Healthcare AI Guy Weekly Newsletter | 10/31

Our Picks ✨

Highlights if you’ve only got 2 minutes…

1/

Abridge raises $30M in Series B funding

Abridge, which launched in 2018, just landed $30M in Series B funding from Spark Capital and big-name strategic players like CVS Health, Kaiser Permanente, and Mayo Clinic. Abridge's AI converts a patient-clinician conversation into a structured clinical note draft in real time and integrates it into the EMR. Apparently, clinicians edit less than 9% of the notes.

Abridge is steadily ascending in the competitive AI scribe space, thanks to its active pursuit of strategic partnerships. Epic brought them on as the first startup in its new Partners and Pals program, and they’ve also managed to partner with key health systems such as UPMC, Emory Healthcare, and the University of Kansas Health System.

With other impressive solutions like Nuance, Suki, and Nabla in the mix, the competition is fierce but Abridge’s recent major funding round puts them in a really strong position. (link)

2/

Biden administration to unveil AI regulation executive order

The White House is scheduled to unveil a long-anticipated artificial intelligence executive order soon, which would be the US government’s most significant attempt to date to regulate AI.

The executive order could deploy numerous federal agencies to monitor the risks of AI and develop new uses for the technology while attempting to protect workers. The executive order would streamline high-skilled immigration, create a raft of new government offices and task forces and pave the way for the use of more AI in nearly every facet of life, from healthcare to education, trade to housing, and more.

We hope this can provide guardrails in order to accelerate AI development in the US and allow high-skilled immigrants to come here and build. (link)

3/

Large language models propagate race-based medicine

A new study found that major AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Google's Bard are prone to spreading false or debunked medical info when asked certain race-related questions. Details from the study:

• Researchers asked the chatbots 9 questions on race and medicine - with all four models giving concerning and inaccurate responses.

• The chatbots appeared to use outdated, debunked race-based formulas for calculating things like kidney function and lung capacity.

• The findings could potentially worsen health disparities if used in clinical settings without oversight.

The study highlights a significant issue, bias and misinformation in AI systems. Proper oversight and auditing of data will be important to prevent situations like this and for the users of AI to know the technology’s bias and limitations at this point in time. (link)

Tool Box 🧰

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

🔧 HealthGPT: Samsung subsidiary Harman, unveiled ‘HealthGPT’, a private model fine-tuned on healthcare-specific datasets such as clinical trial data and medical records. (link)

🔧 AI to predict irregular heartbeat: Cardiologists just developed an AI algorithm that can predict A-Fib a month before onset by finding subtle EKG patterns. The machine learning model crunches data human doctors can't easily see, catching potential cardiac events before they happen. (link)

🤝 eClinicalWorks + Sunoh.ai: eClinicalWorks, the largest ambulatory cloud EHR, integrated with Sunoh.ai, an AI-powered ambient listening technology that enables providers to use natural language to seamlessly generate clinical documentation during in-office appointments and televisits. (link)

🤝 Sharp Healthcare + EvoNexus: Sharp HealthCare, based in San Diego, has teamed up with the local incubator EvoNexus to assess advanced medical technology such as AI. (link)

Deal Desk 💸 

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

📈 Abridge: a software provider for automating clinical documentation based in Pittsburgh, raised $30M in Series B funding. Spark Capital led and was joined by Bessemer Venture Partners and others. (link)

📈 Signos: a health data and weight management platform based in San Fransisco, raised $20M in Series B funding. Cheyenne Ventures and Google Ventures led the round and were joined by Dexcom Ventures and Samsung Next. (link)

📈 PhaseV: a company developing machine learning technology designed to analyze clinical trial data based in Israel, raised $15M in new funding. Viola Ventures and Exor Ventures led and was joined by others. (link)

📈 Heidi Health: a provider of documentation automation for health care providers based in Australia, raised A$10M in Series A funding. Blackbird Ventures led, and was joined by others. (link)

📈 RadiantGraph: an AI platform designed to increase customer engagement for healthcare companies based in San Fransisco, raised $5M in seed funding. True Ventures and XYZ Ventures led the round and were joined by Remus Capital. (link)

Other Relevant News 🔍

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

• AI already helping physicians make better diagnoses (link)

• Moody’s: AI can improve revenue cycle operations, but with risk of attacks, breaches (link)

• AI’s evolving role in drug discovery and development in 2023 (link)

• Researchers use machine learning to review medication errors (link)

• Apple considers using $3,500 headset to diagnose, treat mental illness (link)

• Large language models propagate race-based medicine (link)

• FDA revs up AI clearances, on pace to jump more than 30% year-over-year (link)

• Digital health market survey showing how AI is shaking up investment strategies (link)

• Generalist models could overcome some limitations of first-generation machine-learning tools for clinical use (link)

• AI, machine learning top health CIO priorities in 2023 link)

• A robot for doing lashes (tweet)

AI Images of the Week 📸

Funny memes and pics from around the web…