News 1/24/25

Top News

VA secretary nominee Doug Collins tells the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee that he will review the VA’s Oracle Health implementation with a fresh perspective and is optimistic about its completion.

Collins expressed confidence that project rollouts could resume earlier than the recently announced target date of mid-2026.

Reader Comments

From Senor Ortega: “Re: Express Scripts. Its fax service has been down since January 17. The only way to send them new prescriptions is via fax.” Unverified. I’ve emailed the company’s press contact. Meanwhile, my own contacts suggest that it was a brief outage and faxing is back to normal now, but anyone who knows different is welcome to chime in. I had forgotten that Express Scripts (pharmacy benefits manager) is part of Evernorth Health Services, which is owned by Cigna.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Dear conference attendees – while I admire your enthusiasm for spending your employer’s money to attend some conference, my own enthusiasm wanes when faced with a splashy LinkedIn announcement of that attendance (I’m annoyed only if it has a gratuitous graphic to game the LinkedIn algorithm, especially if the conference obviously provided it, but otherwise it’s just fine). For those who have asked me, I don’t know if ViVE is hosting a cash-grabbing nostalgia act for Industry Night this year (the Fergie-free Black Eyed Peas should now be unexpectedly available, prices start at $400,000, and who doesn’t like “Where Is The Love?” even if their newer stuff uses a lot of computer enhancement).

Health system executives, technologists, and radiologists — complete a short, anonymous survey about your organization’s AI purchasing plans and Volpara Health will make a significant donation to teach grant requests through DonorsChoose. Eleven questions, two or three minutes of your time, and a teacher somewhere gets some help with classroom necessities. I bragged on HIStalk reader participation when Volpara suggested the donation, so help me avoid looking bad.

Webinars

Stream on demand. “Healthcare Data Security: Aligning Processes with Evolving Threats & Regulations.” Sponsor: Inovalon. Presenters: Anthony Houston, MBA, senior director of security, risk, and compliance, Inovalon; Paul Wilder, MBA, executive director, CommonWell Health Alliance; Luke McNamara, MPA, deputy chief analyst, Google Cloud; Michael Quinn, VP of strategic partner development, Inovalon. Hear leaders in healthcare data security discuss some of the top recent threat evolutions and how organizations can proactively respond by making ongoing improvements to security protocols.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Behavioral health AI agent developer Eleos raises $60 million in a Series C funding round.

Sweden-based full-body scanner company Neko Health raises $260 million in a Series B funding round, valuing the company at $1.8 billion. Neko, co-founded by Spotify’s billionaire CEO Daniel Ek, has performed 10,000 scans in London and Stockholm, priced at $400 and $250 respectively, and boasts a waitlist of 100,000 people. The scans measure blood pressure, blood oxygen, ECG, heart risk, blood values, BMI, eye pressure, and skin mole assessments. Patients receive consultations with company doctors immediately after their scans. Based on the numbers provided in the announcement, Neko has generated between $2.5 million and $4 million in revenue since its launch in February 2023, which establishes its valuation at a lofty 900 to 1,440 times annual revenue, so they had better start working through that waitlist. Neither of the co-founders have prior healthcare experience.

People

Bethany Miller-Urroz (Zus Health) joins Sownder as SVP and head of sales for North America.

Australia’s EHealth NSW hires Richard Taggart, MBA, MPharm (Calvary Health Care) as chief executive and CIO of NSW Health .

Announcements and Implementations

Meditech releases APIs that are compatible with version 4 of USCDI.

Mayo Clinic and Cerebras Systems will collaborate to develop LLMs that can review the medical records of patients to determine how they will respond to treatments based on their genetic makeup. The models will be trained on the genomic data of 100,000 Mayo patients.

Precision medicine technology company Tempus AI launches a personal health concierge app that collects a patient’s medical records and applies AI to generate insights.

WellSky announces its participation in TEFCA and its selection of Kno2 as its QHIN.

Government and Politics

The UK’s NHS will establish a $250 million fund to help trusts invest an diagnostic and predictive AI tools, with an initial focus on medical image analysis and pathology.

The Department of Justice sues Walgreens, accusing the company of filling millions of opioid prescriptions without medical justification and instructing its pharmacists to process them without verifying their validity. In response, Walgreens has countersued, arguing that the federal government has not clearly outlined the responsibilities of drugstores when handling potentially questionable prescriptions that were issued by licensed prescribers. DOJ sued CVS with similar accusations last month.

The Department of Defense urges patients who want personal copies of their legacy medical records to download them immediately from the TRICARE Online Patient Portal, which will be shut down on April 1 since it has been replaced by MHS Genesis.

Privacy and Security

The Sequoia Project publishes a white paper that reviews managing privacy and consent when sharing PHI, inviting public feedback by February 21.

Other

The Armed Forces of Ukraine will replace its paper medical forms with an electronic Primary Health Record that will be maintained through the Armed Forces Medical Information System. The system will capture information about combat injuries that will be used to create an evidence-based medicine database.

A viral video from India captures a hospital housekeeper running an ECG on a patient. The hospital confirmed the video’s authenticity, adding that while it it is trying to recruit more ECG techs, the machine is so easy to use that anyone can do it.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research publishes a new technical guide, “The 2025 Black Book of Behavioral Health IT.”
• Five9 will present at Customer Contact Week Orlando January 28.
• Fortified Health Security welcomes Lauren Amador as a renewals specialist.
• Health Data Movers releases a new episode of its “Quick HITs” podcast, “Innovating Healthcare IT with Khalid Turk: Equity, Integration, and the Future of Digital Transformation.”
• Inovalon releases a new “Inovators” podcast, “Healthcare Data’s Evolution: New Patient Expectations and Exciting Healthcare Advancements.”
• Meditech customer Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Canada earns HIMSS Stage 7 recognition.
• Healthmonix releases the 2025 Mental and Behavioral Health Registry (MBHR), a specialized Qualified Clinical Data Registry (QCDR).
• MRO releases a new episode of “The MRO Exchange” podcast, “Automated Record Retrieval w/ CHRISTUS Health’s RCS Director, Prudence Budemer.”

Blog Posts

• CMS Health Equity Initiatives in 2025 and Beyond (Findhelp)
• The Role of Analytics in Reducing Denials and Rejections (FinThrive)
• Navigating Legacy EHR Data: How to Prepare for Transitioning to a New EHR System (HCTec)
• 5 Ways to Optimize UKG Pro Workforce Management for Healthcare (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Mastering Denials: Practical Solutions for Improving Appeals Performance (Medhost)
• Optimum Healthcare IT Achieves ServiceNow Validated Practice Badge for HCLS (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Rethinking productivity to enhance revenue cycle performance (Meditech)
• Licking Memorial Health System Proactively Identifies and Resolves Citrix Slowness Issues Before Epic Hyperdrive Speed & Reliability Impacts Users (Goliath Technologies)
• The Successful Road to Epic is Paved with Multiple Stakeholders (Med Tech Solutions)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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