In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, we look at the New York city nurses’ strike, why Yann LeCun’s AI startup is focused on healthcare, Epic’s new predictive tools, and more. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.
The largest nurses’ strike in New York City’s history entered its 10th day on Wednesday with no end in sight.
Nearly 15,000 workers are striking at three big hospital systems: New York-Presbyterian, Mount Sinai and Montefiore Medical Center. The nurses said that the action was necessary to improve staffing, pay and security. Violence has become an increasing concern, with reports of patients punching and kicking nurses; in November, a gunman threatened to shoot up the Mount Sinai emergency department.
The New York State Nurses Association contract expired on December 31. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took office on January 1, stood with the striking nurses, saying that there is “no shortage of wealth in the healthcare industry.”
The strike comes as New York has been hit with a surge in flu cases, driven by a new variant called subclade K, and as President Trump and Republican-majority Congress have slashed federal healthcare subsidies to the state by billions of dollars.
The hospitals affected by the strike remain open, and have been hiring traveling nurses to cover for workers on the picket lines. Kenneth Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, a trade group that has assisted hospitals in their strike planning, told The New York Times that the three hospitals have cumulatively spent more than $100 million to hire temporary nurses and rent hotels for them.
The most recent similar strike in New York, in 2023, involved 7,000 nurses and lasted for three days. But this time, the two sides appear to be digging in. As of Wednesday, there were no new bargaining sessions scheduled.
Meanwhile, New York may be just the beginning. In California, some 31,000 Kaiser Permanente workers threatened to strike as early as next Monday. Their contract expired in September, and they previously held a five-day work stoppage in October.
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Why Yann LeCun’s New AI Startup Is Targeting Healthcare
In November, Yann LeCun, one of the world’s foremost AI experts, announced he would leave his role as Meta’s chief AI scientist to start his own company, focused on building a new type of AI called world models. He’s now executive chairman of Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs, which is seeking to raise funds at a valuation of some $3.5 billion. But he made a seemingly unusual choice for CEO: Alex LeBrun, cofounder of a health tech startup based in Paris that uses AI to transcribe doctor visits.
That might sound like a niche choice for an AI lab. But it indicates the buzzy company, whose tech attempts to understand the world by learning from videos and spatial data as well as text, will have a significant emphasis on healthcare. Its first announced partnership will be with LeBrun’s company, Nabla.
“Healthcare is my baby, and we know what problems we cannot solve today,” LeBrun said in an interview on the sidelines of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco. “We hope that this new branch [of AI] will help us move beyond what we can do today in healthcare.”
Read more here.
Epic Is Rolling Out New Predictive Tools With ‘Curiosity’
Medical records giant Epic is rolling out new predictive digital tools, called ‘Curiosity,’ trained on more than 100 billion patient medical events. Curiosity is now available to researchers at academic hospitals who already use its ‘Cosmos’ datasets, with the goal of getting some early predictions for real-world use later this year.
“Once we find predictions that are highly reliable, we will turn it into something that every doctor can consume,” Phil Lindemann, Epic’s vice president of data and research told Forbes during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference.
The questions it hopes to answer range from the critical (“Can we predict pancreatic cancer?) to the mundane (“What tests should be offered to a patient with an earache?”) with the overarching goal of using data to speed up quality medical care.
Early predictions are likely to be more operational than clinical–yet could still have patient impact, Lindemann said. For example, by predicting patients’ discharge dates, a 600-bed hospital might be able to improve its operational planning, keeping beds filled without overbooking. “It will seem like Epic got smarter,” he said.
Deal of the Week
Zarminali Pediatrics raised $110 million led by Healthier Capital, the VC firm founded by One Medical’s Amir Dan Rubin, to expand its tech-enabled approach to pediatric care. The new cash brings Zarminali’s total funding to $150 million. The company declined to disclose valuation. Danish Qureshi, the company’s CEO, previously cofounded mental health provider LifeStance Health. He started Zarminali after struggling to figure out care for his daughter who had been diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder in 2023. Axios previously reported that the Chicago-based startup was targeting an $80 million raise last spring.
WHAT WE’RE READING
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