Healthcare AI Guy Weekly | 7/30

Our Picks ✨

Highlights if you’ve only got 2 minutes…

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Hospital AI Readiness Index

CB Insights launched its Hospital AI Readiness Index to rank top U.S. health systems based on their preparedness for the evolving AI landscape. The index evaluates two pillars: Innovation and Execution. Mayo Clinic leads in innovation with substantial AI investments and over 50 AI patents. Intermountain ranks second, bolstered by its venture arm’s investments. Cleveland Clinic, in third, excels in AI partnerships. High execution scores went to Mayo Clinic, Banner Health, and Johns Hopkins for their successful AI integrations in clinical and administrative practices. Congratulations to the top 25 health systems on CB Insights' inaugural list! (link) (tweet)

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Abridge, Mayo Clinic, Epic new AI for nurses

Mayo Clinic, Epic, and Abridge are teaming up to sprinkle some generative AI magic into nursing workflows. This new tool, designed for nurses’ unique tasks like collecting vitals and patient care, will seamlessly integrate with Epic's EHR. At the heart of this are Mayo Clinic nurses, shaping and testing the solution to ensure it fits with their needs, workflows and regulations. Epic’s involvement signals a big leap in their GenAI roadmap. With this collaboration, we’re looking at a year-end release to help nurses tackle documentation more efficiently and reduce burnout. Exciting times ahead! (link)

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McKinsey’s 7 most promising areas for genAI in healthcare

According to McKinsey’s latest AI in healthcare report, over 70% of healthcare organizations have adopted or plan to implement genAI. 59% of organizations partner with third-party vendors, 24% build in-house, and 17% buy off-the-shelf solutions, with about 60% of early adopters reporting a positive ROI. Lastly, the survey of 100 executives revealed the top areas expected to benefit, listed below. (link)

1. Clinician/clinical productivity: 73%

2. Patient/member engagement and experience: 62%

3. Administrative efficiency and effectiveness: 60%

4. Quality of care/service delivery: 48%

5. IT/infrastructure: 42%

6. Research and education: 30%

7. Strategy and growth: 28%

Tools & Partnerships 🔧

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

TOOLS

• AI discharge planning solution saved OhioHealth $1.7M in months: Qventus, a healthtech startup, is using AI to automate health system operations, increase bed capacity, and reduce patient stay lengths, saving hospitals money. The company recently launched the third generation of its AI solution after successful beta testing at OhioHealth, where it saved nearly $1.7 million to date. (link) 

• MIT's AI identifies breast cancer risk: Researchers from MIT and ETH Zurich have developed an AI model that can identify different stages of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a type of preinvasive breast tumor, using simple tissue images. This AI model could democratize advanced breast cancer diagnostics, offering a cheaper, faster way to assess DCIS risk. (link)

• SoundHealth launches FDA-cleared AI wearable for nasal congestion: SoundHealth launched SONU, the world’s first FDA-cleared AI-powered wearable for treating moderate to severe nasal congestion. SONU utilizes acoustic resonance therapy, delivering personalized relief through gentle vibrations. (link)

• OpenAI reveals its AI search engine: OpenAI just announced SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine prototype that combines powerful AI models with information from the Internet to provide users with timely answers from relevant sources—directly challenging Google’s search dominance. (link)

• Meta has a new open-source AI model: Meta just released Llama 3.1 alongside its prized 405B model, achieving state-of-the-art performance across key benchmarks and becoming the first-ever open-sourced frontier model, marking a major milestone in open-source AI development. (link)

PARTNERSHIPS

• GE Healthcare + Amazon: GE Healthcare and AWS of Amazon have entered into a strategic collaboration to develop foundation models and genAI applications to help healthcare professionals better diagnose and manage the care of patients. (link)

• Humana + Google Cloud: Humana inked a new multiyear agreement with Google Cloud to modernize its cloud infrastructure and build out generative AI solutions. The agreement builds on an ongoing collaboration between the two companies to co-develop solutions focused on population health and advance the use of AI technologies and product for Humana members and patients. (link)

• Microsoft + Mass General Brigham, UW-Madison: Microsoft continues to deepen its work in healthcare AI. The tech giant is now collaborating with academic medical systems Mass General Brigham and the University of Wisconsin-Madison to advance AI in medical imaging. (link)

• One Health + healthPrecision: The independent primary care provider group is partnering with the AI clinician assistant to support the former’s Modern Primary Care platform. (link)

• West Tennessee Healthcare + Qventus: The seven-hospital health system is implementing the AI-enabled facility and patient flow management vendor. (link)

Deal Desk 💸 

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

FUNDING

• Pearl, an L.A. dental AI diagnosis startup, raised $58M in Series B funding led by Left Lane Capital with Smash Capital, Alpha Partners, Craft Ventures, and Neotribe Ventures also participating. (link)

• Clarapath, a White Plains, N.J. AI-powered medical robotics company, raised $36M in Series B-1 funding led by Northwell Ventures, with CU Healthcare Innovation Fund, Mayo Clinic, and Ochsner Ventures also participating. (link)

• deepc, a German AI radiology platform, raised $13M in additional Series A led by Sofinnova Partners and Bertelsmann Investments, with KHP Ventures, SwissHealth Ventures, and Winning Mindset Ventures also participating. (link)

• SoundHealth, an S.F. maker of an AI-powered breathing monitoring device, raised $7M in seed funding led by Moai Capital and J4 Ventures, with TeleSoft Partners, Tau Ventures, TechU Ventures, and Rhythm Venture Capital also participating. (link)

• ShiftRX, an Austin AI-powered pharmacy staffing and administration startup, raised $3.5M in seed funding led by Workbench, with Inflect Health, Tau and Opal Ventures also participating. (link)

• RxDiet, a NYC-based AI-powered platform designed to create medically tailored food plans, raised $3M in seed funding. Giant Ventures led the round and was joined by others. (link)

Other Relevant News 🔍

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

• The state of telemedicine in 2024 (link)

• CrowdStrike outage expected to cost healthcare $1.9B (link)

• Increasing demand and competition for AI scribes (link)

• AI an 'easy sell' for this health system (link)

• HHS hiring senior leaders to lead health tech, data and AI strategies (link)

• Who will control the future of AI? - oped by Sam Altman (link)

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Visuals of the Week 📸

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