Healthcare AI Guy Weekly Newsletter | 10/3

Our Picks ✨

Highlights if you’ve only got 2 minutes…

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OpenAI is in the arena…

OpenAI has had a busy week to say the least! We have five notable updates to share:

• $90B valuation announced: OpenAI in talks to raise new funding.

• New AI hardware device: former Apple designer Jony Ive & OpenAI's Sam Altman are discussing building a new AI hardware device. Softbank's Masayoshi Son is also involved.

• New voice dictation/image recognition features: ChatGPT now offers multimodal support for images and voice search.

• ChatGPT can now browse the internet: ChatGPT users can use the Browse with Bing plugin, enabling live web querying.

• Partnership with Hint Health: see below.

OpenAI is partnering with Hint Health on a new AI-powered clinical documentation platform. The aim is to help the thousands of primary care physicians using the Hint platform to spend more time with patients and less time taking notes, as they will be auto-generated using OpenAI’s Whisper API. With all these updates OpenAI is clearly continuing to make massive strides in AI and is looking to penetrate healthcare as well. (link)(tweet)

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Nuance goes live with DAX copilot

Microsoft-owned Nuance Communications announced the general availability of DAX Copilot, formerly ‘DAX Express’, opening it up to over 550,000 active Dragon Medical users. Talk about scale!

DAX Copilot is the first ambient clinical documentation app to combine conversational AI with GPT-4, which allows it to securely generate draft notes for immediate review by eliminating the need for a human quality checker. Similar to the Hint Health news, AI tech like DAX Copilot should greatly help reduce physician burnout and improve physician-patient relationships. (link)

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AI in healthcare case study: $44M saved!

A hospital system, Avera McKennan, utilized AI to determine observation vs. inpatient status and saved $44 million! The Avera McKennan teamed up with MCG Health, a healthcare analytics and software provider, to use their AI solution to monitor patient-specific data in the EHR and prioritize cases in real-time for review. Results below:

• Cost Savings: with the assistive AI features the hospital was able to determine the appropriate level of patient care faster (increase in obs. vs. inpatient conversion rate) and save $44M in avoided costs over 3 years.

• Time Savings: reduced inpatient stay/concurrent review times by 1 hour per nurse. The team was able to review 60 additional beds and two ERs with the same number of FTEs.

It’s nice to see more and more case studies highlighting the impact AI can have in streamlining care ops. Given the growing macro issues in healthcare (labor shortage, burnout, increased costs) any increased efficiency is welcomed! (link)

Tool Box 🧰

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

🔧 Reveleer: Reveleer, a health tech company focused on value-based care, has unveiled two new suites of solutions for risk-bearing providers. The company helps payers manage risk adjustment and quality improvement in-house, using machine learning to simplify the process of collecting member data and improving outcomes. (link)

🔧 Komodo Health: Komodo Health, a health data company, launched ‘MapLab’ to let anyone from commercial teams to clinicians generate insights and answer research questions leveraging its dataset of 330M de-identified patient journeys. Through customizable dashboards and an AI assistant, MapLab enables users to visualize data such as risk factors in a specific population, disparities at the point of care, or uptake of a new drug. (link)

🔧 Mercy Health + Microsoft: Microsoft and Mercy announced a partnership to explore generative AI, cloud technology and other tools that could lighten the load on employees. (link)

🔧 Sentara Health + Regard: Sentara Health is expanding AI-powered clinical documentation to all 12 of its hospitals. The AI from Regard scans EHR data to recommend diagnoses and draft notes for clinicians that they then review, edit and sign. (link)

🔧 WHOOP Coach: WHOOP unveils first wearable with AI coaching for personalized performance recommendations. (link)

🔧 Athelas Scribe: Transform the clinical intake process, delivering unmatched results in record time. (link)

Deal Desk 💸 

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

📈 Harbinger Health: a developer of cancer screening and detection technologies based in Cambridge, MA raised $140M in Series B funding. Founding investor Flagship Pioneering was joined by Pictet, Partners Investment and M&G Investments. (link)

📈 Health Data Analytics Institute: a maker of clinical decision support software for health systems based in Dedham, MA, raised $31M in Series C funding led by Invus. (link)

📈 Cognition Corporation: a data management and automation platform for the life sciences industries based in Lexington, MA, raised $6M in funding from Spring Lake Equity Partners and members of Cognition’s management team. (link)

📈 Meeno: an AI-powered app that gives relationship advice to users raised $3.9M in seed funding. Sequoia Capital led the round and was joined by AI Fund and NEA. (link)

📈 Atropos Health: a AI-powered clinical support tool and real-world data platform based in California completed a strategic financing round with participation from Sumitomo Corporation Venture Group's Presidio Ventures, Samsung Next, Audere Capital, Gaingels and other investors. (link)

Miscellaneous 🔍

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

• AI, Implants form ‘digital bridge’ to help paralyzed man move arms (link)

• Health system leaders view generative AI as a way to cut costs (link)

• Microsoft-owned Nuance announces data breach affecting 1.2M patients (link)

• AI is most exciting emerging tech in annual survey of hospital execs (link)

• Mayo Clinic among first to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot (link)

• 5 questions about the reality of AI in healthcare (link)

• ‘State of CareOps 2023’ survey results (link)

• Costco is pushing into healthcare (link)

AI Images of the Week 📸

Funny memes and pics from around the web…