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Healthcare AI Guy Weekly Newsletter | 12/12

Healthcare AI Guy Weekly Newsletter | 12/12

CB Insights ‘Digital Health 50’, The Godfather of AI likes healthcare, EU AI Act, and more

Healthcare AI Guy
December 12, 2023

Welcome back everyone —

As always, appreciate the support. Healthcare AI Guy is nothing without its readers so thank you! We’ll cover the following stories this week:

CB Insights ‘Digital Health 50’
The Godfather of AI likes healthcare
EU AI Act
New tools/partnerships, funding updates & link-worthy content

Our Picks ✨

Highlights if you’ve only got 2 minutes…

CB Insights ‘Digital Health 50’

CB Insights released its annual rankings of the top 50 most promising digital health startups. The list leaned heavily towards diagnosis/imaging and care management companies, but AI was a huge theme this year. This year’s winning cohort contains 33 companies with AI-augmented solutions. Many are developing new ways to analyze data from monitoring devices or imaging, using AI to make quicker diagnoses and to help clinicians determine the right treatment for each patient. Some of our favorite AI-related healthcare startups are listed below:

Atropos Health: leverages AI to transform medical data into real-world evidence, closing evidence gaps in medicine and expediting research speed.
Rad AI: Radiologist-led AI company, using machine learning to streamline repetitive tasks for radiologists.
care.ai: uses AI to improve healthcare facility management and patient care, moving towards more predictive, smart care facilities.
RapidAI: uses AI to diagnose neurovascular, cardiac and vascular diseases with data from 10+ million scans and +2,000 hospitals worldwide.
Atomic AI: leveraging AI to enable the design of RNA-targeting small molecules and RNA-based medicines.

Pretty cool to see so many companies building cutting-edge tech for clinicians and healthcare organizations. Can’t wait to see all the innovation in 2024! (link)

The Godfather of AI likes healthcare

The Godfather of AI, Geoffery Hinton, and famed physician, Eric Topol, sat down for one of the best healthcare AI interviews to date. Mr. Hinton shared his views on AI in healthcare, how LLMs understand and exhibit empathy, and concerns about safety going forward. Some of my favorite quotes below:

“I always pivot to medicine as an example of all the good it can do because almost everything it's going to do there is going to be good. There are some bad uses like trying to figure out who to not insure, but they're relatively limited almost certainly it's going to be extremely helpful. We're going to have a family doctor who's seen a hundred million patients and they're going to be a much better family doctor.”

The Godfather of AI

“In 2016, I made a daring and incorrect prediction that within five years, the neural nets were going to be better than radiologists that interpreting medical scans…at the present time, they're comparable. This is like seven years later. They're comparable with radiologists for many different kinds of medical scans. And I believe that in 10 years they'll be routinely used to give a second opinion and maybe in 15 years they'll be so good at giving second opinions that the doctor's opinion will be the second one.”

The Godfather of AI

I recommend you take a listen if you have the time. It’s energizing to hear one of the great AI technologists seem so optimistic about its impact. AI in healthcare is clearly very real and going to bring sweeping changes to the industry. Don’t worry, we’ll keep you up to date on all the happenings here at Healthcare AI Guy! (link)

EU AI Act

After many talks, EU officials just struck a tentative deal establishing the world's first comprehensive legal framework governing AI systems. AI regulation is a polarizing issue — some think it could help adoption in industries like healthcare and others think it could be premature and hinders development. Regardless of where it truly lands, Europe (to no surprise) made the first major move in regulating the technology. Details below:

The Artificial Intelligence Act aims to ensure oversight of high-risk AI through transparency, risk management, and human review.
It covers controversial areas like the use of facial recognition, with compromises allowing law enforcement applications.
The act will be officially voted on early next year and won’t take effect until at least 2025.

Again, as we’ve stated in the past, regulation has served as an accelerant for tech adoption in healthcare (ex. Meaningful Use rule) but has also prevented a lot of builders from pursuing healthtech ideas due to the strict and limiting rules, making this issue a double-edged sword. We generally believe regulation as just proposed by the EU is premature, not to mention filled with wide and vague statements. One thing is for certain, the EU will likely not be the place for leading innovation. (link)

Tool Box 🧰

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

🔧 athenahealth AI features: athenahealth announced a range of new AI capabilities through athenaOne, its integrated suite of EHR, rev cycle, and engagement solutions. New features include automated inbox response drafting, identification of missing prior auth info, care plan summarization, and “one-click” action tasks at the top of the provider’s list. (link)

🔧 Incredible Health adds AI for hiring: Incredible Health added AI tools for both healthcare employers and employees. Nurses can build high-quality resumes and health system recruiters have new tools to help review applications and generate customized outreach highlighting why candidates are a good fit. (link)

🔧 AI determines organ age from blood: Stanford researchers developed an AI model that can tell the age of individual organs by analyzing blood proteins, a breakthrough that could pave the way for a new generation of diagnostics. (link)

🤝 Hippocratic AI Partnerships: Hippocratic AI launched the ‘Early Access Partnership Program’ to co-develop AI with industry stakeholders. The program will work to identify workflows in need of an LLM overhaul and pilot early use cases.OhioHealth, Roper St. Francis Healthcare, Evernow, HarmonyCares, Guidehealth and others have already signed up. (link)

Deal Desk 💸

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

📈 Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology: a new biotech initiative aiming to develop "DNA typewriter" technology raised $75M from tech billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg & Melissa Chan. (link)

📈 InpharmD: a platform designed to provide AI-powered responses to clinical health questions raised $6M in seed funding. 645 Ventures led the round and was joined by Atlanta Ventures, Y Combinator, Qlarant Capital, and others. (link)

📈 Abridge: SCAN Health Plan, a nonprofit MA plan invested in Abridge, an AI-medical documentation startup. SCAN has offered Abridge's products to select members since 2021. (link)