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New medical company relies on AI to improve medical practice
Dereck Paul, a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco, was concerned that innovation in medical software was lagging behind other sectors, such as finance and aerospace. He came to the conclusion that patients are best served when doctors have state-of-the-art software, and dreamed of creating a company that would prioritize the needs of patients and doctors over hospital administrators or insurance companies.
The launch of Glass Health
Paul has teamed up with Graham Ramsey, his friend and an engineer at Modern Fertility, a technology company specializing in women's health, to launch Glass Health in 2021. Glass Health offers a notebook that doctors can use to store, organize and share their diagnostic and treatment approaches throughout their careers; Ramsey describes it as a "personal knowledge management system" for learning and practicing medicine.
A commitment to technological innovation
Paul said, "During the pandemic, Ramsey and I witnessed the crushing burden on our healthcare system and the growing crisis of healthcare provider burnout. I experienced burnout myself as a medical student on hospital rotations and later as an internal medicine resident physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Our empathy for front-line providers drove us to create a company resolutely focused on maximizing the use of technology to improve the practice of medicine."
The pivot to generative AI
Glass Health generated a lot of interest on social networks, particularly X (formerly Twitter), among doctors, nurses and doctors-in-training, and this resulted in the company's first round of funding of $1.5 million, led by Breyer Capital in 2022. Glass Health was then accepted into Y Combinator's winter 2023 promotion. But earlier this year, Paul and Ramsey decided to pivot the company towards generative AI - embracing the growing trend.
Glass Health's AI tool
Glass Health now offers an AI tool powered by a Large Language Model (LLM), a technology similar to that used by OpenAI's ChatGPT, to generate "evidence-based" diagnoses and treatment options for patients to consider. Physicians can enter descriptions such as "71-year-old man with history of myocardial infarction presents with progressive subacute exertional dyspnea" or "65-year-old woman with history of diabetes and hyperlipidemia presents with acute onset chest pain and excessive sweating", and Glass Health's AI will provide a likely prognosis and clinical plan.
The potential and limits of LLMs in medicine
In theory, Glass Health's tool sounds incredibly useful. However, even cutting-edge LLMs have proven exceptionally bad at giving medical advice. Other companies, such as Babylon Health and Cass, have been criticized for health AI technologies that gave unsafe or inaccurate advice. This raises questions about the reliability and accuracy of medical AI tools.
Glass Health's control over its AI
Paul says Glass Health's approach gives him "precise control" over his AI's results, and guides his AI to "reflect the latest medical knowledge and guidelines". Part of this approach involves collecting user data to improve Glass' underlying LLMs - a move that may not please all patients.
Many first-time adopters
Glass Health is not struggling to find early adopters. To date, the platform has over 59,000 users and already offers a "direct to clinician" offering for a monthly subscription fee. This year, Glass will begin testing an enterprise offering integrated with HIPAA-compliant electronic health records; 15 unnamed health systems and enterprises are on the waiting list, according to Paul.
Conclusion
With total funding of $6.5 million, Glass plans to devote resources to creating, reviewing and updating clinical guidelines used by the platform, fine-tuning AI and R&D in general. Paul says Glass has four years of funding available.
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