🧬 PS - check out how the Chair or Standford Medicine used Claude to analyse his Genome

Anyway, if you’ve followed along for the last +3 years, you’d know I’m an OG Oura and preventative health nerd.

Data + knowledge = power.

The last few months I’ve been testing out the Ultrahuman Air💍 💪 (side by side with my Oura) thanks to the lovely UltraHuman folk.

Not going to lie - loving the integrations and no monthly subscription

I’ll bring you a full side-by-side review soon, but for now - they’re offering all WTH readers 22% off!

So if you do want an affordable kicker wearable and aren’t yet a part of the WHOOP or Oura cults, check it out.

Use code: EMILYCASEY22

Get your discount here!

Ends July 13th

**Yes, I do get affiliates, but they aren’t paying me for this cause you know I only tell you about things I actually like

🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy

  • Funding

  • Newsworthy

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Events

• Cool Content

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

🍏 Everlab raised $65M led by Airtree Ventures at a ~$500M valuation, to scale its AI diagnostic screening platform globally.

The Melb startup has 20K patients, 21M+ biomarker results processed has UK expansion up next

👩‍⚕️ Medical Angels announced its first doctor-led fund targeting $40M for Aussie healthtech

🧠 Fluent raised $2M pre-seed to develop its sub-scalp BCI for people with speech loss from MND and MS

🩷 Ovum raised $4M in seed funding after tripling its valuation, to scale its AI women's health platform

🧬 Atisama Therapeutics received $15M+ MRFF funding to advance RB042, an inhaled RNA therapy for COPD, into Phase 1a/1b clinical trials

🦷 Dentroid raised $32M for Nuralyte,its LED light-based device that numbs dental pain without needles and got a commercial deal Read more

🔬 Novartis is aquiring Myricx Bio, a novel next-generation class of antibody-drug conjugates for cancer, for up to US$1.5B with US$1.1B upfront plus milestones

This Brandon Capital portfolio company, spun out of Imperial College London, is delivering nice returns for LPs and finally seeing returns flow in for biotech

Now, if only we can make it happen more for Aussie based spinouts…

Newsworthy

🎓 USYD is hunting $200M+ for a new venture fund to commercialise its deep tech & biotech research as spinout companies, inviting potential partners to co-invest

🩺 Heidi Health published a deep dive on fine-tuning its own clinical AI model to frontier parity, replacing the best frontier model in its Evidence product with one a fraction of the size

🏥 Bupa agreed to acquire Partnered Health Group from Quadrant Private Equity, adding 68 primary care clinics, 3 urgent care sites & 5 corporate health brands

💊 ~1 in 5 Aussies are being prescribed mental health medication, with 5.2M people on antidepressants & ADHD prescriptions tripling over the past decade

🚀 LaunchVic announced $3.5M for nine AI & deep tech pre-accelerator programs across Vic, with recipients including Cicada Innovations & MedTech Actuator

👶 The AFR warns childcare is shaping up as “the next NDIS” as a budget pressure, with the gov dropping an unbudgeted $3.6B to subsidise childcare worker wages for another 18 months after the “one-off” retention payment ran out

⚠️ Private health bosses warn up to 200k Aussies will downgrade their top-tier health cover due to cost-of-living pressures & Labor’s axed rebate for over-65s

🫀 Auckland's HeartLab inked a deal with Advara HeartCare, Aus's largest cardiology chain, rolling out its AI cardiac imaging software across 100 clinics

📚 VicHealth made 20+ years of health promotion research available for free in one place via the new VicHealth Research Library

🦷 Dentroid, Canberra medtech, hit a $265M valuation after partnering with French dental giant Septodont to commercialise Nuralyte, a device that uses bursts of light to replace dental anaesthetic injections

🦷 National Dental Care, one of Aus's largest dental networks with 100+ clinics, is up for sale after 13 years under Crescent Capital Partners

Morgan Stanley has been hired to run the process, with the deal expected to exceed $700M at a 12x earnings multiple

🏆 Remy Tucker, founder of On The House, was named 7NEWS Young Achiever of the Year

💊 Sigma Healthcare (owner of Chemist Warehouse) has pulled out of talks to buy UK pharmacy chain Boots

🎓 ANU received a $4.5M philanthropic gift to advance personalised medicine research

🏅 UniMelb's A/Prof Garron Dodd won the NHMRC Marshall & Warren Innovation Award for his research into why drugs like Ozempic lose effectiveness over time

🔄 MTPConnect has rebranded to AUScelerate, adopting a new name & identity as it enters its next decade🔒 Monash IVF and Medmate breached the Privacy Act by using Meta and TikTok tracking pixels to collect sensitive health data without consent

🫁 4D Medical got TGA approval for its CT:VQ™ tech, enabling ventilation and perfusion imaging derived directly from routine chest CT scans, without contrast agents, radiotracers or dedicated nuclear medicine infrastructure

❤️ UNSW Sydney built a fully synthetic soft robotic heart that can mimic disease and provide a realistic environment for testing cardiac devices

📱 Defeat Diabetes’s found you could reverse diabetes through a digital program on nutrition education and behaviour change

The La Trobe University 12 month study found 78% of participants improved HbA1c, 42% dropped below the diagnostic threshold for type 2 diabetes, and 18% achieved full remission without glucose-lowering medication

📊 My Health Record is now finally sharing pathology and diagnostic imaging results by default from 1 July

📋 The Registered nurse prescribing reform laws have passed, allowing endorsed registered nurses to collaboratively prescribe PBS medicines starting October 2026

US & Beyond the Borders

💪 NewLimit raised $435M Series C led by Founders Fund (Peter Thiel), with Thrive Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Eli Lilly Ventures and others

Founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, the longevity biotech is developing epigenetic reprogramming medicines that reverse cellular ageing starting with a liver program heading into human trials next year

🧬 Insilico Medicine has the world’s first AI drug to enter Phase III trials, with Rentosertib being a target identified by AI, molecule designed by generative AI, now in Phase III for IPF

⌚ Clair Health, founded by a 21-year-old Stanford grad, raised $11.6M led by Khosla Ventures to build the first non-invasive continuous hormone monitor for women

The wristband uses 10 biosensors to track estrogen, progesterone, LH & FSH without blood draws

⌚ WHOOP partnered with HealthEx to let US members connect their medical records directly within the app

aaaand ⌚ the FDA dropped its enforcement action against WHOOP over its blood pressure feature after the company tweaked its messaging, ending a year-long standoff

🥛 US whey protein inventories have fallen by half since 2023 with prices surging 250% year-on-year

🍎 Apple launched perimenopause & menopause support in its Health app, with symptom logging, educational content & cycle-deviation notifications

🤖 Insilico Medicine & SK Biopharmaceuticals also signed a US$2.5B R&D collaboration to discover AI drug candidates for neuroimmune CNS disorders

🧬 Novartis & Antares Therapeutics signed a strategic collaboration with US$105M upfront and up to $1.8B in additional milestones to develop first-in-class small molecule therapies against historically undruggable oncology targets

🏥 Medtronic is bringing Corsano Health’s FDA-cleared, medical-grade, multi-parameter wearable to US hospitals and hospital-at-home programs.

🧠 Temple, a brain-tracking wearable startup founded by Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal, raised $54M seed for Entropy™, a new device tracking proprietary biomarker that tracks real-time metabolic and stress load via blood flow patterns at the temple

Get the rest here!!

🤖 AI Updates

🌏 Anthropic:

• Dropped Claude Fable 5 & Mythos 5, its most powerful AI models yet, before briefly suspending access three days later over safety concerns

• AND launched Claude Science, a dedicated AI workbench for life science researchers with 60+ functions across genomics, proteomics, structural biology and cheminformatics, whilst low-key announcing its own internal drug discovery program for neglected diseases

The same company that upended coding is now coming for drug discovery

🤯 Midjourney, the AI image company, announced Midjourney Medical, a full-body ultrasonic scanner that produces MRI-quality images in 60 secs with no radiation, powered by 500K sensors & Butterfly Network hardware

🧬 Ex-Anthropic researchers Behnam Neyshabur and Harsh Mehta launched Mirendil with $200M seed to build “AI for AI for science” - self-improving AI models to run drug discovery, chemistry and biology research at universities and labs that can’t afford frontier AI infra

🧬 Superpower launched OrganAge, the world's first organ aging test from a single blood draw, developed with Stanford's Dr David Furman & the Buck Institute

🩺 Abridge unveiled the first AI-native clinician intelligence platform at its NYC keynote

📈 PwC projects US medical costs will rise 9% in 2027, the highest in 17 years, with healthcare spending on track to hit $9T annually by 2035

70% of health plans now rank providers' use of AI coding tools as a top-three cost driver

🧠 Verge Labs (backed by Eli Lilly, BlackRock & YC) released vBx-1.0, a foundation model for precision neurology that reconstructs the molecular state of a patient's brain from a routine blood draw

📊 CSIRO released its AI Trends for Healthcare 2026 report - saying AI is off the sidelines of healthcare now (no duh)

Sick Science

📱 Can Your Smartphone Passively Monitor Your Heart Rate?

A 2026 Nature study by Google Research validated a deep-learning system that measures heart rate through your smartphone's front camera during normal daily use, no wearable needed. Tested on 162,546 videos from 211 participants, the system achieved less than 10% error compared to ECGs across light, medium & dark skin tones, and estimated resting heart rate within 5 beats per minute of a wearable tracker.

💉 Does Your Menstrual Cycle Phase Affect Vaccine Response?

A 2026 npj Women's Health study of 1,474 women using the Clue period tracking app found that those vaccinated during their follicular phase (estrogen-dominant) had 35% higher odds of side effects but stayed infection-free 35 days longer than those vaccinated during the luteal phase (progesterone-dominant). The findings suggest menstrual cycle timing could matter for vaccine effectiveness, yet cycle phase is almost never considered in immunisation research or clinical trials.

Startup Stuff 🚀

Idea or Pre-seed stage and building anything deeptech ot health?

Illume Ventures Future Frontier 2026 is takeing applications open for its program backing early-stage founders working on complex, hard problems in health, sustainability, and enterprise. Equity-based, with mentorship, networks and follow-on support - More here

Working on mRNA-based therapeutics or vaccine research?

BioNTech Australia in partnership with the A-RNA Association has opened the 2026 mRNA Innovator Award Program, offering AUD$50K (half cash, half in-kind mRNA supply from BioNTech’s R&D lab) for preclinical mRNA research. Open to researchers & companies across Australia & New Zealand. Applications close 31 July - More here

Got a digital health innovation tackling global challenges?

The Future of Health Grant supports early-stage digital health startups through a Swiss-based accelerator with mentoring, clinical access & funding. Applications close 31 July - More here

Got a health tech idea & based in Victoria?

MedTech Actuator’s Origin Australia program is a two-phase venture-building journey for emerging health entrepreneurs, from pitch bootcamp to demo day. The winner takes home a $10K non-dilutive cash prize & return travel to compete at the Global Pitch Showdown in Japan. Open to clinicians, researchers, engineers & aspiring founders. Applications close 5 July - More here

Building an AI-driven startup in Australia or New Zealand?

Google for Startups Accelerator: ANZ is now accepting applications for its 10-week equity-free program for Seed to Series A startups. Includes dedicated Google mentors, access to AI products & Cloud TPUs, technical bootcamps & deep dives on product, growth & leadership. Applications open now - More here

Events💥

23 - 24th July: MedTech Actuator Origin: Pitch Bootcamp (Melb)

27 July: Bio Connections Australia (Melb)

29th July: ANDHealth Unfiltered: Digital Health Summit (Melb)

3 - 4th Aug: HIC 2026 (Syd)

7th Aug: Cicada xTech23 (Syd)

2nd Sep: MedTech Actuator Origin: Demo Day (Melb)

Cool Content 💎

🎧 No Priors Pod: “Curing All Disease by next century is too conservative” Priscilla Chan & Mark Zuckerberg on newly announced biohubAI for science and medicine

🎙️ Bain & Company: AI & the future of pharma with Bob Bradway, CEO of Amgen

📖 Dr Mike Evans (ex-Apple Health team): The Future of Wearables: Why Self-Measurement is Both Over & Under-Hyped

📊 NVIDIA: State of AI in Healthcare & Life Sciences: 2026 Trends

70% of healthcare orgs now actively deploy AI (up from 63%), 85% report revenue gains & nearly half are increasing budgets by 10%+. The pilot era is officially over

📝 Galen Growth: H1 2026 Digital Health Funding Review

📰 Second Opinion: The $100B Paradox: Why the Largest Company in Healthcare Hasn’t Been Built Yet

💡Got Feedback? Something to include next time? Keen to get in touch?

We want to make this worthy of your time & the best it can be.
💌 Hit reply or reach out to emily@whatthehealth.io to share your thoughts.

Adios Amigos

👋 Emily,
Mariah & Team WTH

Want to get featured here in front of >10,000 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

Women’s Health has been having its MOMENT in the last 6 months, and May in particular popped off with half a dozen events across the country (yes we counted), Apple adding perimenopause notifications to the health app, and of course - the $215 million dollar pledge by Melinda French Gates.

But between all the noise, some pretty uncomfortable questions still aren’t getting asked or enough attention…

What action will actually help move the needle?

Where’s women’s health in ANZ really at?

What structual, data, and policy barriers really need to be overcome - and how?

How can we help accelerate more of these changes and innovation to reach people who need them?

and so many more…

So we thought this was worthy of actually getting the people who are tackling these questions head-on into a room.

💪 Beyond the Bandwagon: FemTech Skipping the Pink Wash

Join us and our friends at Giant Leap, Scale Investors & Medtech Actuator for an exclusive evening of insight into where the FemTech industry is, where it’s heading, and what’s still in the way.

​Join us for a night of real conversation, live Q&A, and plenty of time to connect!​

👋 Who’s it for? All Women’s Health and Technology enthusiasts, experts, operators, founders, investors and beyond!

Ft. Our Epic Panellists

Dr. Talat Uppal - Director at Women’s Health Road

​A gynaecologist, Clinical Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University, and one of Australia’s most recognised advocates for female health. Dr. Uppal founded Australia’s first Abnormal Uterine Bleeding Hub and serves as a clinical ambassador for AI-driven health solutions. Her work sits at the intersection of clinical innovation, menstrual literacy, and FemTech, and she represents RANZCOG on national interoperability initiatives. Expect her to speak to the clinical realities and the tech translating them into better patient outcomes.

Dr. Amanda Shea - Chief Scientific Officer at Clue

​A molecular biologist with roots in ovarian cancer research, Dr. Shea now leads research at Clue, one of the world’s leading FemTech platforms, where she works to close the gender data gap using self-tracked reproductive health data. She bridges rigorous biological science and consumer health technology better than almost anyone in the space. Expect her to speak to what the data is actually telling us, and what it could tell us if we collected it better.

Georgie Drury - Co-Founder and CEO at Metluma

An entrepreneur who scaled a digital health platform to 13 countries before turning her focus to women’s health, Georgie now leads Metluma, a menopause and midlife wellbeing platform. Expect her to speak to what it actually takes to build in FemTech, and why the current system keeps making it harder than it needs to be.

and moderated by yours truly, .

​📍 Medtech Actuator, Melbourne

📆 Thursday, 25 June 2026

🕖 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM

We’re keeping the focus on the conversation, so the room is small and intimate, and the pre-release went out to our private community already.

So if you’re keen - make sure you apply to be in the room by registering below! Its already filling up fast…

Get your spot here!

See you there!

New here? Welcome, friend 😊

Want to get the latest Healthtech news with our crew of +10,000 health innovation-loving legends? Hit subscribe & join us!

Subscribe now

👋 Emily,
Billa, Mariah & Team WTH

It’s been a hot minute.

Unsurprisingly, DHF delivered in the influx of people, stalls (and disease - once again kindly sharing every flu variant on the market).

Anyway - it’s sure been a bit of a busy month between Digital Health Festival, ANDHealth’s FY26 Sentiment Report Launch, Brandon BioCatalyst’s Cureator Showcase and the Claude for Health Meetup (not to mention all those I missed - sorry AusMedtech, MTAA Women’s Summit and PTA Congress 🥲)

💜 Great to see and meet so many of you and thanks to those who came to see me yap.

As we all retreat and recover from the abundance of extroversion - its time to settle back behind our screens and catch up on the MANY delicious updates we have coming your way.

On to the news…

🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy

  • Funding

  • Newsworthy

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Events

• Cool Content

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

💰 Synthesis Capital bagged $60M and HESTA as a backer for its debut fund, targeting early-stage Australian health and Metech startups, targeting a $70m close

💜 Factory Capital is raising $25M to make women’s midlife health an investable category, targeting the massive gap in funding for perimenopause, menopause & midlife care

🤰 Oli (formerly Baymatob) raised $6.5M in Series A3 backed by Scale Investors, Clare Ventures & USyd, bringing total funding to $13M+ plus $9.5M in grants.

The wearable monitors millions of maternal & fetal data points across 10 biosensors to predict complications like PPH, fetal distress & stillbirth risk, with a 1,000-patient clinical trial nearing completion across Australia & the US

🚀 ANDHealth+ announced the 5 startups in their latest intake sharing up to $9M in non-dilutive funding:

• Australis Scientific (smart patch for overactive bladder)

• Corcillum (coronary digital twin)

  Earflo (paediatric ear device)

• Kraken Coding (clinical decision pathways)

• MoreGoodDays (chronic pain platform)

🚀 Care GP was accepted into Y Combinator’s S26 batch

☀️ MoleMap, Aus’s leading skin cancer detection service, acquired Spotscreen to continue to accelerate its growth

💊 Bioxyne secured a $50M two-year supply deal with German pharma company ADREXpharma for medicinal cannabis products, including a $25M minimum in the first 12 months

💰 But first… Budget recap time (ICYMI)

🔥The Federal Budget 2026 came in hot for health, with:

• $1.8B to make Medicare Urgent Care Clinics permanent (137 clinics, 4 in 5 Aussies within a 20-min drive)

• $2B for Thriving Kids early intervention, including a new National Digital Child Health Record

• $220.3B in total public hospital funding over five years

• 💻 Allocating $745.1M for Medicare systems & infrastructure ft.

  • $598.3M for My Health Record enhancements tied to sharing-by-default reforms,

  • $146.8M for Medicare integrity capabilities

  • $259.9M for aged care ICT

📈 For startups, the budget raised VC cap limits, revived the loss carry-back scheme for startups & SMEs, & signalled possible startup relief in the broader CGT overhaul.

Leaving linkedin in dissaray littered with bad AI memes ft. everyones new “co-founder”

🔬 The MRFF Program is getting a facelift ft. an immediate extra $508.5M, then scaling up from ~$650M annual disbursements to $1B per year by 2030 (see the National Health & Medical Research Strategy 2026-2036)

• Prioritising national research ($210M for precision health and cancer programs), research infrastructure/admin costs ($128M), and commercial translation pipelines ($127.6mM

🚨 But a little line about capping the refundable R&D tax incentive at 10 years has caused A LOT of concern for bio, deeptech and health companies

TLDR, good things take time… often much longer than 10 years

📣 AusBiotech and the whole community united to take a stand.
Find their letter to the government here

Newsworthy

🏥 Bain Capital is exiting Estia Health, selling Australia’s second-largest residential aged care operator to US infrastructure firm Stonepeak in a deal reportedly valued at ~$2.5B

🏆 The AFR released the winners of the 2026 Financial Review AI Awards, presented by Cognizant, recognising the companies & leaders shaping AI across Australia

With the Trailblazer award going to Liesl Yearsley who is now working on empathetic companions for people who need help at home

🏥 A growing capital drought is pushing Australia's digital health sector offshore, with local startups struggling to find smart money between seed & late-stage

🎓 USYD will offer Aus's first part-time medical degree, allowing MD students to complete Year 3 over two years instead of one, starting 2027 at Westmead & Dubbo

💊 Novo Nordisk has been accused of using sales bonuses to push off-label use of Ozempic

The GLP-1 saga continues to get spicier

🏛️ Disability spending is set to hit $98 billion in the federal budget despite government efforts to curb NDIS growth

🤝 Australia & the UK signed an MoU on AI safety & security

🏛️ Innovation Victoria was unveiled as the successor to LaunchVic & Breakthrough Victoria, consolidating the state’s startup & deep tech support bodies into a single entity

Following an independent review that recommended Victoria scale back & consolidate its industry support activities

⛔ The fed gov’s Industry Growth Program Grants have quietly been paused

🔬 Nexsen signed a binding term sheet with GHK Hospital (IHH Healthcare subsidiary) for clinical validation of its rapid diagnostics platform in North Asia

🧪 Amplia Therapeutics launched a Phase 2b registration-enabling trial for narmafotinib in pancreatic cancer (aligned with FDA feedback)

🦷 Denteric, a Uni of Melb biotech spinout, secured FDA clearance to begin Phase 2 clinical trials in the US for GPV381, a therapeutic vaccine targeting periodontitis, a condition affecting 1 in 3 adults globally

💚 Tenmile & AusBiotech announced a strategic partnership to strengthen the industry and ensure Australia achieves the impact it deserves as a serious player on the global life sciences stage

🏆 BioNTech awarded its inaugural mRNA Innovator Program grant toUoM's Professor Linda Wakim to support development of an advanced, long-lasting intranasal influenza vaccine candidate

🎓 RMIT is investing $30M in health capability & research at its Bundoora campus, in partnership with Northern Health

🤖 The Guardian explored whether AI can deliver more humanity in aged care, from companion robots speaking 90 languages to VR train rides through the Swiss Alps.

Meanwhile, USYD researchers warn the agetech industry is "subscribing to a vision of technological rescue" that distracts from structural reform

US & Beyond the Borders

🧬 NewLimit, co-founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, raised $435M in Series C led by Founders Fund to bring its first cell age-reprogramming medicine into human trials next year

🎥 Nature joined TikTok, declaring in a recent editorial that "the future of science communication is not an article like this"

About. Time. Welcome to the new age research journals…

🧪 Chai Discovery, a 2-yr-old AI drug discovery startup, is now working with Pfizer, Eli Lilly & nearly 20 other pharma companies on its antibody design AI model, & is reportedly in talks to raise $400M at a $3.4B valuation

💜 Melinda French Gates pledged $215M through Pivotal for women's reproductive & midlife health

💍 Oura confidentially filed for an IPO with the SEC, projecting 5M+ paid members this quarter after 4x’ing membership & revenue over two years

80% of users renew after year one, & over half are managing at least one chronic condition

📊 Lilly announced 3 acquisitions to build their infectious disease portfolio - including Tenmile’s portfolio company LimmaTech Biologics, a company tackling AMR resistance via self-adjuvanting, multi-antigen vaccines for up to $780M

🎗️ A landmark WHO study found ~40% of cancer cases may be preventable, sparking a wave of startups building lifestyle-based survivorship care for the US’s 18M+ cancer survivors

68% of patients found ChatGPT more empathetic & informative than their oncologist. Let that sink in

👵 Kalos Ventures, an all-women founding team backed by Melinda French Gates' Pivotal Ventures & MassMutual, closed an oversubscribed $78.8M inaugural fund targeting early-stage tech across workforce, care & education as AI reshapes jobs

👩‍⚕️ WHOOP is now a physician’s assistant - launching in-app telehealth in the US this summer, integrating medical history, bloodwork, and longitudinal biometrics for informed care, becoming a full operating system

🧠 Meru Health launched Meru Health Advanced, a psychiatry program combining blood biomarker panels, WHOOP data & HRV biofeedback for treatment-resistant depression, anxiety & PTSD

💊 KURK Biosciences, a turmeric supplement company co-founded by Wollongong native Trent Scanlen & backed by actor Tom Hardy, is weighing a sub-£5M raise at a £27M+ pre-money valuation

⚛️ NVision raised $55M in Series B to expand from quantum-enhanced MRI into quantum computing for drug discovery, with its POLARIS platform already being deployed at ~20 cancer centres globally

Get the rest here!

🤖 AI Updates

🏥 Mayo Clinic & Microsoft announced a strategic collaboration to build a frontier AI model purpose-built for healthcare, combining Mayo's de-identified clinical data & longitudinal insights with Microsoft's AI infrastructure

Mayo will own the model; Microsoft will distribute it via Azure

💰 Anthropic raised a staggering $65B in Series H funding at a $965B post-money valuation, with run-rate revenue crossing $47B

🤝 Anthropic committed $200M in partnership with the Gates Foundation to support drug discovery, vaccine development, & better use of health data in low- & middle-income countries using Claude

🧬 Isomorphic Labs, the Google DeepMind spinout, raised a massive $2.1B to scale its AI drug discovery platform targeting cancer, immune disorders & complex diseases

💊 Formation Bio, backed by Sam Altman, Sequoia, a16z & Sanofi, is betting it can use AI to cut clinical trial timelines by up to 50%.

The $1.8B AI-native pharma company acquires clinical-stage drugs then runs them through its own tech platform to streamline recruitment, trial design, regulatory filings & data management

👩‍⚕️ Two reports from Elsevier & McKinsey reveal that nurses are being left behind in AI adoption. Only 41% of nurses regularly use AI tools vs 57% of physicians, & 41% say their views are rarely reflected in AI decision-making

80%+ of nurses believe AI can improve patient care. They’re the operational backbone of healthcare. If they’re not shaping these tools from the start, we’ve got a problem

🩺 Kin Health raised $9M to build an AI scribe for patients, not doctors, recording visits, summarising conversations & helping patients organise care across providers

Founded by two physicians & a former GoodRx exec, the app is free & plans to stay that way. Abridge started as a patient scribe before pivoting to clinicians… maybe the market wasn’t ready yet

✅ FDA cleared the first-ever continuous AI sepsis monitor from Bayesian Health, detecting patient deterioration & flagging sepsis earlier in hospital settings

📝 Stanford Health Care surpassed 1M clinical notes generated using AI via Microsoft’s Dragon Copilot ambient AI platform

🔍 OpenEvidence, an AI clinical search platform, was used in ~27M clinical encounters in April, with 65% of US physicians actively using the tool for medical decision support

💰 Penn Medicine is projecting $105M in ROI from AI across imaging, documentation & prior auth workflows, one of the clearest signals yet that health system AI investment is paying off

⏱️ A Mayo Clinic study found an AI admission-risk model reduced ED length of stay by 12 minutes in a prospective study

🩷 Evvy launched an AI-powered vaginal health advisor trained on 100K+ proprietary microbiome tests, translating results into personalised action items for fertility, menopause & common conditions

Sick Science

🧫 How Does a Common Gut Bacterium Trigger Colon Cancer?

A 2026 Nature study led by Johns Hopkins solved a 15-year mystery, identifying that the Bacteroides fragilis toxin BFT must first bind to a host receptor called claudin-4 before it can damage colon tissue & drive tumour formation. The discovery already led to the development of a molecular decoy that successfully blocked the toxin’s effects in animal models, offering a potential new strategy for preventing colorectal cancer at the molecular level.

📑 How Many Biomedical Papers Contain Fake Citations?

A 2026 Lancet audit of 2.5M academic papers found nearly 3,000 biomedical papers containing fabricated references that couldn’t be traced to known publications. The rate has grown 12-fold since 2023, with the sharpest spike beginning mid-2024, coinciding with the rise of AI writing tools. By early 2026, 1 in every 277 papers contained at least one fake citation.

Startup Stuff 🚀

Working on mRNA-based therapeutics or vaccine research?

BioNTech Australia in partnership with the A-RNA Association has opened the 2026 mRNA Innovator Award Program, offering AUD$50K (half cash, half in-kind mRNA supply from BioNTech’s R&D lab) for preclinical mRNA research. Open to researchers & companies across Australia & New Zealand. Applications close 31 July - More here

Deep tech founder looking to turn your research into a real-world venture?

Curtin University’s DeepStart program is a 3-month accelerator backed by RTCM Trailblazer in collaboration with Cicada Innovations & Greentown Labs. Providing researchers, startups & SMEs with a $5K grant & access to a $500K investment pool, plus a two-day immersion at Tech23 in Sydney. Applications close 12 June - More here

Building a startup that could compete on the world stage?

Startup World Cup Australia is open for Sydney & Queensland regional finals, hosted by Startup&Angels. Winners get a full Silicon Valley immersion week, investor meetings & a shot at the Grand Finale in San Francisco with 300+ investors. Queensland apps close 9 June - More here

Got a digital health innovation tackling global challenges?

The Future of Health Grant supports early-stage digital health startups through a Swiss-based accelerator with mentoring, clinical access & funding. Applications close 31 July - More here

Deep Tech founder looking to turn your research into a real world venture?

Curtin University’s DeepStart program is a 3 month accelerator backed by RTCM Trailblazer in collaboration with Cicada innovations and Greentown Labs. Providing researchers, startups and SMES with a range of opportunities, including a $5K grant and access to a $500K investment pool, to accelerate commercialisation and investment readiness. Applications close 12 June - More here

Driving community-led public health change?

Applications are now open for the Ian Potter Foundation's Public Health program. Offering multi-year grants and minimum $100,000 per year. Supporting organisations to design and deliver evidence-based, preventative health initiatives in partnership with their communities. Funding focuses on improving long-term health outcomes in high-need populations through early-stage exploration, co-designed solutions, scaling proven pilots, and system-shifting public health innovation. EOIs open 28 May - More here

Events💥

10-12th June: 2026 ARCS Annual Conference

11th June: ON Translate 2026 (Melb)

11th June: PWN Future of Health & Health Care Forum (Melb)

16 - 17th June: Wild Health Canberra 2026 (Canberra)

18th June: ACMD Link: Your Pathway Towards Translation (Melb)

24 - 25th June: Strategic Program for Advancing Research Commercialisation (Syd)

1st July: CHICC Expert Workshop: Usability Beyond the Checkbox (Melb)

2 July: HealthHaus Sydney

27 July: Bio Connections Australia (Melb)

29th July: ANDHealth Unfiltered: Digital Health Summit (Melb)

7th Aug: Cicada xTech23 (Syd)

Cool Content 💎

🎙️ a16z Raising Health: Andrew Huberman: Peptides, Sleep Tech & the End of Obesity

📖 WEHI: Breaking the Mould: Why Australia's Biotech Future Doesn't Need to Follow the Past

📖 Bill Gates: A Golden Age of Alzheimer's Research

Our mate Mr Gates writes about why breakthroughs in diagnositics combined with new treatements to slow cognitive decline, AI tools and data analysis creates momentum in creating understanding and perhaps treatments & interventions

📖 Eric Topol: The Paradox of Medical AI Implementation

72% of US physicians are now using genAI, 35% for direct patient care, & ~40M Americans use AI chatbots daily for health info. Yet almost none of this is validated.

🛩️ Eric Peck: Swoop Aero Post-Mortem: Lessons from Founding & Failure

A candid reflection from the founder of the Aussie drone delivery startup that delivered vaccines across three continents, raised $26M from Blackbird, Main Sequence & the CIA’s In-Q-Tel, then landed in liquidation. Required reading for healthtech founders

📊 Rock Health: Q1 2026 Digital Health Funding Overview

$4B raised across 110 deals, strongest Q1 since the pandemic peak. 59% of all capital went to just 12 mega deals. The haves & have-nots era is real

📈 ANDHealth: Navigating Global Complexity – Scaling Australia’s Digital & Connected Health Sector FY2026 Industry Sentiment Survey

💡Got Feedback? Something to include next time? Keen to get in touch?

We want to make this worthy of your time & the best it can be.
💌 Hit reply or reach out to emily@whatthehealth.io to share your thoughts.

Okie dokes friends, stay warm and we’ll see you soon

👋 Emily,
Mariah & Team WTH

Want to get featured here in front of >10,000 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

Anyway, I don’t know about you, but I’m still recovering from the energy overdose that is Sunrise.

Shoutout to the Blackbird crew for once again bringing the vibes, Anthropic for some killer parties and merch with their Sydney office launch, and of course, all our wonderful health friends.

Talking of conferences - it’s nearly that special time of year where we squish the wholeeee health industry into a few small rooms to network (and facilitate winter flu & COVID spread), starting with Digital Health Festival & AusMedtech.

(and we can’t forget the PTA Congress & Breaking the Silos: The Women’s Health MedTech Summit in Sydney, the week after).

So naturally, to ensure you don’t miss out, we’re doing a giveaway…

🎫 Want a free ticket to the Digital Health Fest? 🎫

We have a few to give away to WTH readers! 🍩

All you need to do is be a paid subscriber (we love you), like this newsletter and hit reply and you’ll go in the draw to win a free ticket

Subscribe now

Okies dokes, onto the news…

🐣 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy

  • Funding

  • Newsworthy

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Events

• Cool Content

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

💊 Blackmores invested $10M in BiomeBank, to scale medical-grade prebiotic microbiome therapies derived from microorganisms in the human gut, across international markets’

🧼 Clean Slate Clinic closed $4.3M to accelerate Australia’s leading alcohol detox platform

🩹 Nutromics secured AU$3M in CRC Grant funding to help support development of it’s world’s first wearable sepsis management patch

🤖 Andromeda, a humanoid robotics company tackling loneliness in aged care deployed its 22nd Abi bot with Victorian provider Mecwacare

💡 Regis Healthcare benefitted from recent $3B federal aged care reforms, boosting valuation to $1.82B and 18% revenue growth

🤰 Baymatob (CUREator+ ANDHealth portfolio company) received NSW Gov funding to advance Oli, its AI maternal-foetal health platform

Newsworthy

💉 Microsoft is set to invest $25B in Aus over the next 3 years to expand AI and cloud capacity, strengthen cybersecurity, and access to digital skills across the country

🎧 Cochlear shares plunged 40%, reaching it’s lowest share price in more than a decade

Leading to speculations about flat-lining revenue due to Middle East conflict or broader company concerns

🧬 The NSW Gov opened its $96M RNA Research & Manufacturing Facility in the Macquarie University Innovation Precinct to boost development of domestic vaccines and therapeutics

📚 NHMRC injected $10.5M into Australian health and medical research to reduce the impact of chronic non-communicable diseases and health inequities

🏥 UNSW joined partners to open Aus’s first purpose-built children’s comprehensive cancer centre, bringing research & clinical care together to speed up new treatments

💰 A Nous Group Report, finds Australia’s medical research institutes generate $4.07B in annual economic benefit while delivering modest returns

✨ NSW Gov is expanding pharmacist prescribing powers to allow eligible adults to access the contraceptive pill without a GP visit from June 1

🌍 Vic is apparently Australia’s leading startup hub, attracting record investment with 4,400 startups valued at $139B

🧑‍⚕️ Heidi Health announced its integration with Epic’s Haiku app, extending seamless clinical workflows from desktop to mobile

While also hitting $US50M ARR, solidifying their position as the fastest growing Aussie tech company since Canva

🏥 Monash Health signed a partnership MoU with Medtech Actuator, connecting clinical experts and innovators with commercialisation pathways and industry networks

💊 ADHD prescription changes will allow pharmacists to issue repeat prescriptions, saving families around ~$10M annually

🦅 Lyrebird Health announced Dr Ray Boyapati, founder of MedEntry joined as Chief Clinical Officer

👶 Navi Medical Technologies has expanded its Neonav® system to support real-time catheter placement & monitoring in newborns, giving clinicians a safer way to care for critically ill babies in NICU

📉 Cochlear, CSL & ResMed are facing a sharp investor reset, as earnings shocks, market pressure & changing healthcare trends drag down Aus’s biotech giants

US & Beyond the Borders

🔬 Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan dropped $500M into their Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, launching a Virtual Biology Initiative to simulate how cells behave at the microlevel

🧠 President Trump signed an executive order fast-tracking psychedelics research as a treatment for serious mental illness, accelerating FDA reviews and unlocking $50M in matched funding for state research programs

🧪 Iterative Health closed a $77M Series C, led by Google Ventures, to transform clinical trial processes

🩻 Aidoc raised $150M Series E to advance AI capabilities across CT and X-ray workflows

🩸 Superpower announced its new offering, Superpower Peptides. While joining forces with GRAIL to give members earlier detection of 50+ cancer types from a single blood draw

🤝 WHOOP got a contract with the US Navy to support operational readiness and reduce fatigue-related risk across naval forces

🩺 Eli Lilly announced a global R&D collaboration and licensing deal to develop AI-discovered drugs worth up to $2.75 billion with Insilico Medicine

Marking a huge shift in Big Pharma from using AI tools to licensing AI built drug pipelines

💰 Fitbit founders announced the launch of their new AI startup, Luffu, integrating scattered health information across devices into one “intelligent family system”

🤝 Johnson & Johnson is set to acquire Atraverse Medical, a device company pioneering next-generation left-heart access and radiofrequency technology

🩺 Novo Nordisk announced the implementation of a full-stack drug discovery and operations system powered by OpenAI

💍 Oura acquired Galen AI, an AI-powered personal health companion, to integrate fragmented medical records and lab data with Oura’s wearable biometrics

With 5.5M+ rings sold and an ~$11B valuation, it’s positioning itself to own the sensor layer, unify health data, and deliver real-time, AI-driven guidance

💰 CVS Health launched Health100 in collaboration with Google Cloud to provide consumers a 24/7 personal healthcare partner

🖊️ Isomorphic Labs, a DeepMind spinoff, is sending AI-Designed drugs to human trials

🏋️ ZOE reduced its platform costs using AI trained on 300,000 microbiome samples, to deliver personalised gut health advice without requiring user testing

🧬 SiranBio has licensed its Phase I siRNA candidate SA030 to GSK in a deal worth up to ~US$1B, targeting abdominal fat & cardiometabolic risk across lung, liver & kidney disease

💊 Sun Pharma is buying Organon for US$11.75B

🤖 AI Updates

🎯 Amazon launched its Bio Discovery platform, giving scientists access to biological AI models to advance research capability.

Sparking interest about whether it will succeed or go down in history like Amazon care in 2022…

💰 Google will invest $US10bn in Anthropic at its last valuation, with another potential $US30bn en route

🏋️‍♀️ Google Health is replacing the Fitbit app with one central hub for fitness, sleep, vitals, medical records & AI coaching from Gemini

⛔️ A researcher invented a fake health condition, which AI chatbots Gemini, Chat GPT, Copilot and Perplexity informed patients was real

The fake papers were also reportedly cited in peer reviewed literature… lol

✨ Meta is expanding its child safety tools adding AI chat monitoring to enable parents to see search topics

🐋 DeepSeek AI released a new model DeepSeek-V4, claiming superior performance to legacy models, running at a lower cost with Chinese Ascend chips

✨ OpenAI introduces OpenAI Frontier, a new platform helping enterprises build, deploy and manage AI agents

🤝 Anthropic is offering to share internal data with the federal government in a collaboration to boost AI uptake and unlock productivity gains

⚠️ LLMs are falling short in mental health care, focusing on isolated signals rather than evolving risk patterns of mental crises

The proposed shift: integrate clinical psychology rigour enabling systems to assess intent, context, and vulnerability more like a clinician

⚕OpenAI is turning its attention to clinicians, with a new ChatGPT tool to support medical research and documentation. Free for verified U.S. practitioners, with broader rollout planned.

⚠️ AI is now setting pay rates in an “Uber for nurses” model, using performance data to control shift access and pricing, enabling nurses to bid for work

Concerns that gig-style healthcare may drive a race to the bottom on pay and conditions

🤝 Novartis CEO, Vas Narasimhan, joined Anthropic’s board, becoming the first pharmaceutical executive on its governing body

🧪 Biossil announced a US$43M round backed by Peter Thiel and OpenAI, to reactivate abandoned drugs, taking them through to approval faster and more cost-efficiently

⚠️ MIT Media Labs researchers suggest that “cognitive offloading“ to AI could be having a corrosive effect on our mental abilities

Researchers found the ChatGPT group showed reduced brain activity by up to 55%

Click here for the rest!

Sick Science

🫀 Does Long COVID Raise Heart Disease Risk?

A 2025 Stockholm cohort study of 1.2M non-hospitalised adults revealed those with physician-diagnosed Long COVID faced 2x higher cardiovascular events. Particularly, arrhythmias and coronary disease with stronger effects in women. This calls for routine heart screening & sex-specific follow-up in primary care to catch risks early in community cases.

🥼 Can AI Predict Breast Cancer Better Than Doctors?

A 2026 Lancet Digital Health study found Australia’s BRAIx AI tool, trained on 400,000 mammograms, could estimate a woman’s 4-year breast cancer risk more accurately than traditional factors like age or family history. Women who were flagged in the top 2% faced a 9.7% risk of breast cancer diagnosis, which was higher than BRCA gene carriers. Potentially, unlocking more personalised screening from age 40 through AI-based risk scores, moving beyond the one-size-fits-all model, to enable earlier detection and a reduction in mortalities.

😺 Can Gut Metabolites Predict Early Cognitive Decline?

A 2026 Gut Microbes study of 150 adults found that blood metabolites linked to gut bacteria may help distinguish healthy ageing from early cognitive decline. Cognitively impaired individuals showed lower levels of protective compounds and higher levels of potentially harmful ones. Using six key metabolites, AI models classified stages of decline with up to 79% accuracy (and up to 84–90% when comparing healthy adults with cognitively impaired groups). The findings highlight the gut–brain connection and point to a simple, minimally invasive way to detect decline earlier.

Startup Stuff 🚀

Ready to take your tech startup to the national stage?

Entries are open to Startup&Angels 2026 Australian Technologies Competition. A multi-month growth journey providing expert mentoring, growth workshops, masterclasses, world-class networking, national recognition and your chance to win big. Apply by May 10 - More here

Interested in researching at Anthropic?

Anthropic’s STEM Fellows Program is a short-term opportunity for scientists and engineers to work alongside frontier AI research teams. You’ll be applying domain expertise to evaluate and improve models like Claude across real-world scientific and engineering problems. The program starts June 15 - September 15 with the potential for extension - More here

Deep Tech founder looking to turn your research into a real world venture?

Curtin University’s DeepStart program is a 3 month accelerator backed by RTCM Trailblazer in collaboration with Cicada innovations and Greentown Labs. Providing researchers, startups and SMES with a range of opportunities, including a $5K grant and access to a $500K investment pool, to accelerate commercialisation and investment readiness. Applications close 12 June - More here

Looking for a health tech startup launchpad?

Health 10x is a leading Australian medtech accelerator, offering $100k in funding and support to help startups scale globally. Built with UNSW Founders and The George Institute for Global Health, it backs founders solving major unmet health and medical needs - More here

Driving community-led public health change?

Applications are now open for the Ian Potter Foundation's Public Health program. Offering multi-year grants and minimum $100,000 per year. Supporting organisations to design and deliver evidence-based, preventative health initiatives in partnership with their communities. Funding focuses on improving long-term health outcomes in high-need populations through early-stage exploration, co-designed solutions, scaling proven pilots, and system-shifting public health innovation. EOIs open 28 May - More here

Events💥

15th May: BioMelbourne Network 2026 | Connecting Women Lunch (Melb)

19 - 21st May: AusMedtech 2026 (Perth)

20 - 21st May: Digital Health Festival (Melb)

21st May: Off the record | Real Stories of Medtech

22nd May: Innovate Medtech Masterclass

27 - 28th May: PTA Congress (Syd)

28th May: Breaking the Silos: The Women’s Health MedTech Summit (Syd)

11th June: ON Translate 2026 annual flagship event, bringing together the deep tech ecosystem community to share, learn, collaborate and celebrate together.

2 July: HealthHaus Sydney

Cool Content 💎

🐙 Coherence Neuro: Can This Tiny Brain Implant Increase Cancer Survival?

🧭 Compass, a biotech psychedelics company, reports positive Phase 3 clinical trial data for treatment-resistant depression [Read the press release]

📈 Early Moderna investor, Bianca Ogden has tapped into global medical momentum, delivering a 48% return for Platinum Asset Management

🦠 Researchers discover bioengineered chewing gum could fight oral cancer [Scientific Report]

💡Got Feedback? Something to include next time? Keen to get in touch?

We want to make this worthy of your time & the best it can be.
💌 Hit reply or reach out to emily@whatthehealth.io to share your thoughts.

Adios for now,

👋 Emily,
Mariah & Team WTH

Want to get featured here in front of >10,000 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

I don’t know about you but I’m still recovering from the energy overdose that is Sunrise.

Shoutout to the Blackbird crew for once again bringing the vibes, Anthropic for some killer parties and merch with their Sydney office launch, and of course, all our wonderful health friends.

Talking of conferences - it’s nearly that special time of year where we squish the wholeeee health industry into a few small rooms to network (and facilitate winter flu & COVID spread), starting with Digital Health Festival & AusMedtech.

(and we can’t forget the PTA Congress & Breaking the Silos: The Women’s Health MedTech Summit in Sydney, the week after).

So naturally, to ensure you don’t miss out, we’re doing a giveaway…

🎫 Want a free ticket to the Digital Health Fest? 🎫

We have a few to give away to WTH readers! 🍩

All you need to do is be a paid subscriber (we love you), like this newsletter and hit reply and you’ll go in the draw to win a free ticket

Subscribe now

Okies dokes, onto the news…

🐣 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy

  • Funding

  • Newsworthy

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Events

• Cool Content

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

💊 Blackmores invested $10M in BiomeBank, to scale medical-grade prebiotic microbiome therapies derived from microorganisms in the human gut, across international markets’

🧼 Clean Slate Clinic closed $4.3M to accelerate Australia’s leading alcohol detox platform

🩹 Nutromics secured AU$3M in CRC Grant funding to help support development of it’s world’s first wearable sepsis management patch

🤖 Andromeda, a humanoid robotics company tackling loneliness in aged care deployed its 22nd Abi bot with Victorian provider Mecwacare

💡 Regis Healthcare benefitted from recent $3B federal aged care reforms, boosting valuation to $1.82B and 18% revenue growth

🤰 Baymatob (CUREator+ ANDHealth portfolio company) received NSW Gov funding to advance Oli, its AI maternal-foetal health platform

Newsworthy

💉 Microsoft is set to invest $25B in Aus over the next 3 years to expand AI and cloud capacity, strengthen cybersecurity, and access to digital skills across the country

🎧 Cochlear shares plunged 40%, reaching it’s lowest share price in more than a decade

Leading to speculations about flat-lining revenue due to Middle East conflict or broader company concerns

🧬 The NSW Gov opened its $96M RNA Research & Manufacturing Facility in the Macquarie University Innovation Precinct to boost development of domestic vaccines and therapeutics

📚 NHMRC injected $10.5M into Australian health and medical research to reduce the impact of chronic non-communicable diseases and health inequities

🏥 UNSW joined partners to open Aus’s first purpose-built children’s comprehensive cancer centre, bringing research & clinical care together to speed up new treatments

💰 A Nous Group Report, finds Australia’s medical research institutes generate $4.07B in annual economic benefit while delivering modest returns

✨ NSW Gov is expanding pharmacist prescribing powers to allow eligible adults to access the contraceptive pill without a GP visit from June 1

🌍 Vic is apparently Australia’s leading startup hub, attracting record investment with 4,400 startups valued at $139B

🧑‍⚕️ Heidi Health announced its integration with Epic’s Haiku app, extending seamless clinical workflows from desktop to mobile

While also hitting $US50M ARR, solidifying their position as the fastest growing Aussie tech company since Canva

🏥 Monash Health signed a partnership MoU with Medtech Actuator, connecting clinical experts and innovators with commercialisation pathways and industry networks

💊 ADHD prescription changes will allow pharmacists to issue repeat prescriptions, saving families around ~$10M annually

🦅 Lyrebird Health announced Dr Ray Boyapati, founder of MedEntry joined as Chief Clinical Officer

👶 Navi Medical Technologies has expanded its Neonav® system to support real-time catheter placement & monitoring in newborns, giving clinicians a safer way to care for critically ill babies in NICU

📉 Cochlear, CSL & ResMed are facing a sharp investor reset, as earnings shocks, market pressure & changing healthcare trends drag down Aus’s biotech giants

US & Beyond the Borders

🔬 Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan dropped $500M into their Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, launching a Virtual Biology Initiative to simulate how cells behave at the microlevel

🧠 President Trump signed an executive order fast-tracking psychedelics research as a treatment for serious mental illness, accelerating FDA reviews and unlocking $50M in matched funding for state research programs

🧪 Iterative Health closed a $77M Series C, led by Google Ventures, to transform clinical trial processes

🩻 Aidoc raised $150M Series E to advance AI capabilities across CT and X-ray workflows

🩸 Superpower announced its new offering, Superpower Peptides. While joining forces with GRAIL to give members earlier detection of 50+ cancer types from a single blood draw

🤝 WHOOP got a contract with the US Navy to support operational readiness and reduce fatigue-related risk across naval forces

🩺 Eli Lilly announced a global R&D collaboration and licensing deal to develop AI-discovered drugs worth up to $2.75 billion with Insilico Medicine

Marking a huge shift in Big Pharma from using AI tools to licensing AI built drug pipelines

💰 Fitbit founders announced the launch of their new AI startup, Luffu, integrating scattered health information across devices into one “intelligent family system”

🤝 Johnson & Johnson is set to acquire Atraverse Medical, a device company pioneering next-generation left-heart access and radiofrequency technology

🩺 Novo Nordisk announced the implementation of a full-stack drug discovery and operations system powered by OpenAI

💍 Oura acquired Galen AI, an AI-powered personal health companion, to integrate fragmented medical records and lab data with Oura’s wearable biometrics

With 5.5M+ rings sold and an ~$11B valuation, it’s positioning itself to own the sensor layer, unify health data, and deliver real-time, AI-driven guidance

💰 CVS Health launched Health100 in collaboration with Google Cloud to provide consumers a 24/7 personal healthcare partner

🖊️ Isomorphic Labs, a DeepMind spinoff, is sending AI-Designed drugs to human trials

🏋️ ZOE reduced its platform costs using AI trained on 300,000 microbiome samples, to deliver personalised gut health advice without requiring user testing

🧬 SiranBio has licensed its Phase I siRNA candidate SA030 to GSK in a deal worth up to ~US$1B, targeting abdominal fat & cardiometabolic risk across lung, liver & kidney disease

💊 Sun Pharma is buying Organon for US$11.75B

🤖 AI Updates

🎯 Amazon launched its Bio Discovery platform, giving scientists access to biological AI models to advance research capability.

Sparking interest about whether it will succeed or go down in history like Amazon care in 2022…

💰 Google will invest $US10bn in Anthropic at its last valuation, with another potential $US30bn en route

🏋️‍♀️ Google Health is replacing the Fitbit app with one central hub for fitness, sleep, vitals, medical records & AI coaching from Gemini

⛔️ A researcher invented a fake health condition, which AI chatbots Gemini, Chat GPT, Copilot and Perplexity informed patients was real

The fake papers were also reportedly cited in peer reviewed literature… lol

✨ Meta is expanding its child safety tools adding AI chat monitoring to enable parents to see search topics

🐋 DeepSeek AI released a new model DeepSeek-V4, claiming superior performance to legacy models, running at a lower cost with Chinese Ascend chips

✨ OpenAI introduces OpenAI Frontier, a new platform helping enterprises build, deploy and manage AI agents

🤝 Anthropic is offering to share internal data with the federal government in a collaboration to boost AI uptake and unlock productivity gains

⚠️ LLMs are falling short in mental health care, focusing on isolated signals rather than evolving risk patterns of mental crises

The proposed shift: integrate clinical psychology rigour enabling systems to assess intent, context, and vulnerability more like a clinician

⚕OpenAI is turning its attention to clinicians, with a new ChatGPT tool to support medical research and documentation. Free for verified U.S. practitioners, with broader rollout planned.

⚠️ AI is now setting pay rates in an “Uber for nurses” model, using performance data to control shift access and pricing, enabling nurses to bid for work

Concerns that gig-style healthcare may drive a race to the bottom on pay and conditions

🤝 Novartis CEO, Vas Narasimhan, joined Anthropic’s board, becoming the first pharmaceutical executive on its governing body

🧪 Biossil announced a US$43M round backed by Peter Thiel and OpenAI, to reactivate abandoned drugs, taking them through to approval faster and more cost-efficiently

⚠️ MIT Media Labs researchers suggest that “cognitive offloading“ to AI could be having a corrosive effect on our mental abilities

Researchers found the ChatGPT group showed reduced brain activity by up to 55%

Click here to get the rest!

Sick Science

🫀 Does Long COVID Raise Heart Disease Risk?

A 2025 Stockholm cohort study of 1.2M non-hospitalised adults revealed those with physician-diagnosed Long COVID faced 2x higher cardiovascular events. Particularly, arrhythmias and coronary disease with stronger effects in women. This calls for routine heart screening & sex-specific follow-up in primary care to catch risks early in community cases.

🥼 Can AI Predict Breast Cancer Better Than Doctors?

A 2026 Lancet Digital Health study found Australia’s BRAIx AI tool, trained on 400,000 mammograms, could estimate a woman’s 4-year breast cancer risk more accurately than traditional factors like age or family history. Women who were flagged in the top 2% faced a 9.7% risk of breast cancer diagnosis, which was higher than BRCA gene carriers. Potentially, unlocking more personalised screening from age 40 through AI-based risk scores, moving beyond the one-size-fits-all model, to enable earlier detection and a reduction in mortalities.

😺 Can Gut Metabolites Predict Early Cognitive Decline?

A 2026 Gut Microbes study of 150 adults found that blood metabolites linked to gut bacteria may help distinguish healthy ageing from early cognitive decline. Cognitively impaired individuals showed lower levels of protective compounds and higher levels of potentially harmful ones. Using six key metabolites, AI models classified stages of decline with up to 79% accuracy (and up to 84–90% when comparing healthy adults with cognitively impaired groups). The findings highlight the gut–brain connection and point to a simple, minimally invasive way to detect decline earlier.

Startup Stuff 🚀

Ready to take your tech startup to the national stage?

Entries are open to Startup&Angels 2026 Australian Technologies Competition. A multi-month growth journey providing expert mentoring, growth workshops, masterclasses, world-class networking, national recognition and your chance to win big. Apply by May 10 - More here

Interested in researching at Anthropic?

Anthropic’s STEM Fellows Program is a short-term opportunity for scientists and engineers to work alongside frontier AI research teams. You’ll be applying domain expertise to evaluate and improve models like Claude across real-world scientific and engineering problems. The program starts June 15 - September 15 with the potential for extension - More here

Deep Tech founder looking to turn your research into a real world venture?

Curtin University’s DeepStart program is a 3 month accelerator backed by RTCM Trailblazer in collaboration with Cicada innovations and Greentown Labs. Providing researchers, startups and SMES with a range of opportunities, including a $5K grant and access to a $500K investment pool, to accelerate commercialisation and investment readiness. Applications close 12 June - More here

Looking for a health tech startup launchpad?

Health 10x is a leading Australian medtech accelerator, offering $100k in funding and support to help startups scale globally. Built with UNSW Founders and The George Institute for Global Health, it backs founders solving major unmet health and medical needs - More here

Driving community-led public health change?

Applications are now open for the Ian Potter Foundation's Public Health program. Offering multi-year grants and minimum $100,000 per year. Supporting organisations to design and deliver evidence-based, preventative health initiatives in partnership with their communities. Funding focuses on improving long-term health outcomes in high-need populations through early-stage exploration, co-designed solutions, scaling proven pilots, and system-shifting public health innovation. EOIs open 28 May - More here

Events💥

15th May: BioMelbourne Network 2026 | Connecting Women Lunch (Melb)

19 - 21st May: AusMedtech 2026 (Perth)

20 - 21st May: Digital Health Festival (Melb)

21st May: Off the record | Real Stories of Medtech

22nd May: Innovate Medtech Masterclass

27 - 28th May: PTA Congress (Syd)

28th May: Breaking the Silos: The Women’s Health MedTech Summit (Syd)

11th June: ON Translate 2026 annual flagship event, bringing together the deep tech ecosystem community to share, learn, collaborate and celebrate together.

2 July: HealthHaus Sydney

Cool Content 💎

🐙 Coherence Neuro: Can This Tiny Brain Implant Increase Cancer Survival?

🧭 Compass, a biotech psychedelics company, reports positive Phase 3 clinical trial data for treatment-resistant depression [Read the press release]

📈 Early Moderna investor, Bianca Ogden has tapped into global medical momentum, delivering a 48% return for Platinum Asset Management

🦠 Researchers discover bioengineered chewing gum could fight oral cancer [Scientific Report]

💡Got Feedback? Something to include next time? Keen to get in touch?

We want to make this worthy of your time & the best it can be.
💌 Hit reply or reach out to emily@whatthehealth.io to share your thoughts.

Adios for now,

👋 Emily,
Mariah & Team WTH

Want to get featured here in front of >10,000 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

There’s a lot we have to cover today, so we’re not going to mess about today and just dive straight in…

🐣 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy

  • Funding

  • Newsworthy

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Events

• Cool Content

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

🧫 Symex Labs raised $2.5M to develop a wearable hormone sensor aiming to simplify IVF monitoring & at‑home fertility tracking

💡 4DMedical secured an unexpected $83M private placement from undisclosed institutional investors

📊 BlinkLab (ASX: BB1), a digital health company developing AI-powered diagnostic tech, secured $17.5m to Fund FDA Autism diagnostic clearance and advance ADHD trials

💉 xCystence Bio, a biotech developing novel targeted‑protein‑degrader therapies for Polycystic Kidney Disease, closed its pre-seed round with Uniseed, BioCurate, Monash Ventures & Breakthrough Victoria

👩‍🔬 Proseek Bio raised $1.5M seed round to advance OC‑Triage, its blood‑based ovarian cancer test

🧬 Genomics Health Futures Mission awarded up to $74M for projects advancing genomic research & innovation

Newsworthy

🩸 WHOOP & i-screen launch Australia’s first WHOOP-compatible blood test, enabling users to upload 30+ biomarker results directly into the app

“WHOOP Advanced Labs Blood Test - we provide the pdf report for you to upload your bloodwork results into WHOOP as part of an existing WHOOP membership.”

🌍 Australia is set to join Horizon Europe (EU’s EUR93.5B research & innovation program), giving Aussie unis access to the world’s largest R&D platform

🩺 Updoc is giving a rural NSW region free, unlimited access to GP telehealth through its Community Access Program

🤝 Anthropic signed an MoU with the Aussie Gov to collaborate on safe AI adoption, economic impact & workforce transformation

🧠 St Vincent’s Health Australia launched Medicare Mental Health Check In, a free digital mental support program for Aussies aged 16+

💰 Mindset Health were provisionally approved to participate in CMS ACCESS, an experimental Medicare program meant to expand access to technology-supported chronic care

💰 Snow Medical Research Foundation invested $24M in 3 Aus biomedical researchers through its 2026 Snow Fellowships

💊 ADHD prescriptions are surging, with ~838k patients & 6.7M scripts in 2025, up 25% year-on-year

🎧 Cochlear is ramping up US lobbying efforts as potential tariffs threaten access to its hearing implants in the world’s largest healthcare market

⚠️ NDIS providers are submitting illegible handwritten invoices for payments worth 1000s, raising concerns about fraud and errors in the $50B scheme

One provider found ~30% of 200,000 monthly invoices couldn’t be processed automatically

🍏 LuminaX’s 2026 accelerator selected 10 healthtech startups for their new cohort ft. a shift toward preventative & early-stage care

🚀 MedTech Actuator selected 15 startups for its 2026 Accelerator Cohort 11 ft. AI wearables, cancer diagnostics, women’s health devices & digital therapeutics

📱 Spoony will shut down despite reaching 65k users, as investors shift funding toward AI-driven startups over traditional social platforms

⚠️ Australian research leaders are urging the Gov to act on a growing “brain drain” crisis and lack of funding, warning the country risks losing a generation of scientists

A letter co-signed by 63 leaders calls for unlocking $1B annual MRFF funding, stabilising research careers, and fixing fragmentation, as funding success rates fall to ~4% for early- and mid-career researchers

US & Beyond the Borders

💰 WHOOP raised $575M at a $10.1B valuation to scale its global personalised health platform & was selected for Medicare’s ACCESS program, enabling eligible patients to receive the wearable as part of their clinical care

📊 Rock Health’s Q1 2026 report revealed digital health funding reached $4B across 110 deals, with capital increasingly concentrated in mega-rounds

59% of funding came from just 12 deals ($100M+), as AI becomes table stakes across healthcare startups & investors double down on fewer, larger bets

🧪 Life Biosciences, co-founded by David Sinclair, raised $80M to advance a one-time anti-ageing gene therapy into clinical trials, aiming to “rewind” cellular ageing

🧬 Protocole emerged from stealth with a $6M seed round to build a clinical-grade peptide platform with physician oversight

🧠 Women’s brain health is a $1T global economic opportunity, driven by underinvestment in conditions like Alzheimer’s, menopause & mental health

Women spend 25% more of their lives in poor health & make up ~⅔ of Alzheimer’s patients, yet only ~6% of healthcare investment targets women’s health

🧪 Stipple Bio raised an $100M Series A to advance its precision oncology pipeline & lead drug STP-100 into clinical trials

🏋️ Gym membership hit a record 81M Americans in 2025 (26.1% of the population), with participation surpassing 100M+ people & 7B annual visits

💰 Unilever acquired Grüns for $1.2B, doubling down on functional gummy supplements

🖊️ Remedy Place launched its first smart NAD+ pen in partnership with NADclinic to bring at‑home self‑injection of clinical‑grade NAD+ to consumers across its U.S. wellness clubs

✨ Moxie raised $25M in Series C to expand its clinical‑grade operating system & Scale Suite for independent aesthetic practices

🏋️ Hyrox has exploded with 1.5M+ participants across 30 countries & races now selling out in minutes

🥇 F45 launched PEAK500, a 30‑minute in‑studio competition, to double down on hybrid fitness & “fitness‑as‑a‑sport” as it sponsors 12 global HYROX events & builds a larger event platform beyond the studio

🧠 Inflow is joining Cerebral, bringing its ADHD‑focused digital‑therapy platform into a broader mental‑health ecosystem to expand continuous, tech‑enabled care for more people

💊 Superpower raised US$42M led by Forerunner Ventures to grow its AI-driven peptide health platform & clinical research capabilities

🥤 Danone acquired UK-based Huel for ~EUR1bn to expand its footprint in the growing functional nutrition & protein shake market

💍 Oura is in talks with investment banks to launch an IPO as early as this year

And partnered with Vida Health to integrate wearable data into virtual care programs, bringing ring insights into clinical decision-making

🩺 Samsung launched blood‑pressure monitoring in Samsung Health for select Galaxy Watch users, adding to its suite of FDA‑cleared tools like sleep‑apnea detection & ECG

🤖 Medvi, an AI-powered telehealth startup founded by Matthew Gallagher scaled to an estimated $1.8B annual revenue, selling GLP‑1 weight‑loss drugs & men’s‑health products with just 2 employees

But, sparked a lot of discussion about fraud, ethics and safe care

🏋️‍♂️ Nike shut down all Nike Studios boutique fitness locations, ending its in-person gym experiment launched in 2023

🌐 China has fully connected wearable‑device data to its national healthcare & insurance system, turning continuous‑monitoring streams into medical‑insurance inputs

🧬 Researchers used CRISPR & mRNA tech to create a personalised gene-editing therapy for a baby with a rare disease in just six months

💉 Scientists are developing “universal” or “everything vaccines” that could protect against multiple viruses, bacteria & even allergens with a single shot

🌡️ Peri launched a wearable device for perimenopause, designed to track symptoms like hot flashes & night sweats in real time

🤖 AI Updates

✨ Perplexity AI launched Perplexity Health, the only platform for Pro & Max users that integrates data from wearables & 1.7M+ medical records to track health trends & generate AI‑driven wellness recommendations

🩺 Google/Fitbit is rolling out its Gemini‑powered Personal Health Coach, now capable of integrating medical records with wearable data to deliver AI‑driven, context‑aware health guidance

🤝 OpenEvidence & Tandem partnered to connect AI‑powered clinical‑decision support with automated prior-authorisation & prescription routing, closing the gap between evidence‑based treatment plans & real‑time patient access to medications

🧬 Anthropic acquired Coefficient Bio, an AI‑driven biotech with fewer than 10 employees & eight months of stealth, in an $400M all‑stock deal, bringing a compact, Genentech‑experienced team into Claude for Life Sciences & signalling that AI‑native computational‑biology talent is now a top‑tier strategic asset

🧠 A new paper argues that AI’s biggest healthcare impact may not be efficiency, but a re‑imagining of specialty care

🧬 Diadia Health launched its AI causal‑reasoning platform, helping clinicians uncover root‑cause drivers in complex chronic & hormonal conditions where standard labs show “normal” results

⚠️ AI disease prediction models for stroke & diabetes are being trained on potentially fabricated or unverifiable datasets ---> Researchers found 124 studies using questionable data, with some models already used in the clinical setting

🧬 Goodfire & Mayo Clinic developed an AI model that can predict & explain the impact of 4.2M genetic variants across the human genome ----> The system achieved state-of-the-art accuracy (0.997 AUROC) & generates human-readable explanations for previously unknown variants

Click here to get the rest!

Sick Science

🫁 Does Vaping Cause Lung Cancer?

UNSW-led review in Carcinogenesis concludes nicotine vapes likely cause lung & oral cancers independent of smoking, based on clinical, animal, & lab evidence of carcinogens in e-cig aerosols. Multidisciplinary analysis by cancer experts, pharmacists, & epidemiologists found consistent risks across disciplines, though exact case numbers await long-term data. This challenges vaping’s harm-reduction narrative, urging focus beyond its role as a smoking gateway

💊 Low Vitamin D in 40s Raises Dementia Risk?

A 2026 Neurology study of 793 healthy adults found higher vitamin D blood levels at age 39 linked to less harmful tau protein buildup in the brain 16 years later, spotted on special PET scans. Low vitamin D speeds up tau, an early sign of Alzheimer’s before memory loss starts, but didn’t affect another protein called amyloid. Getting enough vitamin D young might protect your brain later

😺 AI can rank unmet medical needs across 22,701 diseases in just 1 hour?

A 2026 PLoS Medicine study developed an LLM-based method using GPT-4o to score unmet medical need for all 22,701 diseases in the MONDO ontology, assessing 11 criteria across patient suffering & accessibility. Scores, weighted to prioritise rare diseases lacking effective treatments with high mortality/morbidity, were generated in ~1 hour for $120, closely matching expert ratings (e.g., ρ=0.845 for mortality) with strong inter-expert agreement (95% within 1 point)

Startup Stuff 🚀

Got a big idea & looking for the right launchpad?

Antler is now taking applications for its global Residency Program, where exceptional founders come together to build & scale world-changing startups. It’s a full-time, in-person opportunity to find your co-founder, validate your idea, & tap into Antler’s global network of investors & mentors - More here

Looking to put your deep tech venture on the national stage?

Powered by Cicada x Tech23, the program is a curated platform for Australia’s most promising science & engineering-led startups to connect with investors, industry leaders, & key decision-makers. Selected ventures gain national recognition, high-value connections, & access to a strong deep tech community. Apply by 30 April - More here

Building the next wave of Australian biotech?

Jumar Bioincubator is Australia’s newest biotech incubator, co‑located in Melbourne with a leading biopharmaceutical company & supported by WEHI, CSL, the University of Melbourne, & Breakthrough Victoria. It offers early‑stage ventures world‑class labs, research commercialisation support, & access to a strong national network to help translate cutting‑edge science into real‑world treatments - More here

Ready to accelerate your therapeutic project?

Applications are now open for the Pipeline Accelerator 2025–26 Round 2 Vouchers, offering up to $50,000 in funding (with at least 50% co‑investment) to support early‑stage therapeutic development. Backed by Phenomics Australia, Therapeutic Innovation Australia (TIA), ANSTO’s National Deuteration Facility, & Bioplatforms Australia, the program gives researchers & SMEs access to national research infrastructure & translation expertise across the full pipeline from molecules to clinical trials - More here

Planning to take your life‑sciences startup global in 2026?

MTPConnect’s International Conference Delegations Program is rolling out a packed calendar of overseas conferences & site visits to help Australian medtech, biotech, pharma, & digital‑health companies access international markets, investors, & supply chains.

Delegations cover key events like BIO‑Europe Spring (Lisbon), BIO Middle East (Riyadh), The MedTech Conference (Boston), BIO (San Diego), & BIO KOREA / BIO Asia‑Taiwan, with tailored site‑visit programs & Australian pavilions or industry events in each region. - More here

Events💥

22nd Apr: Commercialisation Grant Development Workshop (Perth)

22nd Apr: BioSymposium - Next-gen Biosensing: Breakthroughs in technology & translation (Melb)

28th Apr: Building Regulatory & Trial Readiness for Medical Devices & SaMD - HealthTech Hub Masterclass (Syd)

30th Apr: Sunrise (Syd)

15th May: BioMelbourne Network 2026 | Connecting Women Lunch (Melb)

19 - 21st May: AusMedtech 2026 (Perth)

20 - 21st May: Digital Health Festival (Melb)

27 - 28th May: PTA Congress (Syd)

28th May: Breaking the Silos: The Women’s Health MedTech Summit (Syd)

Cool Content 💎

🐙 Frazis Capital Partners: We Grew Human Brain Cells on a Chip & Taught Them to Play Doom

📟 Fast Company List: The Most Innovative Medical Device Companies of 2026

💡Got Feedback? Something to include next time? Keen to get in touch?

We want to make this worthy of your time & the best it can be.
💌 Hit reply or reach out to emily@whatthehealth.io to share your thoughts.

Adios for now,

👋 Emily,
Mariah & Team WTH

Want to get featured here in front of >10,000 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

First with Australian Healthcare Week, our fun little exclusive briefing with Google’s Life Sciences team on “Accelerating Innovation with AI in Life Sciences”…

Then, Heidi Unlocked yesterday in Melbourne, where they unveiled the Heidi “Remote” - their first hardware product to help create seamless experiences, transcribing, notes and communication in healthcare.

Along with their communication agents (voice, text and beyond) for both inbound and outbound interactions, helping them further expand into a fully fledged “AI care partner” and manage more parts of the care process. Tres cool.

I must say, it’s awesome to see what this incredible team has achieved in a relatively short period, and it’s clear they're just getting started

Interestingly, moving in a way, closer to bringing their original vision back when they first got funding from Blackbird for “Oscer” - of becoming a diagnostic companion. But in a much bigger, better and ground-up way.

Well done to all the Heidi team 💜
Love your work.

PS - For all the Medical Doctors turned investors (or aspiring), we’re currently hiring at Tenmile for a Investment Analyst/Associate 💹 👩‍⚕️

If you want to come work with me and a whole heap of far smarter folks investing in the future of Aussie healthtech, apply here!

🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy News

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Events

• Cool Content

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

🧬 TMRW raised a $7M Seed round led by Tidal Ventures to expand its longevity clinics & preventative health platform

🧪 Lumonus topped up its Series B to $28M, adding $3M from Brandon Capital & Investible to scale its AI-powered cancer care platform

🔬 Monash Uni secured up to $22.4M to develop first-in-class medicines that restore lymphatic vessel pumping, targeting diseases like lymphedema & arthritis

Newsworthy

💪 US-based Superpower is licensing Tetratherix’s proprietary polymer-based carrier system to help deliver peptide-based medicines & GLP-1s via the nose rather than injections

💰 Spectrum.Life, an Irish mental health and wellbeing player, expands into Aus through the acquisitions of MindFit, We Lysn and Valion

👩‍⚕️ Heidi launched their new hardware product and “AI care companion” ft autonomous communication at the snazzy “Unlocked” demo day

🧠 Cortical Labs is building biological data centres powered by human brain cells in Melb & Singapore

The startup’s CL1 “biocomputers” grow neurons on silicon chips, with 120 units planned for Melb & up to 1,000 in Singapore as researchers explore ultra-low-energy alternatives to traditional AI chips

💊 Eli Lilly confirmed the TGA is evaluating its oral GLP-1 weight-loss drug, orforglipron, signalling potential new treatment options beyond injectables

📝 The government published its Ambitious Australia: Strategic Examination of Research and Development final report, after a year-long process to identify the challenges & opportunities facing Australia’s R&D system

Ft. 20 recommendations intending to improve the capacity of Australia’s research, development and innovation (RD&I) with 6 core focus elements:

• greater focus and scale for RD&I impact

• a world class foundational research system creating knowledge and expertise

• incentives to build the RD&I businesses and industries of the future

• investment and capital to fuel the innovation cycle

• building workforce capability to power RD&I activities

• government to lead and champion

🩺 NZ rolled out Heidi's AI scribe to every ED nationwide, giving 1,250 ED clinicians access to the tool

In early pilots, drs using the scribe saw 1 extra patient per shift, while 80% of staff reported improved productivity & 84% said it improved their wellbeing

⚖️ Aus clinicians are calling on the TGA to allow a “clinician-in-the-loop” exemption for AI medical software

🧬 Monash Uni licensed an antibody therapeutic program for immune-mediated diseases to biotech giant CSL

🤖 Anthropic is opening a Sydney office, expanding its APAC footprint as usage of its Claude AI surges globally

AU & NZ rank 4th & 8th worldwide for Claude usage per capita

🏥 NDIS providers are advertising taxpayer-funded services, including pet taxis, sensory gardens, lawn mowing, & recreation like skiing & surfing, highlighting ongoing grey areas in what the disability scheme will cover

🐶 Paul Conyngham, an Aussie tech founder, used AI & ChatGPT to design a personalised mRNA cancer vaccine for his dog, resulting in a ~75% tumour reduction

🌿 “Third places” like parks, libraries & community spaces are becoming increasingly important in Brisbane, offering free or low-cost environments to support mental health & social connection

🫀 Google launched an AI-powered heart health initiative to identify cardiovascular risk earlier in rural Aus communities

The program, run with Wesfarmers Health, SISU Health, the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute & Latrobe Health Services, will use Google’s Population Health AI to analyse community-level data & support 50k heart health screenings in regional areas

🏥 Healthscope will shrink its hospital network from 31 to 28 facilities after the Adelaide Community Healthcare Alliance ended a 23-year management contract

US & Beyond Borders

💉 Novo Nordisk dropped its lawsuit against Hims & Hers & signed a partnership to distribute FDA-approved GLP-1 medications through the telehealth platform

⌚ WHOOP launched a women’s health blood biomarker panel & expanded its menstrual cycle prediction features, as the company reports 150% YoY growth in female members

⚖️ New York lawmakers are considering a bill that would ban AI chatbots from giving legal or medical advice & allow users to sue companies that violate the rule

🏋️‍♀️ Women are driving a surge in strength training, with more women logging strength sessions than men on Garmin & Strava in 2025

👩‍⚕️ Wisp launched a women’s longevity care offering, prescribing peptides & therapeutics aimed at hormonal, immune & cellular health

💌 Maven, the virtual women’s health clinic launched a DTC platform adding hormone and GLP-1 support programs

💉 Consumers are increasingly self-prescribing peptides, often sourcing them from medspas, online vendors & compounding pharmacies rather than doctors

🤝 HealthEx partnered with Microsoft to integrate personal health records into Copilot Health, enabling more personalised AI-driven health insights

🧠 Gestala, a Chinese startup, raised $21.6M just two months after launch to develop non-invasive ultrasound brain–computer interfaces

🌏 Google hosted their annual Check Up with Google 2026, sharing how AI, health products and partnerships are helping with everything from disease detection to patient experience and health coaching

🤖 AI Updates

🤖 Microsoft launched Copilot Health, an AI assistant that aggregates data from EHRs, wearables & lab tests to generate personalised health insights

☁️ AWS launched Amazon Connect Health, a suite of AI agents designed to automate tasks like appointment scheduling, patient verification & documentation

💻OpenAI just rolled out GPT-5.4

🤯 Digital health funding hit $14B in 2025 (+35% YoY), while platforms like Hims & Hers &Ro are giving patients more control over diagnostics, prescriptions & medical information

📊 Anthropic released new research showing AI is reshaping the labour market, with hiring for highly AI-exposed roles among workers aged 22–25 falling ~14% since ChatGPT launched in 2022

📣 Perplexity announced their Perplexity Health Advisory Board … “a small group of practising physicians, researchers, and health tech leaders who will help ensure the future product decisions, content quality, patient safety, and clinical workflows reflect evidence-based medicine”

Sick Science

🧠 Can childhood stress start wearing down the body by age 13?

A 2026 Brain, Behavior, & Immunity study used data from 3,787 adolescents in Portugal’s Generation XXI cohort to test whether adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) were linked to allostatic load, a biomarker score of cumulative physiological “wear & tear.” ACEs reported by age 13 were associated with higher allostatic load, with parental separation/divorce, school difficulties, & household alcohol/drug use showing the strongest links. The biological signals were clearest in the metabolic & immune systems, including lower HDL, higher waist circumference, higher triglycerides, and higher hs-CRP.

🤖 Is AI actually making you delusional?

A Lancet Psychiatry Personal View warns that as LLMs become everyday companions, they may also validate or amplify delusional thinking in people vulnerable to psychosis. The authors describe a risk of “delusion co-creation”, where AI systems mirror grandiose or distorted beliefs, blur reality boundaries, & reinforce epistemic instability rather than grounding users in shared reality. This is not framed as proof that AI causes psychosis from scratch, but as a serious concern that these systems could worsen symptoms or deepen relapse risk in susceptible users.

🧑‍⚕️ Delusions aside, could an AI therapist outperform a human one?

A Nature Medicine study tested AI-delivered cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) using a double-blind trial with 227 participants, comparing human therapists, standalone LLMs, & LLMs augmented with Limbic’s clinical “cognitive layer.” Expert clinicians rated transcripts using the Cognitive Therapy Rating Scale, & AI systems with the cognitive layer scored higher than human therapists, while standalone LLMs also slightly outperformed humans. Participants reported therapeutic alliance levels similar to human therapy, suggesting users felt comparable trust & connection. Real-world analysis of ~20,000 therapy conversations also linked greater cognitive-layer use with higher recovery rates and larger reductions in anxiety and depression.

Get the rest here!

Startup Stuff 🚀

Ready to scale a digital or connected health startup in Vic?

ACTIVATE is a 6-month accelerator backed by LaunchVic, designed for Vic healthtech startups that have reached MVP & are ready to grow. The program offers hands-on mentoring, deep commercialisation support, & access to ANDHealth’s global network to help founders get investor- & enterprise-ready - More here

Building the next wave of Australian healthtech?

LX Health is taking applications for its 2026 accelerator, supporting 10 Aus health startups with investment (up to $200k), deep commercialisation support, & access to a powerful network of clinicians, operators, & VCs. Since 2021, LX has helped founders raise $33M & scale globally – More here

Early Stage Starup looking for a leg up?

The MedTech Actuator Accelerator is taking applications for its program designed to fast-track early-stage healthcare startups in Australia & APAC through the complex process of commercialisation. Spanning several months, they provide BioTech, MedTech, and HealthTech founders with intensive mentorship, hands-on guidance from industry experts, & a structured pathway to secure seed to Series A investment - More here

Got a big idea and looking for the right launchpad?

Antler is now taking applications for its global Residency Program, where exceptional founders come together to build & scale world-changing startups. It’s a full-time, in-person opportunity to find your co-founder, validate your idea, & tap into Antler’s global network of investors & mentors - More here

Turning research into a startup?

Breakthrough Victoria 2026 Fellowship offers paid researchers (undergrad/postgrad/recent Vic uni grads) $150k per startup + founder salary to build from an idea to investment-ready, with hands-on UIP support. 2025 cohort includes: IVF embryo imaging, AI skin cancer detection, mental health games
- More here

VC-backed Startup?

Anthropic Claude Startup Program offers free API credits, priority rate limits, exclusive events/office hours, & tools (Claude Code, team workspaces) for early-stage founders, trusted by Cursor, Perplexity, Replit - More here

Events💥

20th Mar: Founders Meetup with Thomas Jeng, OpenAI’s APAC Startups Lead (Syd)

23rd Mar: The 5 Day Kill Your Idea Challenge (Online)

31st Mar: Get Unstuck: How to turn idea chaos into clear decisions (Online)

26th Mar: BioNSW x Cicada HealthTech Hub Digital HealthTech Networking Night (Syd)

2nd Apr: Will They Pay? How To Find Your Real Buyers (Online)
22nd Apr: Commercialisation Grant Development Workshop (Perth)

22nd Apr: BioSymposium - Next-gen Biosensing: Breakthroughs in technology and translation (Melb)

28th Apr: Building Regulatory and Trial Readiness for Medical Devices & SaMD - HealthTech Hub Masterclass (Syd)

15th May: BioMelbourne Network 2026 | Connecting Women Lunch (Melb)

19 - 21st May: AusMedtech 2026 (Perth)

20 - 21st May: Digital Health Festival (Melb)

27 - 28th May: PTA Congress (Syd)

28th May: Breaking the Silos: The Women’s Health MedTech Summit (Syd)

Cool Content 💎

🎙️ a16z: Andrew Huberman: Peptides, Sleep Tech, & the End of Obesity

📖 Axios: The era of Doctor AI is already here

Caitlin Owens discusses how >40M people ask ChatGPT health questions every day, with challenges emerging as consumers increasingly treat chatbots as experts.

📖 Healthcare AI Guy: Company Deep Dive, Nabla

📖 AFR: I’m a longevity doctor. Here’s why I’ll never give up alcohol

💡Got Feedback? Something to include next time? Keen to get in touch?

We want to make this worthy of your time & the best it can be.
💌 Hit reply or reach out to emily@whatthehealth.io to share your thoughts.

Have an excellent weekend, friends

👋 Emily,
Mariah & Team WTH

Want to get featured here in front of >10,000 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Welcome to March.

What a crazy time. Thoughts and prayers to those involved in the Iran situation and Dubai.💜 Whilst Anthropic is out of the good graces of the White House.

But also, big excitement on the investment and fund returns front in healthtech here in Aus.

And, at least thanks to Friday’s wonderful panel, we know a little of what’s happening in Llms.

Ok - lots to catch up on since we’ve been MIA.
Onto the news...

🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy News

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Cool Content

Brought to you with… 💜 Australian Healthcare Week

Interested in whats cutting edge in healthcare? Want to hear from leaders? Or mingle with other innovators?

Come join the health industry and leading Aussie healthtech Startups & Scaleups taking centre stage at Healthcare 2040 Expo, part of Australian Healthcare Week!

There’s a dedicated Start-Up & Investor Program - for bold ideas, real stories and the people shaping the future of health. Hear from early-stage disruptors and learn what it takes to scale, with real-world insights from companies like Heidi Health!

🏆 And even a pitch fest with 3 different categories: Improving Clinician Experience, Transforming Consumer Experience & Evolving Models of Care.

📅 11-12 March
📍 ICC Sydney
🎟️ Register for free 👇

Register here for free!

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

💰 Eucalyptus is selling to US telehealth giant Hims & Hers for $1.6B (~$1.15B USD; $240M upfront + deferred/earnouts to 2029), turning the Oz weight-loss leader Pilot, Juniper into its international arm.

🩸 On the House raised a $1.7M Seed round to scale its model, providing free period products in public bathrooms, using ad-funded digital dispensers

👩🏻‍💻 Splose, raised a record-breaking $46M Series A round led by Spectrum Equity to scale their PMS

🤝 HBF launched the $25M HBF Ventures fund (with Artesian) targeting 15-20 digital health, care models, & preventative startups over 10 years

🩺 HotDoc CEO Ben Hurst announced a majority stake investment led by Potentia Capital (in a previously estimated $250-300M deal) alongside Acclivis and AirTree, celebrating 13 years from startup funding to transforming GP practice sustainability

💰 Tenmile announced their latest portfolio additions

🧪 Amaroq Therapeutics - pioneering finding and developing novel oncogenic long-non coding RNA targets in the dark genome

🧬 Creyon Bio - building AI-enabled, RNA-targeting therapies with tissue specific delivery to unlock safer, more precise medicines

🎯 Cuttlefish Bio - advancing highly targeted enzyme-based therapies designed to improve outcomes in solid tumours

💜 Kantoko - delivering accessible and supportive care management for treatment of ADHD

🔬 Oncko - using advanced biology and AI to identify optimal combination therapies for cancer

🌱 ProtoAxiom announced their investment in Flo Axiom, a Griffith University spin-out tackling one of the biggest bottlenecks in pharma production: purification

Newsworthy

🚀 Heidi launched Heidi Evidence, their clinical research tool built in partnership with EMGuidance and NICE Guidelines and Heidi Comms, and acquired AutoMedica

🗣️ Mindset Health is using ElevenLabs’ AI voice tech to personalise & scale its gut–brain digital therapeutics, achieving 85–90% session completion rates with AI-generated audio performing on par with human-recorded voices

⚠️ Drs warn Aus’s weight-loss ad surge is skirting the law as GLP-1 demand explodes

🏥 Macquarie Health Corporation is preparing to cut contracts with dozens of private insurers, escalating a funding dispute that could leave 100,000s of patients facing higher out-of-pocket fees or needing to seek care elsewhere

👨🏼‍⚕️ ~2,500 junior doctors launched a class action against St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, claiming unpaid overtime and a culture of excessive off-the-books hours

🔬 Dr Monique Ryan MP launched a campaign calling on the federal government to increase the amount released from the Medical Research Future Fund

🍿 Health star ratings will become mandatory on all packaged foods in Australia following a vote by food and health ministers

👵 Aged care wait times have surged, with elderly Aussies waiting an average of 245 days for home care services & 27 days to be assessed

🤝 Eucalyptus partnered with Consultmed to enable secure GP–clinic communication & shared care for patients using its Juniper medically supervised weight-loss service

… and faces accusations from Manila-based medical staff of unpaid overtime, rising workloads, & underpay after performance targets were increased

🇨🇳 Telix Pharmaceuticals received Chinese regulatory clearance to proceed with filing its prostate cancer imaging agent, Illuccix

🦷 Tetratherix signed an exclusive global distribution deal with Henry Schein, paving the way for US & international launch of its bone regeneration product

🩺 Ex-NSW Chief Health Officer Nick Coatsworth welcomes Health Minister Mark Butler’s mandatory specialist fee disclosure but calls it “necessary but not sufficient”

US & Beyond Borders

🧬 FDA cleared first human epigenetic reprogramming trial as Life Biosciences gets approval to begin a Phase 1 study of ER-100, a gene therapy using partial cellular reprogramming to safely rejuvenate retinal cells in age-related eye diseases

🌬️ Climatic raised $10M to bring preventative lung health into everyday wellness, backing a non-prescription inhaler system

🦠 Nipah virus outbreak in India has confirmed 2 cases with a high fatality risk, but limited human-to-human spread means global risk remains low as authorities increase monitoring & precautions

🦾 Sword Health acquired Kaia Health for $285M, expanding its AI-driven musculoskeletal platform into Germany

💰 Midi Health bagged $100M Series D to reach unicorn status & scale a national, insurance-backed women’s healthcare platform

🏥 HHS plans $100M addiction & homelessness initiative to fund recovery-focused outreach, psychiatric care, crisis intervention, & treatment programs under its new STREETS framework

💰Santé Ventures, an early-stage healthcare and life sciences investment fund, closed its fifth fund with $330M (USD) in committed capital

🤖 AI Updates

🤖 Amazon One Medical rolled out an agentic health AI assistant inside its app, giving members 24/7 personalised health guidance

💰 OpenEvidence raised a $250M Series D at a $12B valuation to scale its AI-powered medical search platform, now used by over 40% of US physicians

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Fitbit founders launched Luffu to build an AI “family care system” that helps households track shared health data, spot changes, & coordinate caregiving

🏥 AI in hospitals is paying off in radiology, documentation, call centres, & insurance appeals, but fails when treated as a replacement rather than a second set of eyes

The Wall Street Journal analysis found ~27% of health systems pay for commercial AI tools (3× the broader economy). At Northwestern Medicine, AI nearly halved radiology read times & flagged missed findings, while Mount Sinai used AI-assisted insurance appeals to overturn more denials & add ~$12M in annual revenue

🧠 ARISE Healthcare Network’s The State of Clinical AI 2026 Report finds clinical AI delivers “superhuman” results on narrow tasks but fails under uncertainty & works best as a teammate, not a replacement.

🩺 Lotus Health snagged $35M to scale a free, AI primary care platform that delivers diagnosis, prescriptions, & referrals nationwide, with human doctors reviewing/ signing off on clinical decisions

🤖 Oura launched its first proprietary LLM for women’s health in Oura Labs, powering a new Advisor that blends clinician-curated knowledge with biometric data for personalised guidance across menstrual cycles to menopause

Get the rest here!!

Sick Science

💊 Digital blood testing almost at hand?

UNSW & Nutromics’ lab-in-a-patch wearable aced a pilot trial monitoring vancomycin levels via aptamer sensors in interstitial fluid – more comfy than blood draws, with ICU trials underway & US approval eyed for 2027 to enable continuous drug & biomarker tracking.

⌚ Do your wearables protect your health data, or quietly expose it?

Digital Medicine living review analysed the privacy policies of 17 major wearable companies using a 24-point risk framework spanning transparency, data use, user control, security, & breach response.

3/4 of companies scored high risk for transparency reporting, 65% for vulnerability disclosure, & 59% for breach notification, despite collecting continuous biometric data at massive scale. Apple, Google, & Polar ranked lowest risk, while Xiaomi, Wyze, & Huawei ranked highest, revealing sharp gaps in data governance across the industry.

💉 Can optimism boost your immune response to a vaccine?

A Nature Medicine study tested whether brain activity linked to positive expectations can shape immune function. Using real-time neurofeedback, 85 volunteers learned to activate specific brain networks before receiving a hepatitis B vaccine. Activity in the brain’s reward centre, specifically the ventral tegmental area, was strongly linked to higher antibody responses after vaccination. Crucially, this effect tracked with hopeful expectations about the future, not general good mood or pleasure.

🧠 World-first study suggests ADHD underdiagnosis in women

A Journal of Psychiatric Research study out of the Monash School of Translational Medicine has found there may be a systemic misdiagnosis and underdiagnosis of ADHD in women, rather than a male predisposition to ADHD. More than 70% of survey participants said their ADHD symptoms worsened after childbirth, and nearly all women reported that symptoms worsened during menopause. 88% of women surveyed reported that their ADHD symptoms changed throughout their menstrual cycle.

🌡️ Is continuous hormone tracking the next big healthtech blind spot?

Stanford startup Clair built a wearable with 10 biosensors that estimates estrogen, progesterone, LH, FSH (plus cortisol, thyroid) in real time using skin temp, HRV, heart rate, breath, EDA & sleep data through AI – no blood/urine needed, shipping November for daily insights from periods to menopause.

Startup Stuff 🚀

Ready to scale a digital or connected health startup in Vic?

ACTIVATE is a 6-month accelerator backed by LaunchVic, designed for Vic healthtech startups that have reached MVP & are ready to grow. The program offers hands-on mentoring, deep commercialisation support, & access to ANDHealth’s global network to help founders get investor- & enterprise-ready. More here

Early-stage founder and not quite accelerator-ready yet?

Pre X, the 4-week pre-accelerator from UNSW Founders, is designed to help first-time & early founders validate their idea, sharpen customer discovery, & build core business skills. It’s a fast, free pathway to expert mentoring, tailored workshops, & a powerful startup network – More here

Building the next wave of Australian healthtech?

LX Health is taking applications for its 2026 accelerator, supporting 10 Aus health startups with investment (up to $200k), deep commercialisation support, & access to a powerful network of clinicians, operators, & VCs. Since 2021, LX has helped founders raise $33M & scale globally – More here

Early Stage Starup looking for a leg up?

The MedTech Actuator Accelerator is taking applications for its program designed to fast-track early-stage healthcare startups in Australia & APAC through the complex process of commercialisation. Spanning several months, they provide BioTech, MedTech, and HealthTech founders with intensive mentorship, hands-on guidance from industry experts, & a structured pathway to secure seed to Series A investment - More here

Want to up your grant game in WA?

MTPConnect’s new WAGES program is here to help WA researchers, clinicians, & startups sharpen their grant applications for national funding rounds like the MRFF. Backed by the WA Government, this 3-year pilot offers early-stage support, expert advice, & partnership-building to up your chances of success – More here

Based in WA & need help getting to a big conference?

WA’s Health & Medical Life Sciences Market Access Grant scheme offers 80% of eligible travel costs (up to $5K) for WA healthtech SMEs to attend national or international industry events - More here

Got a big idea and looking for the right launchpad?

Antler is now taking applications for its global Residency Program, where exceptional founders come together to build &scale world-changing startups. It’s a full-time, in-person opportunity to find your co-founder, validate your idea, & tap into Antler’s global network of investors & mentors. - More here

Want to level up your health startup know-how?

The NSW Health Commercialisation Training Program is offering a free 3-day Business Fundamentals bootcamp for budding healthtech entrepreneurs. It covers how to form a company, navigate regulations, get funding-ready & build your team – all taught by industry experts in law, finance, & sales - More here

Turning research into startup?

Breakthrough Victoria 2026 Fellowship offers paid researchers (undergrad/postgrad/recent Vic uni grads) $150k per startup + founder salary to build from an idea to investment-ready, with hands-on UIP support.
2025 cohort: IVF embryo imaging, AI skin cancer detection, mental health games
- More here

VC backed?

Anthropic Claude Startup Program offers free API credits, priority rate limits, exclusive events/office hours, & tools (Claude Code, team workspaces) for early-stage founders—trusted by Cursor, Perplexity, Replit - More here

Cool Content 💎

🎙️Ill-conceived: Inside Australia’s IVF money-making machine

The AFR discusses how Aus’ IVF industry has become increasingly commercialised under PE ownership, fuelling rapid growth in egg freezing & add-on treatments while raising serious concerns about patient pressure, false hope, rising costs, staff strain & whether $$$ is being prioritised over care

📖 Breyer Capital 2026 healthcare & life sciences predictions

The AI healthcare gold rush is here | Equity Podcast - video below

🔮 Lightspeed’s 5 Healthcare AI themes for 2026

After closing >$9B in new funds, Lightspeed shared where it’s placing its healthcare AI bets. From clinical AI closing access gaps to employers becoming the proving ground for cost reduction, to long-horizon plays like robotics & brain–computer interfaces

💡Got Feedback? Something to include next time? Keen to get in touch?

We want to make this worthy of your time & the best it can be.
💌 Hit reply or reach out to emily@whatthehealth.io to share your thoughts.

Adios Amigos

👋 Emily,
Mariah, Victoria & Team WTH

With thanks to our partners 💜

Want to get featured here in front of >10,000 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

Given the endless product drops (hello EPIC AI, Anthropic, OpenAI & more) and exponential increase in AI applications & adoption - we must again gather some absurdly smart people on the front lines in Australia & abroad to give us the tea on what’s actually happening.

This one is one of our What the Health Private Community events - but sharing is caring and this is just too hot to miss….

So we’re opening it up to you lovely paid subscribers too 💜

Join us this Friday for a deep dive into the latest trends, innovations & applications in large language models (LLMs) and what they could mean for the health landscape.

We’ll explore emerging opportunities, potential risks, and the ways these technologies might shape healthcare innovation in the near future - locally and globally.

Whether you’re curious, cautious, or excited about LLMs, this conversation will provide insights and perspectives to keep you up to date (and sounding smart at work or with friends)

📅 Friday, February 27th
⏰ 12.30pm AEDT
📍ZOOM

*you’ll get added to the event if you’re a paid subscriber

Subscribe now

Our wonderful speakers…

🧠 Dr. Kieran McLeod
~ Head of Medical Knowledge, Heidi Health

Dr. Kieran McLeod is a South African medical doctor and health technology leader with a background in emergency medicine and field hospital experience, including work with Médecins Sans Frontières. His journey into healthtech has included advisory roles, as well as founding and building ByeGwaai, a mobile app-based smoking cessation program. Now based in Melbourne, he heads up the Medical Knowledge team at Heidi Health, where he specialises in prompt engineering, clinical safety and product management for Heidi's AI-powered medical scribe.

💻 Dr. Jill Freyne
~ Healthcare Industry Lead, AWS

Dr. Jill Freyne is an experienced industry leader with deep expertise spanning AI research, digital health innovation, and healthcare transformation. As Healthcare Industry Lead for AWS Australia and New Zealand, Jill drives digital transformation and AI adoption across the healthcare sector, shaping industry strategy, forging partnerships across the healthcare ecosystem, and catalysing critical conversations on AI governance, transformative technologies, and workforce development.

Working with healthcare executives, boards, government stakeholders, and technology partners, Jill focuses on unlocking safe and effective use of technology to advance Australia’s healthcare transformation ambitions.
Previously Deputy Chief Scientist at CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, Jill brings extensive experience bridging healthcare research and technology enablement.
Jill serves as advisor and board member to startups, SMEs, research entities, and higher education institutions. She is a passionate advocate for diversity in STEM and active mentor for emerging leaders in healthcare and technology.

🇺🇸💰 Bret L. Bostwick, MD, FAAP, FACMG
~ Venture Advisor, Breyer Capital

Bret is a physician-scientist and drug developer whose career bridges academic medicine, biotech innovation, and venture capital. He joined Alnylam Pharmaceuticals in 2019, where he is a co-inventor of several CNS-targeted RNAi therapeutics for rare and common neurological diseases.

He also led translational medicine efforts for multiple assets, culminating in successful proof-of-concept for mivelsiran, the first siRNA therapeutic to demonstrate gene silencing in the human brain. Before entering industry, Bret was on the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine and practiced as a clinical medical geneticist. In parallel, he leads Translational Medicine Solutions, an advisory firm focused on the intersection of healthcare, technology, and venture capital.

Bret was recently appointed Venture Advisor at Breyer Capital, where he strengthens investment, incubation, and portfolio efforts across therapeutics and life sciences, contributing translational and clinical judgment to Breyer Capital’s healthcare and life sciences practice.

👩‍⚕️ Dr. Janice Tan
~ GM of Clinical Innovation, Bupa

Dr Janice Tan is a practising General Practitioner and digital health leader passionate about transforming healthcare delivery. As General Manager of Clinical Innovation at Bupa Australia, she leads initiatives that leverage emerging technologies and innovative models of care to democratise access to quality healthcare for both clinicians and consumers.

She continues to practice as a GP across NSW with clinical expertise spanning women’s health, paediatrics, and mental health, maintaining frontline insight while driving digital health strategy. This dual perspective allows her to advocate for solutions that genuinely improve workflows, reduce inefficiencies, and enhance patient outcomes.

Beyond Bupa, she contributes to shaping Australia’s digital health and primary care landscape with the RACGP and Central Eastern Sydney PHN, ensuring digital health solutions are safe, equitable, and designed with the needs of both patients and clinicians at the centre.

If this isn’t for you - of course, as always, we still love you and will be back with the news soon ☺️

Alrighty.

Thats all for today. Hopefully see you Friday!

👋 Emily & Team WTH

2026 is off, and we have lots to catch up on.

I don’t know about you, but I’m still awakening from my holiday coma, which feels like a blurry dream… nonetheless, now, I’m focused on the future 🔮

First…

Do you actually read this?

💌 If so - hit reply with a line (or 5) on your hottest predictions for health & life science innovation in 2026!

ICYMI at WTH, we closed out 2025 welcoming 55 new members from 6 countries to the What the Health Private Community! 🇦🇺🇳🇿🇺🇸🇸🇬🇪🇸🇸🇬 And, soft launched our Community Business Membership. Huge shoutout to our first official WTH Community Business Partners supporting and contributing to the community.

💜 Giant Leap, Genomical, and Diag-Nose.

PS - Want to get in on the fun, partner with Australia’s leading healthtech gossip collumn and get in front of ~10,000 health leaders & learners?

💌 Shoot me a note to learn about out Partnership & Community Business Partner options

Onto the oh so juicy news… 🍑

🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy News

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Events

• Cool Content

🤖 AI Updates

🤖 OpenAI launched OpenAI for Healthcare, rolling out HIPAA-aligned AI products….

🩺 ChatGPT Health launched as a dedicated, privacy-protected experience that lets users securely connect medical records & wellness apps to better understand & manage their health

🧠 AND OpenAI acquired health data startup Torch, for a reported US$100M to strengthen ChatGPT Health by unifying patients’ fragmented medical records into a single, privacy-focused health context layer

🏥 Anthropic also launched Claude for Healthcare , positioning it as an enterprise-first alternative to ChatGPT Health, embedding AI directly into hospital, payer, & pharma workflow

🧫 Conceivable is using AI-assisted robots to automate IVF lab work, with its system already linked to 19 live births

💊 Utah trials a first-of-its-kind pilot allowing AI to autonomously renew prescriptions for chronic conditions, with no doctor involved

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

🧠 Omniscient Neurotechnology got $20m from the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation as part of a Series D to scale its FDA-approved AI brain-mapping platform (Quicktome®), which uses MRI and connectomics to personalise neurosurgical care globally

🏋️ Hapana, a fitness SaaS platform that manages memberships & bookings for gyms & studios to improve member retention & revenue, raised $7.25M to scale globally

💧 GenAqua secured $300k in pre-seed funding to commercialise its point-of-use water disinfection device for hospitals & care facilities

🔬 Evidentia Labs closed its first funding round to build a platform tackling science’s reproducibility crisis by unlocking unpublished & hard-to-access research data

Newsworthy

📞 1800MEDICARE now provides free, 24/7 access to registered nurses offering health advice anywhere in Aus

🩸Proteomics International developed a non-invasive blood test to diagnose endometriosis that identified 10 specific protein "fingerprints" in a new study

🏥 Calvary acquired Hobart Private Hospital & Holmesglen Private Hospital as receivers continue breaking up Healthscope’s private hospital network

🧬 Euc shelved its men’s longevity program Compound as the company refocuses on expanding Juniper’s women’s weight-loss offering in the UK

🧪 Aus medical researchers are shut out of innovation funding, with >90% of NHMRC ideas grant apps rejected despite a $5B of gov medical fund sitting largely unspent

The MRFF is disbursing ~$650M/ year instead of its planned $1B+, prompting calls to unlock more funding as grant success rates fall to just 8.1%.

💉 GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are dividing doctors as the Albanese gov weighs whether taxpayer subsidies would deliver equity or blow out the PBS budget

✈️ Aus founders are heading back to SF as the AI boom & US-centric capital pull startups away from the post-COVID “build from anywhere” model

🕷️ Researchers at UoQ launched a clinical trial for a potential heart attack and stroke treatment derived from the venom of the K'gari funnel-web spider

US & Beyond Borders

🦴 Stanford Medicine researchers have shown an anti-aging injection can regenerate knee cartilage & prevent arthritis in animals by blocking an age-related protein

🥩 RFK Jr.’s released new dietary guidelines and a new pyramid - whilst drawing a mix of praise & backlash

🧪 “Chinese peptides” are the latest Silicon Valley biohacking craze, with tech workers buying cheap, unregulated compounds directly from Chinese suppliers to boost weight loss, focus, recovery, & sleep

🍭 The WHO is calling for taxes on alcohol and sugar-sweetened products

🏋🏻‍♂️ EGYM is merging with Playlist, the parent company of Mindbody, ClassPass, and Booker, in a $7.5B deal

🧠 Prenuvo failed to limit damages in a malpractice case where a 37y/o paid $2,500 for a whole-body MRI, got told everything was “normal”, then had a stroke 8 months later

🍸 Alcohol is undergoing a cultural reset as participation in Dry Jan surges & moderation replaces all-or-nothing sobriety

US drinking is at a near-90-year low, with Gen Z leading the pullback

😩 American primary care doctors are among the world’s best paid, & the most burnt out, with 43% reporting exhaustion, the highest rate across comparable countries

💼 Matt Holt exited New Mountain Capital to pursue a $30B health-tech consolidation play that would combine 5 portfolio companies into a new AI-focused venture

🏋️ Fitness spending is being locked in as a non-negotiable, with Americans budgeting $60B for health & fitness in 2026

🚀 Neko Health, the preventative body scan born from Spotify’s founder, Daniel Ek, is set to launch in NYC in Spring

Get the rest here!

Sick Science

😴 Can 1 night of sleep predict your future health?

Nature Medicine published a paper on SleepFM, a “foundation model” from Stanford trained on ~585k hours of polysomnography (the full sleep-lab workup) from ~65k people to learn patterns across EEG, ECG, breathing & muscle signals.

From a single night of PSG, SleepFM predicted 130 conditions with strong discrimination, including all-cause mortality, dementia, myocardial infarction, heart failure, & stroke (0.78).

📱 Can a smartphone pick up autism-linked sensorimotor “signatures”?

A multicentre team tested whether an at-home smartphone platform (BlinkLab) could measure sensorimotor differences in autistic kids, beyond subjective observation.

Autistic kids showed altered startle & sensory gating profiles, incl. reduced prepulse inhibition, stronger long-term habituation, & more variable eyeblink responses to sound. The app also captured higher rates of behaviours like screen avoidance, head & postural movement, & non-syllabic vocalisations, with many effects largely independent of co-occurring conditions.

🐶 Can dogs lower teen anxiety via the gut?

A study explored why teens who grow up with dogs tend to have fewer social & anxiety-related problems. In a cohort of 343 adolescents, dog owners showed less aggression, delinquency & social withdrawal than non-owners, alongside distinct differences in their saliva microbiome. Specific bacteria, included/

Streptococcus variants & Prevotella 7, were more abundant in dog-owning teens & were linked to better social behaviour. When these microbes were transferred to mice, the animals became markedly more social & responsive, suggesting a gut–brain mechanism rather than simple companionship alone.

Startup Stuff 🚀

Interested in Angel Investing? Want to learn with the best?

The Airtree Explorer Program is a selective angel-investing program designed for senior ANZ tech operators who want to deepen their role as investors, mentors, and early backers. The program will curate a small, high-impact group to strengthen and diversify the angel ecosystem, offering world-class education in angel investing, access to ANZ’s leading angel network, a behind-the-scenes view of Airtree’s investment process, and a high-calibre peer group of operators shaping the future of the startup ecosystem - Apply here

Early Stage Starup looking for a leg up?

The MedTech Actuator Accelerator is taking applications for its program designed to fast-track early-stage healthcare startups in Australia and APAC through the complex process of commercialisation. Spanning several months, they provide BioTech, MedTech, and HealthTech founders with intensive mentorship, hands-on guidance from industry experts, and a structured pathway to secure seed to Series A investment - More here

Want to tackle medical waste with a real-world partner?

The Lifeblood Circularity Challenge by Australian Red Cross is calling on innovators, startups, & creative teams to develop practical, scalable solutions to reduce waste across the medical supply chain. With a focus on circularity, recycling pathways, & prototype testing, selected teams get access to datasets, pilot sites, & Lifeblood’s innovation ecosystem – More here

Want to up your grant game in WA?

MTPConnect’s new WAGES program is here to help WA researchers, clinicians, & startups sharpen their grant applications for national funding rounds like the MRFF. Backed by the WA Government, this 3-year pilot offers early-stage support, expert advice, & partnership-building to up your chances of success – More here

Working on a game-changing genomics or precision medicine solution?

The MRFF’s Genomics Health Futures Mission has a new grant round open to fund projects improving medication efficacy via pharmacogenomics & genomic solutions to tackle diseases prevalent among Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples - More here

Based in WA & need help getting to a big conference?

WA’s Health & Medical Life Sciences Market Access Grant scheme offers 80% of eligible travel costs (up to $5K) for WA healthtech SMEs to attend national or international industry events - More here

Got a big idea and looking for the right launchpad?

Antler is now taking applications for its global Residency Program, where exceptional founders come together to build &scale world-changing startups. It’s a full-time, in-person opportunity to find your co-founder, validate your idea, & tap into Antler’s global network of investors & mentors. - More here

Want to level up your health startup know-how?

The NSW Health Commercialisation Training Program is offering a free 3-day Business Fundamentals bootcamp for budding healthtech entrepreneurs. It covers how to form a company, navigate regulations, get funding-ready & build your team – all taught by industry experts in law, finance, & sales - More here

Events💥

22nd Jan: Cicada HealthTech Hub: Shifting Paradigms in Quantitative Systems Toxicology - Boosting Human Predictivity (Syd)

2nd Feb: NSW Health Commercialisation Training Program - Info Sessions (Online)

11th Feb: Breakthrough Victoria Fellowship Webinar (Online)

12th Feb: Jumar Masterclass - Considering an ASX Listing: What Biotech Founders Need to Know (Melb)

25th Feb: Growth Summit 2026 (Melb)

Cool Content 💎

🎙️Wired: The Science of Super Agers

What if getting older didn’t mean slowing down? The cardiologist, researcher, and bestselling author of Super Agers, Dr. Eric Topol, joins WIRED’s Sandra Upson to explore the cutting-edge science of longevity, brain health, human resilience – and how we might all live sharper, stronger, and longer lives.

📖 Stanford’s Human Centre for AI explains healthcare is still waiting for its “MedGPT moment” and why a new evaluation model for models is needed

🔮 Dr Vu Tran, co-founder of OneMRI shared his case for why the future of preventive healthcare won’t be led by institutions, but by empowered by patients, consumers and technology

📊 CB Insights dropped their “Tech Trends 2026 Report: 14 emerging trends to watch closely this year” ft. a few in healthcare, including

1️⃣ Healthcare puts voice AI to the test
2️⃣ Pharma’s path to self-driving labs
3️⃣ The unbundling of employer health plans

💬 Jim Breyer & Breyer Capital Kicked off the flood of 2026 healthcare predictions…

💡Made it this far?
💡Got some predictions for 2026 and beyond?
💡 Or, just want to say hey and fill me in on your holidays?


💌 Hit reply

👋 Emily,
Mariah, Victoria & Team WTH

With thanks to our partners 💜

Want to get featured here in front of >9800 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

We hope you’re not on emails today, and not reading this. Instead, busy enjoying the holidays with those you love…

But if, for some reason, you are - this is just a short note to say a big thank you for being part of our healthtech-loving nerd crew. It’s a privilege to have almost 10k of you for whatever reason, joining us on the reg to debrief on the latest happenings, connect, learn, innovate and of course, laugh together.

Whether you’re an occasional email opener, regular event attendee, private community member or partner - we 💜 appreciate 💜 you💜

It’s been a hell of a year in healthtech (which is really just healthcare’s new norm now, let’s be real…) and for us at WTH!

Here’s a Wrapped that dropped earlier this month by our incredible Victoria - with a little insight into it.

Of course, there will be more in store next year for sure.

But the WTH team and I will be out of office enjoying the (other) good things in life until January 12th. Then, we’ll be back in your inboxes.

In the meantime, hope you have a chance to log off, be present and have a healthy and happy holidays however you choose to celebrate.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays and much love all around

See you in 2026!

👋 Emily,
Mariah, Victoria & Team WTH

With thanks to our partners 💜

Want to get featured here in front of ~10,000 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

Coming to you this week in shock and with very heavy hearts after the devastating events on Sunday evening in Bondi - A place I know many of you love, and until just months ago, I called home.

It’s indescribable and deeply shocking to see something like this happen here in Australia.

We hope you and your loved ones are safe. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected, especially those in Bondi and the Jewish community. 💜

Please take care this festive season - hold your loved ones tight, come together, and remember, kindness and love are really all that matter. We’re all in this together - and won’t stand for this hateful, horrid behaviour.

Sending love and strength to you all, and wishing everyone safety and care heading into the holidays 🎄🕎 ❤️

Onto the news…

🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy News

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Events

• Cool Content

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

💊 Eucalyptus is set to become Aus’s next unicorn, closing a $190M round that pushes its valuation to ~$1.37b, >2x its 2023 valuation & driven by surging demand for weight-loss drugs like Ozempic & Wegovy

Also….Euc 2xd revenue to $248.1M as UK demand for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs sent Juniper sales soaring, making the UK its biggest market at $143.5M

🧍‍♂️Bodd, a 3D body-scanning startup, bagged $15M to fuel a US, UK, & Middle East expansion

🩹 Australis Scientific raised $9.3M to scale its Confidanz smart patch, a wearable that uses tibial nerve stimulation to calm overactive bladders & reduce reliance on adult diapers

🏋️‍♂️ Recovr raised ~$1M to expand its AI member-retention platform globally, after 322% growth in Aus gyms & new partnerships with brands like STRONG Pilates

🩻 Saluda Medical is set for a $775M ASX debut after raising $230M, bringing its Aus-born “smart” spinal cord stimulator to public markets

🧪💻 Magentus acquired pathology platform Labflow, strengthening its push to build a unified, global pathology software ecosystem

📉 Epiminder’s shares slid 21% below their $1.50 issue price after its $125M IPO, despite FDA authorisation for its Minder sub-scalp EEG system

Newsworthy

🩺 A new C4 report found Aus recorded zero cervical cancer cases in women under 25 in 2021, the first time ever, almost certainly due to widespread HPV vaccination

🧬🇦🇺 Aus is the 1st country in the world to regulate NMN, after the TGA formally added it to the Permissible Ingredients Determination

Longevity Life Sciences, the biotech behind the regulatory change, is currently the only company permitted to supply NMN

🤖 Aus has quietly scrapped plans for a permanent AI Advisory Board

👥 Michael Batko, Startmate CEO, stepped down after 8 years, handing the reins to COO Phoebe Pincus

🤖 Startup Muster 2025 shows AI has reshaped Aus’s startup ecosystem, with 51% now building AI products & founders cutting headcount as FTEs fall 48%

🏥 St Vincent’s will shift half of all care into homes or online by 2030, adding 1 million virtual interactions as it builds Aus’s largest virtual & home-care system

🏥 Healthscope receivers rejected a bid from Calvary Health & Northwest Healthcare Properties to operate 12 private hospitals

🏆 Heidi Health has been named a Deloitte #TechFast50 winner, with 4DMedical, Updoc, Microba & Inventia all making the top 50

⚠️ The TGA issued a safety alert for Ozempic, Wegovy, Saxenda, Trulicity & Mounjaro after reports of depression, suicidal thoughts & unusual mood changes

💡 Medibank was named Australia’s most innovative health insurer again in 2025, scoring a sector-leading Innovation Index score of 91%

💸AMA data shows gold-tier policies have fallen by 360k since 2020, even as overall coverage hits record highs, with premiums 2xing since 2008 while MBS indexation rose <20%

🧠 QLD has become the first state where specially trained GPs can diagnose adults with ADHD & prescribe medication

💼 Vic will cut 1,000+ public sector jobs after a major cost-cutting review found the bureaucracy had become “top-heavy,” with savings of $4B planned over 4 years

Including plans to abolish VicHealth, and merge LaunchVic with Breakthrough Victoria and InvestVic

💬 Nicola Roxon, former federal health minister, slammed Vic’s plan to abolish VicHealth, warning the move hands a win to industries driving poor health & risks burying prevention inside a $30B Health Dept

📘 NSW responded to the Healthcare Funding Inquiry, promising to make prevention, planning & workforce reform long-term system priorities

🏡🤝 Prestige Inhome Care has made its third acquisition in 2 months, buying Omni-Care to expand its Vic home-care footprint

🩻 PRP Diagnostic Imaging is in exclusive due diligence to buy a stake in SA’s Benson Radiology, signalling continued consolidation in medical imaging

US & Beyond Borders

🎗️ Gallup’s data shows 9.7% of U.S. adults now report having had cancer, up from 7% in 2008–2009, driven not by more new cases but by people living longer after diagnosis

🧠⚡ Flow Neuroscience secured FDA approval for the world’s first at-home brain-stimulation treatment for depression, opening the door to prescription, non-drug depression care delivered entirely at home

🧪 Sanofi completed its acquisition of Vicebio, adding a next-gen RSV/HMPV combo vaccine and new ‘Molecular Clamp’ tech to its respiratory pipeline

💸Michelle Carnahan, former Eli Lilly exec, raised a $52M seed round, entirely from family offices, to launch healthcare AI startup Arbiter at a $400M valuation

💊 Equinox is pivoting from gym to longevity hub, rolling out medical-grade wellness like contrast therapy, IV drips, & a $40K/year data-driven “Optimize” program

CEO Harvey Spevak telling Vogue, “people will pay anything for longevity”

🍟 10 major food brands, including Kraft Heinz, Nestlé, and Coca-Cola are being sued in the US over their ultra-processed foods…

🤖 AI Updates

🤖 ChatGPT turns 3, now hitting 800M weekly users

⚡ Microsoft, NVIDIA, & Anthropic struck a mega-AI alliance, with Anthropic committing $30B in Azure compute & up to 1 gigawatt of Nvidia-powered capacity as all 3 companies deepen ties across infrastructure, model optimisation, &enterprise distribution

🩺 Patients are turning to AI not out of distrust for doctors, but because the health system often can’t meet them in the moment, & chatbots can

A new NYT report shows people now lean on ChatGPT to decode labs, prep for appointments, & get guidance during long waits or rushed consults; an estimated 1 in 6 adults now use AI for health questions

🧬 Function Health raised a $298M Series B at a $2.5B valuation to build a doctor-trained “medical intelligence” AI that turns users’ labs, scans, notes, & wearable data into personalised health guidance

🩻 Gemini 3.0 Pro is the first generalist AI model to beat radiology trainees on the RadLE exam, scoring 51% vs trainees’ 45%, though still far behind board-certified radiologists at 83%

🤖 A leaked draft executive order shows Trump planning to block states from regulating AI, threatening lawsuits & even cutting off federal grant funding for states that pass their own AI laws

🧑‍⚕️A WellSky survey of 1,200 healthcare workers found 80% of nurses prioritise easy-to-learn software & 58% say AI tools influence where they apply

Get the rest here!

Sick Science

💊 Repurposing a migraine pill for endo?

This preclinical study from UNSW used a multimodal pipeline to test approved drugs as non-hormonal endometriosis treatments. Researchers showed ROR1 is consistently elevated in endo lesions, confirming it as a viable target. From ~9,000 screened compounds, rimegepant was the only one that reduced viability in an endometriosis cell line. In patient-derived organoids, 2 of 3 models showed clear, dose-dependent growth inhibition, indicating rimegepant may offer targeted, non-hormonal therapeutic potential.

🫀 Can high-dose fish oil cut heart risk in people on dialysis?

In a double-blind randomised controlled trial in NEJM, 1228 adults on maintenance haemodialysis were given either 4 g/day fish oil or corn-oil placebo for 3.5 years. Fish oil halved serious cardiovascular events: 0.31 vs 0.61 events per 1000 patient-days, with fewer cardiac deaths, heart attacks, strokes & amputations in the fish-oil group. Risk of a first cardiovascular event or death from any cause also fell, with similar adherence & no increase in serious bleeding.

🧠 Is autism really one condition…or many?

The Economist explores research showing that autism’s biology is too diverse to fit a single diagnostic category. Scientists now link autism to hundreds of genetic variants, from rare high-impact mutations to common variants that accumulate across generations, each shaping brain development differently.

Large cohort studies, such as a 5k-person American dataset & a 46k-person Danish genetics study, show autism clustering into distinct biological subtypes, with groups differing in symptoms, developmental timing, & when autism-linked genes switch on.
Researchers are also probing environmental factors (maternal health, air pollution, endocrine disruptors), but warn that mixed subtypes may obscure real signals, meaning precision subgroups could sharpen future research, diagnosis, & support.

Startup Stuff 🚀

Got a big mRNA idea bubbling away?

BioNTech Aus launched its new mRNA Innovator Program, offering $50K in funding to support preclinical mRNA research across Aus & NZ. Early & mid-career researchers are especially encouraged to apply - More here

Want to up your grant game in WA?

MTPConnect’s new WAGES program is here to help WA researchers, clinicians, & startups sharpen their grant applications for national funding rounds like the MRFF. Backed by the WA Government, this 3-year pilot offers early-stage support, expert advice, & partnership-building to up your chances of success – More here

Have a promising digital health startup ready to scale?

ANDHealth+ opened apps for its flagship incubator program, offering up to $5M in non-dilutive funding alongside hands-on support from a world-class network of experts to help you grow globally - More here

Working on a game-changing genomics or precision medicine solution?

The MRFF’s Genomics Health Futures Mission has a new grant round open to fund projects improving medication efficacy via pharmacogenomics & genomic solutions to tackle diseases prevalent among Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples - More here

Based in WA & need help getting to a big conference?

WA’s Health & Medical Life Sciences Market Access Grant scheme offers 80% of eligible travel costs (up to $5K) for WA healthtech SMEs to attend national or international industry events - More here

Got a big idea and looking for the right launchpad?

Antler is now taking applications for its global Residency Program, where exceptional founders come together to build &scale world-changing startups. It’s a full-time, in-person opportunity to find your co-founder, validate your idea, & tap into Antler’s global network of investors & mentors. - More here

Want to level up your health startup know-how?

The NSW Health Commercialisation Training Program is offering a free 3-day Business Fundamentals bootcamp for budding healthtech entrepreneurs. It covers how to form a company, navigate regulations, get funding-ready & build your team – all taught by industry experts in law, finance, & sales - More here

Events💥

None left - just holidays *yay*

Cool Content 💎

🎙️ABC Radio: Program:From coldies to thongs: Should Aussie AI speak our language?

Dr Thomas Kelly, Co-Founder of Heidi Health, unpacks the race for sovereign AI, why energy might be the hidden bottleneck & whether we’re at risk of becoming consumers instead of creators

📖 Read the pitch decks that 9 healthcare AI startups used to raise millions in 2025

💡Got Feedback? Something to include next time? Keen to get in touch?

We want to make this worthy of your time & the best it can be.
💌 Hit reply or reach out to content@whatthehealth.io to share your thoughts.

Don’t get too lit at those Christmas & EOY shenanigans. Take care, be kind, and we’ll see you soon!

👋 Emily,
Mariah, Victoria & Team WTH

With thanks to our partners 💜

Want to get featured here in front of >9800 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

In case you missed it - we had an EPIC event in Sydney with our friends Google Cloud, Tenmile and +150 of you 💜

Sadly, I got the flu and couldn’t be there too (yes, I have the biggest FOMO). BUT if you’re a private community member - there’s a recording for you 📽️ 👀

Big thanks to the incredible Victoria, Tina & Mariah for making the magic happen, our amazing speakers, and to everyone who joined!

ALSO - it’s the final week for applications to our What the Health Private Community - Cohort 6

✨Your ultimate hack to level up in healthtech. Join other epic open-minded experts & innovators to nerd out, connect & learn ✨

Want to join a curated crew of +330 top health tech experts & innovators?

💰For just $29 a month for 6 months + GST
💡Get all the information here!

✅ Want to join?

(We know it’s kind of long - to keep the quality & vibes high). Promise it’s worth it.

Apply here to join the crew!

🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy News

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Events

• Cool Content

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

🧠 Synchron raised $308M to advance its brain-computer interface tech, including a $54M investment from Aus’s NRF to bring operations & clinical trials back home

The Series D round, led by Double Point Ventures with backers like Bezos Expedition & Khosla Ventures, values Synchron at about US$1B

🫁 RAGE Biotech, announced $29M to take its inhaled COPD treatment, RB042, into first-in-human trials

💰 Medtechs dominated the latest $10.3M Industry Growth Program grants, with Laronix securing the biggest slice, ~ $3.2M, to take its artificial larynx into two top US hospitals

🧠 Coherence Neuro bagged $10M in a seed round led by Artesian to advance its wearable device that uses electrical stimulation to treat brain cancer

🧫 Cytophenix, snagged $1.3M in pre-Seed funding for its AI infection management platform, FloCAST, which identifies effective antibiotics within hours instead of days

🤖 J&J Impact Ventures invested an undisclosed amount in ThinkMD, to scale its AI clinical decision software that helps frontline health workers deliver doctor-level assessments in low-resource settings

👁️ Optain Health acquired EyePACS to expand AI retinal screening & teleophthalmology access in primary care

Newsworthy

🧬 Harrison.ai launched its Open Platform, giving hospitals zero-markup access to medical imaging AI & third-party algorithms through a single integration

🧠 Cochlear-backed Epiminder is preparing a $325m ASX listing after its under-scalp epilepsy implant, the Minder, secured FDA authorisation

💉 0.5M Aussies are using GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic & Mounjaro, with sales jumping 10x since 2020 & ~50% of users paying privately up to $600 a month

🏥 Medibank is buying GP network Better Medical for $159M to expand beyond insurance & become a major health provider

🤖 Care GP will scale its agentic AI platform to 7,000 GP clinics after recording 140% month-on-month usage growth, zero churn, & profitability across 150 clinics

💢 A Vic inquiry into women’s pain found widespread dismissal, bias, & inadequate care in the health system, with 90% of respondents reporting pain lasting > a year

🦴 Bupa partnered with MoreGoodDays to give members free access to clinician-supported digital program for chronic pain

😴 ResMed will open a new US manufacturing plant by 2027, doubling its American production but keeping major sites in Sydney & Singapore

The move aligns with Trump’s “Made in America” push & lessons from COVID supply chain shocks, as ResMed posts 9% quarterly revenue growth to $US1.3B

💪 Everlab partnered with Bain & Company to roll out a long-term employee wellbeing strategy focused on sustained health

🩻 Vexev’s robotic ultrasound AI-powered ultrasound system, VxWave, that maps patients’ vascular access points in 3D, met all primary endpoints in the CANSCAN trial

🏆 Capgemini & Navi Medical Technologies won the Good Design Award for their NeoNav ECG Tip Location System, a world-first device that tracks catheter placement in newborns & children in real time

🏆 Emyria won the 2025 Wesfarmers Wellbeing Platinum Award for its psychiatrist-led, insurance-backed therapy programs for treatment-resistant depression & PTSD

⚖️ The Federal government will give the NDIS Commission new powers to ban fraudulent auditors & consultants and boost penalties for rorting the $50B scheme

🧠 Control Bionics integrates Apple’s new Brain–Computer Interface across NeuroNode & NeuroNode Trilogy

🤖 Daniel Roelink was appointed to lead the new NSW Office for AI, which will oversee the safe & ethical use of AI across government

US & Beyond Borders

🧠 Microsoft created a new MAI Superintelligence Team to focus on domain-specific systems like medical superintelligence, which already achieved 85% accuracy on NEJM diagnostic case challenges (vs ~20% for doctors)

📉 U.S. obesity has dropped from 39.9% in 2022 to 37.0% in 2025, as GLP-1 weight-loss drug use <2x since early 2024 to 12.4% of adults

🧬 Biogen launched a new venture arm, Biogen New Ventures, to invest in & incubate early-stage life sciences startups

💰 Global longevity spending is projected to exceed $8T annually by 2030, driven by aging populations, medical innovation, & shifting consumer priorities

🛒 A FoodHealth Co. report found most Americans are buying unhealthy foods *shock*, with 60% of grocery spending going to processed items across 210B transactions

💔 Aid cuts following the dismantling of USAID are devastating health services across Africa, leading to rising deaths from HIV, malaria, & childbirth complications

Under Trump’s “America First” strategy, U.S. funding for the WHO, UNICEF, & the Global Fund has plunged by up to 80%, forcing program shutdowns in >20 countries & threatening more than 1M lives through cancelled HIV, TB, and malaria treatment

💍 Tidepool partnered with ŌURA to create a first-of-its-kind diabetes dataset combining smart ring biometrics with glucose & insulin data

💊 Hims & Hers launched compounded GLP-1 microdosing treatment plans to offer more personalised, flexible care for metabolic health beyond weight loss

🚴 Superpower launched a brand partnership with SoulCycle, turning every class into a “Superpower Ride” that helps riders understand their metabolic health

💸 America’s health-care costs are climbing sharply, with group insurance premiums up 8.5% in 2025, as more people seek treatment & use medical services…. Cancer screenings are up 60–80% since 2019 & mental-health claims have surged up to 80%

🤖 AI Updates

🩺 OpenAI is exploring a move into consumer health, sussing new products like a personal health assistant or data aggregator after hiring Doximity cofounder Nate Gross & Instagram’s Ashley Alexander to lead its health strategy

🧬 The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is going all in on AI & biology, shifting its focus to the Biohub network as its primary philanthropic effort & acquiring frontier AI lab EvolutionaryScale

🧠 Millions are turning to AI chatbots like ChatGPT for therapy, but new lawsuits claim the bot encouraged users toward delusional thinking &, in some cases, suicide

OpenAI says 0.15% of users have suicidal conversations weekly & is updating GPT-5 to curb “people-pleasing” responses & flag crises. While trials of specialised bots like Therabot cut depression symptoms by 51% & anxiety by 31%, 11 U.S. state, have now moved to regulate or ban AI conducting “therapeutic communication.”

Get the rest here!

Sick Science

☕ Does coffee protect against irregular heartbeat?

In a multicentre randomised clinical trial published in JAMA, researchers enrolled 200 adults with persistent atrial fibrillation (AF) after cardioversion to test whether caffeinated coffee helps or harms heart rhythm. Over 6 months, patients who drank at least one cup of coffee daily had fewer AF recurrences (47%) than those who avoided caffeine entirely (64%), a 39% lower hazard of relapse. There were no differences in side effects or hospitalisations.

💻 How safe are NHS digital health tools, really?

In a national cross-sectional study (J Med Internet Res), researchers surveyed all 239 NHS organisations in England about their digital health technologies (DHTs) & compliance with mandatory safety standards DCB0129 & DCB0160.

Of 14,747 DHT deployments reported, only 17% were fully assured under both standards, 13% were partially assured, & a striking 70% had no documented safety assurance at all. In a typical NHS trust, just 1 in 4 digital tools met the minimum legal safety requirements, leaving more than 10,000 unassessed systems in routine use.

🦾 Can AI run your company’s quality management system?

In a 2025 Technical Disclosure Commons paper, researchers proposed a Proactive & Semi-autonomous Agentic Quality Management Framework that replaces static, manual QMS tools with a network of specialised AI agents. The system uses a three-layer design:

1. a unified data fabric to merge siloed manufacturing, regulatory, & complaint data;

2. a core AI engine that interprets information and orchestrates workflows; and

3. agentic sub-AIs that handle tasks like risk management, CAPA, & audit prep.

Each agent runs continuously with a human-in-the-loop for oversight, turning quality management from a passive record-keeping process into a proactive, intelligent ecosystem across industries like medical devices and aerospace.

Startup Stuff 🚀

Got a big idea and looking for the right launchpad?

Antler is now taking applications for its global Residency Program, where exceptional founders come together to build &scale world-changing startups. It’s a full-time, in-person opportunity to find your co-founder, validate your idea, & tap into Antler’s global network of investors & mentors. - More here

Got a big mRNA idea bubbling away?

BioNTech Aus launched its new mRNA Innovator Program, offering $50K in funding to support preclinical mRNA research across Aus & NZ. Early & mid-career researchers are especially encouraged to apply - More here

Want to up your grant game in WA?

MTPConnect’s new WAGES program is here to help WA researchers, clinicians, & startups sharpen their grant applications for national funding rounds like the MRFF. Backed by the WA Government, this 3-year pilot offers early-stage support, expert advice, & partnership-building to up your chances of success – More here

Have a promising digital health startup ready to scale?

ANDHealth+ opened apps for its flagship incubator program, offering up to $5M in non-dilutive funding alongside hands-on support from a world-class network of experts to help you grow globally - More here

Working on a game-changing genomics or precision medicine solution?

The MRFF’s Genomics Health Futures Mission has a new grant round open to fund projects improving medication efficacy via pharmacogenomics & genomic solutions to tackle diseases prevalent among Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples - More here

Based in WA & need help getting to a big conference?

WA’s Health & Medical Life Sciences Market Access Grant scheme offers 80% of eligible travel costs (up to $5K) for WA healthtech SMEs to attend national or international industry events - More here

Want to level up your health startup know-how?

The NSW Health Commercialisation Training Program is offering a free 3-day Business Fundamentals bootcamp for budding healthtech entrepreneurs. It covers how to form a company, navigate regulations, get funding-ready & build your team – all taught by industry experts in law, finance, & sales - More here

Building the next big healthtech startup in Australia?

LX is a leading accelerator backing 10 Aussie health startups with up to $200K in funding, plus hands-on support, expert coaching, & access to 300+ clinicians, investors, & operators – More here

Events💥

19 - 21st Nov: The International Forum on Quality & Safety in Healthcare (Canberra)

19 - 21st Nov: The Health Innovation Conference (Melb)

23rd Nov: Mastering AI Integration into Healthcare (Bris)

24 - 25th Nov: AI.Care 2025 (Bris)

26th Nov: Investing in MedTech/DeepTech (Online)

27 - 29th Nov: 2025 Australasian Doctors’ Health Conference (Melb)

3 - 4th Dec: Health Justice 2025 (Syd)

4th Dec: ANDHealth Unfiltered (Melb)

Cool Content 💎

🎙️Oversubscribed: Inside the Playbooks of Australia’s Fastest-Growing Founders

In the debut ep of Oversubscribed, Brendan Hill sits down with 3 of Aus’s most ambitious founders: Dr. Tom Kelly (Heidi Health), Liam Millward (Instant), & Charlie Gearside (Eucalyptus) for an unfiltered look at the realities of building a high-growth company

🎙️Notion, Founder Fridays: Scaling Fast Without Burning Out with Sam Kothari, Everlab and Alex Dam, Notion

🎙️Redoctoring: Navigating a Portfolio Career in Medicine with Dr Amy Collyer

📜 Strategic Shift released a report on Why Patient Experience Is Now Healthcare’s Top C-Suite Priority

💡Got Feedback? Something to include next time? Keen to get in touch?

We want to make this worthy of your time & the best it can be.
💌 Hit reply or reach out to content@whatthehealth.io to share your thoughts.

Enjoy the sales and weekend!

👋 Emily,
Mariah, Victoria & Team WTH

With thanks to our partners 💜

Want to get featured here in front of >9800 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

Popping into your inbox this Monday arvo (hello 4 pm slump) to remind you that it’s the last week you can apply to join Cohort 6 of our What The Health - Private Community.

🍩 What’s that again? Why join?

Because in this world of AI, content overload and endless buzz - connecting with the right people, from across the industry, and cutting through the BS… is all the more valuable. Not to mention, way nicer than the endless scroll.

✨ So, this is your ultimate hack to make life in healthtech & innovation easier ✨

Apply now!

Join the vetted community for health tech innovators, investors, clinicians, industry & operators to connect, collaborate, and support each other on this journey 🚀

With highly curated, thoughtful events & resources to shortcut your learning and success. Helping you connect with the best.

So, what do you get again?

🎤 Fortnightly Expert Events
💬 Private Members Forum
🔎 Members Directory
🧠 Expert Office hours
🎫 Free conference tickets & credits
💜 Countless connections & collabs
🍻 Regular IRL Meetups

To help you…

🎯 Level up & learn - across tech, corporate, health systems, growth, investing & startups
💞 Connect with the best relevant audience - in Aus & globally
🌱 Grow your network
💰 Save time & learn from experts
📣 Share news, wins, problems & expertise

Ft. legends from companies like…

Medibank, Bupa, Airtree, Tenmile, Eucalyptus, Mindset Health, Heidi Health, Telstra Health, HotDoc, Bloody Good Tests, Midnight Health, Everlab, DropBio, Congniss, CSL, Stryker, Cochlear, NSW Health, QLD Health, The Florey Institute, Vively, Kali Healthcare, Eugene, More Good Days, Kantoko, AWS, Google, Microsoft, AIDH, Melbourne Uni, The Medtech Actuator, Giant Leap, Mass Mutual Ventures & Sonder....

Just to name a few.

Apply to join them here!

*It’s like the newsletter on steroids, cause it’s got like way more actually smart people you can learn from and talk to than just me

💰And, it's just $29 a month

(Upfront for 6 months at $179+GST)…
Way less than even 1 of the industry gala dinner or lunch event tickets

Which can come under L&D, a business expense or be tax deductible
How’s that for direct access to +330 experts from all across the industry?!

💡Keen to know more?

Check out all the details here!

✅ Want to join?

(We know it’s kind of long - to keep the quality & vibes high). Promise it’s worth it.

Apply here to join the crew!

Of course, any questions or suggestions - shoot me a note
💌 emily@whatthehealth.io

Otherwise, we’ll be back with your usual programming of the hottest news & insights shortly

👋 Emily

With thanks to our partners 💜

Want to get featured here in front of >9900 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

🍩 What’s that again? Why join?

Because in this world of AI, content overload and endless buzz - connecting with the right people, from across the industry, and cutting through the BS… is all the more valuable. Not to mention, way nicer than the endless scroll.

✨ So, this is your ultimate hack to make life in healthtech & innovation easier ✨

Apply now!

Join the vetted community for health tech innovators, investors, clinicians, industry & operators to connect, collaborate, and support each other on this journey 🚀

With highly curated, thoughtful events & resources to shortcut your learning and success. Helping you connect with the best.

So, what do you get again?

🎤 Fortnightly Expert Events
💬 Private Members Forum
🔎 Members Directory
🧠 Expert Office hours
🎫 Free conference tickets & credits
💜 Countless connections & collabs
🍻 Regular IRL Meetups

To help you…

🎯 Level up & learn - across tech, corporate, health systems, growth, investing & startups
💞 Connect with the best relevant audience - in Aus & globally
🌱 Grow your network
💰 Save time & learn from experts
📣 Share news, wins, problems & expertise

Ft. legends from companies like…

Medibank, Bupa, Airtree, Tenmile, Eucalyptus, Mindset Health, Heidi Health, Telstra Health, HotDoc, Bloody Good Tests, Midnight Health, Everlab, DropBio, Congniss, CSL, Stryker, Cochlear, NSW Health, QLD Health, The Florey Institute, Vively, Kali Healthcare, Eugene, More Good Days, Kantoko, AWS, Google, Microsoft, AIDH, Melbourne Uni, The Medtech Actuator, Giant Leap, Mass Mutual Ventures & Sonder....

Just to name a few.

Apply to join them here!

*It’s like the newsletter on steroids, cause it’s got like way more actually smart people you can learn from and talk to than just me

💰And, it's just $29 a month

(Upfront for 6 months at $179+GST)…
Way less than even 1 of the industry gala dinner or lunch event tickets

Which can come under L&D, a business expense or be tax deductible
How’s that for direct access to +330 experts from all across the industry?!

💡Keen to know more?

Check out all the details here!

✅ Want to join?

(We know it’s kind of long - to keep the quality & vibes high). Promise it’s worth it.

Apply here to join the crew!

Of course, any questions or suggestions - shoot me a note
💌 emily@whatthehealth.io

Otherwise, we’ll be back with your usual programming of the hottest news & insights shortly

👋 Emily

With thanks to our partners 💜

Want to get featured here in front of >9900 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

Do you love Healthtech?

Geeking out with others on health innovation?
Improving the state of healthcare?
Meeting cool people?

Then this one’s for you!

After a massive year of growth, epic events, and a brand-new member platform, we’re finalllyyy opening applications again for our private community 🥳

Apply now!

Wait, what is the WTH Private Community!?

For those of you who are new, or haven’t been paying attention… beyond our regular news updates and insights you get here in your inbox, and occasional IRL public events - we do a WHOLE lot more of all this, for our Private Community.

It’s all that, but on steroids 💪

Here’s the TLDR…

The Exclusive WTH Community Crew 💜

🍩 An invite only, vetted group of doers, makers, founders, funders, health professionals and operators 

After 5 intakes of +400 insanely smart, diverse legends - we're pumped to get more of you in the mix!

It can be *hard* keeping up to date with all the happenings & navigating the health innovation space - finding the right resources, advice & people. There’s a lot of noise and BS. Not to mention, it can be a tad lonely.

Well - this is where the What the Health Community comes in…

It’s a vetted community for health tech innovators, carers, experts and operators to connect, collaborate and support each other on this journey. Sharing knowledge, connections and insights via a private online community, directory, resources and exclusive events.

✨ It's your ultimate hack to make life in health tech easier ✨

🍭So, what exactly do you get?

• 💬 Private Slack Channel: Connect with vetted health & tech peeps

• 📖 Member Directory: Find the connections you need

• 📆 Exclusive Monthly Events (IRL & URL): Network and learn from the best

• 🎬 Resources & Recordings: Years of content, and over 30 recorded webinars

• 👩‍🏫 1:1 Office Hours: Get personalised support from industry experts

• 💰 Perks & Freebies: Score discounts and cool stuff

• 🌐 Brand-new community platform: faster, smarter, easier to find the people & support you need

🏆 Outcomes you can expect

• Connect with the best across the sector

• Grow your network

• Save time, resources and heartache learning from the experienced & experts

• Share your news, wins, problems & expertise with those who can help

• Learn from others in the space who have been there or are on the same road

• Learn about the many parts of health - health tech, corporate, health systems, investing & startups

• Get more warm intros across the ecosystem - Aus & Globally

TLDR: This is where you can find open minded nerds. Have experts to help on tap. And learn with & from some of the best in the biz.

✅ Who is it for?

Anyone passionate about transforming healthcare through tech and innovation. This is your chance to connect with established and emerging leaders in the space.

Specifically:

• Founders & Startup Teams

• Health Professionals & Domain Experts

• Investors

• Committed Enthusiasts & Experienced Operators

• Industry

• Academics

• Government & Hospital Leaders

❌ Who is it not for?

At this stage, this offering is for a more experienced crew and not suitable for total newbies or people just looking to pitch/sell.

🍩 Who the hell are we again?

What the Health is a community & media brand dedicated to improving healthcare (and, making it a bit more fun).

We believe in a future where health is supercharged through collaboration & innovation - empowering all patients, professionals and people. As well as the huge opportunity to build killer products & businesses around these things - creating both great commercial and health outcomes.

But, health is hard. And finding the right information, structures, and support can be a nightmare.

So, we connect, educate & empower health innovators through collaboration, content & community. Making your journey easier, more fun & impactful.

💕Still on the fence?
Check out the LOVE from our current cohorts!

💡 How’s it work?

Our goal is to ensure it’s a bloody fantastic experience and actually valuable, so we strictly cap the intake number of each cohort to ensure that we can deliver the best experience, connections and engagement. 

So, if you want to join (and why wouldn’t you?!)

1️⃣ Fill out our application form (yes, the application is long, but this helps us ensure a great mix of people in the fold!)

2️⃣ Once applications close - we will get back to you with if you’ve been successful

3️⃣ We onboard you (yay) and have nerdy fun for 6 months 🎉
And if you like it - you can stay for as long as you like

Apply here!

💊 We know the application is annoyingly long. BUT we want to make sure we get the right mix of people and have as much info to best help and showcase you 💊

💵 What’s the Investment?

For this 6th cohort, it’s just $179+GST for 6 months (or ~$29.00 per month) 💜 🚀

Multiple people keen on joining from your business?
Ask us about our business membership options!

How’s that to get unlimited access to >300 experts, expert knowledge, >12 IRL & URL events, +30 recordings & discounts valued at >$75,000?!

And… you can add it as a business expense or industry membership at tax time 😉

Join the inner WTH Circle

💥 APPLICATIONS CLOSE NOV 21ST 💥

Of course, any questions or suggestions - we’d love to hear from you 😊
💌 emily@whatthehealth.io

Have a great weekend and see you soon!

👋 Emily & Victoria

With thanks to our partners 💜

Want to get featured here in front of >9,800 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

Hey friends,

If you’ve been with us a while, you might remember that just over 2 years ago, we teamed up with our friends at Google…

Here’s some of the copy I wrote wayyy back then - which, frankly, seems only more relevant today…

What’s hotter than AI right now? 🤖💊AI in health… ft. a room full of great people of course! 🥳

AI is finally having its time in the spotlight and sure set to shake up healthcare.  But, there’s a hell of a lot of noise & hype…

So, what’s actually happening? What’s BS? What’s possible? And where are we going?

Well, it’s definitely time for another update. So we’re back and bringing you round 2…

With ​Google Cloud & Tenmile for another event, diving deep into all things AI in health, on November 19th at Google Sydney!

Join us for one killer collab as we bring together all parts of the health, tech and innovation community to dive into the latest updates, insights and use cases!

Ft.

🥂 HealthTech networking - guaranteed bevs, good bants, and a few bites

💡A lively AI panel discussion - with leaders in AI delving into just where we’re actually at with AI, Data & LLMs in healthcare.

Including:

• ​Gopi Sara – CEO & Co-Founder, OneMRI

• Suneeta Mall – Head of AI Engineering, Harrison.ai

• Dr. Arjun Balaji – Venture Capital Investor, Tenmile

• More to be announced…
  

💻 A dive into the future of AI in Diagnostics & Discovery with Balaji Rajam, Global AI Blackbelt APAC Lead

👋 Who’s it for? All Health and Technology enthusiasts, experts, operators, investors - and everyone in between!

​📍 Google Office, Sydney
📆 Wednesday, 19 November
🕖 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM

Spots are strictly capped, and pre-release already went out to our community and paid subscribers.

So if you’re keen - make sure you snag your spot by registering below! 😊

Get your spot here!

See you there!

👋 Emily,
Mariah, Victoria & Team WTH

With thanks to our partners 💜

Want to get featured here in front of >9800 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

But Sydney - now it’s your turn!

It's halloween - so we have a treat for you...🍬🎃

We’re teaming up with ​Google Cloud & Tenmile for another Healthtech community event on November 19th at Google Sydney!

With endless buzz around AI in Healthcare, it’s a great chance for the community to gather, share learnings, and get the latest insights from Health & AI experts from Google, as well as prominent startups in this space, including Harrison AI and OneMRI...

​📍 Google Office, Sydney
📆 Wednesday, 19 November
🕖 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM
🥂 Talks, bevs & bants

Check out the link below for more details and to snag your spot - before they are gone…

Get your spot here!

See you there!

🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy News

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Events

• Cool Content

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

🌬️ ENA Respiratory, backed by Bill Gates, Brandon Capital, & Uniseed, bagged $34M to advance trials of its nasal spray INNA-051; a virus-agnostic, intranasal immune-enhancer that primes and boosts the body’s natural first line of defence to prevent severe respiratory viral infections

💰 Human Health, the digital health platform by former Canva leaders Georgia Vidler & Kate Lambridis, scored $8.5M to expand & launch its research platform Human Evidence

With over 200k patients logging health actions worldwide, the platform helps people track their health history, monitor treatments, & share personalised insights with clinicians.

💰 Breakthrough Victoria invested $75M across 5 VC funds - Virescent Ventures, SYNthesis BioVentures, Scale Investors, Galileo Ventures, & North American Health & Life Sciences fund

🧬 Cytophenix landed $1.3M in pre-seed funding to advance trials of its FloCAST™ platform, which rapidly identifies effective antibiotics to combat sepsis & antimicrobial resistance

🧫 iiShield, snagged $1M to fund clinical trials for its “kidney pyjamas”, a temperature-control device that keeps organs safer during transplants

🧠 Tala Thrive, a culturally responsive mental health startup founded by Sonia Kaurah, raised $500k in pre-seed funding

❤️ Anteris Tech, creators of DurAVR aortic valve, raised $39M after strong investor demand to fund its next clinical trials treating aortic stenosis

🩺 Heidi Health is launching a community round via Archangel Ventures, letting eligible Aus users invest from USD $5k as part of its recent USD $65M Series B

Newsworthy

🧘‍♀️ Tim Gurner is bringing ultra-lux wellness club Saint Haven to Sydney in Feb 2026

A 6-storey North Syd “sanctuary” with cryotherapy, hyperbaric oxygen, IV drips, saunas, & even macro-counted meals for its $299/week members

💊 Chemist Warehouse posted a 17.9% sales jump thanks to surging demand for weight-loss drugs like Ozempic

🏥 Healthscope is selling Northern Beaches Hospital to the NSW Gov for $190M

🤒 Medibank, announced plans to >2x its health business earnings to $200M by 2030 as part of a major strategy overhaul, shifting from insurance to healthcare delivery

🧬 Everlab partnered with Eugene to integrate genomic insights into its longevity programs

🩸 A new study from Monash & Flinders Unis found endometriosis diagnoses in Aus women have >2x over the past decade, rising >60% from 2011 to 2021

🤖 Qualitas Health has deployed Care GP’s ‘Samantha’, a Google Gemini–based AI agent, across 20 Aus clinics to automatically process patient records

🚀 Cicada Innovations appointed Liza Noonan as its new CEO

🧪 Uniseed appointed Dr Alastair Hick as its new CEO

🇦🇺 OpenAI secured its 2nd Aus gov contract, a $25k deal with the Commonwealth Grants Commission for the “provision of AI” for 12 months

🚬 WA recorded its first rise in smoking rates in 30 years, climbing from 10% to 12% of the population

💊 The NuvaRing contraceptive will be PBS-subsidised from 1 Nov

US & Beyond Borders

💊 Blueprint, longevity startup founded by Bryan Johnson, raised $60M to expand from supplements into a full-service consumer health platform, backed by investors including Kim K, Jay Shetty, Logan Paul & Paris Hilton

💍 Ōura is seeking FDA clearance for a new blood pressure–tracking feature in its smart ring

💪 Fitness communities are booming, with 57% of people joining for social connection & gym memberships up 10% year-on-year

💊 Novartis is acquiring Avidity Biosciences for US$12B, paying $72 per share in cash to expand its RNA-based therapeutics portfolio

🧬 Metagenomi is using Amazon’s Inferentia AI chips for its gene-editing research, generating > 1M protein variants at roughly half the cost of rival chips like Nvidia’s

📱 Verily launched Verily Me, a consumer health app that gives users personalised clinician-reviewed health recs & an AI companion to answer Qs about their medical records

💊 BridgeBio Pharma announced that its experimental drug BBP-418 for a rare form of muscular dystrophy signif improved motor & lung function in a late-stage trial

🌸 Hers, the women’s health platform under Hims & Hers Health, launched a new menopause & perimenopause specialty

🌡️ Bayer won FDA approval for Lynkuet, a non-hormonal menopause drug that relieves hot flashes & sleep issues, expected to generate > $1B in annual sales

🤖 AI Updates

🧬 Eli Lilly partnered with Nvidia to build “the pharmaceutical industry’s most powerful AI supercomputer”, designed to accelerate drug discovery and development

🧠 California has become the first US state to regulate AI companion chatbots

🩺 Lapsi Health launched Keikku 2.0, the world’s first FDA-cleared digital stethoscope with an integrated AI scribe, letting clinicians listen, document, & diagnose in real time

💬 Counsel Health, an AI virtual care startup, raised $25M in a Series A to expand its medical chatbot that collects patient history, triages care, & connects users to telehealth drs for just $29/ visit

🧠 Yale Pathology developed an AI tool that cross-checks pathology reports against full patient records to detect errors before release

🤖 Menlo Venture’s 2025 State of AI in Healthcare report reveals that healthcare has overtaken all sectors in enterprise AI adoption, with usage up from 3% to 22% in 2 years

🤖 Microsoft launched 12 new Copilot features, including. Copilot for Health, a U.S.-only tool that helps users access trusted medical information from sources like Harvard Health & find doctors based on their needs

Get the rest here!

Sick Science

🩸 Can menstrual stem cells reveal hidden endometriosis?

Researchers from the Uni of Barcelona profiled DNA methylation in menstrual blood–derived stem cells from 42 women (19 with endo, 23 controls). Whole-genome sequencing identified 466 differentially methylated regions, mostly hypermethylated in endometriosis & enriched in genes linked to inflammation, tissue repair, & WNT signalling. Machine-learning models using 4 of these methylation markers classified endometriosis with 81% accuracy, 83% specificity, & 79% sensitivity.

🌍 What’s killing & disabling us? & what’s changing?

The Global Burden of Disease Study 2023 analysed 375 diseases and injuries, plus 88 modifiable risk factors, across 204 countries from 1990-2023. It found global disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) rose ~6% from 2010 - 2023, but age-standardised DALY rates fell ~12%, indicating better health per person despite population ageing.

The burden from communicable, maternal, neonatal & nutritional diseases declined sharply (age-standardised decrease ~26%), while non-communicable diseases grew in absolute numbers (especially heart disease, diabetes, anxiety, depression).

Startup Stuff 🚀

Want to up your grant game in WA?

MTPConnect’s new WAGES program is here to help WA researchers, clinicians, & startups sharpen their grant applications for national funding rounds like the MRFF. Backed by the WA Government, this 3-year pilot offers early-stage support, expert advice, & partnership-building to up your chances of success – More here

Got a women’s health innovation?

The international Ripple Women’s Digital Health Challenge 2025 is now accepting applications. This 12-month program (run by Cogniss, AWS, UK’s Health Innovation Network) helps innovators build pilot-ready women’s health apps without coding - More here

Want to pitch on Australia’s biggest life sciences stage?

Challenger Pitch for Health is back – Aus’s largest pitch day in life sciences, co-hosted by Proto Axiom & St Vincent’s Curran Foundation. Taking place in Sydney March 2026, the showcase will award $500K in grants across two streams: the Proto Axiom Challenger Summit & the St Vincent’s Discovery & Innovation Pitch for Health grants - More here

Have a promising digital health startup ready to scale?

ANDHealth+ opened apps for its flagship incubator program, offering up to $5M in non-dilutive funding alongside hands-on support from a world-class network of experts to help you grow globally - More here

Working on a game-changing genomics or precision medicine solution?

The MRFF’s Genomics Health Futures Mission has a new grant round open to fund projects improving medication efficacy via pharmacogenomics & genomic solutions to tackle diseases prevalent among Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples - More here

Based in WA & need help getting to a big conference?

WA’s Health & Medical Life Sciences Market Access Grant scheme offers 80% of eligible travel costs (up to $5K) for WA healthtech SMEs to attend national or international industry events - More here

Want to level up your health startup know-how?

The NSW Health Commercialisation Training Program is offering a free 3-day Business Fundamentals bootcamp for budding healthtech entrepreneurs. It covers how to form a company, navigate regulations, get funding-ready & build your team – all taught by industry experts in law, finance, & sales - More here

Building the next big healthtech startup in Australia?

LX is a leading accelerator backing 10 Aussie health startups with up to $200K in funding, plus hands-on support, expert coaching, & access to 300+ clinicians, investors, & operators – More here

Events💥

11th Nov: 25 Years of Cicada (Syd)

11 - 12th Nov: Frontiers Health 2025 (Berlin)

12th Nov: AI Vision, hosted by Canva (Syd)

13th Nov: Healthcare x AI Talks (Philly)

14 - 16th Nov: Brighter future together (Bris)

19 Nov: 🍩 WTH x Google 🌏: The Health AI Update 🤖 (Syd)

19 - 21st Nov: The International Forum on Quality & Safety in Healthcare (Canberra)

23rd Nov: Mastering AI Integration into Healthcare (Bris)

24 - 25th Nov: AI.Care 2025 (Bris)

27 - 29th Nov: 2025 Australasian Doctors’ Health Conference (Melb)

3 - 4th Dec: Health Justice 2025 (Syd)

Cool Content 💎

🎙️Fixing Healthcare Podcast: #188 Why younger patients turn away from doctors & toward GenAI

Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr unpack the future of the patient-doctor relationship - from Gen Z’s digital-first expectations, the consumer tren to the rise of AI as medicine’s newest “second opinion.” Can physicians evolve fast enough to keep patients’ trust in the age of ChatGPT?

📜 Silicon Valley Bank released their The Future of Healthtech 2025 report, which is always a good read

📖 What’s the latest in the fast-moving longevity boom? Check out the CBInsights report: The longevity tech market map

📖 Want to know what happened at HLTH but didn’t quite make it? Read Christina Farr’s round-up on HLTH

📖 Joe Connolly reckons HLTH 2025 felt quieter this year, with fewer booths & lower turnout, as tighter healthtech funding & travel cuts from major insurers signalled the end of the conference’s boom era….

💡Got Feedback? Something to include next time? Keen to get in touch?

We want to make this worthy of your time & the best it can be.
💌 Hit reply or reach out to content@whatthehealth.io to share your thoughts.

Have a great pseudo long weekend!

👋 Emily,
Mariah, Victoria & Team WTH