12-Apr-17 Indian health tech startup Lybrate has raised USD3 mn in new funding to achieve its goal of connecting patients with doctors in India and helping to raise awareness of basic medical practices. The startup’s biggest rival is Practo, which offers doctor-finding and health information, and has also raised several million US dollars in past month.

10-Apr-17 Alibaba Cloud's President Simon Hu announced it has developed "ET Medical Brain," a suite of AI solutions built on its cloud infrastructure. The ET Medical Brain aims to ease the workload of medical personnel by taking the role of the patient's virtual assistant, and participating in medical imaging, drug development, hospital management and wearable healthcare devices. [image: Computerworld Hong Kong]

10-Apr-17 Thailand's startup ecosystem is growing with support from the government and private investors. As the fastest-growing e-commerce market in the region, Thailand is attractive for tech startups, and as healthcare is increasingly digitised, startups such as YesMom, SmartHealthCare, Doctorme and MediTech are starting to create solutions for the problems that have plagued healthcare in Thailand. [image: e27]

08-Apr-17 Indian online doctor discovery and healthcare tech platform Practo has laid off 150 employees following its annual appraisal. The company said “this is a combination of performance and natural redundancies that emerge as we evolve our businesses and integrate our five acquisitions. We continue to rapidly grow our consumer and enterprise businesses and will continue to hire talent across the board”. [image: Times of India]

06-Apr-17 Global healthcare spending is roughly USD7 tn, according to the US Department of Commerce and many companies would have more success pursuing product approval in emerging markets as the technologies may be more helpful for those patient populations and the regulatory burdens more manageable, suggested Matthew Hein, representative for the US DoC at the MedTech Intelligence Global Regulatory conference. [image: MedTech Intelligence]