#68 🍩 What the Health - >$100M Raised, Trump turmoil opportunity & chewing gum that stops the flu
Whats happening in health tech & innovation?
Hello friends,
We’re back.
After 1 killer Melbourne event. And 2 weeks in the US of A.
Thanks to everyone who joined us and our friends Tenmile, We VC, ANDHealth & The Medtech Actuator for an epic evening of insights and networking at Going Global: Investing & Scaling Medtech 🥂 🌏
🇺🇸 Meanwhile, I was MIA with a busy few weeks ft.
A visit to Superpower HQ
Stopping in at AWS’s AI Loft
Hangs Henry Peck from LSI
Checking out IndieBio, the killer #1 deeptech incubator, HQ
Hitting up Harry’s Healthtech Hangs with the legend himself
Real talks over dinner with Jose at Retro Bio
Breakfast at Google
A sneaky Coachella sesh because - balance… 🎡 And it’s obviously THE best way to get my steps up & get dance therapy…
But also Bernie Sanders made a guest appearance to talk politics, including healthcare inequity and abortion rights (that means my whole festival is tax-deductible, right?)
Big thank you to all the lovely humans who made time, recommendations and connections 💜Sorry I didn’t catch you all - but, I’ll be back! Stay tuned.
Anyway - I’ll write something about the US shenanigans soon, but for now let’s jump into the news…
🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE
Newsworthy
Sick Science
AI Updates
Startup Stuff
Events
Cool Content
Brought to you with…
💜 Sunrise Festival
📣 1 week until Sunrise Australia 2025! 🌅 The countdown is ON! The full program & speaker lineup is now live — and stacked.
Hosted by our friends at Blackbird, Sunrise isn’t just another startup event—it’s a festival of creativity, technology, and ambition.
✨ 90+ speakers. 40+ sessions. 3 x stages
A two-day celebration of exceptionalism in Australia and New Zealand, where people come together to dream up the future. At Sunrise, you can immerse yourself in our startup community, become a part of it, and help to shape it.
🗓️ April 30 – May 1
📍 Carriageworks, Sydney
🎟️ This is your LAST chance to grab your ticket!
👀 Grab yours and check out the epic program here 👇
See you there?
Want to get featured here in front of >9200 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement and partnership opportunities.
Noteworthy 🗞️
Funding
💥 Superpower, the US-based startup co-founded by Aussie Max Marchione, announced their US$30M Series A to build “the world’s first health super-app”, with comprehensive biomarker testing to bring proactive, preventative, personalised health to everyone
🩺 Hola Health snagged a $10M Series A led by Healthylife, a Woolies subsidiary, becoming its exclusive telehealth partner with 24/7 virtual GP access
🧠 Seer Medical, the Epilepsy monitoring startup, emerged from voluntary administration with a $40M rescue package from Breakthrough Victoria, neurodiagnostics giant Cadwell Industries, and Singapore’s TrialCap
📊 Cut Through Ventures released their 2025 Q1 Quarterly Report on Aussie Startup deals, with the largest being in medtech & Biotech, including Harrison.ai ($179M), AdvanCell ($171M), and Aravax ($66M)
☢️ AdvanCell announced $18M MRFF grant funding to transform prostate cancer outcomes with 212Pb-based Targeted Alpha Therapies and establish a new innovative platform
🧬 Carina Biotech raised $5M to advance its colorectal cancer CAR-T therapy CNA3103, the first Aus CAR-T to get FDA IND clearance & be trialled locally
🧘♂️ MOOD.ai raised angel funding to build its AI workplace wellbeing app, now in beta with 50+ users & set to launch in May 2025
🧫 Inventia Life Science secured $3.5M from the NSW Medical Devices Fund for LIGO™, its bioengineered soft tissue repair device
🦷 Swinburne invested in spinout H3D to commercialise its AI platform for custom dental devices, expanding its tech that designs over 1M hearing aids annually
💊 RMIT handed over all licensed IP to Atmo Biosciences for their gut health monitoring capsule in exchange for equity
Newsworthy
💰 Bupa finally announced it’s $20M VC funds first investments & focus on startups preventing hospitalisations & helping people understand lifestyle & genetic health risk, ft. investments in Eugene, Vively & Umps
🧬 Usyd launched a $25M pre-seed fund to back up to 50 health & tech spinouts, to bridge the early-stage funding gap
To offer staff, students & recent graduates up to $500k to take their ideas “from concept to commercialisation”
🚨 EVP alleges StrongRoom AI's CEO admitted to faking revenue & debt figures to secure a $10.4M investment, as court documents detail willful fraud, whistleblower claims, & a growing list of defendants in a Federal Court case
>10 bids have been submitted for failed medtech startup StrongRoom AI, now in voluntary administration after fraud allegations & a $10.4M clawback claim from lead investor EVP
🤝 Heidi Health partnered with Aus Association of Psychs & ProCare, NZ’s largest primary health org
🧬 Monash IVF admitted a human error led to a QLD woman giving birth to another couple’s baby, in a rare embryo mix-up that could set a legal precedent
🧠 Harrison.ai reportedly clocked $4.75M revenue & $4.4M profit in FY24 after fully acquiring Annalise.ai, ahead of it’s $178M Series C raise
Gov Goss
It’s election time in Aus…
📁 Health Consumers NSW says most patients are unaware of the Single Digital Patient Record rollout, warning poor communication & privacy concerns could derail its success *Shock 🙃*
🛠️ The Coalition may scrap Labor’s $15B National Reconstruction Fund, risking major setbacks for Aus innovation
🧠 Labor pledged $1B for youth mental health if re-elected, funding headspace upgrades, new specialist centres, & workforce training
🧩 NSW’s Innovation Blueprint 2035 sets a $27B target & 100k new jobs by 2035, but experts say it’s still left key proposals still unfunded & lacking delivery timelines
⚠️ +7k NSW public Drs went on strike for 3 days over pay & workload disputes
💊 Health Minister Mark Butler warned Aus pharma giants like CSL could face new US tariffs under Trump
BUT - with all the tariffs, FDA cuts and NIH turmoil, could it actually pose an opportunity for Australian Life Sciences? Capital Brief dives into it here
US & Beyond the Borders 🌎
🧬 The Trump admin slashed NIH funding by $3B, freezing new grants & disrupting early-stage innovation across medical research & device development
💍 Oura launched its AI health coach, Advisor, to all members, offering personalised insights & action plans from sleep, stress, & activity data
👁️ Neuralink will implant Blindsight, a brain chip that stimulates the visual cortex to create images, for the first time in a human by the end of 2025
💊 England will make the morning-after pill free over the counter in pharmacies this year
What does our community have to say on this?
"Well done England! Anything that makes essential care affordable is a must. As a pharmacist, I’ve seen too many young women feel helpless, some even stealing emergency contraception. We give out free naloxone to prevent overdose deaths; it’s shameful we don’t do the same for emergency contraception. With new investment in women’s health, I think we must follow their lead here." - Chris Risby
💰 Alis Biosciences, a UK-based investment fund that acquires struggling biotechs to return capital to shareholders, has officially launched to unlock over $30B trapped in 300+ development-stage companies
🧬 Oxford Nanopore & PacBio, leaders in long-read DNA sequencing, have seen stock drops of 80% & 98% respectively, as cheaper short-read alternatives & tougher funding climates challenge their commercial sustainability
🚚 Amazon, already deep in healthcare via One Medical, piloted Project Pulse by equipping delivery drivers with defibs & CPR training
🥚 Cofertility raised $7.25M Series A to scale its “Split” model, offering free egg freezing to women who donate half their eggs, cutting costs for intended parents & “removing the taboo of egg donation”
🗣️ Suki added an AI prescription order staging feature to its voice assistant, letting clinicians speak orders that are then structured, coded, & staged directly in the EHR to streamline workflows
🦾 Phantom Neuro raised $19M to advance its implantable device that reads nerve signals from phantom limbs, helping amputees control prosthetics with up to 85% functionality after just 10 minutes of calibration
Sick Science
🦷 Could chewing gum stop the flu and herpes in their tracks?
Researchers from the Uni of Pennsylvania developed a clinical-grade chewing gum containing a plant-based protein (FRIL) that traps & neutralises viruses in the mouth. In lab tests, the gum reduced >95% of influenza & herpes simplex virus activity by aggregating viral particles & blocking infection.
🥬 Want to live past 70 with your brain, body, & mood intact?
Harvard researchers tracked 105k adults for 30 years & found that diets rich in fruits, veggies, whole grains, nuts, & unsaturated fats were tied to up to 2.2× higher odds of healthy aging, aka no chronic disease, intact cognitive, physical, & mental health by age 70 or 75. The Alternative Healthy Eating Index came out on top, while ultra-processed foods tanked your odds by 32%.
🩺 Does AI have better diagnostic chat than your GP?
In a double-blind study across 159 simulated patient cases, Google's new medical AI AMIE outperformed real-world primary care physicians on 30/32 clinical metrics, including diagnostic accuracy, empathy, & communication. Evaluated by specialists & patient-actors, AMIE showed more accurate differentials & better rapport—despite only using text chat.
🍟 Junk Food, Junk Brain?
Researchers from McGill & Helsinki Uni analysed UK Biobank data to study how ultra-processed food (UPF) intake affects the brain. In over 33,000 adults, high UPF consumption was linked to structural changes in brain regions that regulate hunger - like the hypothalamus, nucleus accumbens, & amygdala. These changes weren’t just due to obesity; blood markers of inflammation and poor cholesterol also played a role.
🧠 Can a blood test really spot Alzheimer’s brain changes?
Researchers from Washington Uni, Lund Uni & others developed a new blood biomarker—plasma eMTBR-tau243—to detect tau tangles, a key feature of Alzheimer’s disease. In 3 cohorts totalling 900+ people, plasma eMTBR-tau243 levels rose with symptom severity & strongly matched tau-PET brain scans, outperforming other blood-based tau markers. It was specific to Alzheimer’s, not other dementias, & predicted brain shrinkage & cognitive decline better than existing blood tests.
🏃♂️ Late-night workouts messing with your sleep?
In a year-long study of 14,000+ WHOOP users across 4M nights, researchers found that strenuous evening exercise (especially within 4 hours of sleep) led to later sleep onset, shorter duration, lower quality, & higher nighttime heart rate. The more intense & closer to bedtime, the worse the impact.
👄 Could your mouth microbiome be fuelling chronic pain?
Researchers from the USyd & Viome Life Sciences studied 158 NZ women & found that poor oral health was linked to higher rates of migraine, body pain, & abdominal pains. Saliva samples showed women with more pain had a higher abundance of oral pathogens like Gardnerella & Mycoplasma.
🤖 AI Updates
🧠 Harvard Business Review found genAI is now most used for therapy, organising life & finding purpose, marking a shift from technical tools to emotional support
🧪 Isomorphic Labs, Google’s AI drug discovery spinout, raised $600M led by Thrive Capital to expand AlphaFold
🤖 Dr. Oz, newly appointed head of Medicare & Medicaid in the US, promoted replacing frontline healthcare workers with AI avatars in his first CMS town hall
📝 Peterson Health Technology Institute’s report finds that AI medical scribes are easing clinician burnout, with drops up to 63%, but cost savings & productivity gains haven’t materialised yet
📋 Kaiser Permanente physicians used AI scribes in 2.5M visits over a year, saving 16k of documentation time & earning high satisfaction from both drs & patients
🧠 Yale & Google trained a 27 B-parameter model, C2S-Scale, on 50 M+ single-cell transcriptomes, unifying gene expression with biological language to outperform prior models in QA, captioning, & perturbation prediction
Startup Stuff 🚀
Got a biotech idea that could change the game?
NSW’s $3.5M Biosciences Fund is offering grants of $200k–$2M to help local startups move from proof-of-concept to market. This program backs innovations in biotech, biomanufacturing, synbio, genetic engineering & more – More here
Building a MedTech Device That Could Change Lives?
NSW Health’s Medical Devices Fund is offering $500k–$5M to help bring innovative medical tech to market. Open to projects capable of potentially improving patient care, health and wellbeing, & generating economic, social or environmental benefits to NSW – More here
Got a Big Idea Backed by Science?
Cicada x Tech23 is hunting for 23 standout Aussie deep tech startups. If you’re building world-changing tech, this is your chance to get in front of top investors, industry leaders & media – More here
Want to Connect with Global Biotech Leaders at BIO 2025?
MTPConnect’s BIO 2025 Site Visit Program offers exclusive access to top biotech companies like CSL, Novartis, & Pfizer, plus high-impact networking with industry leaders. This two-day program features site visits, keynotes, & curated events to connect Aus life sciences innovators globally – More here
Need Funding for Therapeutic Development?
TIA’s Pipeline Accelerator vouchers offer up to $50k (with 50% co-investment) to subsidise access to leading research facilities. This round partners with Phenomics Australia, ANSTO’s NDF, & Bioplatforms Australia, expanding access to infrastructure.– More here
Looking to Boost International Science Collaboration?
ATSE, in partnership with the Aus Academy of Science, is offering grants of up to $1M each through the Global Science & Tech Diplomacy Fund to foster science & tech collabs with regional neighbours - 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
Events💥
29th Apr: SaMD Regulation with the Therapeutic Goods Administration (online)
30th Apr - 1st May: Sunrise Aus 2025 (Syd)
6th May: ANDHealth Unfiltered: Digital Health Summit (Syd)
6 - 8th May: AusMedtech
13 - 14th May: Digital Health Festival
16th May: Connecting Women Lunch (Melb)
4 - 5th June: International Mental Health Conference (GC)
17 - 28th June: Towards One Healthcare System Summit (Canberra)
9 - 10th Sept: Cicada x Tech23 (Syd)
Consumable Content 💎
🎙️Acquired: The Complete History & Strategy of Epic Systems
Epic is one the OG giants of digital health - which has never lost a single one of its 600+ customers in 47 years & is used by most major US hospital systems. Check out this deep dive into the companies history and how it came to be
💍 Podnosis: How Oura is making the jump from consumer wellness to healthcare
Jason Oberfest, vice president of healthcare at Oura, discusses how Oura is approaching its push into healthcare
📖 The World Economic Forum & Mercer released a white paper titled “Future-Proofing the Longevity Economy: Innovations and Key Trends" which highlights the connection between health/longevity & finances
📚 Offcall #22: Mark Cuban: How I’d Reform Healthcare If I Were in Charge
This interview & summary of chat with iconic businessman Mark Cuban dives into the 9 ways he’d fix the US healthcare system
💡Got Feedback? Something to include next time? Keen to get in touch?
We want to make this worthy of your time & the best possible.
💌 Hit reply or reach out to emily@whatthehealth.io to let us know
Happy ANZAC Day and extra long weekend Aussie friends.
(Sorry to the rest of the world without the public holiday)
👋 Emily,
Mariah & team WTH
With thanks to our partners 💜
Want to get featured here in front of >9200 health-loving legends?
Shoot us a note for ad placement and partnership opportunities.