{"id":264,"date":"2021-06-04T15:57:56","date_gmt":"2021-06-04T15:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wellai.health\/blog\/?p=264"},"modified":"2021-12-31T00:41:35","modified_gmt":"2021-12-31T00:41:35","slug":"babylon-pulls-a-rabbit-out-of-the-hat-with-4-2-billion-spac-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wellai.health\/blog\/babylon-pulls-a-rabbit-out-of-the-hat-with-4-2-billion-spac-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Babylon Pulls a Rabbit Out of the Hat, with $4.2 Billion SPAC Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>Babylon\u2019s shiny packaging disguises poor AI<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/technology\/online-health-startup-babylon-go-public-via-42-bln-spac-deal-2021-06-03\/\">With yesterday\u2019s news, Babylon culminates a massive consolidation and acquisition flurry in the digital health industry<\/a> that started with COVID last year.\u00a0 Covid has been horrible for the world.\u00a0 But one of a few industries that has benefited from COVID has definitely been the digital health industry.<\/p>\n<p>The $4.2 billion SPAC deal places Babylon\u2019s valuation at 53x company\u2019s 2020 revenue and 13x company\u2019s guided 2021 revenue.\u00a0 These are mind blowing valuations (again, this is <em>revenue<\/em>, not profit).\u00a0 Reminds me of the 1990s tech bubble.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest story here is how Babylon got so successful, albeit being widely criticized \u2013 both by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mobihealthnews.com\/content\/uk-practitioner-organization-twitter-influencers-dispute-babylon-healths-strong-performance\">professional groups<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/coiera.com\/2018\/06\/29\/paper-review-the-babylon-chatbot\/\">academics<\/a> &#8211; for the lack of good information on the performance of Babylon\u2019s statistical models.\u00a0 Babylon\u2019s 2018 comparison study \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/33733203\/\">which was later published in the November 2020 issue of the Frontiers of Artificial Intelligence<\/a> \u2013 was poorly conducted, with only 7 doctors and a small number of vignettes.\u00a0 Despite these statistical deficiencies, Babylon claimed its assistant performed at least as good as doctors did.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mobihealthnews.com\/news\/emea\/uk-health-chiefs-block-controversial-app-patient-safety-concerns\">The NHS had to block the Babylon app\u2019s release in 2018 due to patient safety concerns.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In a separate <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/33328258\/\">December 2020 study<\/a>, researchers from ADA Health worked on a larger sample of 200 vignettes and found that, among eight most popular digital health assistants on the market, <strong>Babylon\u2019s digital health assessment app had only 32% accuracy for top-3 diagnoses vs human doctors\u2019 82%<\/strong>, nowhere close to Babylon\u2019s claim of having doctor-like accuracy of diagnoses.<\/p>\n<p>Two obvious problems with all these studies:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The studies are written by parties directly interested in the results. A true independent studies are needed.<\/li>\n<li>More importantly, the sample size is statistically insignificant. At the age of super computing, why do we stop at 200 vignettes?\u00a0 Why not look at thousands?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Despite of all these (at best) very mixed results regarding performance of its statistical models, Babylon has been attracting multiple investors.<\/p>\n<p>As it turned out in Babylon\u2019s story, it\u2019s not the model that matters.\u00a0 <strong>It\u2019s about the message of how AI could help<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Kudos to Babylon!<\/p>\n<p><strong>At WellAI, we use artificial intelligence for what we believe artificial intelligence is supposed to be used for: quick, efficient, cheap and accurate information by means of access to the knowledge of 30+ million medical studies. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Try WellAI for yourself and\/or your patients.\u00a0 The price for our flagship voice guided digital health assistant is still super low at $39.99 per year (which is equivalent to $3.33 per month).\u00a0 You can make your purchase directly on our website <a href=\"https:\/\/wellai.health\">https:\/\/wellai.health<\/a> or at the <a href=\"https:\/\/apps.apple.com\/us\/app\/id1530556224\">App Store<\/a> or on <a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=health.wellai.assistant\">Google Play<\/a> on your smartphone.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to learn more about this breakthrough technology that is meant to provide unique access to scientific health information to everyone and to dramatically improve your health knowledge, please <strong>schedule a 1-on-1 demo<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you are a doctor, an employer, a health benefits advisor, or an insurance broker and would like a cool benefit that makes your employees healthier and happier, and saves your business time and money, please schedule a virtual meeting <a href=\"https:\/\/calendly.com\/well-ai-health\/for-employers-zoom-meeting\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>If you are a potential investor who would like to be part of a unique once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity that will forever revolutionize healthcare, please schedule a virtual meeting <a href=\"https:\/\/calendly.com\/well-ai-health\/investment-opportunities-zoom-meeting\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>If you are a potential customer, a patient or you are just curious about any of the WellAI high tech products \u2013 a voice-guided digital health assistant, data-driven Telehealth 2.0, or the scientific chronic disease management program \u2013 please schedule a virtual meeting <a href=\"https:\/\/calendly.com\/well-ai-health\/30min\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Stay healthy!\u00a0 Be knowledgeable about your health!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With yesterday\u2019s news, Babylon culminates a massive consolidation and acquisition flurry in the digital health industry that started with COVID last year.\u00a0 Covid has been horrible for the world.\u00a0 But one of a few industries that has benefited from COVID has definitely been the digital health industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[186],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wellai.health\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Babylon-Pulls-a-Rabbit-Out-of-the-Hat-with-4.2-Billion-SPAC-Deal-min-e1622822259452.png?fit=594%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellai.health\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellai.health\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellai.health\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellai.health\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellai.health\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wellai.health\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":524,"href":"https:\/\/wellai.health\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellai.health\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellai.health\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellai.health\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellai.health\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}