Tech Funding Trends #2: How Everyone Could Benefit From AI In Healthcare

The use of AI in healthcare has revolutionized the way patients are diagnosed and treated, improving the overall quality of care in the EU. How so?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the healthcare industry in several ways. While some may fear that AI will replace human healthcare providers with robots, the reality is more nuanced.

AI enables machines to learn from large amounts of data by analysing patterns, which has immense potential to transform healthcare. Here are four areas where AI is already making a difference.

According to MedTech Europe, AI could have the following impact in Europe alone:

• 400,000 lives can potentially be saved annually through AI.
• €200 billion could be saved annually, including the opportunity costs of HCP time.
• AI applications have the potential to free up 1,8 billion hours every year. (That’s the equivalent of having 500.000 additional full-time healthcare professionals.)

What are the Drivers of Health Tech?

These goals are accomplished through:

1. Wearable technology: AI-enabled fitness devices, such as wearable fitness trackers, allow individuals to monitor their health and receive recommendations based on their daily activities. This encourages proactive health management and can reduce the risk of chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes.
2. Personalized medicine: AI enables companies to analyse vast amounts of patient data to identify patterns and trends. This informs research and development for new drugs, leading to better patient outcomes. Precision medicine, which tailors treatment to individualized needs, is already a part of many pharmaceutical companies' corporate agendas.
3. Early detection and diagnosis: AI is improving medical imaging technology, making it easier to detect diseases like cancer in their early stages. For example, AI can review and translate mammograms with 99% accuracy, reducing the need for unnecessary biopsies and mitigating the stress of misdiagnosis.
4. Data management: The electronic exchange of patient health data has increased, leading to a growing demand for AI-enabled security systems to protect patient data from breaches. AI can improve the detection of security breaches and accelerate response times, ensuring patient data remains secure.

Overall, AI has the potential to greatly enhance healthcare by streamlining processes, improving patient outcomes, and protecting patient data. While AI will undoubtedly transform the healthcare industry, it is unlikely to replace human healthcare providers entirely. Instead, it will augment their capabilities and enable them to provide more personalized and efficient care.

What's Specific About Health Tech in Europe? 

In Europe, there are significant advantages in terms of the abundance of health data collected within national health systems, as well as established clusters of innovation and pan-European collaborations.

The region has also taken a pan-European approach to key aspects of AI, such as ethics, privacy, and "trustworthy AI", and has an emerging strategy to ensure that the "EU way" for AI benefits its population. However, there are still challenges to be addressed, including issues related to data governance, access, and security, which are further delaying the adoption of AI in healthcare.

Despite strong investment and research in AI at the European level, there is fragmentation at the country or regional level, which can limit the full potential of AI in healthcare.

While there is a significant opportunity for EU health systems to benefit from AI, the impact on the ground remains limited.

Surprisingly, even among healthcare professionals who are engaged with healthcare innovation, 44 per cent of those surveyed had not been involved in the development or deployment of an AI solution in their organization.

This indicates that there is still a gap in terms of the widespread adoption and integration of AI in healthcare practices in Europe.

Furthermore, there are regulatory and legislative restrictions that impede the widespread development of integrated AI with Health Tech. Concerns over data privacy and security are the driving forces behind regulations. Though not Health Tech related, Italy’s (temporary?) ban on ChatGPT is a good example of these growing concerns.

The European Commission has started to work on 6 facets to make AI in healthcare more secure, trustworthy, and efficient:

1. Establishing a policy and legal framework that specifically promotes the development and adoption of AI in the healthcare sector.
2. Implementing initiatives that facilitate increased investment in the field of AI for healthcare, encouraging funding and resources towards research and development in this area.
3. Taking actions and initiatives to enable easier access, use, and exchange of healthcare data for the purpose of leveraging AI technologies.
4. Implementing initiatives that focus on upskilling healthcare professionals and educating AI developers about current clinical practices and healthcare needs. This double prong ensures that both groups are well-equipped to utilize AI effectively in healthcare settings.
5. Addressing cultural issues and building trust among stakeholders in the healthcare sector towards the use of AI, through policy measures that prioritize transparency, accountability, and ethics in AI applications.
6. Implementing policies that support the translation of AI research findings into clinical practice, facilitating the practical implementation and adoption of AI technologies in real-world healthcare settings.

By prioritizing and implementing these measures, the European Commission address the growing pains of AI security and fosters the development, adoption, and integration of AI technologies in the healthcare sector across the EU.

In turn, this leads to improved healthcare outcomes and benefits for patients, healthcare providers, and society as a whole.

Who is Getting Funded? Success Story Time!

Last year, Alan, the personal health company, made bank with a whopping $193m in Series E funding. 

With that kind of dough, Alan's valuation skyrocketed to a cool $2.84bn. Teachers' Venture Growth and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board were the ringmasters of this funding circus, but they weren't the only ones: Coatue, EXOR, Dragoneer, Index, Lakestar, Ribbit Capital, and Temasek also joined the party.

Alan's no small fry either. They're already insuring over 350,000 people across France, Spain, and Belgium with their health insurance contracts.

That's a whole lotta coverage! 

Doctolib, the healthcare software provider from France, scored a whopping $549m in venture funding in March 2022. Eurazeo led the charge, with General Atlantic and Bipifrance Participations also participating.

This funding frenzy boosted Doctolib's valuation to a jaw-dropping $6.4bn. They're already making moves in countries like France, Germany, and Italy, and their CEO and co-founder, Stanislas Niox-Chateau, is hoping to create a whopping 3,500 new jobs across these three nations. Talk about a job creator!

And that's not all folks! Doctolib also acquired Tanker, an end-to-end encryption tech provider, in January 2022. With this new addition, they're aiming to keep the records of their 70 million patients safe and sound.

Last but not least, we've got Promaton, the Netherlands-based medical devices company. They have used AI-powered software to help dentists do whatever they have to do. 

Their advanced algorithms do the heavy lifting, automating image analysis and virtual treatment simulations for dentists. It's like having a digital dental assistant!

With Promaton's cutting-edge tech, dentists can analyze images with more accuracy, saving time and money. And their 3D algorithms are the magic wands automating all the complicated data processing, segmentation, and 3D modelling steps in creating a virtual treatment simulation system.

It's like a dental dream come true... if such things existed...