News 2/21/25

Top News

Vanity prescription vendor Hims & Hers acquires Trybe Labs, an at-home lab testing provider that process customer self-collected blood samples.

The company says the acquisition will allow it to offer whole-body testing and give it de-identified health data for AI training.

HIMS shares rose on the news are are up 350% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $15 billion.

Reader Comments

From Hal2k: “Re: HIMSS25. Federal employees, including those from ONC / ASTP, have had to drop out. What will be the downstream impact? I heard lower turnout overall – they had to cancel a couple of hotels.” Unverified. I gave the conference website a quick look, with the only surprise being that Hal Wolf will be doing a fireside chat with Oracle Health EVP/GM Seema Verma on improving patient-centered care, which seems questionable for several reasons.

From Tired Sales Gal: “Re: ViVE. My perspective is that its attendance was down from previous years. Not sure if the weather played a part or not. Attached is an attendee list. The majority were vendors versus providers and payer representatives. Fewer investors attended. I question whether the list might not have included those attendees who registered through CHIME, but that might only be another 500 folks.” The list has about 4,000 vendors versus 900 providers, and some of those provider folk don’t have a title that suggests purchasing influence (podcast host, professor, administrative fellow, etc.) I’ve never heard of quite a few of the companies on the list. Maybe if I decide that I care enough I’ll compare the ViVE and HIMSS exhibitor lists.

ViVE Conference Day 3 and 4 Observations from an Attendee

• Tuesday felt like the busiest day; lots of activity across the floor as folks tried to wrap up before the snow.
• Simply based on my perceptions from walking around, it felt like sessions on the four primary stages were sparsely attended. One-on-one and small group meetings seemed to be the dominant activities throughout the conference.
• Nashville got about 1.5″ of snow, so on the low side of expectations. On Wednesday there were lots of flight delays but relatively few cancellations, and major roads were in decent shape.
• I’d estimate only ~2,000 folks were around on Wednesday. Probably one-third of booths had no one, and many started packing up early.
• ViVE should’ve had a scavenger hunt to find all the booths that don’t have AI mentioned somewhere in their display or marketing materials. Practically every company is trying to say they have or use AI, but how real it is is unclear to me.
• I want to give a shout-out to Streamline Flow. They were demoing until the very end, and in an industry of bad software, their product seems attractive, intuitive, clinician-friendly, and easy to use. It’s early, but looking forward to seeing how they progress.
• Now the hard work begins. Companies that had a good conference and generated valuable leads are only on first base; there is a lot remaining to do to get to home plate. We feel good about how ViVE was for us but how we execute in the coming weeks and months will determine whether it was worthwhile.

Sponsored Events and Resources

HIMSS25 Guide: HIStalk sponsors can provide conference participation details by February 24 to be included in my guide.

Survey Opportunity: Healthcare AI Purchasing. Responses from health system and imaging center readers to this short survey will trigger a Donors Choose donation from Volpara Health plus matching funds.  

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

A remarkably fine MedCity News investigative piece (it’s well worth clicking over) by Arundhati Parmar looks at Transcarent:

• Founder Glen Tullman had said previously that care navigation companies are as obsolete as travel agents. Transcarent then acquired care navigation company Accolade for $621 million last month at what was seen as a fire sale price.
• Insiders say that Transcarent wildly missed its 2024 sales targets, booking $60 million instead of the expected $175 million, and earned most of its big clients via its acquisitions or from Tullman’s executive connections.
• Another insider says that 70 employer navigation RFPs were issued last year and Transcarent not only failed to win any of them, it wasn’t even considered in any.
• Accolade’s prospects were fading after being dropped by big customers, trading as a penny stock, and being shopped to potential buyers.
• A CEO who has known Tullman for years criticizes the strategy of Transcarent selling directly to executives who tend to perform less due diligence than benefits consultants: “I think Glen preys on the benefits buyers who do not have a ton of resources to understand that there is nothing under the veneer that he is presenting. There is no Transcarent model. They have no NCQA designation, no URAC designation. They have no hard standard accreditation for care management. He invests a lot of money in political connections and in being part of CEO clubs that give him access to board members that don’t know much about benefits.”
• A healthcare CEO who passed on acquiring telemedicine vendor 98point6 after reviewing its financials said of Transcarent’s $100 million acquisition of the company: “They were losing 60 cents for every dollar of revenue they made. Glen has a pattern of taking distressed, low-quality assets and then slapping a bunch of tech together.”

Therapy Brands, which offers EHR/PM software for mental health and therapy providers, expands its Fusion rehab therapy product to the adult market.

Venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners merges two of its population health management technology companies, Azara Healthcare and I2i Population Health. The announcement is coy about what name the combined businesses will use.

Hummingbird Healthcare raises $20 million in a Series B funding round.

Walgreens shares jump Tuesday following a report that its potential acquisition by private equity firm Sycamore Partners could be back on the table.

IRhythm Technologies announces Q4 results: revenue up 24%, EPS –$0.04 versus -$1.26. IRTC shares are down 1% over the past 12 months, valuing the ambulatory ECG solution vendor at $3.5 billion.

Sales

• Cleveland Clinic will roll out ambient documentation from Ambience Healthcare.
• Inspira Health announces that it will replace Oracle Health with Epic, as a reader reported here last September.

Announcements and Implementations

WellSky launches a patient scheduling and workforce management solution for home care agencies. 

Availity launches Rapid Recovery, a solution that is designed to swiftly restore critical healthcare operations after large-scale catastrophic events, including cyberattacks. Key features include a five-day recovery objective, an air-gapped recovery environment, comprehensive backups, and third-party certification.

Epic will expand its 11,400-seat Deep Space underground conference center by 23,000 square feet with a new 750-seat auditorium and a dining facility. The expansion is intended to accommodate the company’s user group meeting and is scheduled to open before UGM 2026 next August.

Government and Politics

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) presses Paul Lawrence, PhD at his confirmation hearing for VA deputy secretary:

EHR started in 2018 under President Trump and in 2020, it deployed to two Washington state VA hospitals. Instead of helping to improve our veterans’ health care, the rollout ending up being a complete disaster, and it endangered veteran patients. Unfortunately, the system still is not working the way that the VA doctors and nurses need, and veterans are continuing  to suffer. Last month, the VA announced that it would be moving forward with pre-deployment activities at the next four sites for this Electronic Health Record. You will oversee the EHR program, so if confirmed, I want to know what you are going to do differently to hold Oracle accountable and to make sure we get this system right for our veterans?” Lawrence responded that he will figure out an accountability plan, to which Murray said, “We have heard that answer from every VA person that’s come before this committee for a number of years now. Everybody’s looked at it, everybody’s considered it, everybody’s talked about it, everybody’s convened panels. It is not working.”

Other

I saw this after reading Dr. Jayne’s piece on tech for seniors and thought it looked interesting. The free version turns an old tablet into a companion device that serves as a smart picture frame, text and photo messaging tool, and task manager. A $10 per month subscription adds auto-answer video calls, auto-join of Zoom meetings, AI activities and check-in, and connection of multiple family members. Onscreen Joy was announced last month at CES.

In the Netherlands, a man buys five 500GB hard drives for $5 each at a flea market and discovers that they contain patient medical records, apparently from the defunct healthcare software vendor Nortade ICT Solutions.

Sponsor Updates

• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Judi Health: Going Beyond Pharmacy and into Medical Claims, with AJ Loiacono and Dr. Sunil Budhrani.”
• BNH Hospital in Thailand implements the TrakCare EHR from InterSystems.
• A Surescripts analysis projects more than $3.76 billion in healthcare savings could be realized if care managers leverage Surescripts Medication History for Populations technology.
• First Databank publishes a new white paper, “Empowering Consumer Choice with EPrescribing.”
• Findhelp welcomes new customers Cone Health (NC), Help at Home (IL), and Marion County Commission on Youth (IL).
• FinThrive will present at the Idaho HFMA Spring Conference March 3 in Boise.
• Five9 announces its global availability on Google Cloud Marketplace.
• Healthcare Growth Partners advises Insight Partners on its investment in Azara Healthcare and I2I Population Health.
• Inbox Health partners with Lighthouse Lab Services.
• MRO achieves HITRUST CSF certification for its Exchange Services platform.

Blog Posts

• Signs it is time to change your PBM vendor, and how to overcome common hesitations (Capital Rx)
• 5 Healthcare IT Trends Shaping the Industry (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• AI in Enterprise Clinical Imaging: Capitalizing on the Value Proposition (Impact Advisors)
• HEDIS MY 2026 Public Comments: Highlights for Quality Teams (Inovalon)
• Full speed ahead: Interoperability at MEDITECH enters a new era (Meditech)

Contacts

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