Jimini Health adds to AI mental health funding enthusiasm

Jimini Health raised $17 million for its artificial intelligence platform that interacts with patients between their clinical appointments, I reported this morning. The funding from a group of investors, including M13 and Town Hall Ventures, comes amid growing interest in using AI to tackle health. The cropped image above comes from a larger chart in the story with data from Rock Health. (I'll try to update from time to time, so let me know if I've missed any raises over $2 million.)

Unlike some of the other companies on the list, Jimini hopes to support ongoing clinical care by continuously interacting with patients between visits. CEO and co-founder Luis Voloch told me that for more complex care, clinicians will need to be involved. Jimini's platform Sage will soon be deployed with hundreds of clinicians, including some at national organizations focused on higher-acuity outpatient care and substance use disorder.

biotech

AI drug developer inks deal with Lilly

AI drug developer Insilico Medicine announced a deal with Eli Lilly worth about $115 million up front and about $2.75 billion in milestones, Brittany Trang reported over the weekend. Lilly will license some of Insilico's pre-clinical drug candidates and both will collaborate on further targets. Despite speculation that Lilly was acquiring the AI biotech, which just went public on the Hong Kong exchange in December, representatives for both companies denied those rumors.

In an interview, Insilico CEO Alex Zhavoronkov discussed the deal, the Chinese AI market, why the company decided to go public in Hong Kong, and the company's AI drug development business model. Read more in the story, and there will be bonus AI-related insights from Zhavoronkov in tomorrow's AI Prognosis.

medical records

Exclusive: Health Gorilla's letter to ASTP

Amid an ongoing legal battle with EHR giant Epic, health data exchange Health Gorilla CEO Bob Weston sent Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy Thomas Keane a letter outlining how it wants the administration to step up and better police how health information exchanges works. Among the asks are a centralized credentialing process for participation in nationwide data exchange; a formalized distinction "between intentional fraud, negligent or reckless misuse, and security incidents;" and a clearer definition of "treatment" and how it applies in the context of data exchange networks. The letter also asks for ASTP to push Congress on related proposals.

Many of these asks are rooted in issues raised by an Epic lawsuit that alleges Health Gorilla facilitated improper access to medical records. Need to catch up on what's going on? Brittany explained the whole mess last week.

decision support

OpenEvidence inks hospital deal, launches coding

OpenEvidence this morning announced a new deal to make its AI-powered medical evidence search engine available in the electronic health record at Mount Sinai Health System. The deal marks the "first enterprise-scale OpenEvidence deployment to extend access across the full clinical care team — including physicians, registered nurses, and pharmacists."

In February, Sutter Health had announced a deal to integrate OpenEvidence into the health system's EHR.

OpenEvidence CEO Daniel Nadler wrote me yesterday to share that OpenEvidence crossed 6 million queries last week (see above). The company also last week launched "coding intelligence" that delivers ICD-10 and CPT code recommendations aimed at helping providers maximize reimbursement.

Does your hospital have an enterprise agreement with OpenEvidence? I'd love to hear about your experience.

Artificial intelligence

Botwatch: Another Utah renewal pilot and PatientGPT

Legion Health will in April begin a one-year pilot of an AI bot that renews psychiatric medications in Utah. It's the latest experiment authorized under a state program that waives regulations to allow companies to test AI technologies in real-world settings.

The details in the r egulatory mitigation agreement with the state mirror elements of a similar pilot launched with Doctronic to allow the 'AI doctor' company to renew nearly 200 common medications. The Legion pilot is limited to 15 non-controlled psychiatric medications. (See a sampling above.)

Legion's bot, like Doctronic's, will be supervised initially before being allowed to operate autonomously: "For the first 250 requests, a licensed physician must review the case before the prescription is sent to the pharmacy, requiring a >98% agreement rate. The next 1,000 requests undergo intensive retrospective review, requiring a >99% agreement rate, before moving to ongoing monthly randomized sampling."

On the heels of launching its pilot, Doctronic last week announced a $40 million fundraise. Legion co-founder and CEO Yash Patel told me the company is also raising money.

Elsewhere, yet another patient-facing health chatbot launched: PatientGPT, developed by clinical AI company K Health and deployed and refined at Hartford Healthcare. The pitch for why it's different? It's linked to Hartford patients' medical records, allowing the bot to reason over their existing health histories when it answers basic questions or refers them on to a visit. The bot is still in beta with provider monitoring: PatientGPT initially failed in 30.2% of high-risk scenarios, according to Hartford's study — that failure rate improved to 8.5% after some model improvements.

Health tech news roundup

Wearable maker Whoop announced it raised a $575 million Series G round at a $10 billion valuation. The funding was led by Collaborative Fund and includes interesting health care investors Mayo Clinic and Abbott.
eMed, which offers GLP-1 programs for employers, announced it raised $200 million in funding led by AON Consulting, Inc.
Lantern, a platform for specialty care, announced a $30 million funding round led by Morgan Health.
Headway, a platform that helps people find insurance-covered mental health care and helps providers take insurance, acquired the team behind Tezi, which "previously developed systems designed to combine human judgment with AI agents inside complex workflows." Tezi last raised $9 million in 2024, according to Pitchbook.

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What we're reading

No, ChatGPT did not cure a dog's cancer, The Verge
Over-the-top psychedelic promos could undermine the field's drug development efforts, STAT
Biotech VCs move upstream in China's scientific pipelines as competition grows fiercer, STAT