SXSW 2025: Emerging healthcare trends you need to know

In partnership with

Greetings from Austin, Texas! 🤠

In this issue of Healthy Innovations, I highlight the emerging trends impacting healthcare according to world-renowned journalists, futurists, clinicians, and entrepreneurs here at SXSW.

South by Southwest (SXSW, or "South by") is an annual festival in Texas that celebrates the convergence of technology, film, music, education, and culture. While it features a dedicated Health & MedTech track, many of the most valuable health insights emerge from sessions on gaming, the creator economy, design, startups, AI and more.

So, let’s dive in!

Unlike a medical conference, SXSW offers an incredibly diverse experience spanning movies, startups, biotechnology, climate change, AI, online marketing, music, and more. While there are many health-focused sessions, it's the exposure to this wide range of topics that reveals new possibilities for improving patient care.

Though SXSW may not resemble a traditional congress, I highly recommend it to anyone who values innovation and thinks outside the box. The cross-pollination of ideas across industries creates a fertile ground for breakthrough thinking that's hard to find elsewhere.

Today's top technological breakthroughs

Trend presentations are a cornerstone of SXSW, and I attended two standout sessions: one that noted today's technological breakthroughs and one that was more focused on what will unfold over the coming years and decades.

First was MIT Technology Review's Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year, presented by Executive Editor Niall Firth. Since 2001, the team has made these educated predictions by polling their reporters and debating which innovations should make the list.

Two healthcare advances made the prestigious top 10 this year:

• Long-acting HIV prevention medications: A trial of a new HIV prevention medicine (lenacapavir from Gilead) showed 100% protection against HIV infection among 5,000 women in Uganda and South Africa. Unlike conventional PrEP, which requires daily or pre-exposure dosing, lenacapavir needs just one injection every six months. While it currently costs $40,000 per year, Gilead is making generics available in lower-developed countries, potentially helping end AIDS - if we ensure access for those who need it.

• Stem cell therapies that work: Scientists promised decades ago that embryonic stem cells would cure disease. That promise is finally becoming reality. Experimental transplants of lab-made cells are successful in treating epilepsy and type 1 diabetes. Niall highlighted Neurona Therapeutics, which develops off-the-shelf neural cell therapies for chronic neurological disorders. Their pipeline includes neuronal, glial, and gene-edited cell therapy candidates led by NRTX-1001, a first-in-class inhibitory neuron therapy for epilepsy.

Also on the list, though not healthcare-related, were driverless robotaxis. Waymo launched its robotaxi fleet in Austin this week, and seeing driverless cars smoothly navigate city traffic was impressive (though I'm still waiting to be assigned one by Uber!).

A glimpse into the future

I attended the highly anticipated Emerging Tech Report session by futurist Amy Webb on Saturday morning. She has been sharing her insights at SXSW for over 20 years, and the line to attend stretched across four floors and included a wait on the outdoor fire stairs!

This year's theme was "beyond" - a period she described as rules breaking down due to rapid progress in AI, biotechnology, and advanced sensors. Apparently, we've also moved from FOMO (fear of missing out) to FOMA (fear of missing anything) as daily technological breakthroughs leave us struggling to prepare for the future.

From Future Today Strategic Group's comprehensive 1,000-page report (available to download for free), here are six fascinating healthcare-related trends:

1. AI: Generative Antibody Design - Companies like Xaira Therapeutics are using sophisticated AI tools, particularly diffusion models (the technology behind AI image generation), to design antibodies from scratch.

2. Web3: Decentralized Science (DeSci) - DeSci platforms are revolutionizing how scientific research is funded, conducted, and shared. Instead of relying solely on traditional funding like government grants or corporate sponsorship, this approach uses blockchain technology for direct community funding and participation.

3. Metaverse: Medical Metaverse - Extended reality (XR) and AI are transforming healthcare, reshaping patient care, surgical precision, and medical education. Platforms like Virti are advancing medical training through interactive XR and AI learning.

4. Biotechnology: Dark Genome Exploration - The "dark genome" - noncoding DNA that makes up over 98% of human DNA - remains mysterious in purpose and function. Recent advances in long-read sequencing, AI-driven annotation, and epigenetic mapping are revealing these regions' roles in gene regulation and disease. Scientists have linked mutations here to autism, schizophrenia, and cancer.

5. Medicine: Lab-On-A-Chip - LoC devices pack entire laboratory functions onto microchips. This technology enables faster, more cost-effective, and portable testing across healthcare, biotechnology, and environmental fields.

6. Space: Biopharma in Space - Pharmaceutical companies like Varda Space Industries, Axiom, and Merck are investing in space-based labs, using microgravity to enhance chemical processes and crystallization in drug development.

There are so many disruptive trends in FTSG's report that I'll cover more in future newsletters.

GenAI transforming drug development

On Saturday afternoon, I attended an enlightening panel discussion sponsored by Eli Lilly with Alex Zhavoronkov, CEO of Insilico Medicine, Samuel (Sandy) Aronson from Mass General Brigham and facilitated by Tatyana Kanzaveli, CEO of Open Health Network.

The panelists explored how generative AI is transforming drug development - from finding drug candidates to recruiting patients.

Alex shared striking statistics: the FDA approves only about 50 drugs annually, with just seven being truly novel. Drug discovery has a 99% failure rate. Yet companies like Insilico show AI's potential, having advanced 6 AI-designed drug candidates to human trials.

He explained that most "low-hanging fruit" in drug discovery is gone, making breakthroughs increasingly rare. This is where AI excels - helping researchers identify promising candidates faster. In preclinical research, AI already cuts development time by up to 1.5 years, with even greater potential in less regulated markets like China.

Sandy focused on AI's impact on clinical trials, particularly patient recruitment, which accounts for 32% of trial costs. By scanning electronic health records (EHRs) for pre-screening, AI reduces research teams' work while boosting efficiency. One randomized trial showed an 84% increase in enrollment rates using AI. When AI and human staff disagreed on patient eligibility, AI proved right more than half the time, suggesting its potential to improve both accuracy and efficiency.

Despite these benefits, the panelists noted that AI adoption faces several challenges:

• Accuracy: AI predictions can be inaccurate. Researchers must assess AI's limitations beforehand to set acceptable uncertainty levels. However, pharma is the most regulated industry in the world, so that is your safety net.

• Privacy and regulations: HIPAA compliance restricts usable AI models, requiring trusted data provider agreements. Many AI drug discovery projects work around this by using public datasets.

• Change management: Implementing AI in clinical trials requires extensive team training. While AI research might become fully automated, pharma needs rigorous testing and validation throughout.

All speakers agreed that rather than replacing human experts, generative AI aims to enhance their capabilities, accelerate drug development, and improve clinical trials. Despite regulatory hurdles and industry caution, AI is proving its worth in making processes faster, more efficient, and potentially more successful.

Reflecting on my SXSW experience so far, one thing stands out: healthcare innovation's future lies in our ability to blend ideas across disciplines. The most promising breakthroughs don't just emerge from within healthcare - they spring from the creative fusion of AI, materials science, biotechnology, and even space exploration.

Innovation highlights

💊 Aspirin's cancer-fighting breakthrough: Researchers have discovered how aspirin prevents cancer metastasis by reducing TXA2 levels, which prevents T cell suppression and activates immune responses. This serendipitous finding explains why daily low-dose aspirin reduces the spread of breast, bowel, and prostate cancers, potentially leading to more accessible and targeted cancer treatments worldwide.

👁️ Sight-saving stem cells: Scientists have successfully restored vision in patients with severe corneal damage using CALEC therapy. By transplanting lab-grown stem cells from patients' healthy eyes into damaged ones, the treatment created a foundation for normal tissue regeneration. In a recent trial, 93% of participants experienced significant vision improvement, offering new hope for those with previously irreversible corneal injuries.

🧪 AI revolutionizes antibody discovery: Researchers have secured $30 million to develop AI technology that can create antibody therapies against any target. Using their LIBRA-seq technology, the team aims to build an unprecedented antibody-antigen atlas with over 1 million pairs (versus 15,000 currently available), transforming the typically inefficient, costly antibody discovery process into a streamlined, democratized system that doesn't rely on biological samples.

Company to watch

🐭 Colossal Biosciences is resurrecting extinct species through cutting-edge genetic engineering, and I was fortunate enough to see founder Ben Lamm speak at SXSW on Sunday. This Dallas-based company is pioneering de-extinction projects for the woolly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger, and dodo bird. Their breakthrough "woolly mice" - genetically modified to display mammoth-like traits including dense golden-brown fur - recently validated their approach to functional de-extinction. Their genetic technologies have powerful healthcare applications, with their spin-off Form Bio already using AI to manage complex biological datasets for disease treatment research.

Weird and wonderful

🧠 Brain cells power next-gen computing: Startup Cortical Labs has unveiled CL1, the first commercially available biological computer using human neurons grown on silicon chips. Unlike their 2022 "Pong-playing" brain cells, this shoebox-sized device contains hundreds of thousands of tiny neural networks that can be programmed directly. While requiring minimal power compared to conventional AI chips, the technology aims to complement (not replace) current AI methods, with potential applications in drug testing, disease modeling, and biological AI development.

Want to get the most out of ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a superpower if you know how to use it correctly.

Discover how HubSpot's guide to AI can elevate both your productivity and creativity to get more things done.

Learn to automate tasks, enhance decision-making, and foster innovation with the power of AI.

Download the free guide with actionable prompts and tips to make your work more productive.

Thank you for reading the Healthy Innovations newsletter!

Keep an eye out for next week’s issue, where I will highlight the healthcare innovations you need to know about.

Have a great week!

Alison

P.S. If you enjoyed reading the Healthy Innovations newsletter, please subscribe so I know the content is valuable to you!

P.P.S. If you're considering starting your own newsletter to share your expertise and build a community around your healthcare niche, check out beehiiv (affiliate link). There's never been a better time to start sharing your knowledge with the world!