Mesh Bio: The role of deep tech in modern healthcare

What if we can prevent catastrophic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and stroke with deep tech? The word deep tech might still be unfamiliar to people’s ears as it first emerged in 2014. 

Deep tech is defined as referring to companies that focus on significant scientific or engineering breakthroughs, to address major global problems. While most digital startups work on new products or business ideas, deep tech startups dive into advanced areas like biotech, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and blockchain. 

These companies have the potential to catalyze change, establish new industries, and disrupt existing ones, as revealed in Deep Tech: The New Wave publications. One area in deep tech with a direct impact on human lives is related to health and medical innovation. 

The Future Health Index 2024 global report also shows how healthcare leaders have already implemented AI for clinical decision support across different hospital areas, including in-hospital patient monitoring, medication management, treatment planning, radiology, and preventative care.

To learn more about AI implementation in healthcare, Dr. Andrew Wu, PhD, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mesh Bio, a Singapore-based deep tech startup focused on addressing chronic disease management through predictive analytics, shared his insights with us. 

Transforming chronic disease management

The impact of predictive analysis on an individual level will enhance patient care and health management. For medical professionals, it will provide actionable insights for better decision-making and reduce the number of administrative tasks that doctors have to complete.

Finally, in the macro-level healthcare system and government, it could improve public health strategies and policies. 

Mesh Bio is building an innovative approach to tailoring chronic disease prevention through DARA® Health Intelligence Platform, that enables personalized healthcare at scale.

“So we do three things: we structure and integrate multidimensional patient data, then feed it into our analytics engine that includes our digital twin technology, and lastly we generate personalized insights about the patient and recommend care plans to the doctors,” Andrew explained. 

Eventually, all patients’ clinical data is translated into actionable insights, providing tailored recommendations for doctors to review and decide on further patient care steps. Hence, it will help patients better manage their health, lifestyle, and disease risk.

In Singapore, Mesh Bio has made progress with SingHealth and NHG under the I2A grant to deploy HealthVector® Diabetes in the public healthcare system. 

HealthVector® Diabetes is the world’s first foundational digital twin model of human biology. It has received regulatory approval from the Health Science Authority in Singapore and has been validated in a clinical paper published by Nature Digital Medicine journal, making it the first for the country.

Additionally, in the past six months, Mesh Bio has marked a significant step in regional expansion by signing agreements with three new healthcare providers in Indonesia and launching operations in the Philippines, in collaboration with Fullerton Health. 

Mesh Bio’s commitment to paving the way for healthcare innovation

The rise of Generative AI (GenAI) has shown significant promise in transforming the healthcare sector, offering remarkable possibilities for improving patient care.

Andrew stated, “We are really excited to incorporate trending technologies such as Generative AI into our clinical analytics engine and combine this with our foundational digital twin model, HealthVector®. It is imperative that novel analytics approaches have transparency that builds trust with healthcare providers.”

All of these innovations are rooted deeply in Mesh Bio’s long-term mission to be the leading global health technology company, where digital twin technology enables precision medicine, bringing the right interventions to the patient and personalized care at scale.

Being part of the East Ventures ecosystem since 2023, Mesh Bio is now ready to build traction and repeatability in key markets such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines to elevate healthcare quality in the region. 

However, since digital transformation is relatively new to Southeast Asia, the company’s biggest challenge is to educate the market and help them understand the value that can be created through these solutions.

East Ventures has been actively investing in healthtech to tackle Indonesia’s greatest challenges and make prevention, early identification, and effective treatment more accessible.

In the coming decade, we believe the integration of technology into healthcare is expected to present an array of significant opportunities for Southeast Asia. A recent study also shows that healthcare investments are shifting from telehealth to biotech.

If you are a startup founder building in the healthcare sector, send us your pitch here.