10x Isn't Enough to Change Medicine with Alan Cohen

Alan Cohen has built companies, sold companies, started a price war between tech giants and now invests in what he calls "tech med" at DCVC, a $4.5bn deep-tech fund.

The distinction matters: tech med starts with data and computational methods, not hardware. 

In this conversation, Alan unpacks the investments that excite him, from real-time surgical guidance to AI-powered ultrasound and the pitches that don't make the cut.

He and Henry dig into hospital bottlenecks, the promise and peril of Health GPT, and his vision for a future where every treatment is personalised to a "circle of one."

Key Topics:

• The distinction between "med tech" and "tech med"  and why it matters

• How computer vision, autonomous vehicle tech, and AI are entering the operating room

• What DCVC looks for when investing in healthcare startups

• The "circle of one" vision for personalised therapies

• Why data strategy must be foundational, not an afterthought

Related Insights:

• The real bottleneck in hospital systems isn't technology it's workflow and staffing

• LLMs like Health GPT have promise, but also serious risks for untrained users

• Surgeons and specialists are the scarcest resource tech should augment, not replace

Core Challenges:

• Healthcare costs are reaching unsustainable proportions, forcing new thinking

• Personnel shortages mean hospitals can't scale with demand

• Switching behaviour in medicine is slow  new entrants need a 10x improvement to break through

🎧 Tune in now to hear how one of Silicon Valley's sharpest deep-tech investors sees the future of surgical robotics, AI diagnostics, and the quantified self.

The Crux of MedTech podcast is brought to you by Cruxx, a specialist surgical robotics recruitment agency.

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A big thank you to our sponsors on this season of the podcast;

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