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

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.

The weather, conference circuit and funding rounds are all heating up 🔥 (finally).

Speaking of - in case you missed it AusBiotech have their Annual AusBiotech International Conference next week in Melbourne.

Also known as “Aus’s biggest week in biotech” - with every org and their dogs hosting events

Me and the Tenmile Team will all be in town (of course, ready to kick things off with a good old hoedown at The Healthtech Muster).

A few program highlights you might want to check out:

1. ☢️ Getting hot down under – Global leadership in radiopharma (the opportunities and challenges) - with Telix Pharmaceuticals (ASX: TXL) CEO Christian Behrenbruch

2. 📈 Driving tomorrow: How Australia’s tech sectors are shaping our innovation-driven economy - ft. Rebekah Cassidy CEO @ AusBiotech, Dr. Ilana Feain, Head of Research @ Tech Council of Australia, Bronwyn Le Grice, CEO & MD, ANDHealth & Dr. Madeline Mitchell, Investment Principal @ Tenacious Ventures

3. 🚀Australian innovation: Striving to meet the unmet - by legendary Dr. Alison Todd
   
   

If you’re keen to check it out, you can still grab a last minute ticket or day pass

Grab your pass here!

I’m also SO pumped for this years Tenmile FocalPoint on Monday

Whats that you ask?

Take a gander at this highly curated international line up of Life Science Superstars and invite only get together for local & global health innovation leaders 👀

Stay tuned for events and conference updates soon…

And, maybe see you there?

🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy News

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Events

• Cool Content

Brought to you with… 💜 Vanta

Scaling a company? Don’t SOC-block your best engineer.

You need compliance to sign deals. But you also need your engineers to build your product, instead of worrying about pulling compliance evidence. Enter a third option: make Vanta your first security hire. Vanta uses AI & automation to get you compliant fast, simplify your audit process, & unblock deals — so you can signal to customers that you take security seriously.

Plus, Vanta scales right along with you, backed by startup-speed support every step of the way, so you’re not stuck ripping out one of those check-the-box solutions later...& rebuilding your whole program under pressure.

Don’t SOC-block your best engineer. Set them free with Vanta.

Find out more

& 💜 Fitt Insider

Fitt Insider tracks the $4T global wellness industry, then delivers the most important trends, insights, & startups straight to your inbox!

From longevity tech to metabolic health & human performance, Fitt Insider connects the dots so you can stay informed, move faster, & execute with confidence.

Join this killer community of operators, founders, & investors driving the wellness economy forward.

Subscribe to Fitt Insider for free!

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

🩺 Heidi, raised a $US65M ($98M) Series B led by Point72, its second funding round in 12 months, lifting its valuation to $711M as it expands globally after powering 73M medical consultations in 18 months

Check out the 9-slide pitch deck they used

In a KLAS Research report, 100% of customers said they’d buy again, citing faster documentation, less burnout, & more time with patients

🧠 Remedy Robotics announced US$35M to advance AI robotic tech for remote stroke treatment…

More excitingly, they completed the worlds first fully remote robotic surgery - having remote surgeons control catheters for multiple neurointerventions

💉 predicTx Health, an AI platform using 3D body composition from routine CT scans to personalise chemotherapy, raised $1.6M

🧫 USYD’s Wojciech Chrzanowski won the $100k NanoPitch Discovery 2025 prize for Biobots, a phage therapy restoring cell–microbe balance to treat Epidermolysis Bullosa

🦴 Orthocell, the ASX listed perth based company, launched a $25M placement to boost manufacturing capacity and sales of its nerve repair device Remplir in the US

☢️ Radiopharm Theranostics, a clinical-stage biotech aiming to redefine cancer care launched a 2 tranche placement targeting $35M to fund its next stage of clinical trials and the manufacture of drugs

Newsworthy

🩸After what feels like a million years… patients and their healthcare teams can finally get immediate access to most pathology tests via My Health Record

🧪 Monash Uni opened a Boston-based hub to fast-track global drug discovery & health innovations, expanding partnerships across North America & Europe

🧬 Bupa & Medibank are offering DNA tests to predict how people respond to medicines, sparking debate over data privacy, equity, & whether Aus is ready for population-wide pharmacogenomic screening

💪 Kic appointed Jane Martino as CEO to expand beyond workouts into a full wellness ecosystem

👁️ Optain Health is expanding its Melb R&D hub into an Asia-Pacific HQ after Vic gov backing, investing $10M to advance AI eye-scan tech

🇦🇺 OpenAI joined the Tech Council of Aus as it expands locally, following its Sydney launch & talks with the gov on data centres & national AI upskilling

🍎 Tummily, Aus’s first dietitian-designed IBS tracking app, hit Apple’s Top 100 Medical Apps within 24 hrs of launch

🗣️ PHAA members voted almost unanimously to establish a First Nations Collective, an Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander voice to guide Aus’s peak public health body

💰 Only 900 GP clinics have shown interest in Labor’s new bulk-billing incentive program launching 1 Nov, with officials saying it could take 4 years to lift bulk-billing rates to 90% despite rising out-of-pocket costs in the meantime

US & Beyond Borders

🍏 Lilly’s new GLP-1 weight loss pill, orforglipron, is showing better blood sugar control in later-stage trials - saying they plan on applying to get it approved for T2D in 2026

💡 Biolinq earned FDA clearance for Shine™, the first fully autonomous, needle-free glucose sensor that tracks glucose, activity, & sleep through a simple wearable patch

🧫 Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell & Shimon Sakaguchi won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering how the body prevents the immune system from attacking itself

They identified the role of regulatory T cells, which act as “security guards” that prevent the immune system from attacking the body’s own tissues and organs. This is fundamental to understanding how the immune system works and potentially opened the door for new treatments for autoimmune diseases, cancer, and transplant rejection

🧩 Epic previewed new interoperability tools for patients, providers and developers to simplify health data sharing and building, including. MyChart Central giving patients one login to unify records across providers

In the past year, supposedly >745 billion data exchanges took place using Epic’s publicly available application programming interfaces

⚖️ Strava is suing Garmin for allegedly copying its segment & heatmap features, escalating tensions between the fitness app & the devices it depends on

💉 Oura launched a $99 blood testing feature with Quest Diagnostics, letting users track 50 health markers & get AI insights directly in its app

💪 Midi Health, the fastest growing virtual clinic for women 35+, raised $63M Series B joined by Amy Schumer, Sheryl Sandberg & others

💰 PwC predicts up to $1T in U.S. healthcare spending could shift to AI, digital-first models by 2035

🧬 Stratos Health partnered with Superpower to offer free workplace wellness combining advanced biomarker testing, AI health coaching, & 24/7 medical care

🩸 WHOOP launched Advanced Labs, letting members pair blood biomarkers with wearable data & AI coaching, after 350k users joined the waitlist

🤖 AI Updates

🇺🇸 The US Department of Veterans Affairs will deploy Abridge & Knowtex AI scribes across its health system to streamline clinical documentation for 9.1M veterans

🧠 ARiSE, a Stanford & Harvard backed lab, launched to try to independently validate & benchmark AI performance in healthcare

🤖 Deloitte admitted using gen AI in a $440k gov report riddled with fake references & quotes, prompting a partial refund & sparking concerns over AI’s unchecked use in official work

🤖 ChatGPT users unsurprinsingly make wellness a top use case, with 6% of chats focused on health as AI shifts from generic advice to personalised fitness, nutrition, & longevity plans

🩺 The Joint Commission & CHAI released their first joint AI governance framework for healthcare, outlining seven pillars

Sick Science

🤖 Can a multi-agent AI become your personal health coach, analyst, & explainer?

In a systems paper from Google Research, DeepMind & more introduced the Personal Health Agent (PHA), a multi-agent AI framework that integrates wearable & medical record data to provide personalised health insights. Built through a user-centred design using 1.3k real-world queries and expert workshops, the system combines three agents: a Data Science agent for time-series analysis, a Domain Expert for evidence-based interpretation, & a Health Coach for goal setting. Evaluated across ten benchmarks with >7k annotations and 1.1k human hours, PHA delivered consistent, contextual answers across wellness, fitness, & symptom queries.

🔥 Can olive oil’s key fat boost cancer-fighting immune cells?

In a study published in Signal Transduction & Targeted Therapy (2025), researchers from the Uni of HK examined how different dietary fats affect γδ-T cells (immune cells used in cancer therapy). They found that palmitic acid (a saturated fat in palm oil) weakened these cells’ ability to kill tumours by disrupting energy metabolism & triggering pyroptosis, an inflammatory form of cell death. Oleic acid (the main fat in olive oil) reversed these effects, restoring energy production & tumour-killing activity both in lab tests & mice.

Get the rest here!

Startup Stuff 🚀

Wanna 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💥

20th Oct: The Healthtech Muster: By Tenmile & Brandon Capital (Melb)

21st Oct: Primary Care. Digitally Connected. (Syd)

21st Oct: AusBioInvest 2025 (Melb)

22- 23rd Oct: MTAA MedTech Conference 2025 (Syd)

22 -24 Oct: AusBiotech International Conference 2025 (Melb)

29th Oct: Universal “AI for Health” Summit (Washington)

29 - 31st Oct: Singapore Week of Innovation & Technology (Singapore)

30th Oct: BrainTech 2025 (Melb)

12th Nov: AI Vision, hosted by Canva (Syd)

14 - 16th Nov: Brighter future together (Bris)

24 - 25th Nov: AI.Care 2025 (Bris)

3 - 4th Dec: Health Justice 2025 (Syd)

Cool Content 💎

🎙️Microsoft Research Podcast, The AI Revolution in Medicine: Reimagining healthcare delivery & public health with AI

This ep dives into how AI is reshaping healthcare since the release of ChatGPT and GPT-4, exploring what early predictions got right and wrong.

Discussing how AI is transforming public health, care delivery, and medical research - from improving data-driven responses to redefining Mayo Clinic’s AI-powered healthcare model.

📖 Nous: Making it stick: The magic of leadership in digital health

📖 The Economist: Is dark chocolate actually healthy?

TL:DR 🍫 isn’t the heart-healthy superfood it’s marketed as unfortunately…..studies show cocoa flavanols don’t prevent disease, & getting enough from chocolate means too much sugar & fat. Better to get your flavanols from fruit, nuts, or tea than wishful thinking (or Big Chocolate’s PR).

📖 Nicholas A Gnan delves into the new health operating system (OS) race

💡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.

See you on the Biotech circuit next week and bring your dancing shoes!

👋 Emily,
Mariah, Victoria & Team WTH

With thanks to our partners 💜

Want to get featured here in front of >9700 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

I just got booted from my “overbooked” flight back from Mallorca 🇪🇸 & Milan 🇮🇹, so I’m stuck here for 24 hours (I know, I deserve zero sympathy nor have the right to complain after 5 weeks galavanting in Europe).

Anyyyyway. In case you missed it…

The Healthtech Muster is just 2 weeks away! 🎉

What’s that again?

Why, only the Aussie healthtech networking event of the year.

After a roaring launch in 2024, Tenmile & Brandon Capital are bringing you the 2nd edition of The Healthtech Muster in Melbourne. And we couldn’t be more stoked to be supporting long with our friends Prime Financial Group & Radium Capital.

(for those of you who joined last year in Sydney, you may remeber the 350+ people party on Sydney harbour during SXSW Sydney)

It’s the perfect way to kick off Australia’s biggest week in biotech – with the whole ecosystem, just before the annual AusBiotech Conference ft. great food & drinks, conversations, and a chance to win prizes from R.M.Williams & Akubra.

📆 Monday, 20 October 2025
⏰ 6 pm onwards
📍The Great Room, W Melbourne (CBD)
🥂 Food, drink & fab conversations

Keen?

Tickets are limited and flying - so make sure you grab yours 👇

Snag your ticket here!

*PS - those who have registered and are yet to be approved (thank you!), sit tight, demand has been way stronger than anticipated, so we’re wading our way through

See you there!

Onto ze news…

🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy News

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Events

• Cool Content

Brought to you with… 💜 Vanta

Scaling a company? Don’t SOC-block your best engineer.

You need compliance to sign deals. But you also need your engineers to build your product, instead of worrying about pulling compliance evidence. Enter a third option: make Vanta your first security hire. Vanta uses AI & automation to get you compliant fast, simplify your audit process, & unblock deals — so you can signal to customers that you take security seriously.

Plus, Vanta scales right along with you, backed by startup-speed support every step of the way, so you’re not stuck ripping out one of those check-the-box solutions later...&rebuilding your whole program under pressure.

That’s why top startups like Cursor, Linear, & Replit use Vanta to get secure early.

Don’t SOC-block your best engineer. Set them free with Vanta.

Find out more

Brought to you with… 💜 Heidi Health

Keen to help power the future of AI in healthcare? Use your sales and relationship skills for good?

Join Heidi Health as a Business Development Rep and help power the future of AI in healthcare!

You’ll get to drive conversations with leading practices, fuel our rapid growth, & make world-class care faster, smarter, & more accessible.

Apply Today!

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

🦻 H3D, an AI 3D-printing startup, raised $5.8M Series A to expand its customised healthcare products from hearing aids into dental labs worldwide

🧠 CUREator+ Dementia Incubator awarded $15.8M in fed funding to 7 Aus companies developing therapies, devices, & digital tools to tackle dementia

👨‍👦 Indi, an AI-powered co-pilot helping parents of children with complex care needs, has raised $1.46M in a round led by Giant Leap and supported by Antler

Newsworthy

💊 Novo Nordisk has asked the gov to subsidise Wegovy for 500K Aussies with heart disease & obesity, pushing for taxpayer-funded access to weight-loss drugs

✅ In one of the biggest changes of nursing regulation (and health system dynamics) in Aus in decades, qualified and endorsed registered nurses will be able to prescribe and administer medication

🤖 Medicare will pilot an AI system to expand prior authorisation decisions from 2026, sparking warnings it could delay or deny doctor-recommended care & harm patients

🏆 Harrison.ai is one of TIME’s top healthtech companies of 2025 for its AI that reviews scans to detect serious conditions, now supporting 6M/year in 1K+ facilities

💊 Strongroom AI owner Joe Zhou sold subsidiary Member Benefits Australia to the Pharmacy Guild, streamlining the startup to refocus on tackling substance abuse & overdose prevention

🛂 US H-1B visas now carry a $150K application fee for new entrants, a move hitting Aus startups & workers

🤖 Juniper’s AI chatbot June now answers nearly all user weight-loss queries, but experts warn AI advice on sensitive health issues risks triggering eating disorders

💰 Sigma CEO Vikesh Ramsunder took home $5.7M in 2025, but Chemist Warehouse’s billionaire founders & relatives sold 000s of Ms in shares, keeping the real payday in the family

💉 Moderna says its Melb plant will deliver Aus’s first locally made mRNA COVID vaccines by year’s end & produce 4 more respiratory shots within 3 years

👁️ RMIT researchers developed an eye drop that delivers protective lutein to the retina in pre-clinical tests, raising hopes for less invasive treatment of macular degeneration

🏥 Ryman Healthcare, NZ’s biggest aged care provider, dual-listed on the ASX in a $2B move to expand its Aus footprint & tap into ageing-population demand

📉 HILDA survey shows Aussies have fewer friends, pay more tax, face higher living costs, & are retiring later than ever, with 1/3 still working in their late 60s

US & Beyond Borders

⚠️ US officials led by Trump & RFK Jr claim paracetamol use in pregnancy is linked to autism & ADHD and that they may have ways to get “somewhat better” if you have it/

🏥Keir Starmer will launch an NHS online hospital service from 2027, offering millions of virtual appointments to cut wait times while freeing in-person care for those who need it

⚖️ Sanofi was ordered by a French court to pay $177M in damages for anti-competitive practices that blocked generic rivals to its anti-clotting drug Plavix

💸 Sanofi Ventures added $625M to its fund, bringing AUM to $1.4B, to back early-stage biotechs & digital health startups

💍 Oura, maker of the smart health ring, is raising $875M at an $11B valuation after doubling sales to 5.5M rings & projecting $1B+ revenue this year

And just debuted ŌURA Ring 4 Ceramic, the ŌURA Ring 4 Charging Case, and Health Panels

⌚ Apple Watch gained FDA clearance for a hypertension detection feature, set to roll out this month on Series 9–11 & Ultra models across 150 regions

💊 AstraZeneca will list shares directly on the NYSE, replacing ADRs, as it pushes to expand its US investor base & sales while keeping its London & Stockholm listings

📱 Strava, the $2.2B fitness app with 150M users, is preparing for an IPO after boosting revenue with AI tools, acquisitions, & global expansion

🏈 Aescape made Tom Brady its Chief Innovation Officer after acquiring his longevity protocols

🌎 Remarkable Accelerator welcomed 4 US startups into its 2025 disability tech program to scale inclusive innovation globally

🤖 AI Updates

📊 OpenAI research shows ChatGPT has 700M weekly users sending 2.5B messages daily, mostly for guidance, writing & info

Clinicians lean on it for documentation, patient comms, & decision support

🧪 Stanford researchers built MedAgentBench to test AI in electronic health records, finding Claude 3.5 hit 70% & GPT-4o 64% on routine clinical tasks like data entry & orders

Sick Science

🧠 Does where you carry body fat change how your brain ages?

In a cross-sectional study in Nature Mental Health, researchers analysed >18,000 UK Biobank adults using DXA to measure arm, leg, trunk, & visceral fat, paired with multimodal MRI, cognitive tests, & brain “age-gap” models, with all associations examined after adjusting for BMI. Visceral fat showed the strongest links to brain change: cortical atrophy in default-mode hubs, widespread white-matter disruption, & older cortical brain-age that statistically mediated poorer reasoning, executive function, processing speed, & memory. Upper-body fat (arm/trunk) related to thinning in sensorimotor cortex, leg fat tracked with weaker limbic connectivity, & these regional patterns were distinct from general obesity.

🧬 How does DNA methylation shape the developing human cortex?

In a Cell Genomics study, researchers profiled genome-wide DNA methylation in cortex tissue from 768 donors spanning 6 post-conception weeks to 108 years. They found dramatic, dynamic shifts in methylation during early & mid-gestation, distinct from the more stable, age-related changes seen after birth. Using cell sorting, they showed neuron-specific methylation trajectories & found that these developmental changes were enriched near genes linked to autism & schizophrenia.

Get the rest here!

Startup Stuff 🚀

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

Developing a breakthrough in cancer care?

Johnson & Johnson’s Unlocking Urologic Oncology QuickFire Challenge is accepting apps for innovations in bladder & prostate cancer care, offering up to $300K in grants plus virtual access to J&J’s global network - 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💥

5 - 8th Oct: The MedTech Conference (San Diego)

8 - 9th Oct: Rural & Remote Health Scientific Symposium (Perth)

10th Oct: HKMTA MedTech Forum 2025: AI in MedTech (HK)

14 - 15th Oct: International Conference on Digital Health (Online)

16th Oct: Future of Health Asia (Singapore)

20th Oct: The Healthtech Muster: By Tenmile & Brandon Capital (Mel)

21st Oct: Primary Care. Digitally Connected. (Syd)

21st Oct: AusBioInvest 2025 (Melb)

22- 23rd Oct: MTAA MedTech Conference 2025 (Syd)

29th Oct: Universal “AI for Health” Summit (Washington)

29 - 31st Oct: Singapore Week of Innovation & Technology (Singapore)

30th Oct: BrainTech 2025 (Melb)

14 - 16th Nov: Brighter future together (Bris)

3 - 4th Dec: Health Justice 2025 (Syd)

Cool Content 💎

🎙️Anecdotal: Hysteria & the Power of Language (ft. Dr Talat Uppal)

This episode of Anecdotal, a great women’s health focused podcast, explores the history of gynaecological language and the recent push to rename hysterectomies and PCOS

📖 Saphire Ventures mapped 80+ of the hottest AI companies building in healthcare

💡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.

See you soon, our Aussie and Melbourne friends!

👋 Emily,
Mariah, Victoria & team WTH

With thanks to our partners 💜

Want to get featured here in front of >9700 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

With an exciting event for you…

Want to join the healthtech networking event of the year? 🎉

Our friends Tenmile & Brandon Capital are bringing you the second edition of The Healthtech Muster! This time, in Melbourne.

And we couldn’t be prouder to be supporting the event along with our friends Prime Financial Group & Radium Capital.

(for those of you who joined last year in sydney, you may remeber the 350+ people party on Sydney harbour during SXSW Sydney)

It’s the perfect way to kick off Australia’s biggest week in biotech – with the whole ecosystem, just before the annual AusBiotech Conference ft. great food & drinks, conversations, and a chance to win prizes from R.M.Williams & Akubra.

📆 Monday, 20 October 2025
⏰ 6 pm onwards
📍The Great Room, W Melbourne (CBD)
🥂 Food, drink & fab conversations

Keen?

Tickets are limited and flying - so make sure you grab yours 👇

Snag your ticket here!

See you there!

🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy News

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Events

Brought to you with… 💜 Vanta

Why founders love Vanta

“If we’d done everything manually, it would have cost us up to AUD$100k in time & resources. Partnering with Vanta has cut that by more than half.” Anshul Jain, Co-Founder, Everlab.

By automating up to 90% of the work needed for SOC 2, ISO 27001, & more, Vanta has helped over 10,000 companies like Atlassian, Relevance AI & Everlab get compliant fast.

Get $1,000 off Vanta here.

*T&Cs apply.

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

👁️ Optain Health raised $26M Series A to scale its AI retinal imaging & teleophthalmology platform

💘 Wable, a Melbourne startup building a dating app for neurodivergent people, raised $1.5M to expand into the US & UK

Newsworthy

💉 CSL bets up to $760M on Dutch biotech VarmX to develop a bleeding disorder treatment, its first big move since cutting 3K jobs & planning a vaccine spinoff

🧠 Dementia has overtaken heart disease as Aus’s leading cause of death, responsible for nearly 17,400 deaths in 2023, about 1 in 10

🐾 Greencross is now using Heidi Health in about 35% of consultations, finding stronger uptake among vets than in public hospitals

🚺 A Monash report found just 3.3% of gov research funding goes to women’s health

🤝 Provider Assist acquired Humanetix to create Aus’s only end-to-end aged care & healthcare partner

🏥 Healthscope’s CEO warned staff the debt-laden hospital group could face closures & job losses unless they back his radical plan to turn it into a NFP, with most salary packaging benefits flowing to the company

📡 Teladoc Health acquired Aus virtual care startup Telecare, marking the first exit for LaunchVic’s Alice Anderson Fund

🧩 Pathological Demand Avoidance, a little-known autism profile marked by extreme resistance to everyday demands, is gaining attention in Aus with the first national PDA conference set for Nov

US & Beyond Borders

📢 The FDA is cracking down on deceptive drug ads, sending thousands of warning letters, 100 cease-and-desists, & moving to close a decades-old loophole that let pharma hide key safety risks

💸 Mark Cuban is launching Cost Plus Wellness this month, a cash-pay provider network with 8,000 doctors & fully transparent contracts

📊 The CBO says the 340B drug discount program ballooned from $6.6B in 2010 to $43.9B in 2021, driven mostly by hospital–clinic integration, the ACA, & expanded contract pharmacy use

😴 Calm launched a stand-alone iOS app called Calm Sleep with personalised plans, daily tasks, & exclusive content to help users build better sleep habits

💊 Merck is abandoning its £1B London R&D hub & pulling all research operations out of the UK. Whilst Sanofi is also holding fire on R&D investments based there, and Eli Lily is reconsidering its UK incubator plans and has paused its buildout.

🍼 BoobyBiome, a London biotech, raised €2.8M to scale its breast milk microbiome tech, developing storage devices and live drops to boost infant gut health worldwide

🤖 AI Updates

🍏 Apple adds sleep apnea & blood pressure tracking to Apple Watch & launches a hearing health suite on AirPods Pro 2

🤖 Oracle released new agentic AI features across its EHR, patient portal, rev cycle & clinical trials suite, pitching itself as the healthcare AI frontrunner against Epic

💰 Strive Health raised $550M in Series D funding to expand its AI kidney care model, supporting early detection, preventative care & partnerships across all 50 states

Get the rest here!

Sick Science

🧪 Can redesigned vitamin K compounds turn brain cells into neurons?

In a lab study published in ACS (2025), Japanese researchers made 12 new versions of vitamin K by adding pieces of retinoic acid, and tested them in mouse brain stem cells. One version, called compound 7, worked best - it switched on key cell receptors & produced more neuron markers than natural vitamin K. The team found it acted through a brain receptor called mGluR1 & bound to it more strongly than regular vitamin K. In mice, compound 7 crossed into the brain, partly changed into vitamin K, & reached its highest levels after 24 hours.

🧠 Can blocking certain brain cells stop diet-related memory loss?

In a mouse study published in Neuron (2025), researchers tested how short-term high-fat diets affect memory. They found that a group of hippocampal neurons (CCK interneurons) became overactive when brain glucose levels dropped, leading to impaired memory. Giving glucose or blocking an enzyme called PKM2 calmed these neurons and restored memory performance. Early intervention to stop this overactivity also protected mice from long-term cognitive problems linked to obesity.

Startup Stuff 🚀

Are you an early-to-mid career woman in science or medicine?

Novo Nordisk’s new Marie Krogh Young Women in Science Prize is open for applications, celebrating female researchers and clinicians making an impact in Australia. The winner scores $50K AUD, with $5K for each of 7 finalists, plus induction into the Marie Krogh Alumni, national recognition, and an invite to Parliament House in Canberra for the reception & awards dinner - 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

Developing a breakthrough in cancer care?

Johnson & Johnson’s Unlocking Urologic Oncology QuickFire Challenge is accepting apps for innovations in bladder & prostate cancer care, offering up to $300K in grants plus virtual access to J&J’s global network - 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💥

30th Sept - 2nd Oct: Ageing Aus National Conference (GC)

5 - 8th Oct: The MedTech Conference (San Diego)

8 - 9th Oct: Rural & Remote Health Scientific Symposium (Perth)

16th Oct: Future of Health Asia (Singapore)

20th Oct: The Healthtech Muster: By Tenmile & Brandon Capital (Mel)

21st Oct: Primary Care. Digitally Connected. (Syd)

21st Oct: AusBioInvest 2025 (Melb)

29 - 31st Oct: Singapore Week of Innovation & Technology (Singapore)

30th Oct: BrainTech 2025 (Melb)

14 - 16th Nov: Brighter future together (Bris)

3 - 4th Dec: Health Justice 2025 (Syd)

💡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.

👋 Emily,
Mariah, Victoria & team WTH

With thanks to our partners 💜

Want to get featured here in front of >9700 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

Coming to you today from the beautiful Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands, as I (try) take a second out to touch grass, do nature ft culturally significant 5000-year-old rocks and hang out with my amazing mother.

Tell you what - ain’t no better way to disconnect than being in the most remote parts of the world.

Anyway, we still have some health insights and news tidbits to share with you…

Onto this week’s issue

🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy News

• AI Updates

• Sick Science

• Startup Stuff

• Events

Brought to you with… 💜 Vanta

Navigating AI & Compliance in Healthcare: Panel Discussion

How do healthcare leaders manage AI risk, navigate evolving regulations, & scale compliance efficiently with increasingly limited resources?

Watch this panel with Vanta, Modern Health & US Med-Equip to discover how!

Watch Now

& 💜 Fitt Insider

Fitt Insider tracks the $4T global wellness industry, then delivers the most important trends, insights, & startups straight to your inbox!

From longevity tech to metabolic health & human performance, Fitt Insider connects the dots so you can stay informed, move faster, & execute with confidence.

Join this killer community of operators, founders, & investors driving the wellness economy forward.

Subscribe to Fitt Insider for free!

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

🤖 Andromeda, the Melbourne startup building AI-powered humanoid companion robots (“Abi”) for aged care, raised a $23M Series A at a $100M valuation, to help with expansion into the US market

🩹Nutromics bagged $7.5M to accelerate its wearable “lab-on-a-patch” that captures real-time molecular data using DNA biosensors & microneedles

🧬 Lucia Bio raised an extra $2M to advance its Syk inhibitor program for neuroinflammatory & autoimmune diseases, bringing its Seed round to $3M

🧠 Monash Uni snagged $1.9M to roll out brain-training therapy for alcohol dependence across 14 clinics nationwide

This marks the first real-world implementation of the tech, which helps retrain patients' automatic responses to alcohol triggers via computer or smartphone

🧪 CUREator awarded $1.23M in milestone-based grants to 6 high-performing biotechs:

• xCystence Bio – Developing a new class of drugs for polycystic kidney disease

• Frontier Inflammasome Therapeutics – Creating small molecule drugs for inflammatory skin & lung conditions

• RAGE Biotech – Building inhaled RNA therapies targeting chronic lung disease

• Cincera Therapeutics – Advancing novel antifibrotic drugs for diseases like IPF

• Kraken Coding – Developing Clinical Branches, a mobile antimicrobial prescribing tool

• Spritz-OM – Creating a nasal probiotic to prevent childhood ear infections & reduce antibiotic use

Newsworthy

🧪  Victoria is launching a $17.5M Monash Velos Accelerator to drive heart health innovation, connecting hospitals, startups & researchers

🌏 Aus pledged $266M to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB, & malaria across the Indo-Pacific, amid alarming HIV surges in PNG & Fiji

💉 Aus’s cosmetic industry has new rules with under-18s facing a 7-day cooling-off, social media testimonials banned & nurses needing extra supervised training before injectables

🤝 Ovum x Women’s Health Road partnered, offering an extended free trial of Ovum to all WHR clinic patients

🦷 Eyes of AI will lead a $6.7M project to build a contactless AI tool for gum disease screening, backed by a $2.2M fed grant & partnerships with CSIRO, USYD & 3Shape

🏥 RACGP, ACRRM & Medical Deans revealed that 33% of Aussie med grads are entering GP training, with Monash, JCU, & Notre Dame leading the way in shaping Australia’s future rural & urban GP workforce

👃 Centenary Institute & USYD developed a nasal COVID-19 booster that showed strong protection in mice by blocking the virus at the entry point

💊 Aus’s PBS medicines will be cheaper next year with >900 drugs capped at $25 from Jan 2026 while concession holders continue paying $7.70 per script

🏠 Mark Butler agreed to release 20K extra Home Care packages by Oct 31 & another 23K by mid-2026, ahead of the delayed aged care reforms

📠 Aus’s $2.5B healthcare system is still stuck on paper & fax with the Business Council warning costs could top 10% of GDP & urging a $5.4B digital makeover

US & Beyond Borders

👟 Strava run club creation hit record highs with Brazil up 8.8x, France 6.5x & the US 4x y-o-y as Gen Z flocks to group running for community, not just performance

🧬 US consumers spend > $500B on wellness but remain wary of longevity, with only 18% using healthtech & most preferring quality of life over sci-fi biohacks

💰 Pitchbook’s report revealed VC in healthtech hit $7.9B in H1 2025, on track for its best year since 2022, driven by mega-rounds, rising valuations, & strong IPO debuts from Hinge & Omada

😞 Gen Z is now the most miserable age group globally, with multiple surveys showing young people reporting worse mental health than older adults for the first time in decades

🫀 J&J’s Impella heart pump added an average 600 days of life over 10 years for STEMI patients in cardiogenic shock, cutting mortality by 16.3% in new long-term trial results

🤖 AI Updates

🧠 Flare Capital Partners report states 58% of 2025 healthcare deals involve AI, with 2/3 of US physicians already using it & value consolidating into a few breakout companies as the battle shifts to owning the clinician assistant stack

🩺 OpenAI is building a health product team with Nate Gross (Doximity) & Ashley Alexander (Instagram) leading the charge

& OpenAI is opening its first Aus office in Sydney 👀🇦🇺

📞 Assort Health raised $50M at a $750M valuation to expand its AI voice agents that automate patient calls for specialty clinics, just four months after its $22M Series A

🩺 Researchers from IMC used an AI stethoscope across 12K+ UK patients to detect heart conditions in 15 secs, 2x heart failure diagnoses & 3x atrial fibrillation detection in GP clinics

🧠 Sage Growth Partners finds 83% of execs see AI improves decision-making but only 13% have a clear implementation strategy

Get the rest here!

Sick Science

🏃‍♂️ Can exercise slow your biological clock?

In a perspective review from Tohoku & Waseda Uni, researchers synthesised evidence on how physical activity, fitness & structured exercise affect DNA methylation–based epigenetic clocks. Observational studies link higher cardiorespiratory fitness with slower epigenetic ageing, while interventions show that structured training can even reverse biological age in blood & muscle. Effects vary by individual & organ, but Olympic athletes & high-fitness groups consistently show younger epigenetic profiles.

👃 Can an allergy spray help block COVID-19?

In a phase 2 randomised trial at Saarland Uni Hospital, 450 healthy adults used a nasal spray for 56 days, with azelastine users having fewer PCR-confirmed COVID infections (2.2%) than placebo (6.7%), & they also had fewer symptomatic cases & fewer colds (rhinovirus). Side effects were mostly mild & expected (bitter taste, occasional nosebleeds).

🧩 Could a hidden virus shape Parkinson’s disease?

In a study from Northwestern University, researchers used whole-virome sequencing to detect human pegivirus (HPgV) in 50% of Parkinson’s brains but none of the controls. HPgV-positive patients showed more advanced tau pathology, altered synaptic protein levels, & disrupted IL-4 immune signalling in both brain & blood. Responses varied by genetics: carriers of LRRK2 mutations had opposite immune reactions compared to non-carriers, with the YWHAB gene emerging as a key hub in this divergence.

Startup Stuff 🚀

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

Developing a breakthrough in cancer care?

Johnson & Johnson’s Unlocking Urologic Oncology QuickFire Challenge is accepting apps for innovations in bladder & prostate cancer care, offering up to $300K in grants plus virtual access to J&J’s global network - 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

Got a women’s health research idea ready to go?

The Foundation for Women’s Health is accepting Letters of Intent for projects tackling critical gaps across the female life course. Focus areas this year include mental health in teen girls, uterine cancer, CVD in pregnancy, vaccine uptake, autoimmune disease, & fibroids – 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

Got a Health Care Innovation Idea?

CSIRO’s Innovate to Grow program is open for Aussie SMEs looking to turn their health care ideas into R&D projects. This free 8-week course provides guidance, expert feedback, & funding pathways to bring your innovation to life - More here

Events💥

10th Sept: Cicada x Tech23 (Syd)

11th Sept: Startmate Alumni Demo Day (Syd)

16 - 17th Sept: HIKM 2025, Empowering Health: AI Innovations (online)

16 - 18th Sept: Australian Public Health Conference 2025 (Wollongong)

18 - 19th Sept: National Disability Summit (Melb)

30th Sept - 2nd Oct: Ageing Aus National Conference (GC)

5 - 8th Oct: The MedTech Conference (San Diego)

8 - 9th Oct: Rural & Remote Health Scientific Symposium (Perth)

16th Oct: Future of Health Asia (Singapore)

21st Oct: Primary Care. Digitally Connected. (Syd)

30th Oct: BrainTech 2025 (Melb)

💡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.

👋 Emily,
Mariah, Victoria & team WTH

With thanks to our partners 💜

Want to get featured here in front of >9700 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement & partnership opportunities.

I’m coming to you today, sitting in the airport en route to London 🇬🇧 before taking a solid Euro summer break for the next month (classic Aussie).

And yes - I did just get the Vegemite I was smuggling to friends in London confiscated 💔 devastating

If you want to get in contact with me this next month, please don’t.

But, you can still catch our all-star What the Health team (who are all actually far more competent than me anyway) 💌 So reach out to info@whatthehealth.io with any asks, enquiries, or just to say hey to the wonderful Vic.

But never fear, we’ll still be in your inbox as per usual

Anywayyy, onto the real news…

🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Noteworthy News

• Sick Science

• AI Updates

• Startup Stuff

• Events

• Cool Content

Brought to you with 💜 Vanta

Navigating AI & Compliance in Healthcare: Panel Discussion

How do healthcare leaders manage AI risk, navigate evolving regulations, and scale compliance efficiently with increasingly limited resources?

Watch this panel with Vanta, Modern Health, & US Med-Equip to discover how!

Watch Now

💜 Heidi Health

What do the (many) clinicians at Heidi have to say about their experience in health? And why have they chosen to join Heidi?

Hear all about it here 👇

Want to know more? Want to explore joining?

Find out more about Heidi here!

Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

💉 Vaxxas raised $49M Series D and $40M in debt facilities at an $805M valuation, but cut 10% of staff and replaced its CEO & CFO as it pushes ahead with needle-free vaccine tech

🫁 Diag-Nose.io and Human Health bagged a $3M in federal grant to develop RhinoMAP, an AI platform that tracks airway inflammation to personalise treatment for asthma, sinusitis, and COPD

💡 Industry Growth Program awarded $28.7M in grants, backing SDIP Innovations’ bone implant tech and more

Newsworthy

📲 Telstra Health won a $33.2M contract to overhaul My Health Record, partnering with Smile Digital Health & Leidos to deliver real-time, interoperable health solutions

🤖 Heidi Health makes Forbes Asia’s 100 to Watch 2025 list

🌞 Ultra Violette pulled its Lean Screen sunscreen and offered refunds after fresh tests showed SPF results as low as 4, far below its advertised SPF 50+

🧬 Monash IVF blamed human error for two embryo mix-ups in Melbourne and Brisbane - including one case where a woman unknowingly gave birth to another patient’s baby

🧩 NDIS faces calls for overhaul as psychologists and insiders warn of inflated autism diagnoses, fraud, and ballooning costs, with Labor set to divert kids with mild autism off the scheme from 2027

💰 Ansell, maker of medical gloves and protective surgical suits, shrugged off Trump’s tariffs by hiking prices, boosting profit 33% to $US101.6M and sending shares up 14%

📹 NSW Health is installing over-the-bed cameras at Northern Beaches Hospital to give NETS specialists real-time access during paediatric emergencies, following an inquiry into care failures

US & Beyond Borders

🎾 Serena Williams revealed she lost 14 kg using GLP-1 weight loss meds, sparking debate over postpartum pressures, celeb influence, and her ties to telehealth provider Ro

🧠 AbbVie is acquiring Gilgamesh's next-generation psychedelic compound lead drug candidate, bretisilocin, which aims to target major depressive disorder for up to $1.2B to fast-track development the novel treatment into late-stage trials

⚖️ Oura won a major US trade ruling banning Ultrahuman & RingConn smart rings for patent infringement

📵 Gen Z is turning to digital detox apps, minimalist devices, and phone-free hangouts as 81% of US and 68% of UK youth say screen time makes them feel worse

In something somewhat out of the matrix (or greys anatomy… IYKYK) - a project in China took out headlines for being close to creating “artificial wombs” robots to become the new surrogates…

But, this was quickly debunked as a hoax (LOL). Bringing into question how something like this got to so many global headlines, and raising the rising and very concerning issue of misinformation filtering and verification

🤖 AI Updates

🩺 Epic unveiled its working on >160 new AI projects for clinicians, patients, and billing - plus a preview of Cosmos AI. The AI has access to a research database of 300M patient records across >16B encounters to be built and trained on

🧬 OpenAI & Retro Biosciences used a custom GPT model to re-engineer stem cell proteins, increasing reprogramming efficiency 50x

📄 OpenEvidence officially enters the scribe wars with the launch of Visits, a free AI assistant for US clinicians

💡 Forbes’ 2025 “Next Billion Dollar Startups” list is dominated by AI (20 of 25), with healthcare standouts:

• AcuityMD helps med device makers target the right physicians using de-identified data from 325M patients

• Assort Health uses voice AI to scan physician calendars and auto-match appointment openings

• Collate automates clinical trial & FDA paperwork, cutting regulatory prep from months to days

• Reducto cleans enterprise data with AI document review, already processing 250M+ pages for major firms including Scale AI, Airtable, and Vanta

📝 Grow Therapy launched AI journaling to help patients capture reflections between sessions and share key themes with their therapists

📑 AMA released an 8-step toolkit to help healthcare orgs build AI policies

Get the rest here!

Sick Science

🧠 Can GPT-5 out-reason doctors on multimodal medicine?

In a preprint from Emory Uni, researchers benchmarked GPT-5 on medical text and image QA tasks against GPT-4o, smaller GPT-5 variants, and human clinicians. GPT-5 set new state-of-the-art scores, increasing reasoning by +29% and understanding by +26% on MedXpertQA multimodal, and surpassing pre-licensed human experts by wide margins. It also hit 95% on USMLE self-assessments, well above passing thresholds.

🦠 Can everyday meds fuel antibiotic resistance?

In a study from the University of South Australia, researchers tested 9 common non-antibiotic drugs at gut-relevant doses for their impact on E. coli resistance. Ibuprofen and acetaminophen significantly increased mutation rates when combined with ciprofloxacin, driving up resistance as much as 32–64-fold. Co-exposure to two drugs further amplified resistance.

Startup Stuff 🚀

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 and 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

Looking to crack the US digital health market?

ANDHealth is taking EOIs for its 2025 international delegation to HLTH US in Las Vegas (19–22 Oct), with an SF pre-program (15–17 Oct) packed with investor meetings, site visits, and expert sessions - More here

Got global medtech ambitions?

MTPConnect’s Trade Mission to The MedTech Conference 2025 is open for applications to join the Aus delegation in San Diego, including a 2-day commercial visit program beforehand for site visits, networking, investor insights, and US market briefings - 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 and build your team – all taught by industry experts in law, finance, and sales - More here

Ready to transform your lab from chaos to credibility?

Zero to Quality empowers life science researchers and small startups to implement a professional, ISO-aligned Quality Management System without needing specialist hires or consultants. It’s a structured online training, ready-made templates, expert support, audits, and certification - More here

Got a women’s health research idea ready to go?

The Foundation for Women’s Health is accepting Letters of Intent for projects tackling critical gaps across the female life course. Focus areas this year include mental health in teen girls, uterine cancer, CVD in pregnancy, vaccine uptake, autoimmune disease, and fibroids – 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, and access to 300+ clinicians, investors, and operators – More here

Got a Health Care Innovation Idea?

CSIRO’s Innovate to Grow program is open for Aussie SMEs looking to turn their health care ideas into R&D projects. This free 8-week course provides guidance, expert feedback, and funding pathways to bring your innovation to life - More here

Events💥

2nd Sept: Healthy People, Healthy Planet (Melb)

2nd Sept: Women's Health & Wellbeing Summit (Syd)

3rd Sept: Heidi Health Roadshow (Bris)

4th Sept: Prompting Techniques for Clinicians (With Live Demos!) (Online)

4 - 6th Sept: Health + Climate Forum 2025 (Canberra)

10th Sept: Cicada x Tech23 (Syd)

16 - 17th Sept: HIKM 2025, Empowering Health: AI Innovations (online)

16 - 18th Sept: Australian Public Health Conference 2025 (Wollongong)

18 - 19th Sept: National Disability Summit (Melb)

5 - 8th Oct: The MedTech Conference (San Diego)

8 - 9th Oct: Rural & Remote Health Scientific Symposium (Perth)

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

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

Have a fab Friday and catch you soon

👋 Emily,
Mariah, Victoria & team WTH

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Don’t know about you but BOY, am I ready for a weekend.

Big thanks to everyone who attended our The Future of Mental Health sesh Wednesday 🧠 where we delved deep into the exciting innovations, complex issues, and potential for actually effective, meaningful mental health innovation, reform and systemic change.

Huge thanks again to our incredible lineup:

💜 Prof. Ian Hickie – Co-Director, Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney
💜 Isar Mazer – Co-Founder & Chair, Tacklit
💜 Dr. Angela Lim – CEO & Co-Founder, Clearhead
💜 Steve Duke – Author, The Hemingway Report

Okie dokes, into the news…

🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE

• Newsworthy

• Sick Science

• AI Updates

• Startup Stuff

• Events

• Cool Content

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Noteworthy 🗞️

Funding

🧠 OneMRI landed $2.5M to expand its whole-body MRI startup, launched by Go1 founders & Gopi Sara to bring radiation-free, preventative scans to Aussies using underutilised imaging clinics

🔬 Mirugen secured up to $4.5M in seed funding to accelerate its gene-reprogramming therapy for retinitis pigmentosa