Big bets on health AI

Healthcare delays behind other sectors in using generative AI, the kind that can answer questions and generate content.

But the big money flowing into the industry could soon drive adoption.

Healthcare systems are like nuclear plants. They don’t want to change. They have to keep going, said Justin Norden, a partner at investment firm GSR Ventures and an adjunct professor of medicine at Stanford. There is often fear of change and the adoption of new tools.

However, AI is attracting billions of dollars in investment.

The details: The market is most mature in the life sciences, which includes drug discovery, personalized medicine and clinical trials, Norden wrote in a recent report.

Substantial investments of $6 billion have been made in generative AI that helps doctors. This is bringing improvements to surgery, note taking, workflow automation and clinical decision support.

Applications like note-taking are relatively simple to fix, and a clear market need is emerging due to widespread physician burnout, Norden said.

Funding for administrative use cases related to recruiting, revenue cycle, and more has only recently started flowing in.

What’s next? Norden is excited about the prospects for investing in improved care and hopes the pace will pick up.

The basic statistic people like to cite is that it takes 17 years for new innovations to become the standard in health care, Norden said. We can’t wait that long.

This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping healthcare.

Slimming drugs they may help you shed the extra pounds, but they won’t make you healthy. Nutritionists told the Wall Street Journal it still matters eat well and exercise to maintain fitness and strong metabolism.

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Today on ours Pulse check podcasts, host Kelly Hooper talks with Katherine Ellen Foley, who gives an insight into the changing Alzheimer’s drug landscape as pharmaceutical companies focus on developing the next class of treatments.

Only 1 in 3 American adults Those with hepatitis C were treated between 2013 and 2022, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, despite the availability of highly effective antivirals.

The report too found that:

People without health insurance were less likely to be treated.

People 60 and older with Medicare or private insurance had the highest cure rate, but less than half of them were cured.

Only 1 in 4 people under 40 are cured.

Because matter: More than 2 million people nationwide have hepatitis C, a liver infection often spread by intravenous drug use. It can be fatal and kills more than 15,000 people a year.

What’s the problem? Treatments can be prohibitively expensive, some costing nearly $100,000.

Many insurance plans limit access.

It can be especially difficult for incarcerated people to get treatment because state policies for prison treatment vary, as reported by STAT. Hepatitis C rates are exponentially higher in prisons than in the rest of the population.

What’s next? Former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins has spearheaded a hepatitis C testing and treatment plan for which the Biden administration is seeking $12 billion in fiscal 2024.

Collins told Ben it was regrettable to have incredibly effective therapy and not be able to administer it.

That doesn’t sound like what a country that cares for all its citizens would do, he said.

A senior GOP aide previously told POLITICO there is deep skepticism in his party about the price, even though the Biden administration says the Collins plan could produce $5 billion in savings over 10 years by reducing health care costs.

Collins told POLITICO he hopes the Congressional Budget Office backs this up, making it easier to get lawmakers to agree.

The World Bank and the governments of Germany, the Netherlands and Côte d’Ivoire want to raise $800 million by the end of the year to continue helping more than 30 countries, mostly in Africa, improve the health of mothers, children and adolescents.

Because matter: Progress against infant mortality it has stalled for the past twelve years, and the pandemic has done the opposite. Maternal mortality was increasing in some parts of the world even before Covid hit.

Whatever the bank and the three governments can raise would add to the $2 billion pledged to the cause since 2015 through the banks Global funding facility for women, children and adolescents.

The facility provides grants to 36 countries with the highest number of deaths of women, children and adolescents, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala and Pakistan to improve their services.

Two-thirds of maternal and child deaths that occur in developing countries occur in those countries, Mamta Murthi, World Bank vice president for human development, told Carmen.

The $800 million would help expand support to seven other countries and help more than 200 million women access contraceptives, the bank estimates.

The needs are enormous, Murthi said, and this is a time when governments are really short on cash.

What’s next? The fundraising campaign will culminate with an event in Berlin on October 16 at the World Health Summit.