Paging Dr. GPT? Tech Investors Bet AI Finally Poised to Transform Health Care
Top venture firms are betting that rapid advances in artificial intelligence and the public fascination with ChatGPT will help tech startups to transform health care after years of Silicon Valley struggling to move the needle in the industry.
Andreessen Horowitz has been investing in a steady stream of startups that are looking to capitalize on the AI boom to improve medical care. That includes companies building AI tools to help with patient care and reduce the burden of clinical note-taking, as well as using AI to try to discover new drugs more quickly than traditional methods. Last week, the firm co-led a $200 million round in the AI-powered drug discovery company, Genesis Therapeutics. General Catalyst, Menlo Ventures, Lux Capital and others are also investing in AI health care startups.
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.
But health care, which is tightly regulated and still relies heavily on fax machines, has proven uniquely difficult for tech companies to crack. International Business Machines Corp. sold off some Watson Health assets last year, a setback for its goal to use AI to help health care providers analyze data and revolutionize cancer treatment. Amazon, meanwhile, abandoned a high-profile attempt to disrupt the industry with JPMorgan Chase & Co and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Moreover, the large language models underpinning generative AI
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