#29 🍩 What the Health - Raises Rebound, Billions to Research Hubs & Mercury is in Retrograde?
#29 🍩 What the Health - Raises Rebound, Billions to Research Hubs & Mercury is in Retrograde?
Your fortnightly healthtech TL;DR roundup
What a weird and whacky few weeks - we lost a Queen, finally made it through winter (hooray!), had RUOK day… and I hear Mercury is in Gatorade?
Oops sorry, retrograde.
It’s been a lot. Hope you’re taking care 💜
In the spirit of taking things easy, this week's drop is a little light (I can hear you cheering already)
But first, in case you missed it…
We launched EOIs for our new little experiment - The Exclusive What the Health Community 🥳
An invite only, vetted group of doers, makers, founders, funders, health professionals and operators 🍩
Keen? Want to know more? Join? Get involved?
Check out all the delicious deets here
I dare you…
For any more info or questions - hit reply or email me at emily@whatthehealth.io
Noteworthy 🗞️
Aussie (& NZ) Funding Fun
🔥 HealthMatch bounces back with a $10m Series C to hopefully survive and thrive post downturn
💰 Nutromics announced a US$14m round led by US medical device leader Dexcom, to advance R&D in Aus and the US
🧪 Evrima, a startup creating end-to-end solutions for clinical trials secured $3m
🎉 Telstra Ventures celebrates $500m for Fund III focused on ‘c’
🫁 Pfizer looks like it will in fact takeover of ResApp Health, now at an increased $180m
👁 Opthea bagged one of the biggest biotech raisings of the year with $239.2m from Launch Therapeutics to advance late-stage clinical trials of its drug to combat eye disease
🛑 Rapid testing start-up Ellume enters voluntary administration with $100m of reported losses
📉 Lumos Diagnostics, who created the world’s first finger-prick blood test to detect if a person has a bacterial or viral infection in 10 mins is reportedly in danger of running out of cash by early next year
🍖 SurgicalBioFix, a Brissy biotech startup is using placentas to make allografts and help potentially deadly wounds
Worth Knowing
🤖 StraxCorp, an AI start-up spun out of Uni Melb, creating algorithms for modelling anatomy and bone fragility merges with US CurveBeam ahead of its IPO
🤑Melbourne got a generous $250m donation for a new global medical research centre to protect against future pandemics focused on therapeutics, thanks to Canadian oil and gas mogul Geoffrey Cumming
🖊 Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) signed a memorandum of understanding with HL7 Australia to improve connectivity across Australia’s digital health system
💚 Lumary, software provider for the disability, partnered with aged care industries service platform Hayylo
Government Goss
📱 ANDHealth received $2.4m from the Australian Medtech Manufacturing Centre and Biotechnology Fund to create the Victorian Connected Health Innovation & Commercialisation Centre (CHICC)
🧞The gov says its “determined to do better at research commercialisation”
🎓 Vic gov is going to pay for university for >10,000 nursing and midwifery students to try help the serious staffing shortage
🗣 Liberals in Vic vow to divert $34.5b from rail project to Vic Health
🏥 USYD is investing almost half a billion to build a new biomedical precinct to try fast-track research and patient care
⛪️ Radelaide is also getting a $450m 28-storey health and medical research hub added to their Biomed City
🏗 RPA hospital is getting a $750m upgrade
US & Beyond the Borders
📱 Google Cloud partnered with Abridge, the healthcare conversation company that uses AI to help users structure, summarize, and generate insights on medical conversations
🍏 Apple
Launched the new Apple Watch 8 ft a new temperature sensor accurate to point 1 of a degree, which enables women to track their ovulation as a retrospective estimate
Trademarked new VR fitness tech as it looks like it will make a play in the space competing with Meta, esports and digital therapeutic companies
👓 Zucks confirmed the new Meta VR headset will launch in October
♥️ Healthcare giant CVS will be the proud owner of Signify Health in a US$8bn takeover
🚬 A new multi-billion dollar healthcare company, Vectura Fertin Pharma, is backed by Tobacco giant Philip Morris and seems a little sus
🛒 Walmart is doing a collab with UnitedHealth Group to roll out high-quality “Value-based” Care
💉 Moderna is suing Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech over alleged COVID vax infringement
Sick Science…
🩸 A simple blood test, looking for cancer DNA in blood could spot multiple cancer types in patients before they develop clear symptoms
🐣 An Israeli BioTech company aims to create artificial embryos for medical transplants and organ harvesting - and reckons the experiments can solve issues relating to infertility, genetic diseases and issues related to old age
💥After the claims of bogus Alzheimer’s studies, bringing into question the mechanism of the disease - biotech and funds worry that billions have been sent in the wrong direction
Startup Stuff 🚀
Fast-growing SME who deserves some celebrating?
Nominate yourself or someone you reckon is ace for Smart Company’s Smart50 Awards - delivering national recognition to the fastest growing businesses across Australia across a heap of categories - More here
Want to voice your view on what’s happening in Digital Health?
Do ANDHealth’s 2022 National Digital Health Industry Sentiment Survey
Want to go to The MedTech Conference 2022 in Boston?
Join MTPConnect's Australian Delegation this October, 24 - 26 in Boston, Massachusetts and be part of the Australian Pavilion exhibit - More here
Building a Genomics Startup?
Apply to the Global Illumina Accelerator and take your startup to the next level. Selected genomics startups will receive access to capital, business guidance, and fully operational lab space for six months in the San Francisco Bay Area and Cambridge, UK - Apply here
Want to get some advice on how to navigate the TGA?
ANDHealth partnered with the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to bring you ‘software as a medical device’ (SaMD) and digital health office hours - More here
📣 Event Feature
WILD HEALTH SUMMIT: There's no greater time to align our health strategy with our health reform agenda 🔥
Melbourne | October 18th 
Join us for a day of deep dives into the different problems, parts and possibilities in the space ft. leading global and local experts at the upcoming Wild Health Summit
PS - If you say you’re from What the Health you get a cheeky discount 😉
Events💥
Thu 15th Sept: How to Solve Problems That Matter (Sydney)
Thu 15th Sept: Startup Women Summit (Melbourne)
20-21st Sept: Cicada MedLab Commercialisation 101
Wed 21st Sept: LifeSci Partners HealthTech Symposium – September 20-21, 2022
Wed 28th Sept: Genomics for Global Health & Pandemic Preparedness (Online)
Wed 30th Sept: Pause Awards
Wed 5th Oct: WILD MASTERCLASS: Create and nurture your personal sponsors and champions (Online)
Wed 6th Oct: Australia MedTech Industry Awards (Sydney)
6th-7th Oct: MTAA MedTech22 Annual Conference (Sydney)
Thu 13th Oct: Celebrating our 2022 Brilliant Women in Digital Health Award recipients (Sydney)
15th - 16th Oct: National Healthcare Datathon
Consumable Content 💎
🎙 The Healthtech Podcast #271: The Story of Mindset Health with Chris Naoumidis
Check out our local darlings, Mindset Health, who are building a portfolio of digital therapeutic apps using hypnosis-based techniques to tackle chronic health conditions like IBS, Menopause and quitting smoking
🗞 The Wallstreet journal covers Amazon and other big techs forrays into health, their current activities and opportunities to buy their way into the space
🔮 The Medical Futurist compiled an epic list of all the partnerships Big Tech have in health - to help paint a picture of our future and just where the data goes
Jobs 💼
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Ciao for now
👋 Emily
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