Stream 01 – DMEA, Google Health Tech Accelerator, Expert Communicators
Debreifing DMEA 2025, examining Google's latest start-up investments, and looking forward into a future without AI notetakers.
DMEA Debrief: 5 companies to follow
DMEA is one of the main avenues for digital health in Europe. Whether you went on the show floor and spent hours exchanging with other professionals, or you couldn't join this year, here is a quick overview of some companies and the people behind them to follow:
- Doccase – Interactive Case Studies. They don't only train for diagnostic proficiency, but also to minimize costs related to process and time spent. At the core is a chat solution. Their offering seems more geared towards doctors than therapists. The latter could benefit even more from such case studies. Developed by the Codana GmbH, a software agency. You can find their CEO Eray Özmü on LinkedIn.
- Nuanic – Wearable for stress monitoring. The company offers the Nuanic Ring in combination with their own app for a list of different issues: long covid, ME/CFS, and burnout. They rely on measuring skin conductance to extract insights on your stress. Regardless of the product, the company is a great example of branding and communication in the health space. Also, the company was co-founded by two women!
- Insight Out – Digitalizing Diagnostics. The company is building software suites to conduct tests and collect results digitally. Standardized psychological tests are the norm in any diagnostic process, and therapists mostly conduct them on paper. Simple and clear use case, but seemingly successful as well.
- Patient Zero – This is not a company purely focused on health. They build and conduct virtual training simulations. Relevant in this context are products like their virtual patient clinic.
- talking pictures – Inclusive visual communication. Their focus is simplifying communication in emergency situations, both with children and adults. The focus is on breaking down language barriers with foreign language patients. They post a lot about their product on LinkedIn.
Beyond discovering those individual companies, there are also a few more key insights from this conference:
- Playing catch-up. Germany is still fundamentally behind on digitalization. Before practitioners can start treating their patients with new innovative solutions that make use of modern technology, they need to get proper access to data on their patients.
- Soo many Health IT consultancies. Whilst this also reflects demand for custom project-based solutions, it will not lead to standardized effective systems. Whilst I think that those companies are doing good work, their business thrives on exactly the issues the German health system has.
- Save time on admin, not patient care. The reason for the previous observations is obvious to me: the current cry for help from doctors and therapists is relating to the administrative burden. Thinking about novel treatment is simply not the most pressing issue. That doesn't mean that there is no true need or urgency, but IMO, for a product to succeed on the market today, it would need to tackle both: admin and patient care. AI Notetaker products will not succeed if they can't integrate with patient systems and allow for secure data sharing with all professionals involved in a patient's treatment. Prospectively, this will lead to a lot of consolidation in the industry over the coming years.
Google starts AI for Health accelerator
The 2025 Growth Academy: AI for Health program could become a catalyst for the EMEA region. With a major company like Google backing some of the most promising solutions, their success rate and their investability will go through the roof. The really valuable thing about this development isn't the initial funding, but potential follow-ups. Seed is not the issue. European Start-ups have similar access to early stage capital as US-based ones. The major issue is the lack of late-stage funds.
When corporates like Google invest in early stage start-ups though, they implicitly also enter the market for later rounds. Investors always plan cash for future rounds. This is great for the companies in the program itself, but also a strong signal to other investing parties, that might have been hesitant about the space and the region in the past. As the USA becomes less and less attractive for building in the space due to the Trump administration, Europe could thrive over the next few years.
But whom are they funding actually? Here are my top 3 in no particular order:
- Blueskeye AI, AI-driven behavioral analysis for understanding emotion.
- Ahead, the self-described "Duolingo for emotional intelligence"
- Advantis, working on MRI data collection and processing.
Go here for the full list of 25:
https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/entrepreneurs/growth-academy-ai-health-2025/
Stop outsourcing communication to AI notetakers.
Most people spend roughly half of their work week in meetings. Communicating and sharing ideas is necessary in innovation driven organisations. But people don't spend half of the time at university learning how to communicate their work. the first AI patch put on this problem was AI notetakers. But they don't make people smarter at speaking, the same way Grammarly is not turning you into a great essayist. Most employees could save meeting time by becoming better communicators.
I have written up some ideas on the problem and a rough solution here:
Friederich
What's good this week?
-> Stanford AI Index 2025
Stanford just released their yearly AI Index Report. Amongst general insights, the report makes one thing clear:
AI is arriving in health at full speed.
→ Article in Nature: Diagnostic AI
Tao Tu
A groundbreaking study published in Nature introduces AMIE (Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer), an AI system specifically designed for diagnostic conversations. What makes this particularly relevant for psychological practice is AMIE's superior performance in communication skills and empathy compared to human physicians.
In a study with 159 case scenarios across multiple countries, this LLM-based system outperformed primary care physicians on 30 out of 32 performance measures according to specialists, and 25 out of 26 according to patient-actors. These included not just diagnostic accuracy but also crucial psychological elements like empathetic communication.
This raises fascinating questions for mental health professionals. If AI can already demonstrate superior empathy in text-based interactions, how might this transform psychological assessment? Could future systems provide preliminary screening that enhances rather than replaces human therapists?
The study acknowledges limitations—text chat isn't standard clinical practice. Yet it hints at a future where technology augments the human elements of care rather than diminishing them. For psychological practice specifically, these tools could help standardize quality of care while allowing clinicians to focus on the most complex aspects of treatment.
That's it for the week. Best,
Friederich
