Healthcare AI Guy Weekly Newsletter | 9/19

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Highlights if you’ve only got 2 minutes…

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Generate Biomedicienes raises $273M

Biotech startup Generate Biomedicines, which uses AI to find new drugs, raised $273M in Series C funding from investors including pharma company Amgen and AI giant NVIDIA. This is one of the largest biotech capital raises this year.

Generate was founded in 2018 by venture-creation firm Flagship Pioneering to use machine learning algorithms to identify antibodies, cell therapies, and other medicines. After this raise, the company now has close to $450M in the bank, much of which will be aimed at expanding the pipeline and advancing more assets in the clinic. Over the next year or two, the company hopes to have between four and six assets in clinical trials with another four to six coming up behind them. The company now has strategic backers and its war chest to really aggressively go after this market. (link)

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Privia Health teams up with Navina on point-of-care clinical insights

Privia Health, a physician enablement company (NASDAQ: PRVA), established a joint venture with Navina, an AI-powered primary care platform. The joint venture “will equip Privia’s network of providers with Navina’s AI tech to enhance workflows, patient care, and value-based initiatives.” Basically, it will help providers interpret patient data such as visit notes, labs, and imaging to generate clinical summaries and live recommendations.

Privia has more than 1,000 practice locations with more than 3,800 providers serving 4.4 million patients. The goal of the partnership is to push more preventive care and close gaps in treatment while cutting down the time that providers spend fishing through the EHR for the same information — nice! Will be exciting to see how this develops. (link)

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ChatGPT found the right diagnosis for a boy who had seen 17 doctors

Over three years, a young boy Alex, experienced chronic pain and other symptoms but received no clear diagnosis despite seeing 17 doctors over 3 years. The specialists diagnosed the part of the body they knew about, unable to make a larger connection to his overall sickness.

Then his mother found an answer by dumping all the notes and symptoms into ChatGPT, which suggested "tethered cord syndrome." A neurosurgeon confirmed the diagnosis. A similar story happened earlier this year as a pet owner said chatGPT saved his dog's life after the vet couldn't diagnose an autoimmune disease. These stories highlight AI’s impressive pattern recognition abilities and potential in a clinical setting. (link)

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Talkspace releases results of suicide risk algorithm

Talkspace, the online and mobile therapy company (NASDAQ: TALK), released the 3-year performance of its proprietary model that ingests anonymized therapy transcripts to flag patients at a heightened risk of self-harm or suicide. Since 2019, the algorithm has flagged 32k members possibly in need of immediate intervention, with a separate validation study suggesting 83% accuracy. Since the model runs in real-time on patient messages within asynchronous virtual therapy rooms, the alerts allow providers to respond with just-in-time care. I’d say that’s a pretty cool use case of how AI can help in the care setting! (link)

Miscellaneous 🔍

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

• Oscar Health CEO Mark Bertolini discusses AI in healthcare & IPO (link)

• Podcast with Dr. Robert Pearl on AI in medicine: risks & liabilities (link)

• Harvard Business Review: Innovators must establish trust to encourage AI adoption in healthcare (link)

• Study: ChatGPT could reduce hospital wait times (link)

• Intermountain, UPMC to transition from Oracle Cerner EHR to Epic (link)

• Google uses AI to expand its reach among health systems, EHR vendors (link)

• ChatGPT outperforms WebMD symptom checker in diagnosing eye-related complaints (link)

• AI startup buzz is facing a reality check (link)

• Is Dr. ChatGPT the new Dr. Google? (link)

• Bain & Company and KLAS study finds 80% of providers are accelerating spending on IT, software, AI (link)

• Major tech companies are using AI to accelerate cancer research (link)

• Amazon debuts generative AI tools that help sellers write product descriptions (link)

• ChatGPT uses an estimated 500ml of water for every five to 50 prompts (link)

• 15 major companies sign White House AI pledge (link)

• Databricks raised $500M in its series I with a valuation of $43B (link)

• a16z report - How are consumers using generative AI? (link)

Deal Desk 💸 

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

📈 Generate Biomedicine: a developer of protein-based medicines based in Cambridge, MA raised $273M in Series C funding. Amgen, Nvidia, and insiders Flagship Pioneering, ADIA, Fidelity, Alaska Permanent Fund, Arch Venture Partners, Altitude Life Science Ventures, Morningside Ventures, and T. Rowe Price all participated. (link)

📈 Sonera: a developer of sensors for non-invasive human-machine interfaces based in Berkeley, CA raised $11M in seed funding. Amplify Partners led the round. (link)

📈 DeLorean AI: a patient outcomes prediction startup based in Miami, FL raised $7.55M in Series A funding. Sopris VC led the round and was joined by Pinta Capital Partners and James Chow. (link)

📈 Thirona: a thoracic CT image analysis startup based in the Netherlands raised $5M from Heran Partners and the Borski Fund. (link)

📈 Carenostics: an AI-powered chronic disease diagnosis startup raised $5M in seed funding. The round was led by M13 with participation from Greatpoint Ventures, Gaingels, and Kurt Hilzinger. (link)

📈 Co:Helm: a prior authorization automation startup based in New York raised $3.2M in seed funding. Sequoia Capital led the round and was joined by Blue Lion Global, Nebular, Ventures Together, Four Acres, and Anamcara. (link)

Tool Box 🧰

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

🔧 Mayo Clinic + GE Healthcare: Mayo Clinic and GE HealthCare are collaborating on a new project that will create an innovation center designed to advance medical imaging and theranostics. Through the collaboration, Mayo Clinic and GE HealthCare will work to adopt AI, multimodal data, and digital health platforms. (link)

🔧 Notable: Notable is launching “Notable Assistant”, which enables health systems to provide a simple natural language interface for patients to access their services either online or through mobile apps. Using data from the provider’s website and EHR, Notable Assistant lets patients easily find available physicians, schedule appointments, refill prescriptions, and manage billing. (link)

🔧 Summit: Life coach that helps you achieve your goals. (link)

🔧 Healsens: Discover your health risks, get insights for longevity. (link)

AI Images of the Week 📸

Funny memes and pics from around the web…