FRI AM News: WisBusiness: the Podcast with Dr. Majid Afshar, UW Health; TitletownTech announces two winners of Startup Draft, each getting $1M investment

April 25, 2025

— This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Dr. Majid Afshar, associate professor of medicine at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

The podcast is focused on a new AI-based screening tool for opioid addiction, which was developed by a research team at the UW SMPH. It was featured in a recent clinical trial study published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Researchers created an AI model using documentation in the health care record that can detect patients that may be at risk, alert the provider and guide them toward connecting patients with addiction resources. It uses notes that are already collected through routine clinical practice and analyzes them for patterns associated with substance abuse.

“A lot of these patients come to the hospital for other reasons, like wound infection or pneumonia or asthma, and it’s the underlying, you know, substance use disorder that’s maybe contributing to that,” Afshar said. “But it’s never prioritized because you’re kind of focused on the physical ailment.”

He discusses the development process for the AI tool, how it was trained to learn the correct trends and how it’s currently being used. Afshar says the “sophisticated” program has more than 13 million parameters, giving it the ability to assess patient records in a nuanced way.

“I don’t think we’re going to be replaced by AI, but certainly it can augment our workflows to become more efficient,” he said. “And so that’s the goal here, was that kind of learning how to use this technology so it can help augment our clinicians.”

The screening tool can identify some addicts that may otherwise have slipped through the cracks, Afshar said, helping to put them in touch with addiction medicine specialists, treatment and other supports. Along with reducing the number of return visits to the hospital, the tool resulted in cost savings as well.

The conversation also touches on the path ahead for the tool’s development, with Afshar noting future iterations may include more targeted approaches to notifying the correct people within the health system.

Listen to the podcast and see the full list of WisBusiness.com podcasts.

— TitletownTech has selected two startup companies as the winners of the Green Bay venture capital firm’s Startup Draft competition: Ateios Systems of Indiana and Madison-based Ubicept.

The firm had originally said one of the seven startups that participated in the recent pitch contest would receive a $1 million investment and other benefits. But during a livestream announcement yesterday ahead of the NFL Draft in Green Bay, TitletownTech Managing Partner Craig Dickman said “we’re really excited” to double that, awarding a $1 million investment to each of the two winning companies.

Ateios Systems is developing a cleaner, faster and less expensive platform for battery manufacturing, CEO and founder Rajan Kumar said during yesterday’s announcement. He said its light-based process can “literally shrink the factory to a fraction of the size” without sacrificing performance, cutting the cost of production in half.

“I’m incredibly honored to represent the company for this award, but all credit really goes to our team, our partners and investors,” he said yesterday. “They’re the ones who’ve bought into our vision, our model and have constantly challenged us to get to this point. And this investment is just going to unleash us.”

The other winner, Ubicept, is working to improve camera technology with an approach honed at UW-Madison. The company can enable sensors to “see” in all lighting environments and eliminate the visual blur caused by motion in captured images.

“Camera data provides almost the perfect input for understanding the world around us, but the problem is they struggle in environments where things are moving really fast, it’s too dark or you have very bright scenes mixed with dark scenes,” co-founder Tristan Swedish said yesterday, adding Ubicept combines “the best image sensors and the best image processing algorithms together in order to resolve these problems.”

Ahead of the announcement, Gov. Tony Evers joined TitletownTech’s broadcast and praised the VC firm — as well as its creators, the Green Bay Packers and Microsoft — for their efforts to support startup companies in Wisconsin.

“It is absolutely important that we become known as a state where startups are welcome and successful, so I’m really jazzed about that,” Evers said.

Before the winners were announced, Evers said he was hopeful that Ubicept would win, citing the company’s Wisconsin roots.

“We have lots of others that are part of this process that I’m sure are just as deserving,” he said. “It just shows how important it is for our state, you know, we have a company like that that’s working hard, has a great product, and no matter where they end up in this particular competition, I know they’re going to be successful.”

GOP U.S. Rep. Tony Wied, who represents northeastern Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District, said “being an entrepreneur is the greatest thing in the world” but also “the most difficult thing in the world.” During brief remarks on the livestream, he applauded the participants for taking on the challenge.

“Be willing to fail, but fail forward, get back up, keep working hard,” he said. “We need entrepreneurs. That is the future of our country.”

See coverage of the startup pitches from earlier this month and listen to a related podcast with Dickman.

— Statewide home sales in March were down 10.2% over the year, though affordability improved last month, the Wisconsin Realtors Association reports.

A total of 4,279 homes were sold in the state last month, compared to 4,764 in March 2024, according to the group’s latest monthly report.

While the median home price rose 3.7% to $310,000 in March, WRA notes that’s only about one-third the pace of price growth over the first two months of 2025. At the same time, a recent re-benchmarking of statewide income data “revealed more income growth” over the past 12 months than previously estimated.

The report shows the state’s median family income rose 7.7% from March 2024 to last month. Along with “moderating” price increases and a slight improvement in mortgage rates, this has improved housing affordability in Wisconsin, WRA says.

Chris DeVincentis, the group’s board chair, says these changes have “really helped” with home affordability.

“This is a good sign as we move into the peak season for sales,” he said. “The ongoing challenge is the weak inventory levels that constrain home sales growth.”

Total statewide listings rose just 0.6% over the year to reach 17,704 in March, while new listings fell by 1.3%.

Meanwhile, WRA President and CEO Tom Larson says buyers in Wisconsin are now adjusting to the “new normal” for mortgage rates. He notes in the report that some buyers “stepped back” from the market when mortgage rates broke 5% nearly three years ago in hopes that rates would go back down.

“Now that 30-year rates have been in the 6% to 7% range for most of the last two years, there are signs that buyers are treating this as the new normal,” he said. “That bodes well for solid buyer demand going into the peak sales period.”

See the release and report.

Top headlines from the Health Care Report…

— Wisconsin physicians criticized GOP U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden for potential cuts to Medicaid during a call hosted by the Committee to Protect Health Care.

For more of the most relevant health care news, reports on groundbreaking research in Wisconsin, links to top stories and more, sign up today for the free daily Health Care Report from WisPolitics and WisBusiness.com.

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