Healthcare AI Guy Weekly Newsletter | 7/11

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Highlights if you’ve only got 2 minutes…

AI funding frenzy in full swing

Funding, funding, and more funding. Lots of people are throwing lots of cash at AI startups. Inflection AI received a $1.3B investment to create personal AI for everyone, Runway raised $141M to build the future of creativity, and Typeface pulled in $100M to build generative AI for brands. In addition, Databricks just acquired MosaicML, an OpenAI competitor building a platform for organizations to train LLMs and deploy generative AI tools based on them, for $1.3B!

AI is now the biggest spend for nearly 50% of top tech executives across the economy according to a CNBC survey, with AI budgets more than double the second-biggest spending area in tech, cloud computing.

It’s not just hype, corporate America is making huge bets on AI transforming their businesses. Big tech companies are investing billions of dollars in machine learning tools, with Dropbox, AWS, Salesforce Ventures, Workday, Accenture, and PwC all announcing significant funding initiatives. Consultants like Accenture and PwC are creating new capital pools to leverage AI to add more value to clients.

Spotify CEO’s startup for AI preventive healthcare raises $65M

The founder of ⁦Spotify, Daniel Ek, just raised $65M for his new AI healthcare company: Neko Health. The Stockholm-headquartered health tech startup aims to provide preventative healthcare through AI-powered full-body scans to detect conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.

According to the company, each scan apparently takes around 10 minutes and costs €250 ($275), and is followed by an in-person consultation where the results are explained. The team consists of 35 doctors, researchers and technicians spread across Europe, and it has a waiting list for people seeking full-body scans out of its inaugural clinic in Stockholm.

The company was originally founded in 2018 but this is the company’s first round of external funding and they plan to use the cash injection to accelerate its expansion plans, including more clinics across Europe, and investing in R&D, clinical studies, and recruitment.

A similar company that has gained traction is Prenuvo, which provides whole-body preventative health screens. Neko Health is another sign of how AI can help earlier detection and aid in the push towards preventative care. (link)

AI once again accelerates the drug discovery process

Insilico Medicine, a biotech company backed by Chinese conglomerate Fosun Group and private equity firm Warburg Pincus, is cutting costs and time in drug discovery using generative AI.

Insilico has just begun the first mid-stage human trials of a drug discovered and designed entirely by AI, an important milestone for the industry. This is just 2.5 years after project inception — a feat that usually takes 6 years. Sanofi, Fosun, and Johnson & Johnson were among several pharma companies that had signed partnership deals to access Insilico’s technology.

As we know, this is not the first news related to generative AI in drug R&D this year. In May, Recursion Pharma acquired two AI startups, Cyclica and Valence, to improve its chemistry and genAI capabilities. In January, BioNTech acquired startup Instadeep. One of Instadeep’s products, DeepChain, uses transformer-based models for protein design. It seems Biology and Chemistry are poised to be supercharged by advances in AI. (link w/out paywall)

Microsoft’s OpenAI-powered app is coming to Epic Systems

Microsoft’s subsidiary, Nuance, which helps with speech recognition, announced its AI-powered clinical notes application is coming to Epic Systems. The goal is to help reduce physicians’ administrative workloads.

Nuance’s product, which summarizes and enters conversations between clinicians and patients directly into EHRs, will work natively on Epic starting this summer for select providers. This technology will use Nuance’s own AI and OpenAI’s GPT-4 models and physicians will have to use Epic’s mobile application for the service to work.

Over 500,000 physicians and 306 million patients throughout the world use Epic’s offerings. Given Epic’s insane scale, this rollout could really be meaningful in terms of accelerating the mass adoption of AI tools in healthcare. (link)

Miscellaneous 🔍

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

• As AI spreads, experts predict the best and worst changes in digital life by 2035 (link)

• Breast cancer detected 2 years sooner using AI vs. human analysis (link)

• AI could predict pancreatic cancer early in some cases (link)

• Achieving health equity will take more than removing racial bias from clinical algorithms (link)

• NYtimes: AI’s role in healthcare to be first oriented to mundane tasks like transcription (link w/out paywall)

• UN security council to hold first-ever meeting on threats of AI (link)

• Eight AI startups winning the race for tech talent (link)

• Investors to know if fundraising your healthcare startup (link)

• Schrödinger executives insist startup is a drug co., warn of dangers of overhyping AI capabilities (link)

• 43% of people haven’t heard of ChatGPT (link)

• Medical experts examine alternatives for eliminating bias in clinical algorithms (link)

• What’s in a good healthcare AI startup? (link)

Deal Desk 💸 

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

📈 Augmedics: an AR navigation platform for spinal surgeries, raised $82.5M in Series D funding. CPMG led the round and was joined by Evidity Health Capital and insiders H.I.G. Capital, Revival Healthcare Capital and Almeda Ventures. (link)

📈 Neko Health: a preventative healthcare startup based in Sweden and co-founded by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, raised €60M in Series A funding. Lakestar led the round and was joined by Atomico and General Catalyst. (link)

📈 Flywheel: a medical imaging data platform based in Minneapolis, MN, raised $54M in Series D funding. Novalis LifeSciences and Nvidia co-led, and were joined by insiders Invenshure, 8VC, Beringea, HP Enterprise, Intuitive Ventures, iSelect, Gundersen Health System, Seraph and Great North Ventures. (link)

📈 Gleamer: a provider of AI software for radiology based in France, raised $29.5M in Series B funding. Supernova Invest and Heal Capital co-led, and were joined by XAnge, Elaia, Bpifrance, F3A, MACSF, Crista Galli Ventures and UI Investissement. (link)

📈 Algorithmiq: a developer of quantum algorithms for life sciences based in Finland, raised $15M in Series A funding. Inventure VC led the round, and was joined by Tesi, Presidio Ventures and Thames Trust. (link)

📈 Gradient Health: a medical AI data-sharing company based in Raleigh, NC, raised $2.75M in seed funding led by ReMY Investors & Consultants. (link)

📈 Memora Health: an AI care enablement platform, received an investment from Memorial Hermann Health System, based in Houston, for an undisclosed amount. (link)

Tool Box 🧰

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

🔧 UNC Health: UNC Health is piloting an in-house AI app called Ava, which allows staff members to ask questions about the different digital health tools available to them across the health system, and it gives them concise answers about how to use the tools effectively. The goal is to prevent staff from searching through vast training libraries. (link)

🔧 Northwell Health + Laudio: Northwell Health partnered with Laudio, a platform that uses artificial intelligence to automate administrative tasks. The partnership aims to enhance the labor productivity, service, quality and safety of frontline employees by automating repetitive work and providing suggestions of how to improve team visibility. (link)

🔧 Banner Health + Viz.ai: Banner Health partnered with Viz.ai, an AI disease detection and care coordination company, to enhance vascular care. The partnership provided Banner Health University Medical Center Phoenix with an AI-powered care coordination platform to develop a “multidisciplinary pulmonary embolism response team.” The AI platform, which is image-based, allows care teams to quickly evaluate suspected vascular diseases shortly after a CT scan is performed, providing lab values, oxygen saturation levels and scoring. (link)

AI Images of the Week 📸

Funny memes and pics from around the web…