Tons of news today and not just because there is a big health tech conference (HIMSS) happening in the desert. First up, how an AI scribe company might benefit from a big new AI fundraise.
‘World model’ developer tied to Nabla gets $1 billion
Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), the new company from former Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, announced it had raised $1 billion for its quest to develop “world models.” This is a health tech story because AI documentation company Nabla will have early access to this new technology as it aims for an edge in a crowded field of companies trying to automate complex and laborious health care work. AMI’s new CEO Alex LeBrun is the co-founder and CEO of Nabla, and LeCun is one of Nabla’s investors. There’s no formal equity or licensing agreement relationship yet between AMI and Nabla, but the companies are already working closely together, Nabla COO Delphine Groll told me.
Lebrun, Groll, and Nabla CTO Martin Raison published a blog post about what they believe to be the health care potential for world models, which “learn abstract representations of how environments function, more similar to how human beings reason about the world.” Where probabilistic large language models produce unpredictable outputs, the executives claim the new approach will produce “safe, deterministic, auditable decision-making” and offer “a credible regulatory pathway for autonomous, agentic systems.”
Nabla last year raised $70 million.
Why Cadence is high on ACCESS
Cadence will participate in the Medicare ACCESS model when the first cohort launches in July, I report in a new story. Cadence is among the first to say it will participate. Best known for its remote patient monitoring programs offered through health systems, the company will reimagine its services with AI to make it feasible at much lower cost.
The announcement follows much public debate about the merits of the program, which is meant to incentivize technology-enabled care by aligning payment to outcomes instead of to individual services. Some observers were disappointed by the payment amounts Medicare set. In my story, Cadence CEO Chris Altchek tells me about the AI the company has already built and the company’s strategy for safely launching new clinical AI and getting it through the Food and Drug Administration.
Read more here
Hims and Novo make nice
Telehealth company Hims will back off marketing compounded versions of GLP-1 obesity and diabetes medications and will offer branded versions of Novo Nordisk’s drugs, Elaine Chen reports. Novo, meanwhile, is dropping a patent infringement lawsuit against Hims.
The new arrangement comes after Hims triggered an escalating series of events last month when it announced plans to market a compounded pill containing semaglutide just as Novo was launching its Wegovy pill. Hims will still offer compounded GLP-1s if a provider determines it is medically necessary.
Read more here
Payer data suggests AI is driving up costs
Brittany Trang reports: Since last summer’s earnings calls, health insurers have claimed that AI is driving up health care costs. Now one is offering proof. Blue Cross Blue Shield released an analysis of claims for postpartum hemorrhage last week, which it says contains evidence of AI coding.
Read more here
business
Talkspace to be acquired for $835 million
Nearly five years after going public at the height of the pandemic digital health boom, Talkspace is cashing out. The company will be acquired for $835 million by giant mental health provider Universal Health Services.
Read my story here
Should health data be treated like a public utility?
Historically, health and biomedical data has been generated in clinical trials. But in a digitized world, it can instead be mined — and patients’ interactions with the health care system are the natural resource. In a paper published in Science last week, researchers and health data industry members proposed a system to govern real-world data like other resources we extract from the environment.
“Health care providers, electronic health record companies, they all kind of believe the data is theirs,” said Alastair Thomson, the former chief data officer for ARPA-H, who spoke with STAT about the proposal. “I disagree with them. I believe the data belongs to the patients, and I think patients should be empowered to take control of their data.”
Read more about the idea to treat real-world data like a “public utility” in Katie Palmer’s Q&A with Thomson — including why he thinks that data shouldn’t live with the government.
Health tech news roundup — HIMSS edition
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Verily announced that Samsung’s Galaxy Watch can now be connected to Verily’s data platform so that researchers can use it for studies.
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New Mountain Capital has abandoned a deal that would have sold five of its health tech portfolio companies to its former managing director Matt Holt for $32 billion, Bloomberg reports.
- Surgical tech and medical device giant Stryker announced a new “SmartHospital” platform.
- Google made a number of announcements about how its cloud and AI products are being used by health care customers. These include a new CVS consumer engagement subsidiary called Health200, as well as tools from Humana, Highmark Health, Quest Diagnostics, and revenue cycle software company Waystar.
- Smart ring maker Oura acquired Doublepoint, a developer of AI gesture recognition technology.
- There will be more HIMSS news coming out this week, so check back Thursday for another roundup!
What we’re reading
- After UnitedHealth moved in, Oregon sought to rein in corporate health care. Now, it’s facing an early test, STAT
- How RFK Jr. is promoting ‘real food’: AI videos, memes and celebrity cameos, Wall Street Journal
- Removing race from kidney function algorithm helped more Black patients access transplants, STAT
