The Chatter on Healthcare 2024- Tau's Look Ahead

AI has been a waxing and waning topic mainstay of the past few years, with the frenzy of Gen AI carrying new angles of opportunities for age-old problems in healthcare such as scribing, paperwork, and friction in entry points of patient care. Since the start of the fund in 2019, we have remained bullish on AI’s impact as a lubricant to inefficiencies of the healthcare ecosystem, but as we go into 2024, we look forward to iterating with founders on the second order unlocks of how software can seamlessly fit into our healthcare system. In the context of digital health trends, we strongly believe that AI, though not a panacea, will serve as a new ground zero: a starting platform for solutions for the future of technology serving the needs of healthcare.?

Here are a few topics to start the conversations this year:

1. AI layered into Care Delivery- As startups continue to service the care continuum both in and out of the clinic/hospital, we may continue to see AI being integrated into the tech stack, not as the front and center piece of the platform, but as an invisible integral part of augmenting care via ways such as but not limited to automatic dosing titration, triaging care, matching patients with correct providers and helping clinicians operate at the top of their license through inbox management.?
2. Value Based Care- we may be seeing a closing gap between the misalignment of fee for service rewards for individual clinicians versus organizational level value based care rewards, which would enable a lot less friction in incentives to partner with startups that drive for true patient outcome instead of patient volume increase. AI algorithms are highly efficient at augmenting pattern recognition on the individual diagnosis level and on the broader population health level. With growth of ACOs that have participated in Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) and the ACO REACH Program (formerly the Direct Contracting ACO Program), AI’s value-add may continue to prove out in its scalability.?
3. Women’s Health/Femtech- alongside the early stage successful rounds of companies such as Midi Health, Evvy, more attention has been focused around spaces such as fertility, pregnancy, childcare, and menopause patient experience. Though there are plenty of white spaces that exist, Tau has made a bet in the space (announced soon) and is excited about companies continuing to reduce bottlenecks in the space through patient matching algorithms, streamlining clinician workflows and enabling complex at home care for women.

If you’re a founder looking to bounce ideas around, feel free to reach out!

Primary author of this article is Sharon Huang. Originally published on “Data Driven Investor.” ? These are purposely short articles focused on practical insights (we call it gl;dr — good length; did read). See here for other such articles. If this article had useful insights for you, comment away and/or give a like on the article and on the Tau Ventures’ LinkedIn page, with due thanks for supporting our work. All opinions expressed here are from the author(s).