Healthcare AI Guy Weekly Newsletter | 5/7

Interested in AI in healthcare? Start tracking along with 5000+ readers (UHG, a16z, Google, etc)

Want to get in front of healthcare AI enthusiasts? Respond to this email!

Our Picks ✨

Highlights if you’ve only got 2 minutes…

1/

Google announces Med-Gemini for medical tasks

Google just introduced Med-Gemini, a suite of AI models fine-tuned for healthcare — which sets new records across a wide range of medical benchmarks. Here are some quick highlights:

• Med-Gemini outperforms top models (including GPT-4) on 10 out of 14 tasks.

• The model achieved a 91.1% accuracy rate on the MedQA benchmark, surpassing human performance in certain medical text-processing tasks.

• Med-Gemini excels at extracting and analyzing data from electronic health records, significantly reducing the cognitive load on healthcare professionals.

• The model incorporates web search information to provide more reliable and up-to-date answers to complex medical questions.

• Med-Gemini excels at analyzing medical images, videos, and health records, as well as engaging in realistic dialogues about patient cases.

Google has forked its Gemini model into a medical powerhouse, showing off AI’s broad potential to assist in healthcare. Google seems to be trending in the right direction again in the AI space (reflected by its current stock price). I think the healthcare industry will see more and more fine-tuned AI models trained on niche tasks and data. (link)

2/

AI-powered alert system saves lives

A new study of 16,000 patients in Taiwan found that an AI intervention system significantly reduced deaths in hospitals. The AI system was used to enhance electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis for identifying hospitalized patients at high risk of mortality. Here are the main takeaways:

• The AI was trained on over 450,000 ECG tests and survival data to predict a patient’s risk of death and alert physicians to those at high risk.

• In the trial, the AI alerted physicians when a patient’s ECG indicated they were in the top 5% risk category.

• The AI intervention reduced overall deaths by 31% and deaths from heart issues by over 90% for high-risk patients.

This trial showcases the potential of AI to save lives in healthcare settings — while working with physicians, not replacing them. AI alert systems like these will be standard in the future, providing more rapid, targeted care to those in need. (link)

3/

Biomedical AI for everyone

Superbio is leveling the playing field for AI in biotech & healthcare. The company provides a software platform that hosts 650+ of the industry’s most advanced AI/ML tools, making AI in life sciences universally accessible and helping researchers and clinicians accelerate discovery. Thousands of scientists and clinicians use their AI platform today for drug discovery, protein design, literature review, and more. The company recently launched two new products:

• SearchBio: Using in-house LLM expertise, the Superbio team just launched SearchBio, a GPT tool capable of searching and summarizing 200 million papers in less than a minute. (link)

• Enterprise: Superbio also recently rolled out an enterprise offering to assist companies with their digital transformation in 2024. The company sources the latest AI/ML technologies from the scientific community and has already worked with Google Health, MIT, and others to distribute these tools to the wider community. (link)

Improving usability and lowering the barrier to entry is a key piece in adopting AI in medicine. Companies like Superbio are bridging that gap between AI developers and end-users in the field. Their platform combines the top software, biomedical knowledge, education, & community-building together to realize the full potential of AI for human health. We wish them continued success! (link)

Tools & Partnerships 🔧

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

TOOLS

• AI model predicts drug effectiveness: Ohio State University researchers just developed CURE, an AI model that can accurately estimate drug treatment effects and effectiveness without clinical trials. The model is trained on de-identified health records of over 3M patients, allowing it to gain a deep understanding of patient characteristics. CURE outperformed seven other leading AI models in treatment effectiveness predictions, with improvements of 7-8% on key benchmarks. (link)

• Augmedix Go launch: Following a successful pilot at HCA Healthcare, Augmedix announced the general availability of Augmedix Go, which it’s calling the “first fully-automated GenAI-powered medical documentation product for EDs.” Incubating the product at HCA reportedly allowed Augmedix to fine-tune its AI to the unique challenges of clinical documentation in the ED, such as capturing multiple non-sequential interactions with a single patient in a noisy environment. (link)

• AI helps OhioHealth doctors focus on patients: OhioHealth has implemented DAX Copilot, Microsoft’s subsidiary Nuance’s AI scribe tool, in its primary care practices to assist doctors by producing clinical notes during patient visits. The technology is currently used by about 100 practitioners with positive feedback from medical staff. (link)

PARTNERSHIPS

• Intermountain Health + Nuance: Intermountain Health is rolling out an AI copilot from Microsoft’s Nuance enterprisewide. The health system will deploy Nuance’s DAX Copilot to physicians and advanced practice providers across its system. (link)

• Kaiser Permanente + Innovaccer: Kaiser Permanente is deploying Innovaccer’s AI platform and population health management solutions to over 650k members in Washington. Kaiser’s VP of AI said that their goal on AI is to find areas where the tech can complement its physicians to boost quality of care, which is aligned with Innovaccer’s ability to provide an EHR- and payer-agnostic platform for advancing value-based care. (link)

Deal Desk 💸 

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

FUNDING

• Innovaccer, a data platform for value-based care, is in talks to raise $250M at a $2.5B to $3B valuation. Kaiser is rumored to be among the lead investors according to TechCrunch. (link)

• Transcarent, Glen Tullman’s employer healthcare platform, raised a $126M Series D led by General Catalyst and 7wireVentures, joined by new investors Geodesic Capital and Memorial Hermann Health System, with support from previous investors Threshold Ventures, Kinnevik, Ally Bridge Group, Human Capital, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Alta Partners, and Leaps by Bayer. (link)

• Vitestro, a Netherlands-based developer of autonomous blood drawing technology, raised $22M in funding. Sonder Capital and NYBC Ventures led the round and were joined by Invest-NL, the European Innovation Council Fund, and existing investors. (link)

• Trovo Health, an AI-powered platform backed by a multidisciplinary care team to help providers extend their capabilities, raised $15M to launch its platform. The fundraise was led by Oak HC/FT. (link)

• Opmed.ai, a Boston-based AI-powered operating room scheduling and management platform, raised $15M in Series A funding. NFX and Grove Ventures led the round and were joined by Secret Chord Ventures and others. (link)

• Piction Health, which started as a mobile app that uses AI to recognize skin conditions from pictures, just raised $6M in seed funding to build out its virtual dermatology clinic. (link)

Other Relevant News 🔍

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

• Burden of documentation among factors pushing physician burnout to historical levels (link)

• What’s behind all these assessments of digital health? (link)

• Transparency, training could help nurses adopt AI (link)

• Are you ready for AI to be a better doctor than you? (link)

• Democratizing medical expertise with AI (link)

• Accenture report on genAI: work, workforce, workers reinvented (link)

Visuals of the Week 📸

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