Healthcare AI Guy Weekly Newsletter | 6/13

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Highlights if you’ve only got 2 minutes…

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AI will save the world

When the guy who basically created the modern-day internet speaks, people listen… Marc Andreessen responds to all the AI doom and gloom and offers his optimistic view of a world integrated with AI. Five key takeaways from his essay:

1) AI won’t kill you because it’s not alive: "AI is not a living being...it is math – code – computers, built by people, owned by people, used by people, controlled by people.”

2) AI can make everything we care about better: "Every child will have an AI tutor that is infinitely patient... compassionate...knowledgeable, infinitely helpful...by each child’s side every step of their development, helping them maximize their potential."

3) AI will not cause mass unemployment: "In fact AI, if allowed to develop and proliferate throughout the economy, may cause the most dramatic and sustained economic boom of all time, with correspondingly record job and wage growth – the exact opposite of the fear."

4) The greatest risk of AI is that it makes it easier for bad people to do bad things: "Any technology can be used for good or bad. Fair enough. And AI will make it easier for criminals, terrorists, and hostile governments to do bad things, no question."

5) It’s time to build: “We should drive AI into our economy and society as fast and hard as we possibly can, in order to maximize its gains for economic productivity and human potential.”

Overall, Marc believes intelligent human attributes are what make lives better, and AI is a way to enhance this aspect of us through AI teachers, AI coaches, AI assistants, and more. He argues that AI panic is irrational and reminiscent of historic cult behavior and instead of slowing down, small and big firms alike should be able to accelerate development in order for the US to win the global AI race.

AI is intelligence. Intelligence is the fundamental building block for improving things. Up until now, the application of human intelligence has been the building block for improving things. Now, if we have machine intelligence working with us on improving the world, it will be much more impactful! (link)(twitter spaces)

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Apple’s (“healthcare”) updates from WWDC 2023

If you use Twitter, or the internet..ha, then you know there’s no way of escaping news from Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference. Makes sense given they’re the largest company in the world (+$3T market cap) and touch billions of consumers. Although it’s not technically AI, there were two relevant product announcements for healthcare:

1. Vision Pro headset

2. Mental health mood tracking

1) Vision Pro headset: Apple’s new AR headset allows people to access apps, write documents, etc in a virtual world. There was a brief medical demo during the event exploring an exploded view of the human heart anatomy. It’s a very early and minimal use case but you can see the “vision” 😉 or one could imagine it being used for patients as the tweet below suggests. What we do know though is it’s time to invest in ophthalmologist clinics as everyone will soon have two 4k screens glued to their eyes…

2) Mental health mood tracking: Apple took a step closer to mental health and filling a gap in its product lineup of mood tracking. I don’t think this will solve any root issues but it will help consumers track how they feel and correlate mood with other metrics such as exercise and sleep.

The AI-related news was slim, but there is a new autocorrect that will learn your frequently used words and some other updates. Overall, Apple is well positioned to make further impacts in healthcare due to its mass scale, tech mastery, and history of creating world-class products.

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AI is projected to grow faster in healthcare than any other industry 

According to Boston Consulting Group, generative AI is projected to grow faster in healthcare than any other sector. The total market size for AI in healthcare is expected to go from $1B in 2022 to $22B in 2027, which is a compounded annual growth rate of 85%! 

The study includes a repository of more than 60 use cases across the entire value chain, from R&D and software development to operations, marketing and sales, customer support, and corporate functions. In addition to improving business processes, AI can shape how medical services are provided. For example:

• Enhance image quality and improve the accuracy of diagnostics

  (Paige & Pictor Labs)

• Automate certain patient-clinician interactions to free up time

  (Corti & Microsoft+Nuance & Hyro)

• Provide guidance along medical workflows

  (Activ Surgical & Kaliber Labs)

• Identify health anomalies and develop personalized treatment plans (DiagnaMed)

BCG thinks that healthcare companies can start to incorporate generative AI into products and services, which will improve performance and lead to better patient outcomes. (link)

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Real-time AI use cases in healthcare from Google & Carbon Health

Utilizing AI tech to improve business processes and go after administrative bloat is one of the technology’s most promising use cases in healthcare. Luckily, Google and Carbon Health are all over it this week with some key updates on how they're helping alleviate administrative burdens for providers.

Google Cloud announced it is collaborating with Mayo Clinic to test its new service called “Enterprise Search on Generative AI App Builder.” This tool helps to create customized chatbots, powered by Google’s AI, to sift through vast amounts of internal data. (link) (more in “Tool Box 🧰” section below)

Carbon Health (which we noted last week) is using its AI-based health record software to monitor in-person and virtual appointments and automatically record “near-complete notes” of the encounter within minutes (~90% of submitted transcripts require no editing). Carbon raised about $750M in venture funding ($100M earlier this year) and “has been developing the AI-based health record software over the past few months and began using it on patients last month. 200 of its 600 clinicians are already using it during appointments and Carbon is onboarding about 25 additional clinicians each day. (link)

It’s clear, health tech companies are eager to partner with health systems to squeeze cost and time savings out of LLMs and generative AI and are starting with information handling and record keeping. Improving efficiency should help lower costs and improve the care delivery experience, which will positively impact all stakeholders — payors, providers, and consumers!

Miscellaneous 🔍

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

• Kaiser Permanente to test AI in AIM-HI program (link)

• Health system-scale language models are all-purpose prediction engines (link)

• AI potentially improving practices for predicting Breast Cancer risk (link)

• Health AI Partnership seeks input from clinicians (link)

• The EU is considering enforcing AI-generated content to be labeled to fight disinformation (link)

• Google & Microsoft released FREE generative AI courses (link / link)

• AI may help Pharma deliver personalized medicine (link) 

• OpenAI’s very own guide on how to effectively use GPT (link)

• Paul Graham, famous entrepreneur / VC, tweets on AI investments (link)

Venture Capital Deals 💸

Spotlight on latest capital raises and investments…

📈 Cohere: a generative AI startup based in Toronto, raised $270M in Series C funding. Inovia led the round and was joined by Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce Ventures, DTCP, Mirae Asset, Schroders Capital, SentinelOne, Thomvest Ventures, and Index Ventures. Cohere’s AI platform is uniquely designed for enterprises, offering data-secure deployment options in companies’ existing cloud environments, customization, and customer support. Cohere says its mission is to transform enterprises and their products with AI that unlocks a more intuitive way to generate, search, and summarize information. (link)

📈 Contextual AI: a developer of enterprise-focused language models, raised $20M in seed funding. Bain Capital Ventures led and was joined by Lightspeed Venture Partners Greycroft and SV Angel. Contextual AI claims to create LLMs that are purpose-built for enterprises, such that they respect data privacy, are safer, more trustworthy, more customizable, and more efficient than the current generation of LLMs. (link)

📈 Laudio: a provider of healthcare operations management software based in Massachusetts, raised $13M in Series B funding. Define Ventures led, and was joined by insiders .406 Ventures, InHealth Ventures, MemorialCare Innovation Fund, and TeleTracking Technologies. Laudio offers an integrated product to scale frontline managers and ease their burden in prioritizing work across people, patient experience, quality, and operations. (link)

Tool Box 🧰

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

🔧 Google Cloud + Mayo Clinic: Google Cloud and Mayo Clinic announced that they’re collaborating “to develop a generative AI-enabled enterprise search capability for the system’s healthcare providers and researchers.” The solution will give medical professionals the ability to quickly find patient data quickly via a straightforward query, even if the information is spread across different formats and locations. Mayo’s CTO said “AI can be applied to relieve longstanding administrative burdens, such as the hours clinicians now must spend writing letters to get prior authorization.” (link)

🔧 LeanTaaS: LeanTaaS rolled out an AI autopilot in beta that can do things like enable hospital administrators to ask for real-time recommendations on capacity optimization management or discuss best practices before shifting case volumes. With the new tool, LeanTaaS is aiming to bring “air traffic control” to healthcare — managing patient flow and capacity optimization across the continuum of care on one platform. The AI autopilot will be embedded in the iQueue platform, which is used in operating rooms. (link) (demo)

🔧 Clarify Health: Clarify Health launched Clara, its AI copilot, to select healthcare organizations. The Clara copilot technology is set to empower healthcare delivery organizations to access insights into influenceable behavior changes that matter in lowering the cost and improving the quality of care. (link)

AI Images of the Week 📸

Funny memes and pics from around the web…