Friday Five: Pfizer strengthens AI leadership; Truepill gets swallowed; AI in autism DX challenge; and more

Friday Five

By: Tina Tan

Ref: Friday Five

Published: 08/22/2024

Pfizer taps Nvidia alumnus for top AI hire

Pfizer is sharpening its AI focus, hiring a new chief AI And analytics officer to lead the company’s strategies and initiatives for deploying the technology in drug R&D development.
Berta Rodriguez-Hervas, who will also co-chair Pfizer’s AI Council, has “a track record of quickly developing AI solutions and delivering them at scale in large global organisations,” according to Pfizer.
Her career includes a five-year stint at Nvidia and most recently served as VP of AI, algorithms, and machine learning operations at global automaker Stellantis.

LetsGetChecked buys troubled Truepill

Two Optum Ventures-backed portfolio companies, home-testing specialist LetsGetChecked and digital pharmacy tech company Truepill, are merging in a deal worth $525 million.
The deal will see Truepill enter the folds of LetsGetChecked in a cash-and-stock transaction, according to media reports.
The combined entity is expected to initially retain the Truepill name and include most of Truepill's senior management team.
While the combination of the two companies make strategic sense, the deal marks yet another financial rescue of a one-time digital health unicorn.
Truepill, valued at over $1.6 billion just three years ago, has recently struggled with sales and faced scrutiny from the US Drug Enforcement Agency for allegedly filling illegitimate prescriptions. The company has shrunk in size from several rounds of layoffs and last year it was victim to a data hack.

AI proves mettle in autism Dx

Researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet have developed an AI tool that addresses the challenge of early and accurate diagnosis of autism in young children.
AutMedAI was tested on approximately 12,000 individuals from theSimons Foundation Powering Autism Research for Knowledge (SPARK) database, which included information on roughly 30,000 individuals with and without autism spectrum disorders.
The AI model accurately identified about 80% of children with autism, by analysing patterns across 28 parameters, including the child's first smile and eating difficulties. These parameters were selected as they can be easily obtained without extensive assessments or medical tests before children reach 24 months of age.
The researchers maintained that the AI tool is designed as an additional aid to early diagnosis of autism, and not a replacement for current standard clinical assessment of autism.

Has K cracked the AI hallucination challenge?

K Health, a specialist in AI for primary care, claims that the latest iteration of its Knowledge Agent large language model (LLM) can outperform current leading LLMs in answering medical questions more accurately, with fewer hallucinations.
K’s tool was trained and validated on the company’s proprietary K-QA dataset, which includes real-world questions from over 1,200 patients across nearly 100 conditions.
Knowledge Agent demonstrated its responses to medical questions were up to 36% more comprehensive and 41% less hallucination-prone than responses generated by several well-known LLMs including GPT3.5 and GPT4.
For related analysis, see Spotlight On: Where genAI is moving the needle in healthcare (available to PLUS subscribers)

Sleep apnea therapy inhales new capital

XII Medical has secured $45 million in Series B funding to advance its neuromodulation therapy for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).
The funding round was led by Omega Funds, with participation from Intuitive Ventures and existing investors, including Cleveland Clinic and Ajax Health.
XII Medical's minimally invasive, implantable device prevents throat muscle relaxation during sleep, aiming to improve OSA treatment accessibility and patient outcomes.
The new funds will support further product development, clinical research, and team expansion as the company continues to refine its innovative OSA therapy.
The standard of care for sleep apnea is predominantly device-based; however, there might soon be a pharma option on the market, with Eli Lilly having submitted its GLP-1 agonist, tirzepatide, to the FDA for approval as a sleep apnea treatment after the drug demonstrated efficacy in reducing OSA severity.