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This weekly blog is to explore the news around the larger issues around Digital Health, data security, data privacy, AI / ML. technology, social media and any related matters.
I will also try to highlight ADHA Propaganda when I come upon it.
Just so we keep count, the latest Notes from the ADHA Board were dated 6 December, 2018 and we have seen none since! It’s pretty sad!
Note: Appearance here is not to suggest I see any credibility or value in what follows. I will leave it to the reader to decide what is worthwhile and what is not! The point is to let people know what is being said / published that I have come upon, and found interesting.
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Dishonest Tiktok and Instagram influencers face ACCC crackdown
By Anna Patty
January 27, 2023 — 12.01am
Dishonest TikTok and Instagram influencers are facing a crackdown by the nation’s consumer watchdog.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has started looking at more than 100 influencers in response to more than 150 tip-offs from consumers. The blitz comes after celebrity influencer Kim Kardashian was slapped with a $US1 million (close to $1.5 million) fine in the US for failing to disclose that she was paid $US250,000 for promoting a cryptocurrency.
ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said most of the tip-offs were about influencers in beauty, lifestyle, parenting and fashion, who had failed to disclose their affiliation with the product or company they were promoting.
“The number of tip-offs reflects the community concern about the ever-increasing number of manipulative marketing techniques on social media, designed to exploit or pressure consumers into purchasing goods or services,” she said.
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How the sudden rise of AI is shaking your white-collar world
Generative AI has caused a storm by automating high-paying professional skills. Now Aussie businesses are trying to determine how to get the best out of it.
Paul Smith Technology editor
Jan 27, 2023 – 2.05pm
In a week during which Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, warned investors not to be too optimistic about the company’s immediate prospects as he embarked on a rampant cost-cutting initiative that would cut 10,000 jobs, he also saw it fit to write a $US10 billion ($14 billion) cheque for a big stake in the world’s current hottest start-up, OpenAI.
Microsoft aims to position itself at the vanguard of a new era in artificial intelligence, with huge influence over the rapidly developing field of generative AI. The technology promises to usher in changes in how doctors and teachers deliver medical and educational advice, and has lawyers, marketers, artists and other white-collar professionals worrying about where they fit in.
Nick Abrahams, global leader of the technology & innovation group at law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, says companies need to be acting now to figure out how to harness the potential of generative AI.
“There is a saying that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” says Nick Abrahams, a Sydney-based lawyer at Norton Rose Fulbright, who studies how companies incorporate “next-big-thing” ideas.
“Generative AI solutions such as ChatGPT and DALL-E 2 are like magic to me.”
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Never give out your email again with iPhone privacy features
By Joseph Lam
11:47AM January 27, 2023
Your data is not your own. At least that of which has been gathered about you via your online browsing activity, your social media accounts and the dozens of online competitions you’ve entered with your email address among other personal details and are still yet to win.
And while you could spend all day wondering just how to find out exactly what data companies have gathered about you and what you can do to remove or delete as much as possible, your time may be better spent limiting what data can be collected from you from this point forward.
Within the Apple ecosystem, there are two relatively new features which have benefits that all users should consider.
These features can limit tracking of your IP address (the address of a device connected to the internet) as well as allow email function without giving away your email address – allowing you enter all the competitions you like while being able to stop those emails whenever you wish.
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Friday, 27 January 2023 10:30
Australia named the country 4th most at-risk of cyber crime in the world
By Gordon Peters
Australia is the fourth country most at risk of cyber crime in the world, acording to research by proxy network provider Proxyrack.
Proxyrack says that its research has calculated the rate per 100,000 in each country to find out where cybercrime is happening the most and Australli had 2,204 victims in its population of 26.2 million and 8 victims per 100,00 people.
“Everyone knows the importance of staying safe online and amongst all the great things that the internet has brought us, it has also presented opportunities for hackers and scammers to make an illegitimate living.,” notes Proxyrack .
“There are many things you can do to stay safe online, such as using a residential proxy and installing anti-virus software.
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AI spells trouble for creatives – about time too
Columnist, The Times
The Times
11:00AM January 26, 2023
Vanity, egotism, a desire to be thought more interesting at parties . . . Perhaps I could have been more honest with the room full of students who wanted to know what had “inspired” me to go into journalism.
But surveying those youthful faces, I felt compelled to strike an idealistic note. So yes, while it’s true that I love books and ideas, a spirit of guilty self-criticism now compels me to confess that I was also after a lifestyle. I wanted to join the “creative classes”. I wanted to pile back-issues of The New Yorker on my coffee table and cultivate intimidating bookshelves. I wanted to look down on management consultants. Such were the youthful snobberies I mistook for principles.
Afterwards, clutching our half pints of cider (modern students are as abstemious as all the surveys say) on the freezing patio of an ancient Oxford pub, we got on to a subject I had not anticipated: artificial intelligence.
Graphic design, journalism, advertising – did these careers still offer reliable futures, my interlocutors wanted to know. AI can write news stories. It can produce paintings of startling and eerie beauty. Were they all fated to become functionaries of a machine, reluctant butlers to an imperious algorithm?
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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/news/pill-mills-or-medicines-future-the-rise-of-the-telehealth-corporates/
Pill mills or medicine’s future? The rise of the telehealth corporates
Telehealth has been one of the big winners from the COVID-19 pandemic
26 January 2023
It’s not easy for Laney Robson to get her two children, aged 5 and 11, to a doctor. Based just outside the Hunter Valley in NSW, she could brave the “diabolical” wait at the local ED or face being told “it’s weeks and weeks’ wait before we can take you on” by an unfamiliar GP clinic.
So Robson started using InstantScripts, an online business that charges $19 per prescription, for scripts to treat minor ailments, like her children’s eye and chest infections.
“Everything else we do in our lives is becoming more and more online; I just don’t see the difference between banking online and this sort of stuff,” Ms Robson says. “Certainly for people in rural areas, we’re very fortunate to be able to access something like this.”
Telehealth has been one of the big winners in Australian business from the COVID-19 pandemic.
A new wave of startups offering online access to treatments — from acne creams to erectile dysfunction medication and weight loss drugs — emerged, raising well over $100 million collectively from venture capital firms and other investors who saw a potential gold rush for startups to capture a slice of the $200 billion this country spends on health each year.
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ed623baa-5d82-431c-b910-93df1efb76a6
At a glance: data protection and management of health data in Australia
Gilbert + Tobin Andrew Hii, John Lee , Kevin Ko and Susan Jones
Australia January 25 2023
Data protection and management
Definition of ‘health data’
What constitutes ‘health data’? Is there a definition of ‘anonymised’ health data?
Health data includes:
- information or an opinion about an individual’s health or any health services provided, or to be provided, to the individual;
- any personal information collected to provide or in providing a ‘health service’ to an individual (including organ donation); and
- genetic information about an individual that is in a form that could be predictive about the health of an individual (or relative of the individual).
The concept of ‘providing health services’ is very broad and can capture a range of services that may not be front of mind when thinking about health – for example, information collected by a gym on an individual in connection with a gym class, or Medicare billing information held by an insurance provider or debt collector.
Anonymised health data is not defined, although the Australian Privacy Principles (APP) Guidelines state that ‘anonymity’ means that an individual dealing with an entity cannot be identified. Critically, health data that may be anonymous in the hands of one entity may not be anonymous in the hands of another. The ability of an entity to link a data set with other information is relevant to whether data is truly anonymised.
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d962e883-acdd-4d0a-9ed2-12796cdd061f
At a glance: intellectual property for digital health in Australia
Australia January 25 2023
Intellectual property
Patentability and inventorship
What are the most noteworthy rules and considerations relating to the patentability and inventorship of digital health-related inventions?
Patentees of digital health-related inventions, which often require computer implementation in one form or another, need to navigate the patentability requirement in Australia. While abstract ideas and computer-implemented inventions are not regarded as patentable subject matter in Australia, patents directed to other aspects of digital health-related inventions such as hardware, telemetry and diagnostic tools may be patent-eligible.
Recently, the Full Federal Court of Australia found that an artificial intelligence system could not be named as an inventor on a patent application (Commissioner of Patents v Thaler [2022] FCAFC 62). The High Court of Australia (Australia’s apex court) declined to hear an appeal of this decision (Thaler v Commissioner of Patents [2022] HCATrans 199).
Patent prosecution
What is the patent application and registration procedure for digital health technologies in your jurisdiction?
The Australian patent system provides the same application process across all technologies, including digital health. There are no specific provisions for digital health technologies. IP Australia (incorporating the Australian Patent Office) is responsible for pre-grant examinations, pre-grant oppositions, re-examinations and amendments to patents and patent applications. As in other jurisdictions, the process of filing to grant can take more than 18 months.
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=db837449-47dd-4991-83db-1609df06ffb4
What is secret sauce in chatGPT?
Australia January 23 2023
The media is ablaze with the marvels of the next generation of AI: writing passable grade university essays, winning art competitions, and composing a song “in the style of Nick Cave” (although Nick says the song sucks).
In a phrase coined by Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), these new AIs are classified as foundational models: 'A foundation model is any model that is trained on broad data (generally using self-supervision at scale) that can be adapted (e.g., fine-tuned) to a wide range of downstream tasks'.
Why are foundational models different to the AI of the past?
Actually, they are not so different. Foundational models use deep neural networks and self-supervised learning, which have existed for decades. What is different is the sheer scale and scope of foundation models – basically the vastness of the data they learn (and importantly, self-learn) on.
In a sense, foundational models are an example of ‘bigger is better’. AI model performance scales with the amount of computing, and in turn, the amount of computing used in training the largest AI has been doubling every 3.4 months and seems to be accelerating (faster than the biblical Moore’s Law). In less than four years, the number of parameters used in the largest AI models jumped by over 5 times.
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AI platform ChatGTP will have a massive impact on education
9:50PM January 24, 2023
No sooner is the Covid problem over than universities have been presented with a different, but equally difficult challenge. Last month artificial intelligence disrupted humans for real when OpenAI – in which Microsoft has just announced a $US10bn investment – released the third version of its ChatGPT platform.
For the first time we have a free, easily accessed AI bot which has close to human communication capacities, as well as the ability to mimic typically human stuff – such as essay writing, coding, joke telling, exam sitting and yarn spinning – in the blink of an eye. If that weren’t enough it also has access to virtually all human knowledge.
ChatGPT, and other similar products, pose several profound challenges and opportunities for educators. One is that ChatGPT can credibly do most assignments given to students – whether research tasks, essays or exams.
Another is that they are a superb source of knowledge. Any student who decides to use an AI bot to learn rather than cheat, immediately finds they have a free, and in most cases entirely reliable, tutor always at their elbow, capable of giving a coherent explanation of almost anything.
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Posted 24/01/2023 in Public Episode featuring Danielle Bancroft, Best Practice Software, Kate Ebrill, CSIRO, Alex Duong, Monash Health, Dr Brent Barker
324 - Interoperability; feasible goal or holy grail? Spring Summit 2022 Feature Episode
Interoperability is a word that is being used with increasing frequency. The reality is we have the technology to make it happen. There is no reason why technology can't support it.
So, why have we failed to achieve that goal so far?
We know it's important to the future of patient-centred care. We know it underpins the full framework, but what does the ideal experience actually look like for patient-centred clinicians? What are we actually trying to achieve?
In this episode, we look back at the Interoperability segment from Talking HealthTech’s Spring Summit. Danielle Bancroft from Best Practice Software chaired this session with a panel of Kate Ebrill from CSIRO, Alex Duong from Monash Health and Dr Brent Barker. In this episode, they look at the potential benefits of interoperability and answer the age-old question; is it a realistic and achievable goal or just a dream?
Supporting Caregivers
Brent recently found himself in the midst of a pandemic, supporting his mother through a complex health journey and is now supporting his father, who is independently living at home and needing care. While providing care and support for his parents, Brent has experienced many complexities over the last few years. However, there are many changes that could be made to help him and others in similar situations.
Though the technology exists for optimising interoperability, it still requires someone to take the time, interpret the information and apply it. Regardless of his clinical background, one thing that could have helped Brent’s situation is support. Having someone like a case manager, a coach or an advocate to support the family and help with coordinating services or ensuring that patient information is linked to identify what resources are available makes so much difference.
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https://www.afr.com/technology/ai-is-improving-faster-than-most-humans-realise-20230124-p5cf0e
AI is improving faster than most humans realise
This professor of economics says after many hours playing around with AI language tools, people are in for a shock.
Tyler Cowen
Jan 24, 2023 – 10.29am
Artificial intelligence advances in a manner that’s hard for the human mind to grasp. For a long time nothing happens, and then all of a sudden something does.
The current revolution of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT resulted from the advent of “transformer neural networks” in about 2017.
What will the next half-decade bring? Can we rely on our current impressions of these tools to judge their quality, or will they surprise us with their development?
As someone who has spent many hours playing around with these models, I think many people are in for a shock.
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If AI has all the answers, universities must change the questions
Academic and writer
January 24, 2023 — 5.00am
As the beginning of the academic year approaches, there is rising alarm among universities about the implications of AI. The focus of this concern is ChatGPT, a program that can, in response to a simple prompt, immediately originate a reasonably convincing approximation of a university-level essay.
Universities are on the defensive, pledging to increase the prevalence of supervised exams, while augmenting their plagiarism detection systems to identify students who have recruited an AI assistant. We’re told innovation (that empty buzzword) will be required, and some have suggested that students could be expected to incorporate the use of AI into their work, becoming for prose what calculators are to maths.
Just as the internet changed the depth and complexity we expect of students’ writing and research, the increasing availability and sophistication of AI might similarly shift the goalposts. Yet the bulk of institutional energy is being directed towards preserving the system as it exists.
As an academic who has marked thousands of assessments in disciplines across the humanities, I can confidently tell you that the system is not worth preserving. Rather than an obstacle to overcome, the flourishing of AI should be seen as an opportunity to ask what universities and assessments are for in the first place.
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https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.19.22283643v2.full
Performance of ChatGPT on USMLE: Potential for AI-Assisted Medical Education Using Large Language Models
Tiffany H.KungMorganCheathamChatGPTArielleMedenillaCzarinaSillosLorieDe LeonCamilleElepañoMariaMadriagaRimelAggabaoGiezelDiaz-CandidoJamesManingoVictorTseng
doi:
This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.
00003905769
ABSTRACT
We evaluated the performance of a large language model called ChatGPT on the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE), which consists of three exams: Step 1, Step 2CK, and Step 3. ChatGPT performed at or near the passing threshold for all three exams without any specialized training or reinforcement. Additionally, ChatGPT demonstrated a high level of concordance and insight in its explanations. These results suggest that large language models may have the potential to assist with medical education, and potentially, clinical decision-making.
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https://www.afr.com/technology/microsoft-invests-14b-in-chatgpt-maker-openai-20230124-p5cex0
Microsoft invests $14b in ChatGPT maker OpenAI
Dina Bass
Jan 24, 2023 – 3.11am
Microsoft is making a $US10 billion ($14 billion) investment over several years in OpenAI, the creator of the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT that has lit up the internet since its introduction in November.
ChatGPT amassed more than a million users within days and touched off a fresh debate over the role of AI in the workplace.
Microsoft, which already ploughed $US1 billion into OpenAI in 2019 and invested again in 2021, is seeking an inside edge on some of the most popular and advanced artificial intelligence systems as it competes with Alphabet, Amazon and Meta Platforms to dominate the fast-growing industry.
OpenAI needs Microsoft’s funding and cloud-computing power to crunch massive volumes of data and run the increasingly complex models that allow programs like DALL-E to generate realistic images based on a handful of words, and ChatGPT to create astonishingly human-like conversational text in response to prompts or queries.
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https://www.afr.com/technology/ai-is-coming-for-white-collar-jobs-gates-warns-20230123-p5cev7
AI is coming for white-collar jobs, Gates warns
Paul Smith Technology editor
Jan 24, 2023 – 12.00am
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has predicted rapid developments in the capability of artificial intelligence programs, such as high-profile tool ChatGPT, will dramatically change the way people source information online, and warned white-collar job losses will inevitably result from its use.
Speaking to The Australian Financial Review after an event at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Monday, the technology pioneer said he had been experimenting with generative AI programs a lot over the past year, and saw huge potential benefits for health and education.
Microsoft is already an investor in OpenAI, the company behind the GPT-3.5 language system that ChatGPT is based on, as well as Dall-E, which generates images from text prompts, and is in discussions to invest as much as $US10 billion ($14.3 billion.)
It has been suggested that generative AI could blow open the internet search market that has long been dominated by Google, amid reports that Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had recently been called back from semi-retirement to hold emergency meetings about how to incorporate chatbots in its search pages.
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https://www.afr.com/technology/is-chatgpt-a-form-of-magic-or-the-apocalypse-20230117-p5cd4p
Is ChatGPT a form of magic or the apocalypse?
ChatGPT hit the headlines in November, but it’s based on technology that data scientists have been working on since the 1950s.
John Davidson Columnist
Jan 24, 2023 – 5.00am
On the topic of how one goes bankrupt, Ernest Hemingway famously wrote that it happens two ways: gradually, then suddenly.
The aphorism has come to be retold in the longer formulation “First it happens slowly, then it happens all at once”, and it’s come to be applied to other phenomena, too, like the rate of uptake of technology, or hair loss.
Or, now, artificial intelligence.
Since the rise of what’s become known as “generative AI” in 2022 and the appearance of ChatGPT on November 30 that year, artificial intelligence has transformed from a steady stream of research and development over a period of half a century, to a gushing fire hydrant of technological innovation that, depending on whom you ask, suddenly promises to revolutionise and democratise entire fields of human endeavour, or threatens to bankrupt them.
Or, quite probably, both.
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How intelligent automation is tackling health care's biggest challenges
By Dan Ternes, Chief Technology Officer APAC,
SS&C Blue Prism
Monday, 23 January, 2023
Every country’s healthcare system works differently, but the pandemic has exacerbated the common pressure points across front- and back-office operations, affecting the quality of patient care.
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) latest global pulse survey revealed that 92% of the 129 respondent countries experienced some kind of disruption to services in the second half of last year. No major health area has been able to avoid negative impact, the survey found.
Australia saw a 7% jump in patients presenting to hospitals in the past year, increasing the wait time by nearly 30%. The pandemic took a toll on health systems around the world, leading to patient care and treatment being affected, with growing waitlists and waiting times, and overburdened care workers struggling to fill the gaps in an already understaffed sector that is facing increasing pressure to also maintain financial sustainability.
How does a sector with significant backlogs of waiting patients, resource and talent shortages, and difficulty attracting and retaining new talent dig itself out?
The WHO’s Regional Director for Europe, Dr Hans Henri P Kluge, said that in order to catch up on backlogged care we need to, among other things, invest in future health infrastructure. This sentiment was echoed by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the CBI conference last month where he had called for the public healthcare system, the National Health Service (NHS), to embrace automation to navigate challenges in the healthcare sector.
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https://www.smh.com.au/technology/is-the-big-tech-jobs-bloodbath-coming-for-you-20230122-p5cejr.html
Is the big tech jobs bloodbath coming for you?
Technology Editor
January 23, 2023 — 5.01am
From social media tool Linktree – a darling of Australia’s start-up scene – cutting 17 per cent of its staff, to rapid grocery delivery companies Voly and Send collapsing, there was no shortage of grim stories in the technology round last year.
This is a fresh new year but so far, it is looking much like the old one. Perhaps the biggest difference is there are even more people out of work as the technology industry’s largest companies, rather than start-ups, swing the scythe.
This month Amazon announced it was cutting 18,000 roles, expanding a layoff round announced last year. Microsoft announced last week that it would make about 5 per cent of the company, or 10,000 people, redundant. Google went for 6 per cent, putting about 12,000 people out of work.
And that’s to say nothing of the job cuts at Twitter, which are smaller in number but – along with resignations driven by its owner Elon Musk’s chaotic management – account for more than half the company’s workforce.
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https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2023/1/agent-based-modelling-lessons-for-this-and-future-pandemics/
Agent-based modelling: lessons for this and future pandemics
Joshua Szanyi Hassan Andrabi Tony Blakely
Comprehensive modelling frameworks provide insight into the potential next steps for policymakers, health professionals, and society in our ongoing response to COVID-19, write Joshua Szanyi, Hassan Andrabi, and Tony Blakely …
WE have navigated the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) policymaking for three years now – no one needs to be told that making decisions in a pandemic is complex. As our available options for responding to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreaks increase, so too do the public health questions requiring clear answers. Which age groups should be targeted for ongoing regular COVID-19 vaccination? How quickly should we bring back restrictions if infections in the community are increasing? What should our mask guidelines look like in Australia moving forward?
Addressing these questions without knowing what is around the corner is a difficult, and inherently uncertain, task. This is where modelling frameworks help – they allow us to quickly weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of a large number of choices in parallel.
We recently published the results of a comprehensive agent-based model in The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific (here), which estimates the health and economic consequences of over 100 potential policy packages implemented in Victoria in the 12 months from October 2022. These policies packages included combinations of:
- higher or lower stringency of lockdown restrictions to SARS-CoV-2 morbidity in the community (ie, a more or less strict approach to responding to infection waves);
- the provision of N95 masks by the government during large outbreaks to replace existing cloth or surgical masks;
- health promotion campaigns to increase overall mask wearing compliance during large outbreaks; and,
- 13 hypothetical vaccination schedules, targeting two different age groups with two future COVID-19 vaccines.
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https://www.smartcompany.com.au/startupsmart/news/australian-startups-raised-10-million/
Four Australian startups that have raised almost $7 million this week
January 20, 2023
Australian startup raises still haven’t quite picked back up to December 2022 numbers, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some dollars floating around. And we’re excited to report that we didn’t even have to look that hard for female-founded businesses receiving funding this week. You truly love to see it.
Bloom: $525,000
First up we have Bloom, an ethical investment startup from Brisbane that offers a democratised investment app that only deals in climate-friendly opportunities. This includes some unlisted green investments, like solar and wind farms, that haven’t been available to regular investors until now.
The $525,000 seed round was led by Up co-founder Dominic Pym and Envato founders Collis and Cyan Ta’eed.
Vedi: $3 million
Perth vet tech startup, Verdi, has secured $3 million for its universal medical record platforms for animals. It’s like My Health Record but presumably far less buggy and problematic.
The company launched in 2017 as VetVB but changed its name to Vedi last year. It was founded by Dr Steve Joslyn, a veterinary radiologist who wanted to create a solution to manual vet record-keeping and consistent data problems.
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David.