Technology

Google hardware launches are never spec-fests. The search giant would rather just sit on the sideline while companies like Apple and Samsung battle it out on that front. In fact, numbers like screen resolution, processor speed and battery capacity were conspicuously absent from todaypresentation.

Instead, the company seems more content to have hardware serve the productsoftware — ita strategy that certainly makes sense given the companybackground. That often means that products like the Pixel don&t offer major spec upgrades year over year, instead relying on breakthroughs in AI, ML and the like to take them to the next level.

As such, the company regularly tosses out words like &pragmatic& and &practical& when discussing the decisions made in service of producing the Pixel 3. One such move was the continued reliance on a single rear-facing camera, when the competition is adding two or three to get the job done.

&We look at all of the different configurations we can get,&VP of Product Management Brian Rakowski tells TechCrunch. &If we would have added another lens, it would have given us no benefit over what we get with one really good lens.&

The simple answer is that the company was able to accomplish most of what it set out to do with a combination of &one really good camera& and software tricks like digital zoom, ultra low-light shooting and depth perception. That last bit is doubly important both for creating the bokeh effect in portrait mode and helping deliver augmented reality experiences through ARCore.

Senior Director of Product Management Sabrina Ellis says the company did consider a wide-angle lens for the rear of the device, but ultimately, &it wasn&t as much of a pain point.& It was, however, enough of an issue to warrant its addition to the front of the device.

That decision is what lead to the mismatched notches on the Google Pixel 3 (no notch) and Pixel 3 XL (giant notch). While the company has happily embraced hashtag notch life in Android Pie, the smaller Pixelslim profile wouldn&t have benefited from the addition of a notch.

&With the small one,& Rakowski explains, &it turns out the space is just too small when you put the wide-angle lens in. Ita narrower phone, so you have room for an icon or two, whereas on the bigger phone everything you need for the status icons is up there, and ita very good use of the space.&

When I suggested the company was ¬ch agnostic,& both execs laughed in agreement. The hardware, Rakowski explained, is secondary to the overall experience. &We&re not obsessed with the specs,& he says. &We&re obsessed with the features and experiences.&

CAVU Venture Partners has led the $20 million Series B for Once Upon a Farm, which sells organic, cold-pressed baby food in 8,500 grocery stores in the U.S.

The Berkeley-based startup was originally founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneurs Cassandra Curtis and Ari Raz. Today, it lists actress Jennifer Garner and former General Mills presidentJohn Foraker as co-founders, too.

Both Garner and Foraker — who was the chief executive officer of the popular organicmac - cheese brand AnnieHomegrown for more than a decade — joined the company in September 2017. Foraker had been an angel investor in Once Upon a Farm and, after conversations with Garner, decided to accept the role of CEO. Garner, widely known for her roles in Alias, 13 Going on 30 and the upcoming HBO original series Camping, was already somewhat of a Once Upon a Farm evangelist when she signed on as chief brand officer a little over a year ago.

&I am proud of the innovative business that we have built,& Garner said in a statement. &It is incredibly exciting to see so many families embracing our products.This latest round of funding allows us to continue to help busy parents give their children the most nutritious foods possible and make life a little bit easier for families across the country.&

Foraker told TechCrunch that since he and Garner joined, the business has grown 10x. Last fall, the companyproducts were for sale in 300 stores; today, as mentioned, they are available in more than 8,000.

&Because she has global celebrity, the power of that, she can really help us get the message out and help lots of moms and dads find [Once Upon a Farm],& Foraker said.

Once Upon a Farm sells smoothies and applesauce for kids up to age 12 directly to consumers through its online marketplace and in stores. Pouches of its signature baby food,smoothies and applesauce are $2.99 each.

As part of the deal, CAVUco-founder and managing partner Brett Thomas, along with CAVU investor Jared Jacobs, will join the companyboard.S2G Ventures and Beechwood Capital also participated in the round for the startup, which raised a $4 million Series A in June 2017.

The company plans to use the funds to expand its direct to consumer business, partner with more U.S. grocers and build out a wider assortment of baby products.

&You can buy fresh pet food now in almost 20,000 stores in the U.S.,& Foraker said. &We think fresh baby food has a long way to go.&

Solving big problems for many people is the kind of opportunity that both entrepreneurs and investors love. Like recent Brazilian investment booms focused on fintech innovation and new on-demand business models, therebeen a recent explosion in healthtech startups in Brazil. With tens of millions of the countrypeople impacted by gigantic inequities in access to health services, some serious quality problems, burdensome costs and inefficiencies on all sides, entrepreneurs& plates are full in bringing healthtech innovations to the market.

In a recent study by Liga Ventures, there are now more than 250 health-focused startups in Brazil, the worldseventh-largest health market with more than $42 billion spent annually on private healthcare. Yet, with more than $18 billion wasted due to inefficiencies, and health-related costs doubling in the country during the last five years (with accumulated inflation at 38 percent), Brazilian healthcare is ripe for disruption. Healthtech startups are one of the five featured verticals atCubo Itaú, one of worldlargest entrepreneurial hubs based in Vila Olímpia, in the southern zone of São Paulo.

Last year, healthtech was the second-fastest growing tech sector in Latin America, according to &Inside Latin AmericaBreakout Year in Tech& published by LAVCA. There was a 250 percent increase in the number of healthtech deals compared to 2016. A $50 million investment inDr. Consulta, a network of brick-and-mortar clinics in Brazil offering top-quality healthcare at an affordable price, was among the top venture capital deals for 2017.

The healthcare sector is a complex market that connects people, processes and products between patients, intermediaries, care providers, distributors and suppliers. Based on tech innovation in Brazil thathaving the biggest impact, here are some of the key categories and players bringing new business models to market.

Healthcare on demand

About 75 percent of Brazilpopulation (approximately 150 million people) only have access to the public healthcare system, which is poorly managed and inefficient. Often times, to schedule a single consultation or exam, a patient needs to wait weeks or even months to see a care provider. Technology-driven startups are springing up to address better, more efficient access to healthcare for a large and aging population.

For example, Dr. Consultachain of low-cost medical clinics have expanded in three years from one to 51 branches and now claim to have the countrylargest clinical data set drawn from more than one million patients. In comparison to other private-sector clinics that cost at least $90, consultations with doctors at Dr. Consulta cost $25. Others offering similar clinical services on demand in Brazil today includeClínica Sim,Dr. Sem Filas,DocwayandGlobalMed.

Telehealth and mobile health apps

To help make healthcare advice, diagnosis and monitoring more accessible, telehealth services in Brazil are expanding. Brazil Telemedicine (Brasil Telemedicina), for example, provides a variety of services around the clock that include medical exams and doctor consultations, a remote monitoring system and psychological counseling.

Startups with B2B telehealth services to improve patient care includeTelelaudo, which provides 24/7 radiology imaging analysis, andVentrix, which provides specialty devices to monitor heart health, treat vacuum wounds and monitor babies& breathing and well-being. Another São Paulo-based startup calledNEO MEDhas launched a marketplace to make it easier and faster to generate medical reports for ECG and EEG exams, facilitate improved collaboration between clinics, laboratories and hospitals and support physicians seeking more income and flexibility in where they choose to work.

Mobile health apps have grown in popularity in Brazil, in part due to a high prevalence of diseases like diabetes and hypertension and a large number of internet users in the country. For example, a mobile app and online program called Diet and Health (Dieta e Saude) has helped more than 1,600,000 users make better nutrition choices and motivate them to exercise regularly.Youper, founded in Brazil and now based in San Francisco, is a virtual emotional health assistant that helps overcome social anxiety. It helps its users re-formulate thought patterns and arrive at healthier states of mind.

AI and data analytics

Like many industries, AI and data analytics are transforming healthcare in Brazil and beyond from improving the speed of patient diagnoses to managing healthcare costs.

Gestois one such emerging innovator thatusing machine learning to sift through and make sense of a lot of data on more than 4.5 million patients in its database to help select better insurance plans for corporations that optimize patient care while controlling costs.Intensicare, the largest specialist in intensive care unit management in Brazil, uses AI to speed diagnosis and reduce patient stay time and mortality rates.Epitrack is a Recife-based startup that uses crowdsourced data, AI and predictive analysis to combat outbreaks and epidemics through computational epidemiology.

Electronic medical records

Last year, the Brazilian government launched a project to modernize patient records for more than 42,000 public health clinics across the country by the end of 2018. This digitization of records is estimated to save the federal government about $6.8 billion according to The World Bank. As of late last year, only 30 million Brazilians (out of 208 million) had electronic medical records (EMR), and nearly two-thirds of the family clinics in Brazil didn&t have any way of recording digital information about their patients.

iClinic, a SaaS EMR platform, is one of the top Brazilian startups thathas made a big impact on modernizing healthcare. It helps health professionals organize patient records electronically, store all that data in the cloud and retrieve it from any device. iClinic provides an extremely easy-to-use system to make healthcare more efficient, reduce costs and improve the quality of patient care. Itnow used in many parts of Brazil and has begun to spread its usage outside Brazil in more than 20 countries.

Digitizing prescriptions

Another major issue caused by a lack of digitization is that close to 70 percent of medical prescriptions in Brazil have potential for errors, according to the World Health Organization. As a result, Brazil has thousands of deaths per year linked to medication errors.A good number of them could be avoided by scanning.In the U.S., more than 77 percent of prescriptions are already done digitally.

To address this life-and-death issue,Memedhas emerged as a key player for managing e-prescriptions in Brazil. Its platform, now used by more than55,000 doctors from all medical specialties in the country, helps cross-check for allergies and drug interactions, makes treatment adherence easier and improves health outcomes. Itdeveloped the most complete, reliable and updated drug database in Brazil.

Certainly, healthtechstartups in Brazil have emerged as a sector to watch, and we&re only at the tip of the iceberg in terms of problems in the country to be addressed by healthtech innovation. The key ingredients to create another boom sector like fintech in the region are abundant. Healthtech in Brazil will surely remain a hot spot for entrepreneurs, and the investors who believe in them, for many years to come.

Disclosure: Redpoint eventures is an investor in Memed.