BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND - MARCH 16: A nurse uses a wireless electronic tablet to order medicines from the pharmacy at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital on March 16, 2010 in Birmingham, England. As the UK gears up for one of the most hotly contested general elections in recent history it is expected that that the economy, immigration, industry, the NHS and education are likely to form the basis of many of the debates.
These investments mirror the enthusiasm among larger tech companies like Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which are moving aggressively to expand their footprints in the lucrative health care industry. In July, Amazon unveiled HealthScribe, a generative AI tool that can help health care providers summarize doctors visits. Google is also said to be testing a medical chatbot in hospitals.
“It took 20 years for the internet to really transform everything,” Pande told Bloomberg. He likens the current state of AI in health care to where the internet was in 2005. The internet had started to seep into everyday life, but “we weren’t doing everything in our lives on the internet that we are today.”
Large pharmaceutical companies, along with a slew of newer entrants, are betting AI will speed up the process of discovering new drugs and therapies by combing through and analyzing vast data sets. These efforts predate the rise of ChatGPT and have had mixed success, but heightened attention on AI and advances in the technology could help boost momentum.
Other startups are sitting out the AI funding boom, for now. Insitro raised about $700 million prior to the rise of ChatGPT and is using AI to develop therapeutics for fatty liver disease and tuberous sclerosis complex, a rare disease that causes neurological issues in children.