Things & Thinks — XXXI
@year_progress shows that we have already finished with 9% of 2022!
In this issue of my monthly newsletter, I have a research brief showcasing what’s happening in the artificial intelligence world for healthcare. There is the usual digital health news round-up, followed by the Longread, Tweet, Chart of the Month sections. Happy reading!
Research Digest
AI in Health and Medicine
In an excellent review of the current state of healthcare AI, Rajpurkar et al explore the more recent developments, new interesting work, challenges and opportunities. I especially loved this part of the review showing the future of AI algorithm development in healthcare, that goes beyond the standard mold of image classification problems.-
- Non-image data sources such as text, chemical and genomic sequences, which can provide rich medical insights.
- Problem formulations that go beyond supervised learning, obtaining insights from unlabeled or otherwise imperfect data through paradigms such as unsupervised or semi-supervised learning.
- AI systems that collaborate with humans instead of competing against them, which is a path toward achieving better performance than either AI or humans alone.
Digital Healthcare News
Tech in Digital Health
J&J and Microsoft entered into a partnership to ‘create a best-in-class, unified platform across innovative surgical technologies’ in medical device companies.
A deeper dive into Oracle’s Cerner deal by Protocol explores the future of health records and the building of applications on such platforms, putting a question mark on Cerner’s current partnership with Amazon.
Uber, continuing to explore healthcare, collaborated with CVS Health to provide critical transportation support at no cost to people who need it most when seeking access to medical care.
Regulatory/Policy Brief
US’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a draft National Coverage Determination (NCD) proposing that monoclonal antibodies directed against amyloid for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease be covered for Medicare beneficiaries only under CMS’ Coverage with Evidence Development (CED) pathway.
Biopharma/Devices Brief
Use of AI in drug discovery continues to grow as a field with Sanofi signing a deal with Exscientia to develop up to 15 novel small molecule candidates in oncology and immunology using the later’s AI platform. The deal, worth of $100 million, will make Exscientia eligible for as much as $5.2 billion in payments for clinical development, regulatory and commercial milestones.
Funding, Deals, Mergers & acquisitions
Global investments in digital health passed $ 28 bn. For comparison, start-up investment in US for the year 2021 touched $330bn.
Aetion, a tech startup focused on real-world evidence in healthcare, announced plans to buy synthetic real-world data company Replica Analytics for an undisclosed sum.
Digital mental health company Headspace Health acquired Sayana, maker of AI-enabled mental health-tracking and sleep apps.
Thread, a North Carolina startup focused on decentralized clinical research tech, announced its purchase of voice-powered research company inVibe.
Other news
There are interesting experiments being done in passive data collection and one such idea just got funded with $30 million-Casana is readying to debut a toilet seat-called Heart Seat- that takes vitals!
Madhavbaug, an Indian chain of heart clinics, unveiled its medical analytics application that gives a complete picture of a chronic disease patient’s health.
Longread of the Month
This article digs into a fascinating aspect of journey of patient datasets, as the companies that acquire them and use them go through mergers and acquisitions. Sample this-
The implications of the data trade, and its privacy risks, become even harder to understand as ownership of patient information changes over time.
Tweet of the Month
This tweet is a good reminder that not all the funding pouring into digital health may mean anything in the end!
Chart of the Month
Well two charts telling an interesting story this month about the Indian digital world- AppAnnie’s State of Mobile shows that India is in the top 3 for downloads and hours spent on mobile apps but not even in top 20 globally when it comes to consumer spend!
