Healthcare AI Guy Weekly Newsletter | 11/21

Our Picks ✨

Highlights if you’ve only got 2 minutes…

1/

Chaos at OpenAI

Although it’s not healthcare specific, it's a classic Silicon Valley tale too good to ignore and involves the darling of the AI boom, OpenAI. Sam Altman's bid to return to OpenAI after being ousted late on Friday has failed, with the board not agreeing to the proposed terms of his reinstatement in a drama-filled weekend. Instead, Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch and a prior partner to Sam Altman at Y Combinator, has been named interim CEO, while Sam - as well as OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman - joined a new AI team at Microsoft. Expect more OpenAIers to jump ship. A breakdown of the timeline below:

• Friday noon: OpenAI board fires Sam Altman.

• Friday night: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI. Sam found out 30 mins before the news, and Greg only got 5 mins.

• Friday late night: Three senior researchers at OpenAI leave.

• Saturday: The Board reconsiders bringing Sam and Greg back.

• Saturday night: Dozens of OpenAI employees repost Sam’s tweet: “i love the openai team so much”

• Sunday noon: Sam is back in the Open AI office but with a guest tag as execs push to reinstate them.

• Sunday Night: in order of reveal…

  • Sam Altman is NOT returning as CEO of OpenAI. Emmet Shear is the new interim CEO of OpenAI.

  • Satya Nadella brings Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and colleagues to join Microsoft.

• Monday: majority of OpenAI team threatens to quit unless board resigns.

A lot to say and analyze here. From OpenAI’s corporate structure, to accelerate vs decelerate, to the implications of the breakup, the list goes on… in short, all parties are in a worse-off position but Microsoft looks like they are walking away with the prize. (link)

2/ 

Forward Health launches AI-powered CarePods

Health startup Forward Health just raised $100M in funding and introduced CarePods, standalone stations that provide medical tests and diagnosis using AI — without needing onsite doctors. Pretty innovative!

CarePods use AI layered on top of full-body scans, diagnostic tools, and lab tests to generate care plans called Health Apps, which patients can access via the Forward mobile app. Breakdown on how it works:

• You unlock the CarePod using your smartphone, then step in to find a large touchscreen and a glowing ring on the floor that marks the full-body scanner.

• A voice starts guiding you through the process, and the screen begins serving up Health Apps for conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and anxiety.

• Depending on the selection, a drawer will open with the sensors needed to perform the test, as well as a needleless collection device to draw blood for any lab work.

• After the ~15min process, the diagnosis is displayed on the screen and an AI-generated care plan gets reviewed by a physician and pushed to the app.

The reaction has been mixed, some think this will never work and others celebrate the innovation. I think it will still take time to build public trust in AI and given Forward doesn’t accept insurance there will be cost barriers, however, I applaud companies for taking risks and thinking outside of the box (no pun intended). Models like this might help increase accessibility and lower the cost of care delivery long term. (link)

3/

GenAI in the enterprise — Menlo Ventures

Menlo Ventures released a report on ‘The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise’ and found that adoption is trailing the hype. Details below:

• Generative AI still represents less than 1% of cloud spend by surveyed enterprises, including just an 8% increase in 2023.

• Safety and ROI continue to be prime concerns, and the tangible advantages of being first movers remain uncertain.

• Big Tech incumbents like Microsoft, including its Github unit, may have an advantage to startups.

• All of that said, Menlo still believes strongly in the long-term opportunity — particularly via infrastructure stacks — and is investing heavily.

Although consumers quickly embraced generative AI, enterprise AI adoption is likely to be slower, resembling early enterprise adoption of cloud computing. Expect healthcare to lag the trend. (link)

Tool Box 🧰

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

🔧 Toku: Toku’s AI platform predicts heart conditions by scanning inside your eye. The AI-powered retina scan technology, CLAiR, uses AI to “read” tiny signals from the blood vessels captured in the retinal images and can calculate heart disease risk, hypertension or high cholesterol in 20 seconds. (link)

🔧 Microsoft + Be My Eyes: Microsoft just partnered with the mobile app Be My Eyes to bring AI-powered visual assistance to blind customers. Using GPT-4, digital visual assistant ‘Be My AI’ resolves issues in just four minutes without human agents. (link)

🔧 AI to predict heart attack risks: An Oxford study, funded by the British Heart Foundation, reveals that AI can predict heart attack risks up to a decade in advance. The study, which focused on improving the accuracy of cardiac CT scans for detecting arterial blockages has demonstrated the ability to accurately forecast heart attack risks. (link)

Deal Desk 💸 

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

📈 Forward Health: an SF-based medical clinic operator, raised $100m in Series E funding from Khosla Ventures, SoftBank, and Founders Fund. (link)

📈 Vida Health: a provider of AI-powered virtual cardiometabolic services based in SF raised $28.5M from insiders General Atlantic, Ally Bridge, Canvas Ventures and Hercules Capital. (link)

📈 Sunnyside: a developer of an app with an AI coach to help people build healthier habits around alcohol raised $11.5M in Series A funding. Motley Fool Ventures led and was joined by others. (link)

📈 Inito: a startup that helps women track fertility hormones at home raised $6M in Series A funding led by Fireside Ventures. (link)

📈 Layer Health: a clinical note analysis platform raised $4M in seed funding from GV, General Catalyst and Inception Health. (link)

Other Relevant News 🔍

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

• a16z: an LLM as your front door to healthcare (link)

• Patients optimistic about AI improving healthcare access, costs (link)

• Stanford Health incorporates AI into clinical decision support systems (link)

• How AI will alter the doc-patient dynamic (link)

• Robert Pearl Interview: AI and the future of medicine (link)

• Insilico Medicine approaches late-stage trials for lung disease drug discovered by AI (link)

• UnitedHealth faces lawsuit over AI, Medicare Advantage care denials (link)

• AI deepfakes could lead to more misinformation in healthcare (link)

• Harvard Business Review: the skills employees need if you want to effectively integrate AI into your company (link)

Visuals of the Week 📸

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