#63 🍩 What The Health - Trump orders the US to leave the WHO, a $500M Pharma + VC fund & 100s of Psychiatrists resign
Whats happening in health tech & innovation?
Happy new year.
We’re back! Who’s excited for 2025?!
Whilst all the cool kids in health started the year at JP Morgan’s Healthcare Conference, I was busy crying at sunny Bondi Beach about not being in a conference centre in wintery San Fransisco…
Jokes. But, as usual - it started with a bang ft. lots of announcements, hot takes and Linkedinfluencers having a say (check out the key takeaways below).
Meanwhile, TikTok - the most accurate source of all health information, was banned in the US.
AND freshly minted President Donald Trump spent his first day signing an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO)
Ah, the times they certainly are a changing and keeping us on our toes.
Anyway, before we touch on what else this year has in store, let’s play catch-up on all the news backlog post-2024…
🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE
Newsworthy
Sick Science
AI Updates
Startup Stuff
Events
Cool Content
Brought to you with…
💜NSW Health Commercialisation Training Program
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Choose from 4 sector-specific specialisation courses: Medical Devices, Software as Medical Device, Pharmaceuticals & Therapeutics, and Diagnostics. Join 2,000+ innovators who've turned ideas into market success (and its free for NSW…)
💼 New Year New Role? 👀 Check out these gigs at Optain
Optain Health is a software-as-a-medical device (SaMD) company in Aus & the US - transforming care with AI-enabled retinal imaging tech. Using the eye as a window to systemic health, they aim to improve how eye and systemic conditions are screened, managed, and treated—making care more accessible and easing system strain.
And, they’re hiring for 2 killer roles!
QA/RA Specialist & SaMD Product OwnerWant to throw your hat in the ring?
Send your CV to recruiting@optainhealth.com
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Noteworthy 🗞️
Funding
🤖 Convergence Medical, a Bris medtech startup, raised a $5M Series A to commercialise its FDA-recognized arthroscopic surgical robot
🔬 Proton Intelligence, a company developing a wearable Continuous Potassium Monitoring platform, raised a US$6.95M Seed round
📍BindiMaps, Aus's leading accessible wayfinding app for the vision impaired, raised from M8 Ventures
💡 CUREator+ awarded $18.5M in grants to 8 Aus startups, including:
Amplificare (NSW): developing real-time visualisation, targeting, & amplification of cell death to personalise & adapt cancer treatment
Baymatob (NSW): developing an AI-powered maternal & foetal health platform ('Oli') for early detection of complications in pregnancy & labour
Currus Biologics (VIC): developing its proprietary BEAT technology for CAR T-cell Therapy in solid tumours
Kinoxis Therapeutics (VIC): aims to provide an alternative to antipsychotics for managing agitation & aggression in dementia
Micromune Therapeutics (QLD): advancing a therapy for treating inflammatory bowel disease
Mirugen (VIC): restoring vision in patients with blindness by developing a novel gene therapy
OncoRes (WA): QME Imaging tech to differentiate cancer from healthy tissue in real-time
SeeTreat Medical (NSW): AI software to enhance breast cancer radiation therapy
Newsworthy
📄 GPs may face penalties under newly proposed "sharing by default" laws, which could make Medicare payments conditional on uploading patient data to My Health Record
🥊 Dr Dean Freestone, Seer Medical cofounder, is fighting investor Breakthrough Victoria in court, claiming he was unfairly dismissed from the startup
⚡ Synchron is advancing its implantable brain-computer interface tech with NVIDIA to enhance real-time neural interaction & edge processing
“Synchron’s vision is to scale neurotechnology to empower humans to connect to the world, and the NVIDIA Holoscan platform provides the ideal foundation”
~Dr Tom Oxley, Founder & CEO of Synchron
💊 George Medicines, partnered with Bausch Health to commercialize their single-pill triple therapy for hypertension
🧠 Ceretas, plans to commercialise the ultrasound therapy developed at UQ to potentially restore brain function in Alzheimer's
🦵 An Aussie world-first treatment for shin splints by Ossyx, the Solushin, is launching in the US with OPED Medical
🤝 Hyphen Health, the online sexual health platform, merged with Hey Fella
👩⚕️RACGP appointed Telstra Health as a Major CPD Provider, with the first program set to launch within MedicalDirector in the first half of 2025
🧠 Xylo Bio, formerly Psylo, rebranded to reflect its focus on neurotherapeutics
📢 eHealth NSW appointed Richard Taggart as its new Chief Executive & NSW Health Chief Information Officer
Gov Goss
🆘 NSW is facing a severe mental health crisis, with >190 psychiatrists resigning amid dangerous understaffing and pay disputes
📝 The 2024 performance indicator survey on the MRFF reveals strong progress in health & med research impact, with key findings of:
Supported 7,527 research staff & attracted $787m in co-funding & $949m
in new funding42% of completed projects influenced healthcare policy, & 35% impacted health professional education
The survey achieved a 75.5% response rate from 1,328 grantees, with 1,002 participants
🎯The Fed Gov released Aus’s first National Autism Strategy, with hopes that the $42.3m plan will improve the lives of the ~300,000 autistic people living in Aus
💊 Vic’s had its 1st pill testing trial at BTV Festival & the NSW Gov announced its 1st pill testing trial at 2025 music festivals
💻 NSW launched the virtualADULTS urgent care service, expanding on the virtualKIDS program, to provide video-based urgent care for non-life-threatening conditions, aiming to serve 85k patients/yr by 2025
US & Beyond the Borders 🌎
💡The 2025 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference had all the happenings. If you were like us and missed it… Forbes kindly recapped key insights:
Pharma dealmaking is rebounding with with 106 biotech venture deals > US$100M in 2024
Health policy under the Trump administration remains uncertain, incl. the Inflation Reduction Act
Chinese biotech is rising, driving 1/3 of global pharma licensing deals
AI is reshaping drug development with FDA support & Nvidia partnerships driving innovation
Advances in cell & gene therapies are delivering breakthroughs in type 1 diabetes & Parkinson
💊 Eli Lilly & a16z announced a US$500M Biotech Ecosystem Venture Fund, to combine leading-edge drug development tech with R&D expertise & depth
🤖 Microsoft AI unit head Mustafa Suleyman is creating a London-based consumer health division, recruiting ex-DeepMind health experts to develop AI for accurate, credible health queries
💊 McKinsey agreed to pay US$650M for its role in the opioid crisis admitting wrongdoing including advising Purdue Pharma on “turbocharging” OxyContin sales
🇺🇸 US healthcare spending reached a staggering $4.9T in 2023, up 7.5% from 2022
Healthcare accounts for 17.6% of GDP
Per person, costs climbed to $14,570 annually
Spending is set to top $9T by 2028, >20% of GDP
🏅 Nike is ‘just redoing it’ under new CEO Elliott Hill, focusing on sport-first innovation & athlete-centric decisions after a tough year ft. a 29% stock decline
🧬 Collate, founded by YC Partner & second-time founder Surbhi Sarna launched with a US$30M seed round, to automate documentation processes in the life sciences industry using AI
📢 NHS Shared Business Services announced a £150M framework to drive AI adoption across healthcare & the public sector
🤰 New York became the 1st US state to mandate paid prenatal leave
💳 Nelly, a Berlin-based healthcare fintech, raised €50M in Series B funding to digitise administrative workflows for >1,200 medical practices across Europe, expanding its patient onboarding, billing, & payment solutions to more market
🎉 Iron Health was acquired by Metronomic, combining its virtual care platform with Materno to offer comprehensive solutions across all life stages
💓WHOOP introduced a novel biomarker, "cardiovascular amplitude," linking heart rate patterns to reproductive health, based on data from 11.5K women
🪞 Withings unveiled Omnia, a concept smart mirror for 360-degree body health scans, ft. weight, heart, & lung metrics and interactive features like telemedicine
Sick Science
🕒 Toxic Timepieces? Smartwatch Bands & PFAS Exposure
Uni of Notre Dame found smartwatch bands from 15 of 22 popular brands contain high levels of PFAS "forever chemicals," known for their links to cancer & liver disease. These bands, worn snugly against the skin, showed PFAS levels comparable to firefighting gear, & sweat may increase absorption rates.
🦷 Mental health comes from… the Mouth?
A population-based study found distinct patterns in the oral microbiome linked to anxiety, depression, & PTSD symptoms. Changes in specific bacteria were associated with mental health & periodontal outcomes, suggesting a potential "oral-brain axis."
🩺 Micro - Details do matter after all in AI spreading medical misinformation
A Nature Medicine study reveals that medical LLMs are highly vulnerable to data-poisoning attacks, where even 0.001% misinformation in training data can produce harmful outputs undetected by benchmarks.
🧬 Decoding depression's genetic blueprint
The world’s biggest genome-wide study of 688,808 individuals identified 697 genetic variants across 635 loci, including 293 new ones linked to depression. The research reveals disruptions in excitatory neurons, the amygdala, & receptor clustering, identifying drug targets for antidepressants and repurposed treatments.
🤖 AI Updates
📜The FDA issued draft guidance detailing recommendations for the design, development, & maintenance of AI-enabled medical devices
📈Rock Health's Innovation Maturity Curve found that AI-enabled digital health startups attracted $3.3B in venture funding from Jan - Oct 2024, making up 36% of overall funding

🧬 Truveta, a Seattle startup, raised US$320M to launch the Truveta Genome Project, the largest & most diverse genomic dataset, linking de-identified patient data with genetic insights to advance precision medicine & prevent disease
💵 Innovaccer, raised US$275M in a Series F round to scale its Healthcare Intelligence Cloud used by >130 healthcare organizations & expand AI capabilities with agents & copilots
🤖 Hippocratic AI, raised US$141M in Series B funding to launch its AI agent app store, offering tools for chronic care management, post-discharge follow-ups, nutrition & more
Startup Stuff 🚀
Dreaming of Exporting Health Products to the USA?
The NSW Going Global Export Program is offering free support to eligible NSW-based early-stage or new-to-market exporters of health products & services to attend the Bio International Convention - More here
Got game-changing ideas to transform General Practice?
Join the RACGP Hackathon 2025: Byte the Bureaucracy, a 3-day event bringing GPs, clinical entrepreneurs, & developers together to tackle real-world challenges in GP. Held at Microsoft Reactor Syd from 28–30 March, this event offers the chance to brainstorm, prototype, & present solutions to digital health experts - More here
Ready to turn your biotech idea into a commercial success?
BioElevate by Jumar is a 2-day hands-on workshop designed to guide you through the commercialisation process step-by-step - More here
Want to reshape the world with generative AI?
The Google.org Accelerator: Generative AI Open Call is offering a share of US$30M & 6 months of support to help nonprofits, civic entities, academic institutions, & social enterprises build impactful AI-powered solutions - More here
Events💥
Wed 22nd Jan: SaMD Regulation with the TGA (Online)
Mon 3rd Feb: NSW Health Commercialisation Training Program (Online)
Tue 11th Feb: 2025 BioMelbourne Network Women in Leadership Awards Ceremony (hybrid)
Tue 18th Feb: How To Fund Your MedTech: Non-Dilutive Funding Options. A HealthTech Hub Masterclass (Syd)
Tue 18th Feb: C3.0 Connect. Care. Confidence. (Online)
Thu 20th Feb: Jumar Masterclass - Big Pharma: Biotech Industry Partnerships and Collaborations (Melb)
12th – 13th Mar: ARC APAC Summit (Melb)
Fri 14th March: Women's Life Cycle Summit 2025 (Syd)
Sat 15th Mar: 2025 ITP Patient Conference (Syd)
19th - 20th March: Aus Healthcare Week (Syd)
27th March: BESTMED 2025 Conference Beyond the Chart (Syd)
Consumable Content 💎
🎙️a16z Raising Health #48: Super Staffing in Healthcare with Munjal Shah
Hippocratic AI cofounder Munjal Shah and a16z's Julie Yoo discuss how generative AI is transforming healthcare, highlighting the "voice renaissance," safe and empathetic AI design, and innovations like multi-LLM architecture and nurse-trained models. They also explore AI's potential for "super staffing" and strategies for integrating it into complex healthcare systems.
📣 Graham Walker shared some solid learnings about the ✨enshittification✨ of American healthcare
📺 Netflix released a documentary on Bryan Johnson & his new cult movement with leading-edge longevity & health experiments conducted on himself. Costing US$2.5m/year this just might be the most expensive (& interesting) individual experiment of all time
Think what you want - but 2 things are for sure:
1) Its getting personal preventative health MUCH more PR
2) Wellness is a booming trend verging on “religion” - that isn’t going anywhere
📰Daniel Getts, CEO & Founder of Myeloid Theraputics, summarised Aus's biotech edge in Aus’s Little-Known Biotech Advantages and Risks
TL;DR: Strong incentives, rapid trials, & Asia-Pacific access make Aus a biotech hub, but challenges in talent & collaboration remain.
Strategies for success: leverage regulatory benefits, maximize tax incentives, collab across states & invest in talent development
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👋 Emily,
Mariah & team WTH
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Want to get featured here in front of >8750 health-loving legends?
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