#78 🍩 Pharma's billion dollar psychedelic buyout & Serena Williams plugs GLP-1s
Whats happening in health tech & innovation?
Hola amigos,
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 DiscussionHow 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!
💜 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?
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
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)
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Have a fab Friday and catch you soon
👋 Emily,
Mariah, Victoria & team WTH
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