Healthcare AI Guy Weekly | 8/20

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Highlights if you’ve only got 2 minutes…

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Why will healthcare be the industry that benefits the most from AI?

Julie Yoo, Andreessen Horowitz general partner, discusses the significant impact AI can have on the healthcare industry, focusing on the unique opportunities and challenges it presents. Julie elaborates on how the healthcare sector, despite being a technological laggard, can benefit from AI due to its lack of legacy systems, contrasting it with other industries that face high costs in transitioning to AI tools — making it ripe for a leapfrog opportunity. Unlike other industries bogged down by outdated software, healthcare can skip straight to the latest AI innovations. AI can scale clinical judgment beyond current staffing, addressing the critical shortage of skilled doctors and nurses. Plus, regulatory frameworks already in place mean only the most rigorous AI products make it to market, ensuring high standards and strong market positions. AI tools applied to healthcare can transform a ~$4 trillion market offering up immense opportunities for startups and innovation. (link)(youtube)

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Kaiser launches largest generative AI project in healthcare

Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest nonprofit and integrated healthcare provider, announced that it’s making Abridge’s AI documentation tool available system-wide to over 24k physicians, marking the fast-moving startup’s largest implementation to-date. The move follows nearly a year of testing and evaluation, which also involved a Nabla Copilot implementation at The Permanente Medical Group. It’s worth noting that KP invested in Abridge’s Series B round last year, so it had a bit of a vested interest in making the company its sole vendor across 40 hospitals and 600+ medical offices. (link)

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States are writing their own AI healthcare rules

With the lack of federal guidance and rules in place, states are stepping up to regulate AI in healthcare, each creating their own standards to manage this rapidly evolving technology. Colorado has led the charge with a law that regulates AI's role in critical decisions, while Utah is focusing in on mental health chatbots. That said, state-by-state regulation could lead to a complex patchwork of rules that's difficult for AI developers and users to navigate, especailly as they try to scale nationally. While federal progress is slow, there’s a growing recognition of the need for consistent national standards as states continue to address the ethical and security challenges posed by AI in healthcare. (link)

Tools & Partnerships 🔧

Latest on business, consumer, and clinical healthcare AI tools and partnerships…

TOOLS

• The world’s first AI scientist: Tokyo-based Sakana AI just introduced "The AI Scientist," the world’s first AI system capable of autonomously conducting scientific research — potentially revolutionizing the scientific process. The system generates new research ideas, writes code, runs experiments, writes papers, and performs its own peer review with near-human accuracy. (link)

• Vivid Health brings AI into home healthcare: Digital health startup Vivid Health is a multispecialty care management platform that leverages generative AI to create patient care plans. The solution is particularly well suited for the home health sector, which struggles with capacity and burnout. (link)

• Fair Square Medicare builds AI voice agents for senior plan enrollment: Startup Fair Square Medicare is using advancements with generative AI to build AI-based voice agents to screen seniors for Medicare coverage and improve the customer experience. (link)

• New METRIC-framework for assessing data quality for trustworthy AI in medicine: The authors developed the METRIC framework, a specialized data quality framework for medical training data. It has five categories and 15 sub-dimensions through which researchers and healthcare entities can evaluate their data fitness for the task at hand. (link)

• Caregility debuts first edge-based computer vision AI capability for healthcare: Caregility debuted a first-of-its-kind fall risk detection capability for its iObserver solution, which uses computer vision to analyze visual data, detect potential hazards, and alert caregivers accordingly. (link)

• Opkit rolls out AI call center for medical practices: The contact center solution released its human-in-the-loop GenAI calling platform, which handles payer-facing calls for insurance verification, claims, and prior authorization, as well as prescription checks, and calls to collect medical records. (link)

• Exdion’s new AI tool provides real-time medical coding feedback: The urgent care-focused RCM platform released a new AI tool that provides real-time coding feedback. (link)

PARTNERSHIPS

• Northwestern Medicine + Microsoft’s Nuance: Northwestern Medicine plans to deploy AI-powered clinical documentation from Microsoft’s subsiadary Nuance across the health system and its Epic EHR. The pilot resulted in a 24% drop in note time and a 17% decrease in after-hours work. Northwestern Medicine has 11 hospitals and over 200 locations. (link)

• Memorial Sloan Kettering + Absci: AI antibody generator Absci inks cancer collaboration with Memorial Sloan Kettering. Absci has joined up with Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Cancer Center on a project to co-develop as many as six potential antibody therapies. (link)

Deal Desk 💸 

Spotlight on latest capital raises, M&A, and investments…

FUNDING

• Caresyntax, an SF surgical data analysis platform, raised $80M in Series C extension funding from PFM Health Sciences, BlackRock Innovation Capital, MTIP, Bioniq Capital, Pictet Alternative Advisors, Surgical.ai, Aescuvest, Optum Ventures, Cure Capital, Relyens Group, Vesalius Biocapital, Lauxera Capital, Plug & Play, and ProAssurance Corp. It also secured $100m in debt. (link)

• MD Ally, a New York-based virtual triage startup, raised $14M in Series A funding. Frist Cressey Ventures led, and was joined by Techstars, Seae Ventures, Red & Blue Ventures, and Alumni Ventures. (link)

• Levels, a NYC-based food and health software company, raised $10M in a Series A extension from Long Journey, a16z, and others. (link)

• Clare&me, a Berlin, Germany-based AI mental health tech startup, raised $4M in funding. The round was led by YZR with participation from Kodori Ventures, Material Ventures, angels, and Antler. (link)

• Guardoc Health, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based AI platform for nurses, raised $3M in seed funding. Pitango led the round and was joined by Bertelsmann Investments, Springbank, and Fresh.fund. (link)

GRANTS

• The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), will invest $500M over 10 years to support AI-driven life science projects across its research community. (link)

Other Relevant News 🔍

News, podcasts, blogs, tweets, resources, etc…

• Dr. Pearl: The AI-powered future of healthcare (link)

• Should we trust AI in medicine? (link)

• Where Cleveland Clinic is piloting AI (link)

• Top 10 cities for healthcare AI jobs (link)

• The dangers of healthcare generative AI 'drift' (link)

• 5 myths about AI in healthcare (link)

Visuals of the Week 📸

Funny memes, cool pics, and interesting data from around the web…