​Why Great HealthTech Products Don’t Make It Into Healthcare

​A small-group conversation with Professor Richard Barker on what it actually takes to get healthcare technology approved, adopted and used.

​Healthcare has no shortage of promising technology. The harder part starts afterwards.

​A product can work, the science can be sound, clinicians can be enthusiastic, and it can still spend years in pilots, fail to get reimbursement, struggle to find the right buyer, or simply never become part of routine care.

​We’re bringing together a small group of HealthTech founders, operators and selected investors for a practical conversation with Professor Richard Barker about the journey from promising technology to real adoption.

​What we’ll explore

​Which ideas are actually worth pursuing

​How do you evaluate whether a clinical need, market opportunity and health-system reality justify years of work and capital before you commit?

​Where the NHS belongs in your commercial strategy

​Should the NHS be your first market, a validation environment, a strategic customer - or sometimes not the priority at all?

​What evidence actually moves adoption forward

​What do regulators, payers, clinicians and healthcare organisations need to see before a product moves from promising to approved, purchased and routinely used?

​Who actually makes the decisions

​The NHS landscape keeps changing. Which decision-makers matter at different stages, and how do founders avoid spending years navigating the wrong part of the system?

​Does AI make the path easier - or harder?

​AI is often presented as a shortcut to better, faster healthcare innovation. But does it actually shorten the path to adoption?

​Where does AI genuinely help, and where does it introduce new problems around evidence, reliability, governance and accountability?

​About Richard Barker

​Professor Richard Barker OBE has spent four decades across healthcare, biopharma, health policy and medical innovation.

​He is currently Co-Founder and Chairman of Metadvice and Founding Director of New Medicine Partners. Previously he held senior roles at IBM Healthcare and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, directed the Centre for the Advancement of Sustainable Medical Innovation, and contributed to the UK’s Accelerated Access Review.

​He’s joining Perfect Strangers to have this conversation directly with founders early enough for it to affect the decisions they’re making now.

​Who this is for

​HealthTech and Digital Health founders who are:

• ​past MVP and starting to think seriously about clinical validation, procurement or NHS access

• ​building products where regulatory pathway, reimbursement or clinician adoption is a real question

• ​considering the NHS as a first market, validation environment or strategic customer

• ​already navigating pilots, evidence generation or healthcare procurement and want to understand what needs to happen next

​We’ll also invite a small number of investors actively backing HealthTech companies, particularly those for whom clinical adoption, regulatory strategy and healthcare-system access are material parts of the investment case.

​This is not designed for pre-idea founders, generic health-adjacent SaaS, or generalist investors looking for a broad introduction to the sector.

​The evening

​6:30 PM - Doors open, welcome drinks
7:00 PM - Richard’s opening conversation + Q&A
8:00 PM - Break
8:15 PM - Facilitated circles
9:00 PM - Drinks, curated introductions and networking
9:30 PM - Close

​This is not a panel and not a pitch event.

​The conversation with Richard is followed by facilitated small-group circles, giving founders space to work through the questions that matter for their own businesses. We’ll then move into drinks and curated introductions.

​Application & curation

​This is a curated, application-based event. Submitting an application does not automatically guarantee a place.

​We keep the room intentionally small and reserve the right to decline registrations where the fit isn’t right for the format or the group.

​Please take a little time with the application. The more we understand about what you’re building, your stage and what you’re currently trying to solve, the more useful we can make the room for you.

​We use this information not only to make relevant introductions during the event, but also, where it makes sense, to connect you with founders, investors and operators from the wider Perfect Strangers network.

​Apply to join the room

​Hosted by Perfect Strangers - curated rooms for founders, investors and senior operators in London.