#36 🍩 What the Health - AI Can Read Your Mind, Budget Drops & Private Longevity Club Pops
Your health tech & innovation TL;DR roundup
Hola amigos,
Big thanks to everyone who took the time to apply to the WTH Private community crew 💜 We’ve had >215 legends apply (WILD🙏) so sit tight and give us a sec to get through them.
In other news, today I’m stoked to welcome our newest partner…
🎉 Hola Health 🥳
You might not know them, as they’ve been heads down building Aus’s fastest-growing on-demand GP telehealth & medicine delivery service.
So who is Hola Health and why are they partnering with WTH?
Well, they’re on the mission “To create innovative and affordable healthcare services of the future, accessible to everyone”
We all know getting access to care is hard, especially when you need it most. And Hola Health is helping create the future of healthcare ft. on-demand access to GP telehealth & medicine delivery.
Welcome to the fold friends 😊 🙌 - we’re stoked to have you.
PS - Interested in joining the fold (*cough* cult) and partnering with us too?
💌 Hit reply or drop us a note at emily@whatthehealth.io
🍩 TODAY
Noteworthy news
AI Arms Race update
Startup Stuff
Events
Cool Content
Lols (cause if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry)
Let’s go…
Noteworthy 🗞️
Funding Fun
🧠 Cortical Labs, creators of “DishBrain”, the science behind “brain cells play pong”, banked $US10m to bring their work to pharma and commercial use
♿️ Kismet, a startup building tools to connect NDIS participants with providers whilst combatting fraud and non-compliance issues celebrated $4m pre-seed 🏥
🌱 Eucalyptus quietly closed their latest funding round of $50m
👁️ Eyetelligence, an AI startup using retinal imaging to screen for eye and vascular diseases raised US$12m (A$17.75m) from NYC’s Ascertain
🔬 USYD spinout Kinoxis Therapeutics landed a $273m deal with Boehringer Ingelheim to develop their compounds targeting oxytocin receptors to create treatments for psychiatric disorders
💰Another healthcare VC hits ANZ with Hashan De Silva, healthcare partner at Karst Peak Capital starting his own fund
PS - Don’t worry What The Health Ventures dropping soon😉
🏈 Bioeye, a MedTech looking to solve sports concussions is hunting for $15m following some recent clinical trials
🤑 Sonic Healthcare is buying German company Medical Laboratories Duesseldorf for $297.6m
💊 Vitable nabbed another round ft. Artesian & VentureCrowd
🎊 Scale Investors was acquired by the current team- and is launching their new female founder’s seed fund
Newsworthy
🧘♀️“Saint Haven”, a private longevity & wellness social club launched this week ft. cold plunges, cryotherapy, hyperbaric oxygen pods, infrared saunas & IVs. And was reportedly already sold out
🏆The AFR’s BOSS Best Places to Work list for Health Industry came out - with Sanofi snagging top spot
🩸Parkinson’s could be diagnosed years before symptoms first appear - with researchers using AI to help find early signs in the chemicals in patients’ blood
✅ Minder®, an ultra-long term minimally invasive epilepsy monitor, has been designated as “a breakthrough device” by the FDA - which will expedite the development and review process
🦘Zoomi, a Newcastle menstrual startup, launched the first and only Aus-owned and made menstrual disc
🚭 Aus is leading the way on the world stage with big vaping changes - committing to ban all non-prescription vapes
⏰ Specialist wait times show patients are waiting years for appointments - increasing disability, financial loss & even death
😷 Aussies can soon collect a 60-day supply of common medicines instead of 30 when filling a script, for the same cost
🤝 Olinqua and FiveP announced a strategic partnership
💎 Congrats Lina Xu from Telecare who snagged the Cartier Womens Initiative fellowship
🎉 ARC awarded $22 million to 50 Early Career Industry Fellowships for projects like new type of malaria vaccine, a new treatment for Alzheimer's disease, and a new way to diagnose cancer
Government Goss
💰The budget dropped. It was a lot…
Heres a few points, but for more read ANDHealth or Wild Health’s overview
New bulk billing incentives
$325.7m for theDigital Health Agency
$429m for My Health Records makeover
$392m towards a new Industry Growth Program for SMEs and startups to commercialise
🏗️ The Department of Health and Aged Care revealed the new aged care service management system is being built on Salesforce, with SaaS licenses worth an initial $13.5m
👩🏽🦼Interesting, given reportedly Salesforce is also currently costing the NDIS $2m-a-month
🦠 $50m has been pledged for research into long COVID - and an action plan
❓NDIS data goes missing? The scheme under the spotlight for scandals and cost control - seems to not even have its data right
🤑 Grants of upto $50k are being rolled out to help GPs & clinics upgrade digital services and expand capacity
🏥 In NSW, women will be able to get treated for uncomplicated urinary tract infections, and pill repeats at local community pharmacies
US & Beyond the Borders
😷 The WHO says the pandemic is “officially over”
📉 Babylon Health, one of the “success stories” of digital health whos the latest org to be on struggle street, secured financing with plans go private after getting smashed on public markets
🏥 Epic & Microsoft look to bring GPT-4 to EHRs
💩The FDA approved the very first oral drug designed to treat the microbiome…
AND finally dropped the long-awaited guidelines for Decentralized Clinical Trials
🍎Apple plans AI-powered tailored Health Coaching Service for individuals ft new technology for tracking emotions, and for everything from sleep, to diet and exercise
🚀 Define Ventures raised a hefty US$460m to fuel early-stage digital health investments
Sick Science
🤖A new AI decoder can translate brain activity into continuous text and is allowing people's thoughts to be read non-invasively - in a WILD world first
The decoder reconstructs speech while people listened to, or even imagined a story - using ab fMRI scan data and specially trained Large Language Models. Enabling pattern matching from scan data for specific words with surprising accuracy.
🦠 Researchers in Helsinki have discovered a potential cause of Parkinson’s disease…And its bacteria. Desulfovibrio bacteria appear linked and the potential causative agent in most cases, so they are exploring screening and the removal of the bacteria from the gut to help prevent it
📚 Elsevier finally had a mass walkout over its ‘unethical’ journal fees, with profit margins outstripping Google and Amazon and charging >$3000 to publish papers in its open-access journal
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🤖 In the AI arms race…
Trust in AI… seems weirdly high.
Ok, getting higher. With a new study “Comparing Physician and Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Responses to Patient Questions Posted to a Public Social Media Forum” seeing AI come out on top… by a lot
Google’s…
ChatGPT competitor, Bard dropped with a heap of epic features (it might have written this newsletter…🙃)
Palm2 was introduced with improved multilingual, reasoning and coding capabilities and scientific use
And integrated AI into the Google suite
OpenAI closed a new funding round speculated to be >US$10.3 bn, valuing the company between US$27 – $29 bn
And again… Epic & Microsoft look to bring GPT-4 to EHRs
Startup Stuff 🚀
Ready to scale your health tech company? Or building in Bio?
UNSW’s Health 10x program and SynBio 10x program help equip startups with expertise, networks and the tools needed to build their company and navigate the crazy complex industry - More here
Woman doing baddass things in the science & tech space?
The Science & Technology Pioneer Award by the Cartier Women’s Initiative is looking for women-led impact-driven businesses. Entrepreneurs across all sectors and geographies are encouraged to apply - More here
Looking to build in the aged care space?
Apps are open for ARIAA’s new incubator program ft. MDPP provides time with experts to help design, test, and progress early-stage product or tech innovation ideas for aged care - More here
Got an idea, business, or research you want to refine?
CSIRO's Innovate to Grow: Health and Medical Technology program is a free 10-week program for SME’s to advance and refine a business idea or innovative R&D solutions - More here
Software solution in health?
NSW Health’s free Software as a Medical Device (SAMD) commercialization course is delivered with ANDhealth from 30 May - 1 June - More here
Aussie technology start-up/scale-up?
Have <100 employees, own your IP, and keen to scale internationally? The Australian Technologies Competition is now taking apps for its premier national growth and awards program - More info & enter here
Looking to explore the Middle East and North African (or ‘MENA’) region?
Hatch Quarter has opened applications for the 2023 MENA Bridge program to explore these emerging markets - More here
Events💥
Thur 18th May: SA Insights: Featuring Fertilis
Mon 22nd May: Future Forums: Design for Future Human Health
Mon 22nd May: MedTech Actuator Innovators Bootcamp (Adelaide)
Tues 23rd May: Discovering South Australia's Medtech
24th - 25th May: AusMedtech 2023
Tues 23rd May: Where Digital Meets Devices Summit
30th May - 1st June: Software as a Medical Device 3-day Specialist Course with Cicada Innovations
Mon 31st July: BIO Connections Australia
19th - 22nd Sep: Global Entrepreneurship Congress Melbourne 2023
Consumable Content 💎
🎙️Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy #325: Dr. Peter Attia - The Portfolio to Live Longer
Health, prevention, science and investing - all my favourite things
👩🔬 Main Sequence released a Venture Science toolkit for founders launching deep tech startups
🏥 Mckinsey wrote a piece delving into how Virtual hospitals could offer respite to overwhelmed health systems
🔮 Lisa Frederenko wrote a fun piece on Imagining healthcare in 2033
🧬 The AFR is doing an interesting series on CSL. With part 1 out on How CSL went from ‘bloated bureaucracy’ to $145b global behemoth
💊 If you want to know where all the money is in healthcare - look no further than The top 20 pharma companies by 2022 revenue
KPMG & UQ lead a world-first deep dive into Trust in Artificial Intelligence: Global Insights 2023
📝 Google is offering a heap of free courses including Intro to Python, AI & ML, Data Analytics & Digital Marketing
🍩 WTH… Cause if we don’t laugh we’ll cry
How’d you find this? Did we miss something? Just want to say hey?
Hit reply 💌 I’d love to hear from you!
Thanks to Tom Spackek, Ashley James, Lisa Frederenko, Rachel Worborys, Eldin & Zachary King for sharing fun things for this drop!
See you soon
👋 Emily
With thanks to our partners 💜
