#82 🍩 Heidi's $100M, World's first fully remote surgery & Aus's biggest week in biotech
Whats happening in health tech & innovation?
Happy Friday friends,
The weather, conference circuit and funding rounds are all heating up 🔥 (finally).
Speaking of - in case you missed it AusBiotech have their Annual AusBiotech International Conference next week in Melbourne.
Also known as “Aus’s biggest week in biotech” - with every org and their dogs hosting eventsMe and the Tenmile Team will all be in town (of course, ready to kick things off with a good old hoedown at The Healthtech Muster).
A few program highlights you might want to check out:
☢️ Getting hot down under – Global leadership in radiopharma (the opportunities and challenges) - with Telix Pharmaceuticals (ASX: TXL) CEO Christian Behrenbruch
📈 Driving tomorrow: How Australia’s tech sectors are shaping our innovation-driven economy - ft. Rebekah Cassidy CEO @ AusBiotech, Dr. Ilana Feain, Head of Research @ Tech Council of Australia, Bronwyn Le Grice, CEO & MD, ANDHealth & Dr. Madeline Mitchell, Investment Principal @ Tenacious Ventures
🚀Australian innovation: Striving to meet the unmet - by legendary Dr. Alison Todd
If you’re keen to check it out, you can still grab a last minute ticket or day pass
I’m also SO pumped for this years Tenmile FocalPoint on Monday
Whats that you ask?
Take a gander at this highly curated international line up of Life Science Superstars and invite only get together for local & global health innovation leaders 👀
Stay tuned for events and conference updates soon…
And, maybe see you there?
🍩 TODAY’S ISSUE
Noteworthy News
AI Updates
Sick Science
Startup Stuff
Events
Cool Content
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Noteworthy 🗞️
Funding
🩺 Heidi, raised a $US65M ($98M) Series B led by Point72, its second funding round in 12 months, lifting its valuation to $711M as it expands globally after powering 73M medical consultations in 18 months
Check out the 9-slide pitch deck they used
In a KLAS Research report, 100% of customers said they’d buy again, citing faster documentation, less burnout, & more time with patients
🧠 Remedy Robotics announced US$35M to advance AI robotic tech for remote stroke treatment…
More excitingly, they completed the worlds first fully remote robotic surgery - having remote surgeons control catheters for multiple neurointerventions
💉 predicTx Health, an AI platform using 3D body composition from routine CT scans to personalise chemotherapy, raised $1.6M
🧫 USYD’s Wojciech Chrzanowski won the $100k NanoPitch Discovery 2025 prize for Biobots, a phage therapy restoring cell–microbe balance to treat Epidermolysis Bullosa
🦴 Orthocell, the ASX listed perth based company, launched a $25M placement to boost manufacturing capacity and sales of its nerve repair device Remplir in the US
☢️ Radiopharm Theranostics, a clinical-stage biotech aiming to redefine cancer care launched a 2 tranche placement targeting $35M to fund its next stage of clinical trials and the manufacture of drugs
Newsworthy
🩸After what feels like a million years… patients and their healthcare teams can finally get immediate access to most pathology tests via My Health Record
🧪 Monash Uni opened a Boston-based hub to fast-track global drug discovery & health innovations, expanding partnerships across North America & Europe
🧬 Bupa & Medibank are offering DNA tests to predict how people respond to medicines, sparking debate over data privacy, equity, & whether Aus is ready for population-wide pharmacogenomic screening
💪 Kic appointed Jane Martino as CEO to expand beyond workouts into a full wellness ecosystem
👁️ Optain Health is expanding its Melb R&D hub into an Asia-Pacific HQ after Vic gov backing, investing $10M to advance AI eye-scan tech
🇦🇺 OpenAI joined the Tech Council of Aus as it expands locally, following its Sydney launch & talks with the gov on data centres & national AI upskilling
🍎 Tummily, Aus’s first dietitian-designed IBS tracking app, hit Apple’s Top 100 Medical Apps within 24 hrs of launch
🗣️ PHAA members voted almost unanimously to establish a First Nations Collective, an Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander voice to guide Aus’s peak public health body
💰 Only 900 GP clinics have shown interest in Labor’s new bulk-billing incentive program launching 1 Nov, with officials saying it could take 4 years to lift bulk-billing rates to 90% despite rising out-of-pocket costs in the meantime
US & Beyond Borders
🍏 Lilly’s new GLP-1 weight loss pill, orforglipron, is showing better blood sugar control in later-stage trials - saying they plan on applying to get it approved for T2D in 2026
💡 Biolinq earned FDA clearance for Shine™, the first fully autonomous, needle-free glucose sensor that tracks glucose, activity, & sleep through a simple wearable patch
🧫 Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell & Shimon Sakaguchi won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering how the body prevents the immune system from attacking itself
They identified the role of regulatory T cells, which act as “security guards” that prevent the immune system from attacking the body’s own tissues and organs. This is fundamental to understanding how the immune system works and potentially opened the door for new treatments for autoimmune diseases, cancer, and transplant rejection🧩 Epic previewed new interoperability tools for patients, providers and developers to simplify health data sharing and building, including. MyChart Central giving patients one login to unify records across providers
In the past year, supposedly >745 billion data exchanges took place using Epic’s publicly available application programming interfaces
⚖️ Strava is suing Garmin for allegedly copying its segment & heatmap features, escalating tensions between the fitness app & the devices it depends on
💉 Oura launched a $99 blood testing feature with Quest Diagnostics, letting users track 50 health markers & get AI insights directly in its app
💪 Midi Health, the fastest growing virtual clinic for women 35+, raised $63M Series B joined by Amy Schumer, Sheryl Sandberg & others
💰 PwC predicts up to $1T in U.S. healthcare spending could shift to AI, digital-first models by 2035
🧬 Stratos Health partnered with Superpower to offer free workplace wellness combining advanced biomarker testing, AI health coaching, & 24/7 medical care
🩸 WHOOP launched Advanced Labs, letting members pair blood biomarkers with wearable data & AI coaching, after 350k users joined the waitlist
🤖 AI Updates
🇺🇸 The US Department of Veterans Affairs will deploy Abridge & Knowtex AI scribes across its health system to streamline clinical documentation for 9.1M veterans
🧠 ARiSE, a Stanford & Harvard backed lab, launched to try to independently validate & benchmark AI performance in healthcare
🤖 Deloitte admitted using gen AI in a $440k gov report riddled with fake references & quotes, prompting a partial refund & sparking concerns over AI’s unchecked use in official work
🤖 ChatGPT users unsurprinsingly make wellness a top use case, with 6% of chats focused on health as AI shifts from generic advice to personalised fitness, nutrition, & longevity plans
🩺 The Joint Commission & CHAI released their first joint AI governance framework for healthcare, outlining seven pillars
Sick Science
🤖 Can a multi-agent AI become your personal health coach, analyst, & explainer?
In a systems paper from Google Research, DeepMind & more introduced the Personal Health Agent (PHA), a multi-agent AI framework that integrates wearable & medical record data to provide personalised health insights. Built through a user-centred design using 1.3k real-world queries and expert workshops, the system combines three agents: a Data Science agent for time-series analysis, a Domain Expert for evidence-based interpretation, & a Health Coach for goal setting. Evaluated across ten benchmarks with >7k annotations and 1.1k human hours, PHA delivered consistent, contextual answers across wellness, fitness, & symptom queries.
🔥 Can olive oil’s key fat boost cancer-fighting immune cells?
In a study published in Signal Transduction & Targeted Therapy (2025), researchers from the Uni of HK examined how different dietary fats affect γδ-T cells (immune cells used in cancer therapy). They found that palmitic acid (a saturated fat in palm oil) weakened these cells’ ability to kill tumours by disrupting energy metabolism & triggering pyroptosis, an inflammatory form of cell death. Oleic acid (the main fat in olive oil) reversed these effects, restoring energy production & tumour-killing activity both in lab tests & mice.
Startup Stuff 🚀
Wanna up your grant game in WA?
MTPConnect’s new WAGES program is here to help WA researchers, clinicians, & startups sharpen their grant applications for national funding rounds like the MRFF. Backed by the WA Government, this 3-year pilot offers early-stage support, expert advice, & partnership-building to up your chances of success – More here
Got a women’s health innovation?
The international Ripple Women’s Digital Health Challenge 2025 is now accepting applications. This 12-month program (run by Cogniss, AWS, UK’s Health Innovation Network) helps innovators build pilot-ready women’s health apps without coding - More here
Want to pitch on Australia’s biggest life sciences stage?
Challenger Pitch for Health is back – Aus’s largest pitch day in life sciences, co-hosted by Proto Axiom & St Vincent’s Curran Foundation. Taking place in Sydney March 2026, the showcase will award $500K in grants across two streams: the Proto Axiom Challenger Summit & the St Vincent’s Discovery & Innovation Pitch for Health grants - More here
Have a promising digital health startup ready to scale?
ANDHealth+ opened apps for its flagship incubator program, offering up to $5M in non-dilutive funding alongside hands-on support from a world-class network of experts to help you grow globally - More here
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 & 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
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 & build your team – all taught by industry experts in law, finance, & sales - 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, & access to 300+ clinicians, investors, & operators – More here
Events💥
20th Oct: The Healthtech Muster: By Tenmile & Brandon Capital (Melb)
21st Oct: Primary Care. Digitally Connected. (Syd)
21st Oct: AusBioInvest 2025 (Melb)
22- 23rd Oct: MTAA MedTech Conference 2025 (Syd)
22 -24 Oct: AusBiotech International Conference 2025 (Melb)
29th Oct: Universal “AI for Health” Summit (Washington)
29 - 31st Oct: Singapore Week of Innovation & Technology (Singapore)
30th Oct: BrainTech 2025 (Melb)
12th Nov: AI Vision, hosted by Canva (Syd)
14 - 16th Nov: Brighter future together (Bris)
24 - 25th Nov: AI.Care 2025 (Bris)
3 - 4th Dec: Health Justice 2025 (Syd)
Cool Content 💎
🎙️Microsoft Research Podcast, The AI Revolution in Medicine: Reimagining healthcare delivery & public health with AI
This ep dives into how AI is reshaping healthcare since the release of ChatGPT and GPT-4, exploring what early predictions got right and wrong.
Discussing how AI is transforming public health, care delivery, and medical research - from improving data-driven responses to redefining Mayo Clinic’s AI-powered healthcare model.
📖 Nous: Making it stick: The magic of leadership in digital health
📖 The Economist: Is dark chocolate actually healthy?
TL:DR 🍫 isn’t the heart-healthy superfood it’s marketed as unfortunately…..studies show cocoa flavanols don’t prevent disease, & getting enough from chocolate means too much sugar & fat. Better to get your flavanols from fruit, nuts, or tea than wishful thinking (or Big Chocolate’s PR).
📖 Nicholas A Gnan delves into the new health operating system (OS) race
💡Got Feedback? Something to include next time? Keen to get in touch?
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See you on the Biotech circuit next week and bring your dancing shoes!
👋 Emily,
Mariah, Victoria & Team WTH
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