• Healthcare-focused AI startups are raising billions to help improve the US system.
• AI can help streamline clinical documentation, drug research, and medical billing.
• This article is part of "Trends in Healthcare," a series about the innovations and industry leaders shaping patient care.

The founder of Suki, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to automate healthcare documents, raised $70 million in funding from investors in a Series D round that was disclosed this past fall.

He said it really didn't take that much persuading: With an epidemic of stressed- and burned-out physicians, there was an obvious need for their AI software, he added.

"Most of the investor conversations over the last year and a half have been, 'Well, it looks like the market is here,'" said Punit Singh Soni, Suki's founder. "Are you going to be the winner or not?"

Suki sells an AI-powered assistant that takes notes during a conversation between patients and clinicians. The notes can be reviewed by the doctor and submitted as an electronic health record. This saves time on administrative tasks and allows physicians more time to take care of patients, a resource that's becoming increasingly limited among healthcare professionals.

Surveys have consistently found that doctors and other medical workers are burned out from working in an often overloaded, convoluted, and inefficient system. The US spent $4.8 trillion on healthcare in 2023, according to a January report from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. The US also spends more per person than nearly all other developed nations, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Despite this, health outcomes were poorer, with Americans facing a lower life expectancy, higher rates of treatable and preventable excess deaths, and less efficient healthcare systems.

Cash-strapped hospitals and private practices have lagged behind the financial-services and telecommunications industries in applying newer technologies, but the healthcare industry is increasingly considering artificial intelligence as it contends with high labor costs and a lot of opportunities to automate routine tasks. The pandemic exacerbated these challenges with staffing shortages as overworked doctors and nurses quit the profession.

To make healthcare more efficient, AI startups like Suki, Zephyr AI, and Tennr have raised millions with vast promises, including making repetitive tasks like billing and note-taking easier, improving the accuracy of clinical diagnosis, and identifying the right patient population for emerging treatments.

But the challenges are vast. The healthcare industry's budget allocations for generative AI are trailing those of many other core industries, such as energy and materials, consumer goods, and retail. Clinical diagnosis will continue to require a human in the loop, so the process can't be fully automated. The healthcare industry is highly regulated, and quite often, venture capitalists will wait for clarity on laws from the federal government before aggressively pushing AI tech advancements forward.

A $370 billion bet on boosting the healthcare sector's productivity

The consulting firm McKinsey estimates that generative AI can boost productivity for the healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and medical-products industries by as much as $370 billion by accelerating drug research, making clinical documentation easier, speeding up medical billing, and helping doctors make diagnoses.

Some big funding rounds announced in 2024 highlight the diverse use cases for AI in the healthcare sector. They include $150 million raised by the clinical-documentation AI startup Abridge in February, the drug-discovery AI startup Xaira Therapeutics bringing in $1 billion before its launch in April, Atropos Health's $33 million Series B in May to help doctors analyze real-world evidence with generative AI, and the medical-billing-automation provider Candid Health raising $29 million in September.

Parth Desai, a partner at Flare Capital Partners, has steered investments into healthcare startups such as Photon Health and SmarterDx. He said that healthcare organizations had been dedicating more money to bolster their AI strategies, beginning in late 2022 and accelerating through 2024. That's boosting demand for the tools these startups are developing. There's also less pressure to immediately prove a return on investment, which budget-conscious health systems have closely monitored in the past when allocating dollars for technology.

"The thing that we're really studying before making an investment decision is: Do budgets exist today to pay for this technology?" Desai told Business Insider. "Or are they going to exist in a large-enough fashion in the next five to 10 years to support this technology?"

Candid Health and Akasa aim to cut costs and automate medical billing

One area of particular promise has been medical billing, which could benefit from large language model automation. An LLM could, for example, analyze a large volume of claims in a client's system and accurately match them with insurers' unique billing codes, a process required for repayment to a physician for their services. Hospitals have traditionally relied on human medical coders to hunt down reimbursements from insurers.

"The software used to do billing was built a long time ago and basically wasn't kept up to date," Nick Perry, a cofounder and the CEO of Candid Health, said.

Malinka Walaliyadde, the CEO of Akasa — another medical-billing-focused AI startup — said the company builds customized LLMs for each healthcare institution it serves. Typically, the aim for these LLMs is to lower costs by lessening the reliance on human medical coders. This often reduces errors in billing and speeds up repayment cycles.

"We looked at what are the biggest pain points for health systems," Walaliyadde told BI. He said that Akasa's focus is on developing LLM products for medical coding and simplifying prior authorization, a process that requires approval from a health-plan provider before a patient can receive a treatment. "Those are the ones where you could really move the needle," Walaliyadde said.

AI for health screenings

George Tomeski, the founder of Helfie AI, is in the middle of pitching investors to raise as much as $200 million in a new round of funding that he hopes to close by the first half of 2025.

Tomeski said the funding would help Helfie scale as it exits beta testing for the company's app. The app, also called Helfie, uses a smartphone camera to do medical "checks" that screen for illnesses including COVID-19, tuberculosis, and certain skin conditions.

"We're targeting all the health conditions that lead to avoidable mortality," Tomeski said, adding that the app focuses on respiratory and cardiovascular conditions. The intention is for these checks —which can cost as low as $0.20 a person per screen — to serve as a form of preventive care and as an incentive to go see a doctor in person.

While some funding is going toward sales and marketing, talent acquisition, and ensuring adherence to regulations around privacy and healthcare data, a large chunk is still being allocated to product development as AI tech advances quickly.

Dr. Brigham Hyde, a cofounder and the CEO of Atropos Health, said his latest funding announcement, in May, was timed to coincide with the geared-up launch of ChatRWD, an AI copilot that can answer doctors' questions and quickly churn out published studies based on healthcare data. Hyde said he's keen to bring in big partners this time, including the pharmaceutical giant Merck and the medical-supplies and equipment maker McKesson.

But Hyde also had to show some restraint. He said that when Atropos Health moved forward with its Series B rounds, dozens of venture capitalists expressed interest in leading the round. The company was offered up to $100 million but took only one-third of that amount.

"I don't always think that's a good idea," Hyde told BI. "As a founder, you want to raise the right amount of money for your business and for the stage you're at."

It may be tempting to take more, as many healthcare AI startups — a vast majority still in the seed and early-stage funding rounds — are racing to outmaneuver rivals. Even if the technology is right, it has to get past regulatory approvals and persuade cautious hospitals and health systems to open up their wallets.

"You can build as much product as you want, but you can never build a market," Soni of Suki said. "It shows up, or it doesn't show up."

Puffs of smoke rose above a meadow in northeastern Washington as a small test fire danced in the grass a few feet away from me. Pleased by its slow, controlled behavior, my crew members and I, as part of a training program led by the nonprofit organization The Nature Conservancy and the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, began to light the rest of the field on fire. The scene had all the trappings of a wildfire — water hoses, fire engines, people in flame-resistant outfits. But we weren't there to fight it; we were there to light it.

It might sound counterintuitive, but prescribed fires, or intentionally lit fires, help lessen fire's destruction. Natural flames sparked by lightning and intentional blazes lit by Indigenous peoples have historically helped clean up excess vegetation that now serves as fuel for the wildfires that regularly threaten people's homes and lives across the West and, increasingly, across the country.

For millennia, lighting fires was common practice in America. But in the mid-to-late 1800s, the US outlawed Indigenous burning practices and started suppressing wildfires, resulting in a massive buildup of flammable brush and trees. That combined with the dry, hot conditions caused by the climate crisis has left much of the country at a dangerously high risk of devastating wildfires. The top 10 most destructive years by acreage burned have all occurred since 2004.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, federal land managers reevaluated their approach to fire and did the first prescribed burns in national parks. We're still making up for lost time: Scientists and land managers say millions more acres of prescribed burns are necessary to keep the country from burning out of control.

But the scale of the task doesn't match that of the labor force, whose focus is often extinguishing fires, not starting them. Responding to the increase in natural disasters has left America with few resources to actually keep them from happening. As Mark Charlton, a prescribed-fire specialist with The Nature Conservancy, told me, "We need more people, and we need more time."

This fall, I outfitted myself in fire-resistant clothing and boots, donned a hard hat, and joined a training program called TREX to better understand how prescribed burns work. TREX hosts collaborative burns to provide training opportunities in the field for people from different employers and backgrounds. The hope is that more people will earn the qualifications they need to lead and participate in burns for the agencies they work for back home.

The program's emphasis on learning, coupled with the support of the University of Idaho's Artists-in-Fire Residency (which helped pay my way), is why I, a journalist with no fire jobs on my résumé, could join a prescribed-fire module of about two dozen more experienced participants. I had to pass a fitness test — speed walking three miles with a 45-pound backpack in under 45 minutes — take 40 hours' worth of online coursework, and complete field-operations training to participate as a crew member. While hundreds of people have participated in TREX burns across the country since the program's inception in 2008, the dramatic growth of wildfires is outpacing the number of people being trained to reduce their impact.

The Forest Service manages 193 million acres of forests and grasslands across the country, burning an average of about 1.4 million acres, roughly the size of Delaware, each year with prescribed burns. It burned a record 2 million acres in fiscal 2023. But it's still not enough preparation, considering wildfires have burned over 10 million acres in recent years and people continue building and living in wildfire-prone areas. "It's a huge workload we have, and we know it," said Adam Mendonca, a deputy director of fire and aviation management for the Forest Service who oversees the agency's prescribed-fire program. The agency plans to chip away at the problem with the roughly 11,300 wildland firefighters it employs each year who squeeze the work in during the offseason, when there are fewer fires to fight.

But relying on wildland firefighters can be problematic. "We only have those resources for a short time," said Charlton, who served as the incident commander on the Washington burns I joined this fall. "After a long fire season, people are exhausted. It's hard to get people to commit." Plus, wildfires are increasingly overlapping with the ideal windows to do prescribed burns — often the spring and the fall, when conditions are cooler and wetter, making fires easier to tame.

That was especially true this year: Multiple large fires burned across the West into October. These late-season wildfires, coupled with two hurricanes that firefighters helped respond to, strained federal resources. That month, the nation's fire-preparedness level increased to a 5 — the highest level — indicating the country's emergency crews were at their maximum capacity and would've struggled to respond to new incidents.

In response to the elevated preparedness level, the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group urged "extreme caution" in executing new prescribed fires, saying backup firefighters or equipment might not be available. "We get to the point where we're competing for resources," said Kyle Lapham, the certified-burner-program manager for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and the burn boss on the Washington burns.

There's also a qualification shortage. Prescribed burns require a well-rounded group with a variety of expertise and positions — including a burn boss, who runs the show and must have years of training. Charlton estimated that hundreds more qualified burn bosses are necessary to tackle nationwide prescribed-burn goals.

Just as concerning is an interest shortage. The Forest Service has struggled to hire for and maintain its federal firefighting force in recent years, in large part because of poor pay (federal firefighter base pay was raised to $15 an hour in 2022) and other labor disputes over job classifications, pay raises, staffing, and more. The agency is also expecting budget cuts next year and has already said it won't be able to hire its usual seasonal workforce as a result.

Legislation inching its way through Congress could help, though its fate under a new administration is unclear. The National Prescribed Fire Act of 2024 would direct hundreds of millions of dollars to the Forest Service and the US Department of the Interior for prescribed burns, including investment in training a skilled workforce — but it hasn't progressed past a Senate subcommittee hearing in June.

Without a boost in funding, the agency will continue relying heavily on partnerships with nonprofits like The Nature Conservancy and the National Forest Foundation to staff prescribed burns. The Forest Service also recently expanded its Prescribed Fire Training Center to host educational opportunities out West. Critically, though, time is of the essence.

During my TREX training in October, about 20 foresters and firefighters from as far south as Texas and as far north as British Columbia worked beside me. Our group included employees of the Washington Department of Natural Resources and two citizens of the nearby Spokane Tribe of Indians, who have a robust prescribed-fire program of their own.

Over two weeks I got a front-row seat to how much planning (sometimes years) and time a single prescribed burn takes. We conducted several burns in the mountains north of Spokane on the property of a receptive landowner who'd hosted TREX in previous years. He provided the training ground and, in exchange, got work done on his property. This isn't a common scenario — burning on private land can be more complicated, and so more burns happen on state or federal property.

When I arrived, the burn's incident-management team had already put together a burn plan detailing our objectives — reducing wildfire risk to the landowner's house, thinning small tree saplings, knocking down invasive weeds, opening up more wildlife habitat — and the exact weather conditions, like wind speed, relative humidity, and temperature, we needed to safely burn. Prescribed burns on federal lands also go through an environmental review.

At the site, we scouted contained areas we would burn, called units, with trainees making additional plans for how to ignite and control fires. Keeping a fire in its intended location, called "holding," meant lots of prep work, like digging shallow trenches to box the fire in. During the burn, teams monitored smoke and occasionally sprayed the larger trees we wanted to preserve with water when flames threatened their canopies; others poured fuel on the ground, igniting bushes, grass, and smaller trees to slowly build the fire.

Managing the fire didn't end when we finished burning the 30 or so acres. In some cases, it can involve days of monitoring and cleanup. To make sure the fire was out, my crew and I combed through areas we'd burned the day before for smoke or heat. If we discovered something still smoking, we'd churn up the ground with a shovel or pickax, douse the hot spot with water, and repeat. Just when we thought we were done, we'd find another spot we'd missed.

I went to bed those nights dreaming of little puffs of smoke and woke up with small flakes of ash embedded behind my ears. The work was rewarding and exhausting — I left with a deeper appreciation for the workers who do it for a living.

While every prescribed burn is different, it's always a careful equation. Everything needs to line up: supportive communities, the right weather, and, of course, the workers necessary to plan, burn, and extinguish. Only then can you light the match.

Kylie Mohr is a Montana-based freelance journalist and correspondent for the magazine High Country News.

• Montana contractors are struggling to hire due to a construction labor shortage.
• Many contractors say they are actively recruiting Gen Z to get more young people into trades.
• Some firms have apprenticeship programs that help young workers learn on the job.

Although Montana's population has grown considerably in recent years, it's facing worker shortages in several trades, according to a September report from the Montana Department of Labor and Industry.

Construction and healthcare were identified by Sarah Swanson, the department commissioner, as industries that would "need considerably more employees between now and 2032."

Contractors say that although demand for construction in Montana is strong, they can't hire enough people to keep up with all the potential work.

Now some Montana contractors are investing in recruiting efforts to attract more workers to the field, including by launching educational and apprenticeship programs and visiting high schools to encourage Gen Zers to consider construction as a career.

"We're trying to prove and show that these hands-on careers do have value," Bill Ryan, the education coordinator at Dick Anderson Construction, one of the largest contractors in Montana, told Business Insider.

"The tide is turning a little bit," he said. "We're starting to see more Gen Z consider going into trades."

Contractors are raising wages to attract workers

The construction labor shortage is not just hitting Montana, putting added pressure on contractors trying to hire.

Brian Turmail, the vice president of public affairs and workforce at the Associated General Contractors of America, told BI contractors around the US are struggling to fill roles.

AGC's annual workforce survey released in December found 94% of contractors said they had openings that were difficult to fill.

Ken Simonson, the chief economist at AGC, told BI that the number of workers in construction in Montana grew by 7% year-over-year as of October, compared to 3% growth nationally. Even as the sector is growing in the state, there's still more roles to fill.

Turmail said one factor driving the shortage is not unique to construction: an aging workforce.

"We just have a lot of people hanging up the tool belts and moving off to Florida to retire," he said.

He said there's also been about 40 years of federal government policy that focused on encouraging every student in America to go to college to get a four-year degree and work in the "knowledge economy."

As a result, he said there's been underinvestment in vocational or technical training, and in turn fewer young people pursing trades.

Some construction companies have tried to draw more people to the field with proactive recruiting efforts and higher wages — including trying to attract workers from out of state. Montana has already lured a high number transplants in part due to a relatively lower cost of living, especially when compared to a state like California, where many have moved from.

Ian Baylon, a tradesman from California, told BI earlier this year that when he visited Montana in 2022 and was considering moving there, he decided on a whim to see if anyone was hiring.

When he reached out to a company about an opening, they quickly invited him in for an interview. A week later when he was back home, they offered him the job — matching his Bay Area salary, plus moving costs and other perks.

In Montana, wage growth in construction grew annually by an average of 0.6% from 2020 to 2023, according to the state government report, with an average salary of $67,386.

Still, some say the growth in wages has not been enough to keep up with the rising costs of living in the state. An analysis by Construction Coverage, an industry site that reviews construction software and other services, found the average construction worker in Montana would need to work 68 hours a week to afford a median-priced home.

Apprenticeship programs allow young workers to 'earn and learn'

Two of the largest contractors in Montana told BI that folks interested in getting into construction do not need any experience in the industry to get hired — they can learn on the job.

Representatives of both companies, Dick Anderson and Sletten Construction, said they also have dedicated apprenticeship programs that are a draw for new workers to the field, especially young people.

Ryan, of Dick Anderson, said he was hired by the company in 2021 to develop an education program that would help attract and retain employees. The four-year apprenticeship program allows employees to work and earn while also enrolling in classes at a college they partner with. Students who complete the program can come out of it with an associates degree, real work experience, and actual earnings.

While jobs in construction do not require an associates degree, Ryan said they can help with career advancement and promotions, as well as satisfy a desire to pursue some level of college.

"When we are talking to young people and mom and dad are saying, 'You're not going to work. You need to go to college,' we can at least say, 'Well, what if they're doing both at the same time?'"

Michelle Cohens, who works in human resource management at Sletten, said the company also has a four-year apprenticeship program that allows employees to "earn and learn." Employees in the program also take a week several times a year to do trainings with the union, and then come back and hop right back into work.

Both companies said they've developed relationships with high schools and high school educators to help reach young people, who they said seem increasingly open to forgoing college and considering trades.

After several years of trying to get in front of students, Cohens said the efforts do seem to be paying off, with more reaching out about jobs. She said young people are drawn in by the chance to work with their hands rather than sit at a computer all day, and the chance to avoid taking on student loans.

"We highlight how good paying jobs they are, how you can get into the trades right out of high school or without any true knowledge," she said, adding, "You're not paying us to learn, we're paying you to learn."

David Smith, executive director of the Montana Contractors' Association, said companies are also evolving their culture to meet Gen Z workers where they're at. Young people today, he said, don't necessarily want to work 55 hour weeks in the summer. They want breaks. They want to take time off.

In the last five or ten years contractors have realized "you can't just throw a job out there and say, 'Hey, we pay big wages,'" he said. "You've got to have other things, and the construction world has to think differently too."

Have a news tip or a story to share? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Russia's labor shortage has businesses turning to teens and retirees to fill positions.
• Openings for workers as young as 14 or older than 55 have jumped.
• The nation was short around 5 million workers last year, Russia's Academy of Sciences estimated.

Russia's wartime economy is dealing with a difficult labor shortage, and the problem is pushing companies to broaden the age range of new hires as they look to fill their ranks.

An analysis cited by the Russian news site Nakanune showed that job openings tailored to "young applicants" — as young as 14 — soared 119% year-over-year in the first quarter. That adds to last year's 289% increase, with openings for young workers rising from 14,500 to 42,000, the analysis found.

In catering and retail, the demand for workers between the ages of 16 and 18 has doubled, Bloomberg reported, citing an analysis from the Russian ad agency Avito.

Demand is also growing for older workers. Openings for specialists over the age of 55 climbed 65% in the culture and education sectors in the third quarter, while openings for specialists in the services sector rose 12%, according to a study viewed by the Russian state-owned news agency TASS.

The average age of specialists has also climbed by three to six years since 2022, per Bloomberg, citing an analysis from the Russian recruiting agency SuperJob.

Russia has also dialed back rules to allow younger people to work, or to allow retirement-age people to continue working.

Last year, Putin approved the employment of workers as young as 14 in some circumstances, though Russia's legal working age is still technically set at 16 years old.

In 2018, Russia raised the retirement age from 60 to 65 for men and from 55 to 63 for women. The nation also plans on raising pension payments for working retirees early next year, with retirement-age people who choose to work potentially receiving an average minimum increase of 1.3 million rubles a year, or $12,264, according to estimates from Russia's Deputy Prime Minister.

Russia's working-age population took a hit in 2022, when millions of Russians fled the nation after the start of the war in Ukraine. The nation is short around 2 million workers, Bloomberg reported, citing an analysis from FinExpertiza, one of the nation's largest auditors. Last year, the Russian Academy of Sciences estimated the nation was short around 5 million workers.

Meanwhile, around 73% of businesses are experiencing a staffing shortage, according to polls conducted by Russia's central bank.

• Matcha has exploded in popularity on TikTok.
• Cafés are reporting that matcha suppliers are hiking up prices or setting purchase limits.
• TikTok's most popular brands appear to be hit hard.

TikTok's obsession with matcha has appeared to create a shortage of the tea in Japan.

TikTok's most popular tea brands appear to be hit hard.

The smooth, bright green powder plays a central role in Japanese tea ceremonies, and while it takes only a few seconds to dissolve in water, it can take an entire year to grow.

Matcha production has remained consistent, but sharp increases in demand driven by social media have created a strain on the industry, The Guardian reported.

Megumi Kanaike, manager of Simply Native, a tea shop in Sydney said that producers of the highest-quality matcha in Kyoto, Japan, recently increased prices by up to 40%, which is the first price hike in many years, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

"You'll probably notice prices in cafés start to go up as well," she says.

Kanaike's shop announced limits on online matcha purchases because of the shortage, she told the outlet earlier this month.

"Several suppliers have told us they're pausing production and putting a stop on any future orders," she said.

Marukyu Koyamaen, a brand that is often featured in popular "matcha haul" TikTok videos, shows that it is completely sold out of green matcha powder on its website. Zach Mangan, owner of a Brooklyn-based tea company, Kettl, told Eater a. Marukyu Koyamaen representative told him the company did "roughly six months of sales in a little less than a month."

Marukyu Koyamaen and TikTok did not immediately return requests for comment from Business Insider about the reported matcha shortage.

TikTok influencers traveling to Japan to try the country's authentic matcha have also reported having a hard time finding it once they arrive. One TikTok video shows a sign at a Japanese matcha shop that says the shop sold too much in the summer months and "ran out of raw materials."

"Due to the stricter purchase restrictions, the quantities available to our shop are now very low," the sign reads. "As a result, it should be extremely difficult to purchase matcha until next year's new tea harvest. This situation is the same in Kyoto, Tokyo, and everywhere else in Japan."

Inside Japan, matcha consumption had been on a decline for the past few decades, with consumption rates dropping from 1,174 grams per household in 2001 to 844 grams in 2015, according to Eater. In the US, sales of matcha have reached more than $10 billion in the last 25 years, according to the outlet.

Some creators on "#matchatok" have also reported harassment and bullying from people on TikTok who blame their overconsumption and promotion of matcha for the ongoing shortage. One matcha creator called Kithumini, with more than 62,000 followers, said in a video that her physician and her therapist told her to turn off TikTok comments because of all the negativity she has received.

"Yes, there may be a matcha shortage for the brands that you like purchasing from, but that does not mean that all matcha is gone," she says in the video.

Kithumini added in the video that she recently went to a café that was selling Marukyu Koyamaen matcha and that "even aside from that brand, there are so many good brands out there."

"So many of y'all out there are making other people's matcha consumption your business," she says in the video. "No, that's just between that person's caffeine tolerance and their wallet, not you."