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Is the health AI business growing rapidly?
In a new report, Bessemer Venture Partners reveals early insights into the outlook for artificial intelligence software services businesses, which it sees as a new category in the broader healthtech ecosystem. This category includes AI clinical scribes, claims audit tools, and back-office automation technologies. BVP sees annual recurring revenue rapidly approaching $10 million. This metric is viewed by investors as a key predictor of a company’s health. It takes AI companies 2.5 years to reach this $10 million benchmark, compared to 6 years for healthcare software-as-a-service companies and 3 years for technology-enabled clinical services companies. This data is based on a cohort of 20 AI companies.
BVP attributes the quick start to a fast sales cycle driven by “buyer urgency to test and purchase AI-enabled solutions.” but! Note that initial revenue often comes from trial programs that may not last long. (Of course, BVP has investments in many of these companies and is therefore not an independent party.)
General Catalyst Announces $750 Million Investment in Healthcare as Part of New Fund
This morning, venture capital giant General Catalyst announced $8 billion in new capital, including $750 million earmarked for “health guarantees.”
GC has recently made a number of aggressive bets in the healthcare space, including the acquisition of Ohio-based Summa Health as a testing ground for innovative ideas. Today’s notable portfolio companies include Commure, Transcarent, and Hippocratic. Before digital health became an established category, GC was a prominent investor in diabetes management company Livongo. The company’s $18 billion sale to Teladoc is one of its largest health technology deals to date.
Why does Change Healthcare’s infringement notification take so long?
In October, some people just received notifications that their sensitive data was compromised in February’s Change Healthcare ransomware attack. By law, people are supposed to be notified within 60 days if their data is breached. So what is given?
As STAT’s Brittany Trang reports, the picture is complicated. In part, it’s unclear when exactly that 60-day clock begins. Additionally, Change is not a healthcare provider, but a third party that processes insurance claims and helps facilitate insurance approval and payment. In legal terms, this is a “business associate” of a healthcare company whose responsibility is to notify its customers (clinics and hospitals), not the individuals whose data has been breached. You may notice that your infringement notice arrives on Change Healthcare letterhead. That’s because Change took ownership of the process.
On Wednesday, Change’s parent company UnitedHealth Group confirmed it had updated the number of people affected by the Change Healthcare cyberattack to 100 million. “Given the amount and complexity of the data involved, and as the investigation is still in its final stages, we will continue to regularly notify potentially affected individuals as soon as possible,” the spokesperson reiterated to STAT. said.
To be sure, there are many people who should be notified, but the fumbling nature of breach notifications underscores what many observers see as the dire state of healthcare cybersecurity. In fact, just last month, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) imposed stricter cybersecurity rules on health care providers and increased fines for violators. proposed a bill to remove the cap. UnitedHealth Group made $22 billion in profits last year. The idea is that if you want to change cybersecurity practices, you have to attack where the problems lie. Click here for details
Retinal implants show promise for people with severe vision loss
Science Co., Ltd.
Preliminary clinical trial data shows that a retinal implant restored vision in people with holes or blurry spots in their central vision, Science Corporation reported this week. Trial participants were able to read text and recognize playing cards while using the implant, even if they were legally blind. Although the results have not been published in a peer-reviewed publication, they are promising for the millions of people who suffer from age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of vision loss.
The implant, called the Prima System, uses a camera attached to your glasses and a computer that fits in your pocket. The camera collects infrared light and shines it onto the implant, stimulating the retina.
Science Corporation enrolled 38 people in the study, but six of them dropped out before the trial. After 12 months of use, participants were able to read, on average, nearly five more lines on an eye chart, or 23 more characters, STAT’s Timmy Broderick reports. This is equivalent to improving a person’s visual acuity from 20/320 to 20/200, which is the U.S. standard for blindness. Click here for details
Walmart’s pharmacy delivery promotion and large-scale venture employment
There was a lot of noise at HLTH this week, but two developments caught my eye.
Walmart announced it will offer same-day pharmacy delivery in 49 states by the end of January. The service is already available in six states. Walmart’s news comes after Amazon recently expanded same-day pharmacy delivery. Early-stage venture capital firm Define Ventures has added former Humana CEO Bruce Broussard as a partner. Big get!
AMA Committee Approves Long-Requested Remote Monitoring Update
The American Medical Association’s CPT Editorial Committee, which develops the billing codes used by physicians, announced that it has accepted a proposed update to the remote monitoring code that will go into effect in 2026. Although exact details were not announced, this update will allow physicians to charge a device supply fee if the data collected is less than 16 days old, or to charge a fee for administrative services related to monitoring that take less than 20 minutes. It is possible to make a claim. Efforts to update the code took several years, and several efforts were abandoned along the way.
FDA’s New Device Director and Other Agency Memos
This week, the Food and Drug Administration confirmed what many probably already suspected. Michelle Tarver will become the new director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, which will oversee hot topics such as medical devices and artificial intelligence tools and lab-developed tests. Tarver joined the agency in 2009 and has been the center’s interim director since Jeff Shuren announced his resignation in the summer.
The FDA also announced new information regarding the inaugural meeting of the Digital Health Advisory Committee, which will be held on November 20th and 21st. In a public meeting that will be streamed live on YouTube, the new committee will discuss “Full Product Lifecycle Considerations for Generative Artificial Intelligence.” Valid medical device. ” Comments on the meeting minutes must be submitted by November 1st. According to Bloomberg Law, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, speaking at a biosimilar and generic drug industry conference, suggested that the FDA use artificial intelligence tools to detect “fraud” in clinical trials. .
what we are reading
In the post-election Congressional minutes: Chinese biotechnology, Medicare payments, ACA subsidies, STAT Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Colonoscopy for Polyp Detection: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, Internal Medicine Annual Report Performance of Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Evaluated in Clinical Trial Oncology Case, JAMA Network Open
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