News 11/21/25

Top News

Ruthia He, founder and CEO of ADHD-prescribing site Done, is convicted on federal charges of illegally distributing Adderall, committing healthcare claims fraud, and conspiring to obstruct justice. The company’s clinical president, David Brody, MD, was also convicted on the distribution and fraud counts.

HHS OIG’s deputy inspector general calls it “one of the most egregious abuses of telehealth that we’ve seen.”

Prosecutors say the billion-dollar startup raised investor money by offering frictionless access to 40 million doses of Adderall and other stimulants and spent $40 million on social media ads during the pandemic to target drug seekers and convince people that they had ADHD.

The company required clinicians to rush first visits, paid nurse practitioners up to $60,000 per month to refill prescriptions without patient contact, and barred clinicians from discharging patients even when families reported Adderall-induced psychosis.

The obstruction charge stems from He moving the company’s operations to her home country of China to hinder evidence discovery. Each defendant faces up to 20 years in prison.

Reader Comments

From IT Networker: “Re: HIMSS. Insiders say that layoffs started with managers on Monday and non-management on Wednesday. Entire teams were eliminated in some cases, while others were downsized to minimal staff. Hal reportedly used a top tier consulting firm to make the staff reduction and reorganization decisions, but those who remain still aren’t clear on direction.” Unverified, in the absence of a response to my inquiries from HIMSS. People who are better LinkedIn users than I am could probably find some newly available names. A reader’s notes from the Georgia HIMSS annual meeting last month quoted Hal Wolf as saying that membership has increased 75% over the past eight years. It’s shocking, shocking I say, that the hard-hitting, HIMSS-owned Healthcare IT News has shared no investigative reporting on the topic. Email me if you are an insider who has details and I’ll keep you anonymous.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Last chance to sign up as a new or returning HIStalk sponsor to get year-end spiffs. Contact Lorre.

It’s going to be mighty quiet in health tech land starting right about now, so I’ll probably skip some updates between now and New Year’s Day.  

Sponsored Events and Resources

None scheduled soon. Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

WellBeam, which facilitates information exchange between the EHRs of acute care providers and those of post-acute care providers, raises $10 million in Series A funding.

Arbiter launches with $52 million to offer AI solutions that automate administrative healthcare tasks like appointment scheduling, follow-up, and referrals.

Ember, an AI-powered denial prevention software startup, announces $4.3 million in seed funding.

Function, which offers lab test memberships, raises $298 million in a Series B funding round that values the company at $2.5 billion. 

People

LiveData hires David Owen (Symplr) as chief product officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Sheer Health rolls out an app that lets consumers compare their medical bills to their insurance coverage so that they can understand deductibles, co-pays, and benefits. The app uses AI and human reviewers to answer questions, and the company offers billable services to contest denied claims and out-of-network determinations.

Trilliant Health publishes a machine-readable dataset of the negotiated prices of 5,000 hospitals, which it obtained from hospitals that are required to publish them by the Hospital Price Transparency rule.

The American Medical Association will develop and disseminate AI learning tools for medical schools and provide CME to upskill practitioners.

Privacy and Security

In Ontario, Canada, an AI-powered bot sends confidential patient details from an unnamed hospital’s grand rounds meeting to 65 invitees, 12 of whom no longer worked there. A doctor who had left the hospital a year earlier sent an Otter.ai “meeting agent” to attend the virtual meeting in his place. The tool then emailed the transcript, including full details on seven patients, to everyone on the invitee list.

Sponsor Updates

• Optimum Healthcare IT will partner with non-profit solution provider Celerate to develop a chatbot for neurosurgeons.
• Visage Imaging will showcase innovations, including AI, to its Visage 7 Enterprise Imaging Platform at RSNA.
• Vyne Medical offers a new case study titled “How Automation is Shaping the Future of Document Management at VHC Health.”
• Artera promotes Michael Jensen to CFO.
• Altera Digital Health adds Sunrise Thread AI, its new ambient scribe and note generation assistant, to its Sunrise EHR.
• Kyruus Health publishes a new report titled “”From Crisis to Control: Executive Insights to Transform Care Guidance with Data and AI.”
• Ellkay offers a new success story featuring West Feliciana Hospital titled “Empowering Rural Healthcare: From Integration to Enterprise Data Management.”
• Findhelp will host a Washington Social Care Summit December 4 in Seattle.
• Five9 introduces updates to its Genius AI Suite, introducing AI across routing, quality management, and analytics.
• Visage Imaging propels AI optimized enterprise imaging at RSNA 2025.
• Healthcare Growth Partners advises Tonic Health on its sale to Luma Health.
• InterSystems establishes a public sector subsidiary.
• AdvancedCare launches Inbox Health’s billing communication and payment technology across its provider network.
• Health Data Movers releases a new episode of its “Quick HITs” podcast titled “Advancing Community Health Through Innovation with Alex Romillo & Oscar Perez.”
• Healthmonix welcomes Akira Health of Fresno and Akira Health of Los Angeles as new customers.
• Infinx releases a new case study titled “How an Academic Health Network Achieved a 70% Revenue Growth & 88% Increase in Charge Volume.”
• CommonWell Health Alliance completes its technical migration to Ellkay.
• Linus Health will present new evidence validating its AI-enabled tools for early detection and trial readiness at the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease conference December 1-4 in San Diego.

Blog Posts

• Revenue Cycle Tech That Pays for Itself: Building the ROI Case for Automation (Vyne Medical)
• What if AI could help restore the human touch in healthcare? (Elsevier)
• Accreditation in Specialty Pharmacy: Turning Compliance Burden into Operational Strength (First Databank)
• The Agentic Future: When Quality Management Becomes Your Strategic Growth Engine (Five9)
• Carrying the Legacy Forward: How a Family History of Service Shaped a Path from Navy to Cybersecurity (Fortified Health Security)
• Building a High-Performing Epic EHR Team at Not-for-Profit Health System (HCTec)
• How Val Verde Regional Medical Center is using data to redefine patient care (Meditech)
• Five Key Strategies to Strengthen Healthcare Budget Resilience (Med Tech Solutions)
• Can AI Help Deliver CMS’s Value-Based Care Agenda? (Navina)

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