Inside an AI startup shutdown

Last week, Equality AI CEO Maia Hightower posted on LinkedIn: "A Bittersweet Chapter: Equality AI is closing its doors." She cited President Trump's rescinding of the 2023 Biden executive order on AI as the reason, telling STAT's Brittany Trang that it was the final nail in the coffin. "We ran out of money. Plain and simple," she said, and the uncertainty created by canceling the executive order made the fundraising environment untenable.

In a post-mortem interview, Hightower plainly lays out the challenges facing startups interested in AI governance and validation — what makes companies attractive to venture capital as opposed to what health systems are looking for right now. She also offers perspective on how the kinds of AI that health systems are interested in has shifted over the last couple years. When Equality AI got started the focus was on algorithms that would predict sepsis or falls in older adults. With the recent rise in generative tools, Equality AI tried to quickly re-orient its offerings to the new technology, but didn't have the time, or the resources, to make the transition successfully.

Read the interview for more.

policy

What's up with that provocative AI prescriber bill?

Brittany Trang writes: There's been some online hubbub over a bill introduced in the House, which would, according to the title: "amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to clarify that artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies can qualify as a practitioner eligible to prescribe drugs if authorized by the State involved and approved, cleared, or authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, and for other purposes." Alarming indeed.

Though such a bill might have more momentum with President Trump throwing his weight behind AI, the bill's sponsor Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) proposed essentially the same bill in 2023, and it didn't go anywhere. This is not the first time Schweikert has weighed in on health AI; last year he proposed a bill that directed HHS to issue guidance on how to pay for remote monitoring devices like continuous glucose monitors that use AI. The bill passed the House Ways and Means Committee but didn't make it to the floor for a vote. Schweikert has also re-introduced that bill this session. A large donor for Schweikert told STAT the lawmaker, "loves AI," but hadn't heard him ever discuss this issue in particular.

Schweikert's office did not reply with the full text of the bills or to an interview request in time of publication.

health data

States sue over post-Dobbs HIPAA rules

Katie Palmer writes: Since December 23, health care organizations have had to comply with a final rule expanding protections for reproductive health care data under the federal privacy law HIPAA, a response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Less than a month after that deadline, a group of 15 states where the Republican Party is in power, led by Tennessee, have filed a complaint against the Department of Health and Human Services. They allege that the rule — which requires health providers to obtain a signed attestation that a request for reproductive information doesn't fall under the rule's prohibitions — prevents states from investigating health care fraud and abuse. "The Final Rule contravenes HIPAA, is arbitrary and capricious, and is inflicting here-and-now harm on States' ability to root out fraud and abuse through routine investigatory functions," reads the complaint, which is similar to one filed by the Texas Attorney General in October.

fundraising

Big tech founders pour money into health tech

Over the last few days, there's been news about a number of health tech ventures supported by very notable technology personalities.

First, Neko Health, a body scanning startup co-founded by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, announced a $260 million Series B raise valuing the company at $1.8 billion, according to TechCrunch. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with notable investors like General Catalyst.

Neko claims it has done 10,000 scans, and HTN did a very good analysis suggesting that at roughly $370 per scan, "Neko is worth 666 times the revenue it generated in year two." That's a remarkable multiple. The company reports some interesting stats on how its scans are helping detect potentially serious conditions. There's obviously an appetite among people who can pay for it for body scans and a growing number of well-funded companies swooping in to serve them. Still, the evidence is out on whether preventative testing of this kind is a cost-effective use of health care dollars, and following the shutdown of Forward Health last year, whether it's a sustainable business.

Elsewhere, LinkedIn co-cofounder Reid Hoffman and physician author Siddhartha Mukherjee announced they raised just under $25 million for a new AI drug company called Manas AI that will focus, according to a blog post, on "aggressive cancers like triple-negative breast cancer, prostate cancer, and lymphoma, but our ambitions extend far beyond." Investors include, General Catalyst and Greylock (where Hoffman is a partner).

research

Close your eyes for ten minutes. Chill. Feel the marketing wash over you.

Stressed employees of UCSF who meditated with the Headspace app for 10 minutes a day for eight weeks saw a significant reduction in their self-reported stress, compared to those on a waitlist. The study of 1,458 employees was conducted from May 2018 to September 2019, before health care workers even had the opportunity to be stressed out by covid-19. Last week, Headspace issued a press release announcing a study, published a week earlier in JAMA Open Network.

The control group in the study doesn't help us understand what exactly accounts for the reduction in stress here. Is it meditation? Is it being checked in on by study staff? Is it using an app with cute animations? What we know is that some combination of these factors is, as study author Rachel Radin put it, "better than nothing... It couldn't hurt." The next step in research would ordinarily be to do a study with a time and attention matched control using, for example, a sham app meant to mimic Headspace, save for the meditation you think is doing the work. I've yet to see a mindfulness app pursue this level of evidence.

Setting skepticism aside, it's more than plausible that taking 10 minutes a day to meditate — or just to chill — will benefit someone who is feeling stressed. As a digital delivery mechanism for this daily practice, Headspace is more convenient than, say, going to a medication class.

But here's one thing the study does prove: If you sign up to do a study with a wellness app and publish the results, those results will be used to market the product. A Headspace spokesperson told me that, "for employers, this study helps demonstrate the power of sub-clinical level mental health support." Therapy and psychiatric treatment can be hard to get into and pricy, and for some people, may not even be necessary. Headpsace is a relatively inexpensive perk that companies can give to their workers that for some number of people will be superior to, well, nothing. Here's a little data to support that investment, in case you need it.

Radin, who is interested in how mindfulness training can be used to in support of changing eating behaviors told me UCSF has ongoing research work underway with Headspace and is in talks to do more.

More around STAT