Let's start the week with some interesting healthcare news.
Apparently, we should be preparing for big changes. Medicine is globalizing, and those tech companies that didn't even think about the healthcare sector now rushed into this area. And this is good.
The Telegraph
New figures
Ranging from very modest to very serious ones. What's about funding and investments in healthtech this week? Read more in our short weekly ranking.
Fifth place — Noteworth from the US that secures $5 million in seed funding to expand on digital medicine technology. Forth — Belfast-based Neurovalens raises €5.5 million to expand its high-tech headset to treat diabetes, obesity, anxiety, and insomnia.
Third place is for Turkish-German mental health app Meditopia. They announced today a Series A investment of $15 million. A medical artificial intelligence (AI) company Caption Health (US) is holding second place in our ranking. It raised $35 million in a Series B financing round to develop and commercialize its AI-guided ultrasound technology.
And finally, the winner is Medly Pharmacy. Medly announced the close of their $100 million Series B funding round. As stated in the company's press release, it would use the funding to expand its digital on-demand pharmacy platform, enter new markets, and provide category-leading services.
New plans
The Australian government has announced it will be handing over a total of AU$18.8 million to fund the development of 21 new biomedical and medical technology projects. The funding is part of round three of the government's AU$45 million BioMedTech Horizons program, an initiative designed to support the development of health technologies.
"Successful applicants will use the funding to develop medical devices -- including wearable devices — telehealth and telemedicine, and digitally-enabled personalized medicine," Minister for Health Greg Hunt said.
While the Australians front up $18,8 million for digital health tech development, the United Arab Emirates plan to become the first "health tech" capital of the world and a global hub for innovation and cooperation in health and wellness technology. With the help of NEOM.
NEOM is a futuristic smart city included in Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 plan. Its model, which includes the presence of major tech-driven companies, represents a vast opportunity to host a major healthtech hub and attract innovative entrepreneurs from across the world — from companies leading the way in remote monitoring and telehealth to innovative AI-powered assessment apps and platforms.
On the global level, the World Health Organisation is conducting a Digital Health Virtual Round Table with the Member States today, on July 21, 2020. This is a closed meeting aimed at further developing plans to speed up the use of technologies to meet global public health needs.
WHO established its first Department of Digital Health and Innovation (DHI) to work on digital health technologies In 2019, as well as a Digital Health Technical Advisory Group to act as an advisory body on matters related to digital health, including the development, scale and implementation of global standards for governance and oversight of digital health products services and systems.
New tech features
Incode, a company delivering secure biometric solutions, has launched Incode Health ID. The new solution is a multi-step health checking tool that will enable a safer workplace by helping establish preventive measures for COVID-19. As companies return to business amid the pandemic, Health ID will create a safe and transparent workplace with its consent-based, privacy-enabled features.
Strata from the UAE goes to healthtech. What's new here? Nothing much, except the fact that Strata is the Mubadala Investment Company’s aerospace manufacturing unit, the region’s biggest producer of advanced composite aircraft parts.
Now this company is looking to diversify into the health technology sector, as the Covid-19 pandemic fuels demand for medical equipment. The company is holding talks with potential partners to produce personal protective equipment and medical consumables. It seeks to bring more high-tech manufacturing capabilities to the UAE and a decision on new health technology investment could be reached within three to six months.
“The pandemic is an opportunity only. We are looking at projects for the long term,” says chief executive Ismail Abdulla. Strata was set up a decade ago to position the UAE in the global aerospace supply chain, the company has billion-dollar contracts with Boeing, Airbus, Italy’s Leonardo and Switzerland’s Pilatus Aircraft.
The U.K. startup Graphcore — something that will change the world. It is announcing a new chip, the GC200, and a new IPU Machine that runs on it, the M2000, which Graphcore says is the first AI computer to achieve a petaflop of processing power “in the size of a pizza box.”
CEO and co-founder Nigel Toon said the M2000 is now shipping to early access customers and will be more widely available by the end of this year to customers in applications in areas like financial services, healthcare, technology, and more, “wherever AI is used.”
New initiatives
Another interesting initiative — NTT DATA Services, working in global technology services, has announced a new alliance with Teladoc Health, R1 RCM, Enli and VisitPay to build Nucleus for Healthcare, a framework that incorporates best-in-class solutions to help accelerate clients’ digital transformation journeys. These companies are bringing together the foundational elements needed by patients and clinicians to create a digital front door for healthcare.
And the last stunning — the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, has launched a new initiative to use open source technologies to help public health authorities (PHAs) around the world combat COVID-19 and future epidemics.
LFPH will initially focus on exposure notification applications that use the Google Apple Exposure Notification (GAEN) system and will be expanding to support all aspects of PHA's testing, tracing, and isolation activities.
"To catalyze this open-source development, Linux Foundation Public Health is building a global community of leading technology and consulting companies, public health authorities, epidemiologists and other public health specialists, privacy and security experts, and individual developers," said Dan Kohn, LFPH general manager. "While we're excited to launch with two very important open source projects, we think our convening function to enable collaboration to battle this pandemic may be our biggest impact."
The new Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH) initiative is launching with seven Premier members – Cisco, doc.ai, Geometer, IBM, NearForm, Tencent, and VMware – and two hosted exposure notifications projects, COVID ShieldTM, and COVID GreenTM.
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