Why Clear wants to get into health care market

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From STAT’s Brittany Trang: Today Clear — yes, the people with the fast lanes at the the airport — announced the results of a study it did with e-prescriber-turned-health-information-network Surescripts. The case study focuses on how Clear’s biometric-based identity verification technology boosted the efficiency of Surescripts’ identity verification for the health care providers accessing its network.

But what is Clear doing in health care, broadly? The company’s head of healthcare, David Bardan, explained it to me like this last month: A person living in New York City might get care at any combination of CityMD, NYU Langone, Mount Sinai, Northwell, etc., but their information isn’t attached to them. It’s stuck in each health system’s EHR. “What CLEAR can do is we can verify that you are the same you that exists across all those different contexts, and we can help you carry along your information as you go from system to system,” he said.

That kind of information-corralling is useful for patients who need all of their info in one place for care, enrolling in clinical trials, or just to increase the level of identity verification when logging into a patient portal or picking up a prescription, said Bardan. In an age where health data breaches are rising so fast, such a promise might sound too good to be true.

Brain implant breakthrough speeds up processing time

A team of researchers from University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Francisco were able to solve a key problem for many brain-computer interfaces: lag. Their Nature Neuroscience study describes how their experimental device was able to shrink the time between when a study participant had a thought, and when the words were broadcast. 

In a new story, STAT’s Rose Broderick unpacks how the researchers managed to get the brain interface to broadcast as many as 90 words per minute. If the technology is proven out and commercialized, the tech works fast enough that it might enable people with paralysis to carry on real time conversations. Read more here

Big AI fundraises draw attention

Rock Health this week published its closely watched quarterly tally of fundraise announcements, reporting $3 billion in digital health raises. At a high-level, the number is slightly above last year’s Q1 number, but now that the market for health tech fundraising has stabilized, the intrigue lies in the nuance. The authors in particular call out “the return of larger late-stage funding deals” including $100+ mega deals for Qventus, Abridge, and Innovaccer.  It’s not at all surprising that those deals were all about AI. Rock Health’s post also includes an interesting analysis of “leapfrogging” strategies companies can employ to get ahead during turbulent times.

Industry news

• Daymark Health, a company providing virtual and other care services to people with cancer, announced it raised $11.5 million from Maverick Ventures and Yosemite.
•  Thatch, a startup that helps companies offer ICHRA benefits to their workers, announced a $40 million Series B ed by Index Ventures with Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, The General Partnership, ADP Ventures, and SemperVirens.  
• Virtual care giant Teladoc Health this morning announced a new Cardiometabolic Health Program.

What we’re reading

• Republicans are proud of creating Medicare Advantage. Now some are urging reform amid runaway costs, STAT
• An IVF alternative could make having babies less onerous, Wired
• Why cameras are popping up in eldercare facilities, New York Times
• Federal commission calls for $15 billion in new biotech funding to counter China’s rise, STAT