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Trump’s Stargate event oozes AI health hype
In case you missed it — and how could you? — President Donald Trump earlier this week held an event with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, and Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank, to announce Stargate, a new venture that promises to invest $500 billion in U.S.-based AI infrastructure. It’s early days, but still the whole thing is somewhat nebulous. The assembled executives praised Trump for facilitating the deal, but besides providing space for a press conference, he has only said his role in all this will be aiding the effort through emergency declarations.
Meanwhile, the financing of the deal is also opaque. The Information reported that OpenAI and SoftBank will each put $19 billion into the deal, Oracle and fund MGX — a UAE investment firm specializing in AI — will together offer $7 billion. The rest, it seems, will materialize from debt and future investors.
Ellison announced that the first Stargate sites were already under construction, but he used his limited time at the podium to advertise the “charismatic” potential of applying AI to electronic health records to help doctors “to provide health care plans that are much better than they otherwise would be.” Not a new idea, but it’s worth mentioning that it’s aligned with Ellison’s business interests. Oracle a few years ago acquired electronic health record vendor Cerner and last fall announced a “next-generation” EHR “designed to embed AI across the entire clinical workflow.” Oracle is otherwise a cloud computing and AI also-ran compared to frontrunners like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, and so a little boost from Trump can’t hurt. A few billion dollars worth of goodwill?
After prodding from Trump to speak to the potential in health care, Altman, who has waded into a few health ventures, including an AI health coach project with Arianna Huffington, offered that the technology will help cure diseases at an “unprecedented” rate: “We will be amazed at how quickly we’re curing this cancer and that one and heart disease. And what this will do for the ability… to cure the diseases at a rapid, rapid rate, I think, will be among the most important things this technology does.”
Ellison, embodying his inner Tony Stark, took the bait, and indulged Trump with promises of personalized cancer vaccines manufactured by robots in 48 hours.
If you are in life sciences or health care, what are we to make off this? I spotted a few insiders cringing on my timeline, but it’s relevant to the industry that Trump is aware of and even excited by visions of AI curing disease. His plans around health AI are broadly unclear, though, it seems evident regulation will be minimal under his watch. But with grand ideas about AI’s potential to improve health care, and generate headlines, ping-ponging around Trump’s head, one wonders if he might not take a more active role in pushing the innovation. And if, for example, well-funded companies boasting claims of AI-designed drugs might benefit.
Another billionaire in the Trump camp, Elon Musk, took the opportunity to poke holes in the project. So we’ll just have to see if Stargate actually gets off the ground.
Eleos raises $60 million for mental health AI scribe
AI products that help providers write clinical notes are some of the hottest companies in health tech, but many of the best-funded are targeted at health systems to handle broad swaths of care. Is there room for products for more targeted use cases?
Eleos Health thinks so. I reported yesterday that the company raised a $60 million Series C round for its ambient scribe targeted at community behavioral health organizations. Part of the pitch is that a one hour therapy session is very different from a brief acute care encounter. It’s longer, and Eleos trained models to pick out specific mental health treatment techniques in conversations. The product generates a recommended note 30 seconds after a session ends, and the company built the technology to process long sessions without driving up costs excessively.
In early roll out with 100 outpatient therapists, multi-state provider Centerstone saw documentation time drop from 15 minutes per note to 5.4 minutes, according to CIO Prasad Kodali. A typical provider see six clients per day, so the tech saves them about an hour per day. Centerstone is in the process of ramping the tech up to 1,000 providers. The potential time savings extrapolated to scale starts to boggle your mind. (Centerstone invested in Eleos’ new round.)
Less time documenting means, in theory, more time to focus on care, better care, healthier patients, happier providers, and less burnout. It will be interesting to see long term if this plays out as more organizations buy into documentation tech.
Eleos’ plans to use the funding to grow and solidify its position as the go-to provider in its niche. It’s expanding in related specialties like substance use and autism care and launching new products around compliance and, eventually, revenue cycle management.
Read my whole story here
Industry notebook
DarioHealth announced a $25.6 million private placement of stock, giving it about $40 million cash on hand. The company makes apps that help people manage chronic diseases lost $33 million as of its November earnings statement. It said it will be cash flow positive by the end of 2025. It acquired mental health app-maker Twill last year to speed up progress to this milestone.
Lindus Health announced a $55 million Series B round led by Balderton Capital. The company is one of a crop of upstarts promising to revolutionize clinical trials with AI and other innovations.
Huma, which helps pharma and other partners stand up digital first care, announced a new deal with Pfizer for an offering to support people with hemophilia. Huma recently announced a deal with telehealth provider Wheel. Are all these things connected?
On the Abbott Laboratories earning call this week, I was curious to hear any updates on the company’s over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor Lingo, which was cleared by the Food and Drug Administration last year. CEO Robert Ford said the company had launched the product in a “restricted number of U.S. cities,” adding that “now that we understand what it takes to be able drive adoption with this completely different consumer segment that we’ll probably be expanding.” He said the launch had exceeded expectations. We’ll see if the company ever delivers concrete numbers.
What we’re reading
RFK Jr., an investor in a CRISPR biotech, has raised alarms about the technology, STAT
Innovaccer acquires Humbi AI, its 3rd acquisition in a year, to launch actuarial copilots, Fierce Healthcare