154 - Deepfakes Are Tricking Companies | Here’s Why Healthcare Should Care

Show Notes

Vic hosts solo as Marcus steps away after losing a pet, then runs a tight roundup: stronger corporate earnings and Fed minutes ahead of Jackson Hole; likely September rate‑cut odds; venture moves including Molecular You’s $5M biomarkers raise, Eight Sleep’s $100M and retail push plus FDA plans; AI in revenue cycle with Develop Health’s $14.3M; Chamath’s new SPAC with tougher sponsor terms; AAP guidance diverging from CDC on pediatric COVID shots; Medicare Advantage star‑ratings loss for a plan and a $289M whistleblower hit for CVS; UnitedHealth’s new governance committee; Emory layoffs and WARN‑act suit, Mass General Brigham’s layoff costs; FDA expanding Wegovy to liver disease; rising survival and uncertainty with metastatic cancers; Circle insider selling after its IPO; Texas AG probing Meta and Character.AI mental‑health claims; EHR AI escalation from Epic (160 projects) and Athenahealth, plus Google’s on‑device Magic Queue and Fitbit coaching; deepfake risks from politics to CEO scams, with a NYT quiz that fools viewers; and a Loom “lamp” robot that folds laundry.

Links

0:48 Strong Crop of Earnings Eases Investors’ Economic Concerns WSJ

1:38 Fed Minutes Reveal Broad Support for Holding Rates Steady Last Month WSJ

2:34 Behind Powell’s Big Gamble in Final Jackson Hole Speech NYT

3:40 B.C. healthy longevity company Molecular You raises $5M to expand biomarker testing Geek Wire

4:05 Eight Sleep raises $100 million, preps retail stores Axios=

5:18 Develop Health garners $14.3M for AI prior authorization platform Mobi Health

5:59 ‘Spac King’ Chamath Palihapitiya returns with a new blank-cheque vehicle https://www.axios.com/2025/08/20/chamath-palihapitiya-spac

7:58 Leading Pediatrics Group Recommends Covid-19 Shots for Young Children, Differing From CDC WSJ

9:01 Elevance Health loses Medicare Advantage star ratings suit to CMS Fierce Healhcare

10:00 Pennsylvania judge hits CVS with $289M fine in whistleblower suit Fierce Healthcare

10:34 UnitedHealth forms board committee focused on enhanced governance Fierce Healthcare

11:07 Former Emory Healthcare employee files class action lawsuit after wave of layoffs  Atlanta News First

12:28  Despite stronger Q3, Mass General Brigham's operations down $44M across 9 months due to layoff expenses Fierce Healthcare

12:54 FDA Approves Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy for Liver Disease WSJ

13:26 A New Reality for Terminal Cancer: Longer Lives, With Chronic Uncertainty WSJ

15:33 CEO Jeremy Allaire Is Selling Circle Stock Yahoo

16:59 Texas attorney general accuses Meta, Character.AI of misleading kids with mental health claims TechCrunch

18:11 How athenahealth is approaching AI for physician practices as tech innovation accelerates Fierce Healthcare

18:45

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What is Health:Further?

Every week, healthcare VCs and Jumpstart Health Investors co-founders Vic Gatto and Marcus Whitney review and unpack the happenings in US Healthcare, finance, technology and policy. With a firm belief that our healthcare system is doomed without entrepreneurship, they work through the mud to find the jewels, highlight headwinds and tailwinds, and bring on the smartest guests to fill in the gaps.

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Thank you.

Okay, welcome everyone to Health further.

We have a little bit of different show.

I'm fine solo.

Today, Marcus had a path that he had to put to sleep.

Just one of the hardest things really ever to do.

I've had several dogs had to put to sleep.

Um, so he's working through that.

Uh, so we have some news to share.

It's gonna be a little bit of abbreviated show this week 'cause I won't have the back and forth with Marcus, but I will do my best to go through it.

And, um, we will go from there.

So let's, uh, jump in.

Okay, the first story, we'll, we'll cover the economy like we always do first, uh, from the Wall Street Journal, strong, proper earnings eases, investors' economic concern.

So, um, corporate profits has been earning season over the last month or so, and, uh, the earnings have been much better with, uh, more companies.

Not necessarily healthcare companies, but companies overall meeting earnings or beating estimates.

Um, and then the journal points out, they have a graphic here that I have put up on the screen that, uh, the companies, the way the management team mentioned, you know, recession having an effect came down dramatically.

So, uh, companies at least are not blaming recession and looking to recession.

They're doing well in earnings and that is supporting.

Stock market growth, which is, it's come down a little bit, but not at all time highs, but very high.

Moving over to the Fed.

So the Fed Minutes were released this week, and, uh, the article is Fed Minutes Reveal Broad support for holding rates steady last month.

This is in the Wall Street Journal and so, um, all it says, almost all the Fed officials were in agreement backing the interest rate decision to, to not cut, even though two did vote for a rate cut officially.

Um, so I don't know.

There's a, there's a big conference at Jackson Hole, Wyoming this week.

Um, chairman Powell's gonna speak tomorrow, so we're recording on Thursday evening.

And of course, I don't know what he is gonna say tomorrow, uh, but I think most people are expecting there to be one rate cut in September for a while.

There were two and then, um, on Poly Market.

And then this week it's been sort of walked back and it seems like they're.

Leading towards one.

New York Times had a good story.

Powell was on the cusp of taking a big gamble with the US economy.

Um, in my, I mean I've been on the show for many months, maybe, maybe quarters, talking about that there's more of a jobs concern than there is an inflation concern.

Powell, uh, not sure agrees with that.

He seems still concerned about inflation.

I think we will have.

A little bit of inflation this fall, but then we're gonna have almost all of next year down disinflation, meaning smaller inflation anyway.

Uh, he will give a speech tomorrow.

He's gonna try to balance between, uh, you know, the two mandates.

Uh, keeping prices and check well also for employment.

Hard to say, we're just gonna, what he's gonna talk about, but I think he's gonna sort of.

You know, do the typical economists on one hand.

This on the other hand, that, and not say that much, but we'll see.

Um, so I expect one rate cut in September, um, but it's hard to know what he'll say tomorrow.

Of course, this will.

Well, when this comes out Saturday, we will have all heard it jumping into venture markets.

So, a um, British Columbia company, Canadian company in longevity called molecular u, just raised $5 million to continue its work on finding biomarkers.

And so that's, that's positive.

It's good to see our Canadian neighbors raising some money.

Um, and so I like, there's a lot of longevity companies we're seeing getting funded.

The next one is a company called Eight Sleep, raised a hundred million dollars and it's a sleep um, company.

They're gonna open up retail stores.

They are capitalizing on HHS.

Um.

Idea of trying to get all Americans to have a wearable that they track their metrics on.

Um.

He told Congress this is an Axio story about the raises.

Um, they're saying it's related that my vision is for every American to be wear and a wearable within four years.

That's what Kennedy said to Congress eight.

Sleep has a smart mattress cover.

It's not technically a wearable.

People lie on it.

Um, but it fits within that category.

And then they also.

Are working on a, um, FDA clearance for medical device, one for sleep apnea, and another for menopause.

So interesting.

We have a couple investments ourselves in this, uh, track, uh, heart rate, respiratory rate, other metrics while you sleep.

It's pretty interesting because of course every, uh, you can get compliance much better than other things.

'cause people of course, go to the same bed typically every night or at least many nights in a week.

Okay, from Moby Health News, develop health.

Raised $14.3 million for AI prior authorization platform.

This is in the arms race, uh, between providers, health systems sort of gearing up for, you know, what they term revenue cycle and trying to get the most reimbursement from the payers.

And then on the payer side, they determine prior authorization.

It's an arms race.

Both sides are gearing up and I think it's gonna continue, but develop health, raise capital to, to work on the the payer side.

So series A funding, um, and A four Capital and Self-Power Commons.

Led the round.

Um, also from Axios Shaath, um, probably the best known spac.

I think he refers to himself as the SPAC King.

He has come out with a new spac.

He did maybe, I don't know, five or six SPACs, um, maybe three successful and three not so successful in the post pandemic, uh, craziness.

I think we all agree that we need more.

Public companies and stack is a, is a good vehicle, creative vehicle.

Um, some people are claiming this is, this is, um, a sign that we're at the peak of a bubble.

I don't think it is.

I think, um, I looked at the terms, um, unlike last time, the terms are quite d. Chamath is, uh, putting his own value at risk in this case.

So typically, uh, the organizer, the team related to a SPAC would get 20% of the raise, um, as their incentive.

And that is sort the, your benefit for doing that as long as it, you've, you acquire something, uh, within a year of going public, you are able to.

Gain that incentive.

Uh, Chamath has made it harder for himself.

So he is not gonna take, he's, he's not gonna earn, his, not gonna invest his shares unless the share price doubles from the IPO price, uh, which is pretty interesting.

Uh, but then he's taking 30% as opposed to 20.

So putting his own value at risk here.

And, uh, it's kind of interesting.

I think, you know, certainly it's much more aligned.

He, you know, has one of, he's good at marketing, so he has a pretty good marketing name for it.

American Exceptionalism Acquisition A. Um, so I don't know.

We'll see.

It'd be interesting to watch if this new structure with putting your, uh.

Sort of incentive pay at risk will have a, a better effect, certainly will align interest more.

Okay.

Moving into policy, we had a story in the Wall Street Journal.

Leading pediatrics group recommends COVID to 19 shots for young children, differing from the C, d, C, so of course h, h, s, and CD.

C. Altered their guidance for children.

Um, this is the American Academy of Pediatrics and they're coming out with immunization guidelines that all children ages six months through 23 months should get vaccinated.

And then if you have risk, people with risk factors in your household.

Then children, um, who are a little bit older should also get it interesting to see the battle between CDC and this, um, you know, physician group ca, American Academy of Pediatrics.

I think it's not a good thing for our health system to have due and regulatory bodies, dueling experts.

Um, I think it's gonna drive more confusion than anything.

Uh, but that's the state of play.

We are in policy, unfortunately.

So that came out this week.

Okay.

In Fierce Healthcare, Elance Health loses Medicare Advantage Star rating suit to CMS.

So Elance was arguing that they deserved, uh, another star, higher star ratings.

And they lost this account, this case, um, it's pretty interesting.

They, they scored, um, 3.7 4 9 6 9 5 on one contract.

And if they had scored, um, 3.75, which of course is quite close to 3.7496, um, they would've gotten four stars overall.

Um, and the judge came back and said that.

3.749 is not 3.75, which of course is true, but it's pretty close.

Um, so they lost that case.

Um, and it's about a $375 million, um, grievance that they did not.

Moving on.

CVS got hit with a $289 million fine in a whistleblower case.

This is also from Fierce Healthcare, and the court ruled that, uh, it was a class action that they owed money to this group that CVS Caremark had pushed insurers, including Aetna, where she worked to submit inflated pharmaceutical claims to the federal government.

And so it's a whistleblower case and they lost that 289.

Almost $290 million.

So CVS continues to have a difficult year.

And then United, so United formed a board committee focused on governance.

I think this is a good step.

It's, it's really united, adding strength to their corporate governance.

Um, it's unclear if they feel like they need that 'cause there's some oversight, uh, problem.

Or it's, uh, sort of preventative or protective.

Uh, but they're beginning to put things in place, uh, in Minnesota.

So United Health Group added this extra committee that is the payer group.

Uh, now we're gonna move on to health systems.

Emory laid off, uh, about 232 people, um, on Wednesday this week.

So fairly small layoff.

They have about 3000 employees.

Um, but in the.

Atlanta News first, uh, read an article.

Former Emory Healthcare employee files a lawsuit after wave of layoffs.

And so the lawsuit claims that they didn't follow the proper notice period under the, the Warrant Act.

I'm not sure what that is, but they didn't give the 60 days advance notice.

Um, they laid people off with very little notice, and so they're being sued for that.

Um.

It's hard to tell.

I think that that WARN act only works if it's a mass layoff.

And I think there's some question about, you know, is this number of people, does it justify a being called a mass layoff?

Of course, 200 and 230 people out of 30,000 would not be that.

Um.

There is a claim that it was a significant portion of, I think one department in Emory.

And so there'll be a debate over that, either way.

Uh, a sign of the times where another health system is laying off folks.

Fierce Healthcare, mass General Brighams, so up in Boston now.

Health system.

Really great health system in Boston.

Despite a stronger Q3 in operations, um, their operations were down$44 million across the nine month.

And this was due to one-time costs related to a layoff they did.

So the operations are doing well for Mass General.

Uh, but they did have that one time, uh, expense related to the layoffs.

Moving into pharmaceuticals from the Wall Street Journal.

The FD approved Novo Wegovy for liver disease.

So Novo was able to get a.

Application, uh, treating fatty liver disease with wegovy.

Um, and so the stock market liked that.

Shares were up about 5% when the news came out.

Um, good to see Novo finding new, uh, applications after they were getting so much pressure from hims and hers and, and others in this space.

Okay, moving on to about health and us and I found a pretty interesting story in the Wall Street Journal.

About cancer.

So its title is New Reality for Terminal Cancer, longer Lives With Chronic Uncertainty.

So we are making a lot of progress in treating cancer and I've pulled up, if you're watching this on YouTube, which you should, I have pulled up the graphics on the Wall Street Journal, estimated people that are still living with cancer, metastatic cancer after diagnosis.

Um, has gone up dramatically.

So more than 690,000 people are projected to be living with stage four or metastatic cancer.

Um, between six of the most common types, um, melanoma, breast cancer, bladder cancer, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, or lung cancer.

And so this is great news that the, um, you know, the mortality rate is.

Declining dramatically.

People are able to live with, you know, some of these are the most com, some of the most common cancers.

Um, I think really the first one that we saw really turn around was breast cancer.

But now all of these long prostate, prostate had incredible turnaround, colorectal, skin cancer, melanoma, bladder cancer.

Um, we are able to find treatments that sort of hold back the cancer.

Um, and the chemotherapy or radiation treatments typically last for a couple years, then the cancer will mutate.

Uh, so it is not, um, for all times really, you have to find another one and another one.

So you have uncertainty.

Um, but we're making progress and so that's a great thing that people don't die.

Uh, but you bring up this, uh.

Chronic living with what will happen in the next three months, six months, 12 months.

Uh, so.

It's a good problem, but a problem that we're now turning to how we deal with the chronic cancer treatment moving into our Web3 coverage.

So we, we talked about circle, there was a huge IPO, uh, maybe a month ago or so, and it's been down since then.

All the excitement from the IPO kind of wore off.

And then this week, the CEO and a group of insiders.

Sold, um, about 10 million shares into the open market, uh, in secondary.

And so they raised 1.4 billion selling their own shares that, uh, obviously caused some pressure on the stock is down 4%, uh, over the last 24 hours.

And so circle, that's not a good sign when insiders are selling.

Uh, it could be that they just have a lot and they're, you know, of course.

Trying to diversify their holdings.

But if it was, you know, really off the races and doing well, I don't think you'd see them selling 10 million shares.

So, um, so I have a wait and see approach on circle.

Um, it's gonna be true that, uh, stable coins, you know, where they hold value are going to be the way that a lot of transactions happen.

It's not clear if there are various entry and if circa will get.

You know, enough of the market to really be justifying the share price.

They might, but I'm sort of taking a wait and see approach and then the insider selling is never great.

Okay.

This was from TechCrunch, uh, the Texas Attorney General accuses meta and character ai.

Of misleading kids with mental health claims.

And so, uh, the Texas Attorney General was Ken Paxon.

He has launched an investigation to meta and character AI for potentially engaging deceptive trade practices, including misleading marketing themselves as mental health tools.

And so I think this is.

You know, one, it's a serious accusation.

Two, it is, you know, directly in healthcare and behavioral health.

And so there are disclaimers on the websites, uh, both meta and character.

Um, but maybe not clear enough.

And especially for children, it can be confusing.

It can be confusing for adults to know, um, you know, is this safe?

And then furthermore, uh, both meta and character ai.

Have a policy of using your data to, um, serve you better content, is what they call it.

That also can be translated, I think as ads.

So I think probably good that the Texas Attorney General is looking into it.

Uh, we'll see what comes of this.

Okay.

Um, Athena Health, this is in fierce healthcare.

Athena Health is approaching AI for physician practices as the tech innovation accelerates.

So we saw last week, Oracle came out with their AI first.

HR Athena has rolled out their new platform.

They're calling it AI Native.

So.

You know, certainly rhymes with AI first.

So we're seeing all of the big platforms.

Of course, Oracle, Athena, two of the biggest, Athena's more in ambulatory practices.

Uh, and then also Epic.

They had their big developer conference this week.

It's going on right now.

Uh, but they unveiled multiple AI solutions inside the Epic, eh, HRI think it's a hundred, yeah, 160.

AI projects both internally and with partners.

Um, so they are really coming out guns blazing as are Oracle Athena.

So I think we're gonna start to see, um, you know, does it make sense to, and Epic particularly talked about, um, ambient scribing as being now just bundled in to the Epic service.

That's quite a challenge for, uh, the point systems that have race capital and they're doing the advanced scribing and then plug into Epic.

And so we'll have to look.

I I've been nervous the whole time about, um, you know, the EHR systems, they control the records.

They are sort of the source of billing for health systems and if they decide to sort of bundle in a package, it could make a point system entire.

Industry subsegment, you know, no longer all that competitive.

So we'll see how it plays out.

It might not be very good.

Sometimes these, uh, big platforms try to bundle something, but it may not be a quality, we'll say, I would not wanna compete with that big.

Okay.

And then Google had their, um, Google, uh, event, I, I forget what they call it.

Uh, maybe Google Unveil.

Um, and they, it was a bunch of phones, but they really were showing off their AI and they have a tool called Magic Queue.

And I pulled up on YouTube here.

Um, how it works.

I'm not gonna play it live, but we'll put a link in the show notes.

But in, if you have a Google, uh, pixel phone, which I do, but most people, um.

Probably Apple is still the most common in our listener base, but the pixel phones, um, they have this magic queue feature that Google on the phone itself, so they don't pull your data, um, to the cloud or anywhere that can be shared.

It's actually on the device.

They have your text messages, your contacts, your calendar, and your email all on the phone, and they're able to sift through that and then pop up.

Uh, well maybe I'll, I'll show this one example.

Okay, so, um, interesting.

They had these couple different examples.

Um.

It's pretty powerful now.

Um, I think they're really showing off sort of what the AI can do when you link it together, and the privacy of having it just on your phone and not shared is pretty powerful.

So being able to find, you know, in my calendar, where am I eating tonight?

And be able to have it ready to send.

Or know that Gary is, is actually his dog and pull up the picture that was being asked for, um, or a flight.

So it seems pretty usable.

It's what?

It's kind of what Apple Pro, a lot of what Apple promised, um, with their intelligence that never really manifested, uh, Google, I think, you know, watched that and now is delivering it.

So I don't have the Pixel 10.

I have an earlier pixel, but I'm definitely gonna get, get the new version and test it out.

I'll report back.

Google also announced, uh, that Fitbit is, they're rolling out a new personnel health coach on the Fitbit platform.

So, uh, some people may not recall, but Google bought Fitbit a while back.

It's gonna be able to use all of your information on the phone to give you, uh, health coaching advice.

It's more about workouts and, uh, losing weight sleep than it is, um, what we would think of healthcare coaching.

Um, but interesting.

I haven't been able to test it yet, but we'll send, put a link in the show notes.

And you can test it out.

Okay.

Um, now we have three stories about, uh, deep fakes.

So, um, in the New York Times, Amy Kochar, she's the Minnesota Senator, uh, she wrote a New York Times, uh, opinion piece.

Uh, what I didn't say about City Sweeney, uh, so she got deep faked.

Um, she and Marcia Blackburn had a senate judiciary committee.

Um, and they were talking about all kinds of things in the committee.

Um, and then a Amy Kuchar's voice got sort of cobbled together from a bunch of different sentences to have a clip about Sidney Sweeney, um, which went viral.

And it was crazy, but it was not what she said.

And so, um, it's pretty interesting that a US Senator.

Is writing kind of a warning piece about how, how powerful and how scary the deep fake, uh, can be, you know, very realistic.

Of course, Amy knew she didn't say that, but it sounded like her.

And, you know, a lot of people thought it was her.

Uh, then we have a story from the Wall Street Journal.

Um, this week as well, AI is driving a rise in CEO impersonator scams.

And so this is a situation where your CEO.

Um, send you an email and then is on a Zoom asking you to send money to a vendor, um, abroad.

And it looks very realistic and it looks like the CEO and then the CFO sends you an email later with the wire instructions and they're fooling a lot of people.

Um, and so the quote in here that I thought was interesting is that.

A year ago, maybe one in 10 security experts had seen one of these.

Um, last year there were 105,000 deep fake related CEO, um, kind of spoofing attacks.

And today it's like one five outta 10.

So half of the security experts are seeing this in their companies.

And so it's just a cautionary tale to really watch out for this and be cautious about.

Anything you see on video or certainly voice, um, I would, you know, verify it with some, maybe call them back or some way to verify.

And then that made me think we should, we should test ourselves.

So I found this story in the New York Times.

It's from about a month ago.

AI videos have never been better.

Can you tell what's real?

And it's a, it's a quiz.

There are 10 videos that are, um.

You have to decide whether it is, um, AI or not, and they are quite good.

So I'm gonna play one here.

This is a basketball player after a game.

Let's see if we can listen to it here.

So that's the video and it is completely ai.

Um, let's see this person walking.

What's he doing?

So I think that is real.

Nope, it's not.

It's ai.

So I, I got half right and half wrong.

I was five outta 10.

They're pretty hard.

So it's really, to me, it's, it's difficult to know if something is AI or not.

There's no real way unless you verify it through some other means.

And I think, so sending money or doing anything, um, just based on a video is no longer sufficient.

Okay.

And then we are gonna end with a robotics thing.

You, um, we have, we'll put in the show notes.

Uh, there's a new robotics company called Loom, and they have these, uh, lamps, which are really cool.

It looks like a, um, it's a floor lamp and so it's a five foot tall.

Pole with a light at the top, you really should check out the video.

And they light the room.

They have, they have two next to a bed, and then you just throw your laundry on the bed.

All, you know, clean laundry but not folded.

Uh, the example in the video is a bunch of towels and the lamps wake up.

It's kind of like imbuing the beast.

That's actually what they were inspired by.

And then it, it does the folding while you.

Um, head to work or you're watching a movie or eating dinner.

And so I liked the idea that, um, a robot could be kind of hidden in plain sight in a lamp and then do work for you.

So interesting.

Um, do robotics.

And so, you know, the technology is a little bit scary with deep fakes, but we're also seeing really cool things like a lamp that can forge your laundry.

That is the show for today.

Thanks for joining me.

Um, I think Marcus will be back next week.

Um, but either way we will bring you the news and there's a lot going on in healthcare.

Thanks for joining.