News 2/13/26
Top News
Health data exchange vendor HealthMark Group acquires Purview, which offers a cloud-based medical imaging sharing solution.
Reader Comments
From T-Bone: “Re: overused phrases to stop using. ‘Dropped’ is an eye-roller for me.” Me too, especially when it strays from podcast self-promotion, as in “new pod ep dropped” and drifts into ambiguity. If Spotify “dropped” a new AI DJ, did it launch one or scrap one? Thus the word is a contronym, meaning that it can mean one thing as well as the opposite (see: dust, clip, and sanction). “Dropped” was a hip-hop thing in the 1980s that referred to dropping the turntable’s needle onto a new LP track, adding no value over “released” either then or now.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
My optometrist referred me to an academic medical center’s ophthalmology clinic to rule out glaucoma after noting minor blood vessel irregularities. The visit went well, the team was efficient and empathetic, and my eyes are just fine. The checkout person said I needed to return every six months, although I’m not sure why. Specialists seem to rarely let patients walk out without promising to return every 6-12 months even when no particular intervention is planned. I suspect that their motivation is clinical rather than financial and that they truly believe, as specialists, that every (insured) human would benefit from their ongoing supervision.
Sponsored Events and Resources
Live Webinar: February 18 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “From Blind Spots to Insights: Gaining Real-Time Visibility into Healthcare Risk.” Sponsor: CloudWave. Presenters: Jacob Wheeler, MBA, director of sales engineering, CloudWave; Mike Donahue, chief operating officer, CloudWave. Resilience starts with the ability to see clearly, across every endpoint, cloud workload, user, and clinical system. Join CloudWave’s cybersecurity leaders for an in-depth session on how real-time visibility transforms your ability to detect threats early, respond decisively, and strengthen resilience across the care ecosystem. Attendees will learn the practical steps that hospitals can take to move from reactive defense to resilient action.
Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2026 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.
Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Healthcare services and insurance provider Harbor Health acquires Rippl, which offers a dementia care platform. Harbor Health raised $130 million in September 2025, while Rippl raised a $23 million Series A in October 2024.
Shares of Teladoc and Doximity fall after Amazon announces plans to expand same-day prescription delivery to 4,500 cities by the end of the year. TDOC shares have lost 65% in the past 12 months, while DOCS is down 66%.
Sales
- Western Missouri Medical Center will implement Meditech Expanse EHR.
- KPC Health will deploy Altera Digital Health’s Paragon Denali EHR in its seven hospitals in Southern California.
- Hillsboro Health (IL) will implement Oracle Health’s EHR, Clinical AI Agent, and Seamless Exchange.
- Tampa General Hospital chooses Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging Cloud software as a service.
People
Providence promotes Maulin Shah, MD to SVP/CHIO.
Announcements and Implementations
Medicomp Systems announces AI enablement tools that use its clinically validated, structured knowledge base to ensure that AI-generated documentation and insights are evidence-based before they are incorporated into the EHR. Core elements include validating ambient listening output, retrieving clinical data by natural language or dictation, converting narrative text into structured clinical data, and improving the flow of poorly mapped or unstructured data. The company has also released a Model Context Protocol to expose its APIs to AI models while limiting unstructured AI output and removing LLM access to PHI.
Government and Politics
Alabama hopes to use federal rural health funds to deploy telerobotic ultrasound technology to address severe rural obstetric clinician shortages and high infant mortality, but clinicians and policymakers question its effectiveness and whether it can replace trained health workers. A small Canadian review found that the technology avoided patient travel 70% of the time, and nearly all patients said that they would use it again. Only 15 of 55 rural Alabama counties have hospital-based obstetric services, down from 45 in 1980.
Privacy and Security
A Utah state auditor finds that records of 2 million people that are electronically stored by the Department of Health and Human Services, including psychiatric treatment records from Utah State Hospital, are accessible to any employee who has system access, with no safeguards to prevent or log inappropriate viewing.
A TikTok celebrity who was injured while creating a travel video requests that his personal information not be published after an unnamed hospital where he was treated notified him that multiple employees improperly accessed his medical record. He also says that staff entered his treatment room while he was medicated to ask for selfies.
Sponsor Updates
- Cibolo Health chooses CloudWave as the preferred cybersecurity provider for its rural clinically integrated network members.
- WellSky announces GA of its WellSky Long-Term Care solution, powered by SkySense AI.
- Fulton County Medical Center (PA) will upgrade to Meditech Expanse in May.
- InterSystems wins four Global 2026 Best in KLAS awards, with TrackCare receiving Acute Care EHR in France, Asia, and Oceania and HealthShare recognized for shared care records in Europe.
- Five9 announces an expanded partnership with Google Cloud and a new joint Enterprise CX AI solution for large enterprises.
- Health Data Movers releases a new episode of its “QuickHITs” podcast titled “Pediatric Health Mergers & AI with John Henderson.”
Blog Posts
- The Managed Services advantage: Why more healthcare leaders are making the Shift (Altera Digital Health)
- AI trends shaping the Health IT Transaction Landscape (Healthcare Growth Partners)
- 2026 Mental and Behavioral Health Registry (MBHR) (Healthmonix)
- Cultivating the garden of leadership: Lessons for female leaders in growth, resilience, and boldness (Cardamom)
- How Healthcare Leaders Can Stabilize Performance Today While Transforming Care for Tomorrow (Impact Advisors)
- How nurses at Berkshire Health Systems harness peer-driven change to improve patient care (Meditech)
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Give ophthalmology a break. There aren’t many specialties that can do most of their diagnosis with physical examination in the office. Go back when they say. It’s not like it’s a colonoscopy.