Invite Health x 💊THE FIX Health-Tech Festival: Interview with Joe Rowan

Message from Sachi

Welcome back to Invite Health!

I’m excited to announce Invite Health’s media partnership with 💊THE FIX Health-Tech Conference on September 18, 2025 in Oxford.

Today’s interview is with Joe Rowan, the Programme Curator of THE FIX. He’s going to dive into:

• The problems with today’s health-tech conferences, and how THE FIX is rewriting how networking at conferences festivals are done

• Psychedelics, diagnostics, longevity, femtech & more- all the topics & the leading experts joining THE FIX

• How students can get involved with THE FIX, VOYAGERS, and the Health-Tech community

I’ll be writing a newsletter in September to describe how I formed this partnership & to share highlights from the Festival.

Read to the end for a special promo code to unlock discounted tickets for THE FIX (and their climate-tech festival, THE HEAT) 🤑

Enjoy today’s read,

Sachi Chan 💌 

Behind the Scenes of 💊THE FIX Health-Tech Festival

Interview with Joe Rowan: Programme Curator of THE FIX & Chief of Staff at VOYAGERS

Introducing… 💊THE FIX

First off, introduce yourself: what is your role on the team, where are you based right now, and what’s your role with planning THE FIX?

My name is Joe Rowan. I am the Chief of Staff at Voyagers, which is an international community of around 4,000 change-makers and people that want to do good in the world.

We have health-tech, climate tech, and a miscellaneous strand. We are putting on THE FIX, a festival of health-tech at Harwell Science Campus (Oxfordshire) on September 18th.

It's going to be an all day event from 10:00 AM until 10:00 PM, with an evening party as well. 

I am the Programme Curator of the festival. I have been working to put together the list of speakers. I select everyone who comes along to lead a workshop, a Conversation Circle, a product demo, or bring some music or art to the festival. I make sure the right people are coming along to make it as special, exciting, and interesting a festival as possible. 

One of the highlights has been that we recently confirmed two cold plunges and a sauna for the festival as part of our Longevity strand. Remember to bring your towels and swimming trunks! 

I also helped to organize THE HEAT last year, which is our Climate Tech Festival. We put it on for the first time last year and we're putting it on again this year, the day after THE FIX, on September 19th.

The Role of Community in Health-Tech

When I was talking to Hugo Paquin (co-organizer of THE FIX), he mentioned that the demand for THE FIX was quite high. The number of people signing up far exceeded the team's targets. 

How did the idea for THE FIX come to be? Why do you think it is so important to build community in the health-tech arena?

We put on THE HEAT last year, which was our first VOYAGERS festival. It was very successful. 

The reason we put on THE HEAT in the first place was that we noticed quite a widespread frustration among conference attendees in the climate tech and health-tech spaces. 

Which is, you got to these conferences. Either you’re:

• A founder, and you want to meet investors, other co-founders, or someone to hire. 

• An investor, and you want to find start-ups to invest in. 

• Something else, and you also want to meet other people working in climate tech or health-tech. 

That was the essential frustration upon which our festival idea was built. The reason we went for festivals is we want people to network as much as possible. 

We want a relaxed, open atmosphere where if you're a founder, you’re not going to be kind of throwing your idea in someone else's face, but instead meeting people, establishing real connections, which is what VOYAGERS is all about.

And then whatever comes from that will come from it. For example, last year at THE HEAT, we had a VOYAGERS band perform with members of the VOYAGERS community. The drummer and the singer didn't know each other before they joined this band. And the singer ended up hiring the drummer or something along those lines. 

It does lead to genuine progress for people’s careers and companies. I have heard that investments have been made off the back of THE HEAT last year as well. 

Startup Pitch Contest

We also have our startup pitch contest at THE FIX. 

We received lots of applications and shortlisted 10 startups to pitch for 6 minutes each.

In the audience, we have lots of investors, some very important investors, signed up to come along and make investments. It's a very good place to showcase your product or your company because of the calibre of people that are coming along. 

The importance of bringing the health-tech community together

You asked about why it’s so important to bring the health-tech community together. Well, I think it's quite rare for people from all different areas of the health-tech space to come together under one roof, or under one tent. Founders, investors, people working in corporate, ex government ministers, etc. 

We’re going to have Lord James Bethell who is an ex government health minister coming along and DJing, possibly in his full Lord attire. We're going to have people working in government, policy, non governmental organisations, journalists, etc.

If I was a founder, I would snap up this opportunity because you want investors to hear about your idea, but you also don't want to be just cold calling and sending out emails to hundreds of investors. You want to meet them face to face. And that's what it's all about. It's about establishing organic connections with people working in the same space as you and seeing what comes from that. 

Even if you are not looking for investment, it’s still a great place to see some of the innovation that’s going on. 

We're going to have lots of product demos from companies at the forefront of innovation in health-tech. We're going to have workshops from some of the highest level experts in very specific areas of health-tech. 

If you look on our speakers page, you can see that every single one of our workshops and conversation circles is focusing on a very specific area. We have wide expertise, but each expert is an expert in a very specific area, which is exactly what you want. 

The agenda is designed to get people involved, get people talking to each other, not just talking at you. 

Limited Keynotes

People often find themselves in situations with conferences where you're sitting in a room for hours listening to keynote after keynote, which seems never-ending. We will have keynotes at the festival, but we're limiting them only to the morning and each of them will only be 10 minutes long, so you're getting exactly what you want from each keynote speaker, just in a very short slot, which is what I think a lot of people actually want. 

The rest of the day from 12:30 until 10:00 PM is focused on meeting other people, starting conversations, and getting your own ideas out there as well.

Psychedelics, FemTech, Diagnostics & Other Festival Themes

I like what you said about prioritizing people meeting each other and building connections. That's what people actually want to do when they go to these events. 

You mentioned some of the themes in the festival. There's going to be longevity, femtech, diagnostics, and more.

Do you want to talk briefly about what each of these fields are, and how you chose these ones to highlight this year?

FemTech

I would say one of our biggest areas are going to be the Femtech and Women's Health tent. We have two amazing curators, Karina Vazirova and Dr Benjamin Viaris de Lesegno, who didn't actually know each other before they started.

These two work in Women’s Health and Femtech, and they’re absolute experts in what they do. Karina, for example, works in Femtech Labs. Benjamin pioneered a new way of doing C sections, so both of them are perfect for the role, and they have put hours and hours into creating an agenda just for the femtech and Women's Health tents. 

From 1:30 PM until 6:30 PM, they have a full agenda of content for Women's Health and Femtech. If you're working in that area, you can essentially go to the festival, go to the keynotes in the morning, have your lunch with some people you meet there, and then for the rest of the afternoon, if you want to stay in the Women's Health and Femtech tent, you can see content which is essentially personalised for you. 

Longevity & Psychedelics 

We're going to have the cold plunges and the sauna, workshops and Circles based around longevity. 

We're also going to have psychedelics and mental health as one of the key themes. We have another amazing curator called Alex Adams who has focused on this area. 

He's managed to get Imperial College London’s Professor David Nutt along as a keynote speaker and Conversation Circle leader, who's a major influence in the world of psychedelics. Alex has also brought along a lot of other people working in the psychedelic space so it’s going to be another very rich part of the agenda.

The FIX Curators

The reason we’ve given these curators so much creative freedom is that we know that they know more about their field than we ever could. 

By outsourcing to them, it's almost like saying: We trust you. We know that you know what you're talking about. And we know that you can get some amazing people to come along. 

We’ve given some of them free tickets, and some the ability to help curate an agenda for their tents. Because of that, I think the agenda is going to be so good for the festival, because we have around 30 curators who individually have pulled their weight and helped to get some amazing people to come along.

How do people get involved with THE FIX?

That's amazing. I like that you have that element of trust with everybody: trusting that they’re the experts and you don’t feel the need to impose. 

My audience with Invite Health is a lot of young people who are aspiring founders and recent graduates who want to build in health-tech. 

How would you encourage them to reach out, get involved with THE FIX, or just break into these health-tech communities, even if they aren’t a founder yet?

Just off the bat, I should mention that that's exactly one of the groups that we want to get involved with the festival because it is an amazing opportunity. 

The Head of Content and the founder of THE FIX, David Rowan, used to be the Chief Editor of WIRED UK. He put on The Next Gen Conference. That conference was directed solely at young people, so he’s got experience with this.

Competitive Pricing

One of the amazing things about the festival is that we have All Access tickets at £250 plus VAT right now. This is a much lower price than you would be able to get at pretty much any conference.  

If you look up the competitors' prices, they are sometimes five times as much, or more. 

We have an under 25 and NHS worker ticket, these are currently £150 plus VAT. 

We’re hoping that that's low enough so that we can get some of these young innovators who are maybe at Oxford University, Cambridge University, or elsewhere with a great idea or a significant interest in health-tech.

We’re not limiting our mindset to anyone in any specific area. We want to invite rule breakers, innovators, and anyone that’s interested in health-tech and wants to meet people. 

That is what it’s all about: Meeting people and learning more. This is the place for you. 

Volunteering 

We also have the opportunity to volunteer at the festival. So, if people find £150 is too much, we have the option to come for free to the festival as a volunteer. 

If you volunteer three to four hours of your time on the day, that still leaves you maybe eight or nine hours (if you come for a full day) of being there for free. 

We've created these options because we want to involve people rather than turn them away.

Health-Tech with DJs, Breakdancing, Drumming Circles, and more

What are you most looking forward to with THE FIX? 

Is there anything else that you want to share that you haven't had the opportunity to share yet?

A problem, kind of a good problem, is that there is so much going on at the festival. 

If you look at the agenda, there are multiple options that people can choose between. Because we have had so much interest in the festival, we'll have lots of people there. 

Even if we have multiple avenues for people to go down at one given time slot, it’s going to be busy wherever you go, which is amazing. 

One of the lesser known highlights is we're going to have some break dancing at the festival, which is pretty cool. We have one of the members of the VOYAGERS community’s 10-year-old son, and he’s going to be coming along with a break dancing expert called Bboy Infante, and they're going to co-lead a workshop on break dancing.

Other things I’m looking forward to: 

• DJing. We have a few really good DJs handpicked from the VOYAGERS community. One of them, as I mentioned, is Lord James Bethell, and we have another guy called Matthieu Vallin.  

• A game show called Tech Bio Quest on everything health-tech. 

• Art by artists Jack Joiner and Vadim Epstein.

• Festival band called the Painkillers.

• A DJ sound system called Libalula. Someone called Tim Fielding has very generously offered to bring this truck which has mushrooms painted all over the side of it, to the festival. It’s where our DJs will be able to DJ from, so they’ll have their own proper space. 

• A Senegalese drumming circle. Last year, at THE HEAT, we had a drummer called Dembis Thioung, who's amazing, and he'll be coming along to THE FIX, leading a drumming circle. So that'll be fun. 

THE FIX will have a genuine party vibe from 6:30 PM onwards, until we close at 10:00 PM. 

We also have so many amazing speakers: 

• Professor David Nutt, who I mentioned, 

• Bill Liao from SOSV, 

• Tess Cosad from Béa Fertility 

We have some super interesting workshops from the likes of Liam Cahill, Keith Grimes, Peter Ward, on areas as varied as the power of human connection, to how AI can set healthcare free, to the breaking and remaking of health-tech founders, and much, much more. 

We have it broken down into slots. For Conversation Circles and workshops, we have two slots. We have created event pages for each of these. Once people have bought their tickets, they are then invited to sign up for two workshops and two circles.

There's a lot of content and a lot going on. It will probably be the hardest thing for people to choose. It's like going into a candy store and having to choose just one or two sweets. There’s a lot of great stuff going on and I'm sure no matter what people choose, they’ll have an amazing time and learn a lot.

NHS Reverse Pitch

One of the other highlights is going to be our NHS reverse pitch. We have two other amazing curators, Matea Deliu and Tahreema Matin, who have worked in the NHS and have some good contacts in the NHS. They’ve reached out to some of the top level leaders of the NHS to come along and be part of this reverse pitch. 

What it is is essentially kind of like a reverse Dragons Den. Rather than you coming along and pitching to the Dragons, the Dragons (the NHS leaders) will come along and talk about some problems in the NHS right now. The festival goers will then team up and try to find solutions together to those problems. 

It’s going to be a fun format. It's designed so that you meet other people. You think together about the best ways to solve the challenges, and they're also what could be more relevant than the challenges that actual NHS leaders are pointing to in the NHS right now. A lot of people come up with an idea organically and they're not necessarily aware of the most important problems. For example in the NHS or in any health system.

Whereas this is a very good opportunity to hear first hand what the most pressing problems are and work with people to try and come up with solutions.

Solutions sound fun and they sound shiny and they sound appealing, but realistically, is it a solution if it's not solving a real problem in the world?

Exactly. And just to give you a brief idea of who's currently signed up, we're going to have Professor Stella Vig, who's the Deputy National Medical Director for Secondary Care, Dr Mayur Vibhuti, who's Chief Clinical Information Officer for the for NHS Kent and Medway ICB. And then Caroline Clarke, who is the NHS London Regional Director. 

These are people who definitely know what the problems in the NHS are and are great, great people to tap into when you're trying to think about, what's the next idea for my next startup?

It’s also an amazing opportunity to meet with them and meet with other people who are coming along to the festival.

Everyone can learn more about THE FIX at THEFIX.IO

Invite Health Promo Code

Interested in attending 💊THE FIX at Harwell Science Campus on September 18, 2025? Use code INVITEHEALTH for 15% off your ticket 🔥 

BONUS: If you'd like to join the sister climate-tech festival 🔥THE HEAT the following day at the same location, extend your ticket for just £120+VAT using the code DAYTWO when you book (code only valid for THE FIX ticket-holders).

Bonus Question ☝️

You obviously have to hire a lot of speakers and bring important figures to your event. 

The people that read Invite Health are sending cold emails all the time, trying to get the attention of interesting people, whether they want to work with them or have coffee with them. 

What do you think is the art of a good and effective cold e-mail And when people reach out to you, what do you look for? 

I think, ironically, that the art of the cold e-mail is that it's not cold.

What I mean by that is the more personalised a cold e-mail can be, the better. Call people by their name. Research who they are before you reach out to them. 

Even if you have a template, that doesn't mean copy paste the template and click send straight away. Imagine if you were on the other end of that e-mail. Would you want to receive a generic template from someone that you don't know when you've got a busy job to start with, and maybe children to look after? Or do you want to receive something where you can see that the person has looked you up, and see that they’re interested in what you do?

It's personalised. That, for me, has been what it's all about. 

Joe’s Strategy for Cold Emails 

Some of the speakers I’ve been reaching out to are pretty important in their field. I don't have a background in health tech either.

The main way that I managed to get them on board was showing interest in what they're doing and showing them the benefits of this festival. The festival does kind of market itself in many ways, because it is going to be such an amazing hotbed of interesting people, interesting innovation, etc.

About Invite Health 💌 

I started Invite Health for my younger self who was trying to figure out what to do with my health sci degree that wasn’t a career in medicine.

Today, I’d say this quote is the primary reason I continue to build Invite Health:

The mission of Invite Health is to close this talent-opportunity gap for students in the life and health sciences.

Since 2022, we’re the leading resource for students figuring out what to do with a life sci / health sci degree. I interview students pursuing diverse careers in healthcare, and how they got there - no gatekeeping here. Every newsletter is rich with resources and insights.

Our main channel is this newsletter, and I occasionally share resources on social media (LinkedIn and Instagram).

You can read more about why I built Invite Health here

How to get the most out of Invite Health 🫶

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3. Bet on yourself: Apply to the opportunities that are shared in the newsletters. You have nothing to lose, and so much to gain. Circling back to point #1 - always reach out to the interviewees if you want advice!

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How I Built Invite Health - BTS 🌼 

I’m building a series where I share strategies on how I built Invite Health.

In two years, I’ve grown Invite Health organically to 2,000+ subscribers (meaning, I’ve spent $0), building it sustainably as a solo student founder throughout undergrad and my Master’s.

Leverage your platform for professional opportunities

Invite Health has opened up several professional opportunities for me:

• I wrote about Invite Health in my statement of interest essays in all of my grad school applications, including my Oxford one

• Invite Health has given me experience as a social entrepreneur which has led to my involvement with the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford, including the Impact Labs programme

• And of course, I’m getting to form a media partnership with THE FIX through Invite Health

Be proud of what you’ve built and open up doors for yourself! Highlight what you’ve learned from being a founder, demonstrate your impact, and showcase that you have a unique network from your platform that can benefit future partners.

Free Links & Resources 🫰 

• Applying to Grad Schools Notion Guide by Sachi

• 15 Paid Summer Research Programs in Canada

• 25 Paid Summer Programs for Life Science & Health Science Students in Canada

• Paid Summer Programs in Research, Policy, Tech, etc.

• Paid Healthcare x Business Opportunities for Students 

• How to Write a Cold Email

• How to Secure Research Funding

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