Savan Devani

Some quick and candid / not just bullish observations on AI in digital health, especially given the enormous level of noise at #JPM2026. Last (5th) post in the 5-on-5 series, opening 2026 with 5 different pieces with 5 observations each on the market for digital health founders. We are passed the hype phase. I actually think 2026 will be the year when saying 'AI' or 'Agentic' will raise more questions than applause. Too many pilots are not scaling, too many promises are yet to be fulfilled. When building a product takes less time, the path to commoditization also takes less time. Scribes, chart summarizations, etc. which leads IMO to NRR being much more important than ARR (show you are resilient to price pressure and churn) Most real impact of AI is on the back end of new companies. This is massive and hence any budget that looks similar to 2023 / 2024 or even 2025 budgets should render a very serious question As a byproduct, and unlike 2021, increased head count becomes a negative signal if the company is indeed AI-centered (proxy to inefficiency) And another key difference from 2021: raising a lot of money (with a big valuation) while the public market is at best open for high 9-digit revenue, is really playing very aggressive poker. For additional color, see this interview with CTech by Calcalist (first comment)

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Med Tech in Focus  Potential Cure for Pancreatic Cancer Using Antibodies Researchers at Northwestern University discovered how pancreatic cancer “hides” from the immune system and have discovered an antibody that blocks the disguise and recharges the immune system to attack those cancer cells. Pancreatic cancer is difficult to treat, has a five-year survival rate of only 13% and doesn’t respond well to immune-based or other therapies. The researchers discovered that pancreatic cancer cells hide behind a sugar-based surface coating that mimics healthy cells and thereby escape detection. After identifying the mechanism behind the false signal, they screened thousands of cells to find one that blocked this deception. In animal studies, the antibodies restored immune activity and slowed tumor growth. By using the novel antibodies along with existing chemotherapy and immunotherapies it’s hoped that patients could see full remission. Further, the scientists are researching whether the same sugar-coat disguises are seen in other hard-to-treat cancers such as glioblastoma and other diseases where the immune system may be “misled” by sugar coatings.   VC Investors are always adjusting their "Play Book" with a variety of options for investing. Mikal Ventures is one of those alternatives, offering curated solutions to real world problems. Reach out if you have questions on how we can be of assistance and bookmark https://mikalventures.com/ for additional insights and information.

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Med and AI Tech in Focus   Smart Bandage Detects Inflammation and Infection Researchers at California Institute of Technology have developed a smart bandage called iCares that continuously monitors fluids in wound sites in real time to assess inflammation and infection. The bandage is equipped with three different microfluidic components. One removes moisture from the wound to help with healing. Another detects nitric oxide and other molecules that indicate wound inflammation. A third component detects hydrogen peroxide, which is another biomarker of infection which occurs one to three days before patients experience symptoms. The iCares bandage was designed for patients with chronic wounds that are slow to heal, because of diabetes or poor blood flow at the wound site. iCares is composed of a flexible strip that can be 3-d printed and incorporates a disposable biomarker sensor array together with reusable circuit board that handles signal processing and wireless data transmission. A machine learning algorithm is used to classify and monitor any changes in patients’ wounds in real-time and can send a signal and data to a Smartphone. VC Investors are always adjusting their "Play Book" with a variety of options for investing. Mikal Ventures is one of those alternatives, offering curated solutions to real world problems. Reach out if you have questions on how we can be of assistance and bookmark https://mikalventures.com/ for additional insights and information.

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DCVC is thrilled to be partnering with the founders of Proxima, Zach Carpenter and Luca Naef, as well as Zak Kanter and the whole team at the company, to make biomolecular interactions programmable. DCVC led the $80M Series Seed financing at Proxima, our largest TechBio investment to date for any investment through Series A, along with NVIDIA NVentures as well as Magnetic Ventures, who both partnered with DCVC previously at Relation.

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Search Engines and LLMs have value because they are the origin point of the query. If you don’t have to manually enter the query though typing or voice the starting line for who gets to keep the finders fee moves. First to consciencess thought and eventually to subconscious preawareness. All queries are a cry for help to reduce “suffering”, an attempt to augment our domain over reality QUICKER. First principles: recognition and context in brains and AIs always precedes query.

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Lila Sciences has raised $235M in its first financing round backed by Flagship Pioneering. Their mission? To create a fully autonomous science engine that generates hypotheses, runs experiments, and learns — all without human intervention. While many biotech moonshots focus on verticals like drug discovery, Lila's ambition stretches across biology: from therapeutics to materials science, agriculture, and energy. A true multi-domain bet on what AI + automation could unlock for human progress. It’s an exciting time for founders rethinking the scientific method itself. Curious to see what founders and investors in Japan will build next in this direction. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gzt_yyGE #DeepTech #Biotech #AIinScience #AutonomousResearch #FlagshipPioneering #LilaSciences #VentureCapital #StartupFunding

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Why Now Is the Best Time Ever to Invest in Healthcare AI Startups By Andy Reid, Managing Partner, M3A Healthcare Ventures We are entering a once-in-a-generation window for investing in Healthcare AI—one where timing, technology, and major shifts in care are aligning to create outsized opportunities for early-stage venture capital. At M3A Healthcare Ventures, we believe this is the moment to invest boldly. 1. Healthcare Is Ripe for Disruption—And It Has To Be U.S. healthcare costs are projected to hit $7.2 trillion by 2031, yet outcomes lag behind every other developed nation. Workforce shortages, and fractured data systems create inefficiencies that AI is uniquely positioned to solve. • 25% of U.S. healthcare spending is administrative waste. • 90% of hospitals face staffing shortages in key roles. • Doctors spend 2 hours on documentation for every 1 hour with patients. AI isn’t a “nice to have” anymore. It’s becoming a critical tool for cost control, productivity, and quality improvement. 2. We’ve Entered the Platform Shift Era Apple Intelligence, OpenAI, and other foundation models have catalyzed a new generation of startups. In healthcare, this means real-time ambient documentation, predictive care, smart inventory management, and even AI-generated clinical trial design—all happening today. This is akin to investing in SaaS in 2006 or mobile apps in 2011. Except this time, the TAM is $4 trillion larger. 3. Buyers Are Ready—and They’re Buying Just five years ago, hospitals were wary of AI. Today, they’re budgeting for it. Health systems, ASCs, pharma, and insurers are deploying capital to integrate AI that: • Shortens revenue cycles • Boosts clinician efficiency • Reduces preventable readmissions • Enhances training and education with immersive tools In short: the demand isn’t theoretical—it’s contractually real. 4. Healthcare AI Has Multiple High-Value Exit Paths M&A activity is accelerating, and healthcare AI companies are being acquired by: • Strategics like Stryker (e.g., $130M for care.ai) • PE-backed rollups seeking operational efficiency • Big Tech, which is aggressively moving into healthcare These aren’t just tech exits. They’re life sciences, SaaS, and data infrastructure exits rolled into one—often with 3–5x higher revenue multiples. 5. We Have the Talent, Data, and Infrastructure The convergence of: • Open health data regulations (ONC Cures Act) • AI-native medical founders trained in both tech and care delivery • Decreasing costs and better modeling We finally have a clear runway to build and scale. The Next MedTech Unicorns Will Be AI-First The next wave will be built on data, AI, and automation. Investors who move now will back the next Teladoc, Intuitive, or Epic—except leaner, faster, and born in the AI-native era. #HealthcareAI #HealthTech #VentureCapital #DigitalHealth #AIinHealthcare #MedTech #ArtificialIntelligence #StartupInvestment #HealthTechStartups #VCFunding #AIStartup

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A quick thought on AI operating metrics. Over the past few weeks, headlines have been plastered with moves in AI, late stage healthcare funding and IPOs. For context, I’ve been buried in healthcare pitch decks evaluating Seed and Series A companies promising to shift care delivery with digital triage, LLM driven diagnostics, clinical decision support tools, RCM automation and chart abstraction across both consumer and enterprise. Most narratives pro forma multi million dollar ARR figures ramping at rapid clips over the next five to seven years until a liquidity event. So where am I going? This focus reminded me of a segment from famed eBoy and highly respectable, Bill Gurley in his recent Invest Like The Best interview, which kept echoing in my mind. “You might be getting compute cheaper from the wrapper company than from the model company who is getting it cheaper from the hosting company, and yet only the hyperscaler truly profits.” What I've found is behind an enticing AI growth chart lurks a hidden compute cost that must be clear and, for me, factored into underwriting. To illustrate why this matters, here is a simple assumption based example. Assumptions: 500 active users/per month 2,000 tokens/ per user/ month or (1,000,000 tokens total) Healthcare startup charges $75 sub per user/month COGS/user/month: $90 Gross loss per user: $15 Monthly cash burn: 500 × $15 = $7,500 Why this matters? ARR is not the same as cash flow. $37,500 in ARR can hide $7,500 of deferred burn every month. Compute is repeatedly resold. The same GPU cycles generate revenue at three separate layers, yet the layers above the application layer really capture the real profit. Hence, part of Bill's point. Margin discipline is essential and optimizing for each layer of the stack is critical. GPs can support sustainable growth by requiring clear paths to positive unit economics before celebrating ARR milestones.

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Last week at JPM — when everyone was talking about the future of healthcare — I moderated a panel focused on a fundamental question: how does the healthcare workforce actually scale in an AI-driven world? We dug into this with Carl Madi, Prabhjot Singh, MD PhD, and Ahmed Omar — and a few themes kept resurfacing:' • If healthcare spends more on labor than any other input, why are our most highly trained clinicians still buried in non-clinical work? • If AI can already handle documentation, triage, and pattern recognition, what should “entry-level” clinical work look like going forward? • Does AI compress years of clinical experience — and if so, how should supervision, trust, and team design evolve? • And the uncomfortable one: does AI actually reduce costs, or does it just help systems squeeze more output from the same people? What stood out is that the hardest shifts ahead aren’t technical — they’re economic, regulatory, and deeply human. Curious to hear from this community: What part of healthcare work do you think we’ll look back on in five years and ask, “Why were humans doing that?”

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Using AI for Health Innovation Fertility startup Inito's recent $29 million funding round highlights the growing intersection of AI and healthcare. Their focus on AI-designed antibodies aims to revolutionize at-home health testing, enhancing both the breadth and accuracy of these essential tools. At ElevenX Capital, we believe that such innovations could significantly impact personal health management and democratize access to medical testing. How do you see AI transforming the future of healthcare testing? #investing #innovation #venturecapital #entrepreneurship

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According to our Blazin Babes Capital women’s health FemTech Investment Thesis, a deep dive of research we conducted and reports we purchased that Stanford University uses, “Diagnostic Kits” in women’s health, including fertility, are one of the HIGHEST ROI investment opportunities in early stage venture capital investing. As a former fertility patient who led a global cross functional team of product innovation in corporate (primarily a male team who did not know I was going through fertility treatments) and where I needed to be in meetings in the office at 9AM as well as drive over an hour to work everyday, each week I was required to be at Fertility Center Of Illinois to get my follicles analyzed with an ultrasound and my blood drawn to analyze my estrogen and progesterone levels. Diagnostic Kits will save time and also positively impact the lives of so many women.

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For most of modern medical history, the “default human” in research was a 160 pound white man. Women were routinely excluded from clinical trials until the early 1990s. Even after policy changes, much of medicine — from cardiovascular research to sleep science — continued to rely on male-dominant data sets. The downstream effect? Gaps in understanding women’s physiology and health needs that we’re still working to close today. That’s why this announcement from Tom Hale and ŌURA matters so much. Today, ŌURA introduced its first proprietary large language model — purpose-built for health, and designed specifically to advance and empower women’s health insights. This isn’t a generic AI layer. It’s grounded in peer-reviewed clinical research and powered by the longitudinal biometric data Oura has been building for nearly a decade. Women’s bodies are dynamic — hormonal cycles influence temperature, sleep, recovery, cardiovascular strain. Personalized health requires context and pattern recognition over time, not one-size-fits-all advice. And just as important: privacy. As AI becomes a first stop for health questions, we Forerunner believe trust IS the product. Building a private, secure model reflects a commitment to responsible AI and long-term stewardship of deeply personal data. I’m especially proud that Oura is partnering with webAI — another Forerunner portfolio company I’m fortunate to be involved with — on this ground breaking initiative. Bringing together biometric intelligence, secure AI infrastructure, and a mission to advance women’s health is exactly the kind of ecosystem thinking that moves markets forward. As an investor and board member at Oura, I couldn’t be more inspired about this meaningful step forward towards what the future of healthcare can and should look be for us all. Congratulations to Tom Hale, Dorothy Kilroy, Ricky Bloomfield, Holly Shelton, Shyamal Patel and the entire ŌURA team. Onward and upwards!

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Tarek Mouhieddine M.D. and I are excited to announce that POM Health is coming out of stealth today and opening a limited beta to early customers. We were founded with a simple mission of catching as many cancers as possible as early as possible and upgrading a cancer screening paradigm that too often catches disease late.  In the U.S., screening catches just ~14% of cancer cases, and around half of diagnoses are made at Stage III+. Despite having world-class detection technologies, we routinely screen for just 5 out of 200+ cancer types, often at multi-year intervals between screens, and most people won’t interact with an oncologist until there’s already a high suspicion of cancer. The result: 625k+ deaths from cancer annually in the US, 70% of which are in cancers without guideline-recommended screening, and far too many people believe their annual physical is an effective warning system. Elite cancer centers around the world (like where Tarek practices) have made significant advances in cancer detection and interception that have not yet translated to our primary care and insurance-driven screening system. With AI, we can now bring these advances to millions. Through POM Health, we offer access to more comprehensive cancer screening. Screening is led by world class oncologists, powered by AI, and accessible via telehealth, with one-time and annual subscription offerings.   POM's cancer screens use multiple detection modalities (including sample-based biomarkers, MCED, imaging, and genetics) to provide broad coverage across 90%+ of cancers, with overlapping coverage for 80%+. When a cancer signal is detected, your POM oncologist drives the next step quickly. The lifetime risk of acquiring cancer stands at 39% in the US and early onset cancers have doubled since 1990. Cancer isn't a rare disease and we believe people should have an option to mitigate their cancer risk.  Now serving beta test users in: MA, NY, and FL (CA soon, and waitlist open for all other states) Learn more: https://lnkd.in/e9qcaru9 Questions: lucas@pomhealth.xyz or tarek@pomhealth.xyz (POM = Peace of Mind, which everyone deserves when it comes to cancer) Thanks also to our first investor Leo Korsunsky!

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💡 Very important to understand the nature of innovative medical technology adoption as distinct from other fields, including even biotechnology and drugs. This is especially critical to grasp in the context of evaluating the impact of policies that increase or reduce timelines and capital required to ultimately see patients access medical innovation, including least burdensome (but rigorous) regulatory standards, coding, coverage and payment for reimbursement, robust intellectual property protection, antitrust, and taxes & tariffs. cc: AdvaMed AdvaMed Accel Medical Device Manufacturers Association (MDMA) FDA Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services American Medical Association Medical Device Innovation Consortium (MDIC) National Venture Capital Association

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#AmTech Weekly Roundup:    Citizen Health raised $30 million in Series A funding from 8VC, Headline, and Transformation Capital. Citizen is building a healthcare advocacy and navigation platform for patients with chronic illnesses.  Farid Vij, Nasha Fitter Vulcan Elements raised $65 million in Series A funding from Altimeter and One Investment Management. Vulcan is reshoring production of rare-earth magnets, which are used in everything from drones to semiconductor fabrications to hard drives and automotive vehicles.   John Maslin, Piotr Kulik GoodShip raised $25 million in Series B funding from Greenfield Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Ironspring Ventures. Goodship is building an AI-powered freight management platform, analyzing shipping and operations data to reduce transportation costs and lateness.   Ryan Soskin, David Tsai #SupplyChain #Healthcare #CriticalMinerals #VC

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How AI Makes Medicine More Humane: An Analysis by Chatfuel CEO A new article from Fedor Pak, CEO of our portfolio company Chatfuel, has been published. Pavel wrote a column in MedCity News about how AI is transforming patient interactions in clinics. Key points from the article worth taking note of: ▪️ AI shouldn't replace doctors; it should assist. Medical clinics don't need an "all-knowing digital doctor." A much more useful tool is a "polite assistant with maximum functionality," who reminds patients about appointments 24/7, forwards instructions, answers common questions, and helps with scheduling. ▪️ Time savings and revenue growth. In real-world cases, communication automation allows clinics to process 3-5 times more requests without hiring new staff, reduces the number of patients who don't show up for appointments without warning by up to 45%, and increases the volume of paid procedures by 20-40% per week. ▪️ Automation makes clinics more humane. Doctors spend an average of almost 6 hours maintaining electronic medical records for every 8 hours they spend seeing patients. When AI takes over routine tasks, doctors arrive at their appointments less burned out and more focused. ▪️ It's not just about chatbots; communication automation is just the first step. AI support for clinical decision-making, predictive follow-ups, automated documentation, and more innovative anamnesis collection processes will follow. If you work in HealthTech or clinics, I recommend reading the entire article. It's an efficient and insightful look at the implementation of AI in healthcare. 🔗 Read the article on MedCity News: https://lnkd.in/eW8Nr-s6

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The global healthcare landscape is rapidly evolving, and Canadian healthcare providers are uniquely positioned to capitalize on one of the most promising emerging markets: virtual care for international patients from growing upper middle class populations. As economies in regions like Southeast Asia, Latin America, and parts of Africa continue to expand, a new demographic is emerging—educated, digitally-savvy professionals with disposable income who seek high-quality healthcare but face local system limitations. These patients are increasingly turning to telemedicine solutions that connect them with physicians in countries known for medical excellence, and Canada's reputation for healthcare quality, coupled with our multicultural expertise, makes us an attractive destination for virtual consultations. What makes this segment particularly compelling is the convergence of several factors: improved global internet infrastructure, growing comfort with digital health platforms post-COVID, and the rising purchasing power of emerging market middle classes who prioritize health investments. Canadian physicians can leverage existing telemedicine infrastructure to serve patients across time zones, offering specialized consultations, second opinions, and ongoing care management that may not be readily available in patients' home countries. This represents not just a revenue opportunity, but a chance to extend Canadian healthcare expertise globally while addressing real gaps in international healthcare access. For healthcare entrepreneurs and established practices alike, the international virtual care market offers a scalable path to growth that aligns profit with purpose. The Singh Twins' Indigo: The Colour of India

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