32.png Kayla Manthey, Author at 91̽ /author/kayla-m/ 32 32 How to Build Broadband Failover Before An Outage Happens /tech/how-build-broadband-failover-before-outage-happens/ Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:00:14 +0000 http://techround.co.uk/?p=151007 Imagine that your broadband goes down, your mobile phones stop working, your VoIP phone system goes down, your cloud collaboration...

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Imagine that your broadband goes down, your mobile phones stop working, your goes down, your cloud collaboration tools become unreachable and your card payment terminal at the front desk goes dark- what do you do? Although this might be a rare occasion, it does happen and many businesses are left in the dark.

This is why business owners shouldtake broadband failover seriously, to minimise the risks that come with sudden disconnection.

What Is A Broadband Failover?

In the simplest terms, broadband failover is the process in which your primary internet connection fails and the secondary internet connection takes over. Your internet is rerouted to a backup line and it often goes unnoticed. Now that remote and hybrid working models are common, broadband has gone from being the nice-to-have to being essential.

Broadband is the medium through which calls, meetings, files and much more are transmitted. Cloud-based phone systems and VoIP are especially sensitive to this because they rely on the internet for call transmission.

What About the PSTN Switch-Off?

The 2027 PSTN Switch-Off increases the need for an internet fail over plan for businesses because from 1 February 2027, broadband across the UK may become the most important and fundamental part of all business communications infrastructure. Businesses should now be investing in the right broadband provider as it is crucial in ensuring a smooth transition to a strong digital foundation.

What Causes Internet Outages?

Before deciding on a failover framework, it’s important to understand what typically leads to business broadband failures. Likely options include:

Physical Fault in the Infrastructure

Damaged cables or a flooded cabinet; construction workers breaking a cable in the street outside your business.

All Faults on the ISP Side

A congested network, maintenance or broken equipment at the exchange.

Router or Hardware Failures

An old router or faulty modem configuration can sever your connection without the ISP

Power Failure

If your router, along with all of the other networking equipment, goes totally dark without power, it doesn’t matter if the ISP line is still completely unbroken

Cyberattack or DDoS

A cyber attack or DDoS in attack that can lead to equipment failure or an overload connection, interrupting your businesses connectivity.

A well-designed failover setup addresses several of these simultaneously. It provides an independent path to the internet, removes the single point of failure represented by a single line and a single provider and if combined with appropriate UPS (uninterruptible power supply) hardware, maintains connectivity even through a short power cut.

Key Aspects of a Broadband Failover Configuration

For reliable failover, a separate internet connection should be added. This failsafe must be from another provider and follow a completely different infrastructure. If one connection is a fiber-to-the-cabinet (FTTC), a leased line from another provider or a 4G or 5G network, would work for failover. For most small and medium-sized organisations, the simplest and most affordable option is a 4G or 5G failover router. Mobile network infrastructure is entirely different from that of fixed-line broadband, making failover connections independent.

Importance of Dual-WAN Router

A dual-WAN router is the device that makes failover automatic rather than manual. It monitors the health of both connections simultaneously and when it detects that the primary line has failed, switches traffic to the backup within seconds.

VoIP-Specific Considerations

Most cloud-based VoIP platforms will reconnect automatically once an internet connection is restored, but the quality of the failover connection matters. VoIP calls require relatively low bandwidth but are sensitive to latency and packet loss. Ensure your backup connection prioritises voice traffic and test call quality over the failover line before you need to rely on it.

How to Build Your Failover Strategy

Building broadband failover does not require an IT department or a large budget. The following steps apply to most small and medium businesses:

Analyse Your Current Setup

Identify your ISP and the type of connection you use along with the hardware you have. Check if your router supports dual-WAN.

Choose Your Backup Connection

The optimal and most affordable option for SMEs is a dual SIM 4G or 5G router from a trusted telecommunications provider. Assess the ground and coverage and then decide what will work best.

Purchase a Dual-WAN Router

If your current router cannot accommodate for dual-WAN inputs, replacing it is the most valuable investment you can make. Routers from known companies can be purchased for just below £100 and business-grade options can be purchased from £300 to £400.

Set Automatic Failover

Work through your router’s administration interface to set the primary and backup connections and define the failover trigger conditions.

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The Best AI Medical Note-Taking Platforms Compared /guides/the-best-ai-medical-note-taking-platforms-compared/ Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:00:26 +0000 /?p=155641 Healthtech has emerged as an exciting sector in the UK AI startup market. While the consumer AI space has been...

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Healthtech has emerged as an exciting sector in the UK AI startup market. While the consumer AI space has been dominated by AI chatbots and coding assistants, a smaller, niche market, ambient AI scribes, have raised significant funding, secured NHS-scale partnerships and have excelled in an area many AI products do not: show tangible return in investment.

What Issues Are AI Medical Note-Taking Platforms Solving?

Writing and updating documents is one of the most time consuming aspects of a clinician’s job. General Practitioners (GPs) and even hospital clinicians spend a large amount of time during a meeting typing to complete a document rather than engaging with the patient in front of them. AI scribing solutions are able to listen to the meeting using the voice of a clinician, complete a digital transcription and automatically generate a formatted clinical note for review and submission. The more advanced platforms go further still, drafting referral letters, suggesting clinical codes and writing directly back into systems like EMIS and SystmOne.

How Fast Are AI Systems in Health-Tech Growing?

From a startup viewpoint, these developments represent a rapid land grab opportunity. Within a year or two, several companies have gone from pilots to deploying their systems in several thousand practices, helped by venture capital and NHS partnerships. This is one of the few AI industries where the claim of working AI systems is substantiated by results of real hospital trials, rather than by vendor marketing. Basically, in a short space of time, the ambient scribe category has grown from a few initial pilots to a well-funded, genuinely competitive market.

For those observing this sector from a startup or investment point of view, there are a few important trends can be identified:

NHS Guidance Offered

NHS England has effectively opened a rapid adoption route, in that its guidance on AI-enabled ambient scribing products and the DTAC compliance framework, provide a clear, if not easy, path to large enterprise adoption for startups. This is something that many AI focus areas do not have.

The Role of Accurx Scribe

Distribution is becoming as important as the underlying model. Backed by venture capital, the well-known software, Accurx Scribe, advantage isn’t necessarily technical superiority, but it’s that Accurx already sits inside roughly 98% of UK GP practices, turning a cold-start adoption problem into a feature toggle.

How Competitors Are Entering The Market

Major competitors are on the move. Epic has introduced its own version of ambient scribe technology by utilising Microsoft’s Dragon AI and Cosmos data Platform and athenahealth has introduced ambient AI for free in the US. This is the classic example of a successful startup-market trend. Once the startup has shown that a product category has value, the big platform companies, in this case the competitors, come in to monopolise it.

What to Look For in an AI Medical Scribe

Before assessing individual platforms, it is important to identify what differentiates a quality AI scribe from an average one. Some simple questions to use are as followed:

For Clinical Accuracy: Can the scribe accurately discern what information is pertinent and what information is not?

EHR Integration:Can the scribe write directly into EHR systems like EMIS, SystmOne, or Epic? Or does the scribe require copy and paste?

Regulatory Status:In the UK, this includes the scribe being MHRA registered, DTAC compliant and having a DCB0129/0160 clinical safety case.

Template Flexibility:Can the scribe adjust how clinical notes are formatted for different specialties?

Data Handling Process:Does the scribe process and then discard audio? What is the scribe’s data governance policy?

Cost and Deployment Model:Does the scribe offer a free subscription for individual use? Or is the scribe only available via large scale practice or trust contracts?

Top AI Medical Scribes in The Space

Taking all mentioned above into consideration, including clinical accuracy, regulatory status and data handling processes, below are the leading platforms in the space:

Accurx Scribe (powered by Tandem Health)

Accurx Scribe has a distribution advantage that’s hard for competitors to match: it’s built into the Accurx platform already used by the vast majority of UK GP practices for patient communication, meaning many practices may already have access without a separate procurement process.

  • Best for: Practices already using Accurx that want documentation added with minimal additional onboarding
  • Strengths: Direct EMIS and SystmOne write-back, links transcripts to the initial patient triage request, MHRA Class I registered and built for ephemeral audio processing
  • Considerations: As a newer, feature-within-a-platform offering, its scribe-specific functionality is less mature than dedicated tools like Heidi or TORTUS

Freed

Freed has built a reputation as a lightweight, affordable option, often highlighted for its accessibility to solo practitioners and small teams who want a straightforward scribe without complex configuration or enterprise procurement.

  • Best for: Solo practitioners and smaller practices wanting a simple, low-cost entry point
  • Strengths: Fast setup, browser-based EHR compatibility via a Chrome extension and a relatively simple pricing structure
  • Considerations: Lacks the depth of specialty-specific customisation and institutional governance features found in NHS-deployed tools

Nabla

Nabla is an ambient AI medical assistant known for fast note generation and broad multilingual support, making it a strong option for clinicians working with linguistically diverse patient populations.

  • Best for: Clinicians wanting quick note turnaround and multilingual consultation support
  • Strengths: Real-time transcription, automatic SOAP note generation tailored to a clinician’s writing style, direct EHR import and a HIPAA-compliant architecture
  • Considerations: Positioned more toward general clinical documentation than deep specialty-specific templating

Abridge, Nuance DAX Copilot and Enterprise US Platforms

For context, it’s worth noting the enterprise end of the market, even though UK adoption of these specific tools remains limited. Abridge and Nuance DAX Copilot are widely used across large US health systems with deep Epic integration, priced accordingly at the enterprise level. Neither currently offers the same depth of Epic-style integration within UK systems that TORTUS, Heidi and Accurx Scribe now offer for EMIS and SystmOne. So, it is important to understand that the ‘best’ platform often depends heavily on which healthcare system and EHR a clinician is actually working within.

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How Female Founders Are Reshaping Healthcare Innovation /guides/how-female-founders-are-reshaping-healthcare-innovation/ Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:01:43 +0000 /?p=155094 The technology and healthcare integration is accelerating fast and female founders are spearheading this evolution. Women are making advances in...

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The technology and healthcare integration is accelerating fast and female founders are spearheading this evolution. Women are making advances in diagnostics, AI, reproductive health, maternal care and medtech.

A lot of work has been done, attracting venture capital and altering the digital health landscape. Women founders are strengthening the health tech sector and challenging the current state of women’s health as a niche healthcare concern.

Femtech is A $60 Billion Sector and Growing

The femtech industry reached an estimated value of $60 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $103 billion by 2030. The increasing valuation of this market indicates the interest and demand for tech-enabled health solutions within this space. These solutions are being developed by founders with a solid understanding of the challenges and opportunities within the field.

In October 2025, prominent women’s health investor Jessica Federer scaled up institutional support for the sector as managing director of The Women’s Health Fund, helping oversee the launch of WH1, a flagship fund-of-funds designed to activate major life sciences capital.

The AI Governance Moment and Who Is Shaping It

A 2026 benchmark study found that no large language model exceeded 75% accuracy on women’s health clinical scenarios.The same study found that models consistently failed most on what researchers called ‘missed urgency’, the moments when a woman’s situation was most dangerous and the AI’s response was least reliable.

This performance gap became the immediate catalyst for the Women’s Health AI Consortium’s establishment in May 2026, with female founders taking the lead in constructing the industry’s response before government regulators moved to mandate one.

Sarah O’Leary-Willow

As the CEO of Willow, which focuses on connected maternal health services and advanced breast pump technology, Sarah O’Leary has become an industry luminary in the intersection of healthcare, AI governance and product innovation. In May 2026, O’Leary co-founded the Women’s Health AI Consortium alongside Ema EQ, in an effort to initiate the first industry-wide benchmarks for assessment of clinical safety, AI bias and transparency in Women’s Health.

Amanda Ducac-Ema EQ

Amanda Ducach, co-founder of the Consortium with Willow and CEO of Ema EQ, has built one of the most capital-efficient AI platforms in the space.She secured $3 million in funding to create a proprietary hybrid language model integrated with clinical governance, bias monitoring and AI. Building something scalable with that funding, The Ema EQ case has become one of the most cited examples in the conversation about capital efficiency among female-founded technology companies.

Ridhi Tariyal-NextGen Jane

Ridhi Tariyal is the founder of NextGen Jane, a women’s health company developing a non-invasive test for the diagnosis of endometriosis, a disease that affects the health of women in the tens of millions. Because the current method of diagnosis is surgery, it is a pressing need. Having received a $2.2 million NIH grant in 2025,Tariyal’s work sits at the frontier of diagnostic innovation, applying molecular biology to a clinical problem that has remained largely unsolved for decades.

Iman Abuzeid-Incredible Health

As the CEO and co-founder of Incredible Health, Iman Abuzeid is the leader of an AI-powered career marketplace that helps hospitals recruit permanent healthcare professionals rather than relying on temporary staffing. The solution has been adopted by over 1,500 hospitals and healthcare organisations as well as over 1 million healthcare professionals across the United States. Abuzeid has successfully created a two-sided marketplace at a significant scale that addresses one of the most challenging operational gaps in the delivery of health services, while also creating a new category within enterprise health technology.

Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks-Ovum

Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks is the founder of Ovum, an Australian FemTech company aiming to create the first ever AI, longitudinal dataset on women’s health in Australia. The platform will have the capacity to collect and store a diverse range of women’s health records, including blood work, imaging and other medical data.

Anna Jeter-AOA Dx

Anna Jeter is co-founder of AOA Dx and lead author of the Follow the Exits report, which documented the true scale of women’s health exit activity. When you look up these companies in PitchBook, they’re all segmented under equipment or diagnostics. None of them are classified as women’s health,”Jeter noted, identifying a structural problem in investment database taxonomy that has materially affected capital allocation. AOA Dx is simultaneously building a diagnostic business and reshaping how the investment community understands and tracks the sector.

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How to Validate a Pet Food Business Idea Before Launch /guides/how-validate-pet-food-business-idea-before-launch/ Fri, 10 Jul 2026 16:17:53 +0000 /?p=153256 The UK pet food market is quickly becoming one of the most lucrative divisions in the food industry. In the...

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The UK pet food market is quickly becoming one of the most lucrative divisions in the food industry. In the wake of the pandemic pet ownership grew and with it, animal-related spending has outpaced the weakest segments of the economy.

There are opportunities for new brands and entrepreneurs be noticed. If you begin a cat food subscription or sales brand for example, without an idea validation process, you may end up losing a lot of time identifying problems later down the track when you could have done so in the beginning.

Why Your Pet Food Idea Needs Validation

Pet food is a highly regulated product. In the UK, pet food is controlled by the Feeding Stuffs Regulations. You must also make sure that your product’s label follows the UK Let Food Labelling Guidelines. You cannot cut corners with the declaration of your ingredients, claims for your products, or your labelling. Although there is a well-defined path for compliance, it is neither quick nor inexpensive.

Manufacturing Minimums Are Real

It’s a given in the industry that your first production run will be more expensive than you anticipate. For wet pet food, most contract manufacturers require a minimum of a few thousand units for each SKU. Freeze-dried food has lower minimums, but a higher cost per unit. Manufacturing three flavours, without first testing to see which one customers want (or perhaps, which one customers will buy), will likely result in a large amount of obsolete stock.

Focus On The Pet Food Owner Not The Pet

Purchases are made by people, not pets. You can almost guarantee that the most successful pet food brands cater to a very specific owner problem.

This means that you might consider offering: a pet food line that contains a single protein source for the owner whose dog is allergic to everything and is unable to find a single reliable protein source, a food line for cats whose owners are uncomfortable with the ingredients of every food line sold at the store, or a pet food line that is home-cooked quality, but requires no time commitment on the part of the owner.

Specify The Animal

‘Dog food’ can never be a finished product. In order to begin thinking about a finished product, you need to provide more information than that. Products for an animal food line can be defined by their species, size, age and health. From there, you can begin to determine whether there is an actual demand for your product. If you are positioning your product in a vague manner, you are likely trying to validate too many things simultaneously, possibly weakening your product positioning.

Differentiate Your Product Early

Crafting your differentiation hypothesis means making a strong concise statement as to why your customer will buy your product. This will be different for each product. It might be for a subscription model for protein powder. It might be due to a novel protein source. It might be due to a specific health benefit with actual evidence to back it up. It can be many different things, however, no matter what it is, be sure to say it in one single, concise statement.

Talk to Real Pet Owners

Before you attempt to collect data with a survey or get customer feedback with a landing page, spend time conversing with the target customers whom you are focusing on. Doing ten of these types of conversations with your desired pet owner will give you better insights than a hundred surveys. At this phase, you are not trying to prove your hypothesis. Your goal is to see the way these pet owners think, the things they buy, their points of friction and whether or not your product is really offering a solution for them.

Understanding The Willingness To Pay

At some point during the conversations you need to determine the current price of pet food and the price people are willing to pay for a better solution to their problem. This conversation is a bit of a hurdle for many, however, it is very important to have. No matter how amazing of a product you create, a price proposition that is too high is not a sustainable business model.

Create A Landing Page To Drive Traffic

A great tool for validating a product is to create a landing page that describes the product and offers visitors the option to sign up for priority access or make a pre-sale purchase. It is not necessary to have a product to create a landing page. What is needed is a good description of the product benefits, a photo or drawing of the product and a way to collect email addresses or pre-order.

Conduct Low-Budget Paid Meta Ads

Before launching an actual product, you can start a cost-effective ad campaign on Meta or TikTok, creating paid social campaigns aimed at pet owners by interest, behaviour, or demographics. Test your potential messaging and positioning by creating two or more campaigns with different ads and animals (ingredient, health, convenience and sustainability) and determine the engagement, click-through rate and sign-up rate of each of your campaigns.

Consider A Small-scale Crowdfunding Campaign

Running a crowdfunding campaign for your pet food startup on Kickstarter or Indiegogo creates an opportunity to validate that a commercial market exists for your product, since people are literally spending money with the intent to support your startup business idea.

Additionally, you will have created an initial first production run of your supply and an early customer base. The effort involved in running a successful crowdfunding campaign is significant, but the validation signal it produces is among the strongest available- particularly for a product with an emotionally resonant story.

Be Sure To Follow Pet Food Regulations Prior To Launching

In the UK, all pet food must contain a statutory statement, the manufacturer’s name and address, the intended species, the net weight, the minimum durability date, the regulated constituents and the complete list of ingredients. Claims regarding health and nutrition are packaged and presented differently.

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The Australian Startups Transforming Women’s Healthcare /startups/the-australian-startups-transforming-womens-healthcare/ Thu, 02 Jul 2026 11:00:56 +0000 /?p=153967 For years, women’s health has been neglected in research and funding and the repercussions are still evident today. In Australia,...

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For years, women’s health has been neglected in research and funding and the repercussions are still evident today. In Australia, the 2024 End Gender Bias survey, the first of its kind, reported that 2 in 3 women experienced bias or discrimination while receiving healthcare. Delayed diagnosis, chronic health issues that are neglected and unregulated health services designed for male bodies fall disproportionately on women.The global initiative FemTech targets healthcare issues that only or mainly affect women and uses technology to provide solutions. It is changing the status quo and Australia is in the forefront of developing groundbreaking technology in this area.

What is Australia’s Women’s Healthcare Startup Ecosystem?

Tracxn has data showing that there were more than 120 FemTech startups in Australia as of May 2026, 25 of which were funded, with 3 going beyond Series A funding. Cumulatively, the sector has received over AUD 16.8 million in the past decade, which illustrates both the growth and funding gaps of the sector.All-female founding teams have received only 0.6% of VC funding in 2025, while founding teams with a mix of male and female co-founders have received almost 45% of this funding.

Why are Women’s Health Care and Issues Such Big Opportunities for Tech Startups?

It’s a big market segment due to a big market gap. In Australia, women are about 30% more likely to experience chronic health issues and delayed diagnoses. In Australia’s first End Gender Bias survey, 2/3 women surveyed experienced bias and discrimination in health care. Endometriosis, for instance, takes an average of 7 to 12 years to diagnose. Almost every woman going through menopause experiences a health crisis, yet research for menopause is lacking. For startups, this means large, well-defined problems with existing user pain that is both well-documented and emotionally resonant. The FemTech market is expected to reach USD $206 billion by 2033. In Australia, the 2024 Investing in Women Funding Program in New South Wales recently saw a $1 million investment in women’s health, well-being and empowerment. It’s a small investment, but it signals that policy is starting to notice the business opportunities.

What Are the Biggest Challenges for Australian FemTech Startups?

The primary obstacle facing most female technology startups in Australia is funding, just as everywhere globally. The second largest barrier is regulation. The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) oversees fem technology along with the digital health service regulations and data privacy laws. The complex compliance system is particularly burdensome to small, early-stage companies and startups. Femtech startups frequently lack the workforce to meet demands. In fact, research conducted at Harvard Business School showed that compared to other startups, those that focus on women’s health and women’s wellness have a 25% lower applicant rate.

Australian Startups to Watch

From FemTech startups prioritising data sets based on women’s health, to AI-based tools to assess the quality of IVF embryos- these are some of the top Australian startups to keep an eye on:

Presagen/ Life Whisperer

Presagen, with the assistance of the South Australian Government and other private investors, received AUD 4.5 Million in initial funding to further develop their company and their commercial product Life Whisperer, an AI-based tool that is used to assess the quality of IVF embryos. The tool was developed in collaboration with the University of Adelaide. Life Whisperer was found to have a 25% to 53% increased accuracy over the assessment of viability of embryos when compared to expert embryologists as part of a multi-center clinical trial conducted in 12 IVF clinics across Australia, the US, New Zealand and Malaysia.

Life Whisperer is made up of three individual AI tools:

Viability-This assess the likelihood of pregnancy for the embryo

Genetics-This assesses the morphology of the embryo and its likelihood to be genetically normal.

Oocyte-Oocyteassesses the quality of the oocyte and assesses which are likely to form a viable embryo.

Ovum

Ovum is creating a large, long-term (longitudinal) women’s dataset in Australia to tackle the gendered health gap and change how women interact with healthcare. Founded by Dr. Ariella Heffernan-Marks, Ovum is the first Australian app to offer a fully integrated, holistic AI health assistant in the app. “Existing AI can perpetuate bias in healthcare outcomes for women,” said Dr Heffernan-Marks. “Ensuring that our AI is women-centric and draws from a diverse dataset is essential to its effectiveness.” Over three million Australian women engage with apps focused on reproductive health and fertility, yet the other apps focus on individual health issues. Ovum takes a system-based approach to women’s holistic health incorporated into one app.

Baymatob

Baymatob is an AI platform that analyses health risks, specifically for the assessment of pregnant women, for clinicians. Having developed a labor management software with features for predicting the risk of postpartum hemorrhage and other maternal health-related issues, Baymatob seeks to resolve a critical gap in the timely assessment of the risk for postpartum hemorrhage that is currently heavily reliant on the judgment of clinicians and is made under severe time constraints.

VitalTrace

VitalTrace cares about mother and child health during labour and delivery. They provide medical devices for foetal monitoring andaim to solve the issue of accurate and continuous monitoring of foetuses during labour, which is one of the most difficult problems in maternal health.The Device-Based Solution has the potential to decrease the burden on clinical staff and reduce the risks of missed deterioration of foetal wellbeing. Real-time labour biosensor data is rapidly merging the fields of both hardware and artificial intelligence and VitalTrace is at the centre of it.

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Can VR Fitness Replace Traditional Exercise? /guides/can-vr-fitness-replace-traditional-exercise/ Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:35:12 +0000 /?p=153638 In 2025, the global Virtual Reality fitness market was estimated to be worth between $30 – $50 billion dollars and...

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In 2025, the global Virtual Reality fitness market was estimated to be worth between $30 – $50 billion dollars and by the mid 2030’s, it is likely to be estimated to be worth up to 400 billion dollars. Big name companies like Meta, Apple, Sony, Samsung and Nike, are investing a lot of money into the field.

One 2025 study by the University of Victoria found that more people utilising VR fitness programs were exercising for longer periods of time. VR based fitness users actively worked out sessions that were an average of 34% longer and VR fitness users were also 2.2 times more likely to complete weekly physical workout requirements than users of traditional home workout equipment.

The real question is, how viable is the market and how much of an opportunity is there for VC-funded startups that are working on the future of fitness technology?

Why Virtual Fitness is Worth Watching

VR fitness is built to solve the problem of the dropout of users of home fitness programs. According to studies, traditional home workouts suffer from dropout rates of 50% within three months. Repetitive workouts become boring and are a drain on motivation.

However, exercising in VR allows fitness to be gamified and VR fitness studies have uncovered an important phenomenon: users perceive their heart rate and effort to be lower than it is and are likely to work out even harder than in traditional settings.

Can You Actually Become Fitter With VR Fitness?

There is no shortage of virtual fitness games out there and yes, you can actually become fitter through a faster heart rate and all while ‘playing a game’ that might not seem so exhaustive when compared to the gym. Active VR games can create an effective aerobic workout and burn calories on par with biking or light jogging.

These games produce real results and the research backs it up. Active VR workouts consistently produce heart rates in the aerobic zone. Game examples include Beat Saber, Supernatural, Les Mills Body Combat VR and Thrill of the Fight.

Opportunities to Expand into Mental Well-Being Through VR

VR fitness isn’t just about physical output. Immersive environments have documented effects on stress and mood, exercising in a virtual forest or on a clifftop coastline produces different psychological responses to a gym mirror.

This mental wellness dimension is opening a new product category: VR fitness platforms that blur into mindfulness apps, targeting the significant overlap between corporate wellness programmes and mental health investment.

What Are The Limitations of Virtual Fitness?

Currently the biggest weakness in VR fitness is the lack of options for strength training. The types of movements that build and maintain muscle mass, like squats and deadlifts, can’t be effectively done in VR without some added equipment. One of the few companies that have started to tackle this problem is Black Box VR, which offers gyms combining VR and cable resistance.

Startups Worth Keeping an Eye On in The VR Fitness Sector

There are a handful of innovative startups in the VR fitness industry that are worth watching in 2026 and beyond- from subscription-based fitness tools to interactive challenges that help increase stamina and even strength:

Supernatural

In 2023, Meta completed its acquisition of Supernatural and integrated the VR fitness platform into the expanding Meta Quest ecosystem. The service offers users daily workouts set in immersive real-world locations, enhanced by licensed music and guided instruction.

As a subscription-based platform, Supernatural has consistently demonstrated some of the strongest retention rates in the consumer VR market, highlighting the viability of the VR fitness subscription model.In 2026, Meta announced that Supernatural would be spun off into a new independent company, Supernatural Health, led by the platform’s original founders. Supernatural Health is expected to relaunch in autumn 2026 with higher subscription pricing, reflecting a renewed focus on growing the platform as a standalone fitness business.

Black Box VR

Purpose-built VR gyms seem to be the focus of Black Box VR. Combining resistance machines and immersive environments is an interesting approach, especially with the existing VR home ecosystems providing frictionless workouts. Black Box VR’s franchise model suggests that they believe the hybrid VR/gym model will bring an edge over the competition when compared to only a software solution.

HOLOFIT

HOLOFIT is a virtual reality fitness platform developed by Holodia that transforms cardio workouts into immersive experiences. Using a VR headset, users can row, cycle, run, or perform bodyweight exercises while exploring virtual worlds and completing interactive challenges.

The platform connects with rowing machines, exercise bikes and ellipticals, making workouts more engaging and motivating through gamification, virtual coachingand online competitions.

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Inside Health AI: What Training Data Can Miss /guides/inside-health-ai-what-training-data-can-miss/ Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:00:31 +0000 /?p=153361 Health AI is one of the fastest evolving technologies, as algorithms can now analyse mammograms, predict sepsis and even expedite...

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Health AI is one of the fastest evolving technologies, as algorithms can now analyse mammograms, predict sepsis and even expedite drug discovery. Due to its potential, large tech and healthcare companies are trying to establish the pathways for the future integration of Health AI in medicine. These systems will only be as good as the data they are trained on and the training of AI systems in health care is extremely data intensive.

How Health AI is Actually Trained

For healthcare systems to utilise AI properly, it is essential that they are trained on high-quality data sets. AI is trained on huge amounts of data in the form of medical images, electronic health care records, lab results and much more. The AI learns to identify patterns for diagnoses, treatment, outcomes and responses. The more relevant, high-quality and representative that data is, the more accurate and generalisable the resulting model becomes.

Importance of ‘High-Quality’ and ‘Representative’ Data

The most common source of data used to train these systems, de-identified electronic health records, is frequently inconsistent and incomplete. Often, health data represent the real-world scenario of inequitable healthcare systems, skewing final AI-driven results. When data is incomplete and does not reflect the real-world population, the system can generate outputs that are inaccurate, which affects the healthcare and treatment of the individuals involved and has the potential to cause direct harm.

Who Are The Big-Tech Players Training Health AI?

NVIDIA is establishing itself as a strong plater in the the health AI infrastructure builder sector with its hardware and Clara, its health imaging and genomics framework. They allied with Mayo Clinic, Illumina and IQVIA for new approaches in drug discovery, digital pathology and genomic analysisat the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, in January 2025.

Microsoft and Epic Electronic Health Systems Partnership

Microsoft Azure AI for Health partnered with Epic Systems to plant AI copilots in Electronic Health Records to position predictive care tools in front of clinicians. With Azure AI growing 34% in 2025, with healthcare being one of their fastest growing sectors, Microsoft acquired Nuance to combine clinical speech recognition and natural language processing in the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare.

Google Health and DeepMind in Radiology

Google Health and DeepMind have offered some of the most compelling accuracy results in the space. Their published research suggests they have outperformed human radiologists in breast cancer detection by 11.5%. Their endeavors have also allowed the field of drug discovery to utilise AlphaFold protein-structure solutions.

The Specialist Health AI Companies

Many companies are developing health-focused applications in addition to the infrastructure giants. Aidoc, who has FDA approved algorithms, is now implemented in 2,000 hospitals worldwide for the real-time detection of stroke and technology for emergency care.

Aidoc

In 2023, Aidoc invested in and unveiled their CARE (Clinical AI Reasoning Engine) foundation model. They also received the FDA stamp of approval and Breakthrough Design Devices utilising this technology for the first AI ‘foundation model’ in medical imaging in 2025-2026. This model is flexible and adaptable to many diagnostic tasks unlike traditional models.

Tempus

Tempus has one of the largest and most comprehensive molecular and clinical data libraries in the world that supports precision cancer care for half of all oncologists in the US. This library houses tens of millions of research records along with billions of clinical notes.

Hippocratic AI

Hippocratic AI takes a different route: constructing a large language model for healthcare in partnership with clinicians from Stanford, Johns Hopkins and El Camino Health and supported by funding from NVIDIA’s venture arm, among others. Its core design principle is telling: the model must perform at the safety level of an average clinician before it’s trusted with any given task. That emphasis on validated safety, rather than raw capability, reflects a growing recognition across the sector that health AI carries risks that other AI applications simply don’t.

PathAI

PathAI trains its algorithms on its expansive data set that is backed by more than 15 million expert-annotated pathology annotations. They are one of the worlds leading digital pathology companies which uses AI to improve accuracy with diagnoses and aims to advance grade development.

Women’s Health: The Largest Gap in Health Data

Women’s health has been a recognised blind spot and discrimination in health AI training data. The majority of participants in clinical trials have been males of a certain age and ethnicity, this pattern has been prevalent for decades and has shaped the medical information for AI. If AI is trained on data sets that exclude women, or other minority groups, the gap and bias will be reproduced every time the model is used.

How Is AI Being Trained to Combat These Issues?

More and more, businesses are intentionally building large datasets that are accurately annotated, not just relying on historical datasets that may be of low quality. The research community is arriving at a consensus that valid AI models require a multitude of datasets. In addition to that, women’s health AI needs to include research on disease and conditions that are relevant to both men and women to avoid a male health conditions baseline.

Policy Attention for AI Training

This is an obvious area that regulators and policymakers are beginning to engage with directly. In early 2025, the UK Minister of State for Women’s Health said that, without representative data, health-related AI tools would likely exacerbate health inequities, rather than alleviate them. The expectation in the field is that public health bodies, medical institutions, and technology companies will have to collaborate to establish standards for bias testing, transparency, and validation before the large-scale deployment of health-related AI applications.

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Apple Just Added Menopause and Perimenopause Support to the Health App /news/apple-just-added-menopause-and-perimenopause-support-health-app/ Thu, 11 Jun 2026 11:00:33 +0000 /?p=153055 After providing cycle tracking functionality for seven years, Apple has recently broadened the capabilities of its Health App to offer...

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After providing cycle tracking functionality for seven years, Apple has recently broadened the capabilities of its Health App to offer recognition of all the phases of women’s hormonal cycles. At WWDC 2026, Apple made an announcement to support the Health application in tracking perimenopause and menopause through symptom logging, offering educational resources and sending users alerts regarding their cycle patterns to help them decide if they need to see a doctor.

What Did Apple Announce at WWDC 2026?

During the WWDC 2026 conference, Apple’s VP of OS Product Management, Stacey Ford made the announcement of the additional features for the Health App. The functionality that this Health App update will add includes the ability for users to log perimenopausal symptoms and patterns and the Health App will now include an official perimenopause symptom logging tool.

Apple’s Symptom Tracking for Perimenopause and Menopause

The new app update offers a broader range of symptoms beyond just menstruation-related symptoms. Users can now log symptoms, such as hot flashes, night sweats, mood changes, sleep disruption, brain fog and changes in period length and flow. Focused on symptoms throughout perimenopause, the app collects all information logged and displays it in a clear record that can be shared with a healthcare provider.

Included Educational Content

The new version has included educational segments that assist users with understanding perimenopause and menopause symptoms. Features of the app help define each of the symptoms of menopause and perimenopause, explaining the transition and distinguishing symptoms that occur during each phase. These features are meant to help users understand the symptoms of menopause so that they are better able to communicate these symptoms to their doctor.

App Notifications

Cycle-pattern notifications could be one of the most clinically significant components of the update. For users 40 and older, the app has the potential to recognise several characteristics of perimenopause if they are logging their symptoms regularly.

iPhone-health-app

A Billion-Dollar Market

Apple announcing this feature at this time is not a coincidence. In the past two years, menopause and perimenopause are some of the fastest growing areas for investment in femtech. In February 2026, telehealth platform Midi Health, which provides menopause and perimenopause care, became a unicorn after a Series D funding round led by Goodwater Capital with a valuation of $1 billion

Competing in a Well-Established FemTech Menopause and Perimenopause Market

Apple is not the first company to be entering this space. Oura Ring tracks Perimenopausal users’ temperature and sleep and has been developing their hormonal health features. WHOOP also tracks menstrual cycles and offers insights into the effects of hormones on performance. Hims and Hers provides menopause care on their tele-health platform and is among the other notable companies like Midi Health, Maven Clinic, Elektra Health and more.

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Natural Cycles Partners with Garmin on MHRA-Registered Fertility Innovation /femtech/garmin-is-now-an-fda-cleared-fertility-device-thanks-to-natural-cycles/ Thu, 04 Jun 2026 11:00:58 +0000 http://techround.co.uk/?p=152697 Garmin has teamed up with Natural Cycles to give select smartwatch users the ability to automatically upload their nightly skin...

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Garmin has teamed up with Natural Cycles to give select smartwatch users the ability to automatically upload their nightly skin temperature to be used in Natural Cycles fertility predictions. This integration means users no longer have to rely on an external thermometer or perform any kind of invasive early morning temperature readings to determine their daily fertility. The system only requires the user to wear their watch to sleep. This integration signifies a change in the wearable tech market. The Garmin and Natural Cycles integration shows that wearable technology companies now have taken interest in women’s reproductive health as a non-niche segment.

What the Integration Actually Does

This integration focuses on capturing skin temperature as a fertility signal. Hormonal fluctuations throughout the menstrual cycle have a measurable effect on body temperature.This temperature remains elevated during the luteal phase and drops again at the onset of menstruation. Natural Cycles’ algorithm has been built around interpreting these thermal patterns to determine which days in a user’s cycle are fertile and which are not.

How It Works With Garmin Devices

Users with a Garmin Watch from the fēnix 8 line or the Forerunner 570, 970, Venu 4, or Venu X1 models, will wear the device as they sleep. The watches will measure temperature on the surface of the skin for the duration of the user’s sleep. The next day, Natural Cycles will automatically receive that data and the app will provide the user with a daily fertility status of either a red day of fertility (suggesting protected sex or abstinence) or a green day of non-fertility.

What Is Natural Cycles?

Natural Cycles was the first MHRA Registeredbirth control app-founded by Swedish particle physicists, Elina Berglund Scherwitzl and Raoul Scherwitzl. This clearance was based on three clinical studies and provided evidence that a combined total of over 20,000 participants (users) and a further prospective study of over 15,000 participants (users) had a high level of safety and efficacy. The app is available in the US, Europe, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Singapore and South Korea. There are more than 1.8 million users worldwide and it is distributed across 162 countries.

What Both Companies Said About the Integration

Both Garmin and Natural Cycles have spoken positively about the integration mentioning innovation and digitally transformation of women’s health:

Garmin

“Women all over the world utilise Garmin products for activity and health tracking, which is why this integration with Natural Cycles, a pioneer in women’s digital health, is so important. As we continue to help women meet their fitness and wellness goals, we are proud that Garmin skin temperature can be used within the Natural Cycles app for those looking for a non-hormonal approach to birth control.” – Susan Lyman, the Vice President of Consumer Sales and Marketing at Garmin.

Natural Cycles

Co-founder Raoul Scherwitzl noted that the integration was in line with the vision of Natural Cycles to digitally transform women’s understanding of their reproductive health and in this case, was an example of what can be achieved by democratising access to personalised, algorithm-based health data.

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Why Startups Should Use Private APNs For Mobile Broadband /guides/why-startups-use-private-apns-mobile-broadband/ Tue, 19 May 2026 05:18:34 +0000 http://techround.co.uk/?p=150983 When launching a startup, connectivity choices usually get left out of the strategic plans. You’re dealing with customers, products and...

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When launching a startup, connectivity choices usually get left out of the strategic plans. You’re dealing with customers, products and often just figuring out how to stay afloat.

However, if your business comprises mobile devices, IoT hardware, field workers or any connected infrastructure, your choice of network is important and making the wrong choice can have real consequences. Private APNs are the kind of infrastructure decisions that are ignored by most early-stage businesses until something bad happens.

Lauren Davies from bOnline comments: “Whether APN or VPN, as we move into the technological future, consumers and businesses have so many more things to consider. However, something that is appealing is that a lot of the infrastructure once upgraded, should serve both individuals and businesses of all sizes much better than old, outdated and legacy infrastructure.”

What Is A Private APN?

An Access Point Name (APN) is how a mobile network and other separate networks, including the public Internet, connect. A real-life example is whenever your SIM is sending or receiving data on a 4G or 5G network, it is using an APN to facilitate that.

Most devices use a public APN by default, which means your data travels across shared carrier infrastructure and out onto the open internet before reaching your systems.

How Do Private APNs Work?

A private APN fundamentally changes what happens to your data. Rather than sending data to the public network, a private APN creates an encryptable IPsec tunnel, allowing mobile devices to connect directly to your private infrastructure. The data can be routed through your controlled network infrastructure rather than the public internet.

Why Security Matters Early For Startups

Most founders think a network and security fund are things to think about later when funding comes or when the business has expanded, however, beginning your startup with a strong security foundation means less work later on. Modifying security architecture later on after hundreds of devices are deployed is almost always a very costly and risky organisational move.

If you build secure connectivity from the beginning, you can:

  • Scale faster
  • Reduce security risks
  • Avoid costly redesigns
  • Simplify device deployment
  • Meet enterprise customer expectations
  • Build trust with investors and partners

Why Startups Are Exposed on Public Networks

Public networks can be dangerous for small business owners, as they are often high-targets for cyber criminals due to the low security measures that are often accompanied. Startups usingIoT equipment should know that it is extremely difficult to protect.

From devices such assensors, trackers, monitors, routers, connected equipment all are notoriously difficult to secure. Most IoT devices come with factory settings which include default passwords. Sometimes they even sit without any updates for extremely lengthy periods, with no consideration towards security.

APN Or VPN For Startups?

Startups implementing VPNs for remote access integration offers value, however, when it comes to protecting mobile and IoT traffic, a private APN offers a higher level of protection. Generally, VPNs provide protection via encryption packets over the public internet. A private APN never reaches the public internet in the first place.

The isolation is at the carrier level, not the application level, which makes it significantly harder to intercept or compromise.

Simplifying Compliance

Startups in healthcare, fintech, logistics, or any other heavily regulated industry, have both legal and compliance requirements for data protection and privacy. A private APN represents control, documentation and place for data traffic that is encrypted and isolated.

Reliable Connectivity

The public internet was never designed for guaranteed consistency.Traffic moving across public networks can be affected by congestion, latency spikes, packet loss and routing changes, all of which are outside your control.For startups building products that rely on real-time connectivity, such as remote monitoring, live telemetry, smart devices or connected hardware, this unpredictability can directly affect product performance and customer experience.

A private APN routes your traffic through dedicated carrier infrastructure rather than shared public pathways. This creates more stable, predictable connectivity with fewer interruptions.In practical terms, that means your devices stay connected more consistently, your data arrives faster and your customers experience a more reliable product.

Are APNs Affordable For Startups?

Until recently, private APN infrastructure was meant to be used only for large enterprises; it was very expensive, complicated and used by very few businesses, however, things have changed.

Many private APN service providers have now geared their services towards post-paid businesses and large IoT (Internet of Things) deployments with more flexible and transparent solution and pricing frameworks. The initial investment for such a service is affordable, especially comparing it to the potential monetary loss from data breaches, service outages and the loss of customers.

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