News 3/6/26

Top News

Amazon Web Services launches Amazon Connect Health, an EHR-integrated agentic AI healthcare operations solution that is based on the company’s Amazon Connect cloud contact center platform.

The system can verify patients, schedule appointments, summarize EHR records, transcribe doctor-patient conversations to generate draft clinical notes, and generate after-visit summaries.

Amazon says that UCSD Health saves 1 minute per call by using Connect Health, while Netsmart’s rollout of it increased ambient documentation adoption by 275%.

Reader Comments

From Fact Checker: “Re: Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services and Epic. The LinkedIn write-up by CEO Wayne Gillis is not accurate. They use the old Cerner / Oracle system.” His post says that “we” went live with Epic 18 months ago, then saw costs balloon because of default workflow decisions during configuration, after which they did some analysis that led to setup changes. Eighteen months ago, in September 2024, he was still working for Great Falls Health Network, which has a single 20-bed hospital. He joined Rehoboth McKinley a couple of months later and will leave the organization amicably effective next week. I emailed him to ask for clarification about which hospital was involved. 

From Buoyancy: “Re: Q-rounds virtual queue app for rounding notifications. It’s an interesting idea for improved family and staff engagement. However, based on 20+ years of doing inpatient attending rounds, they never go as you expect, they are typically interrupted, and sometimes run over time. When you get to a patient’s room, they might be off the floor getting a test or procedure or other factor that prevents you from seeing them in sequence. Rounds can also be interrupted by various emergencies or demands. Even if you put a tracking device on the attending to provide a bus stop-style time estimate, I doubt it would be accurate no matter how hard the team tries to stay on schedule.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor CognomIQ. CognomIQ is a unified, end-to-end semantic data management engine built by healthcare, for healthcare. CognomIQ resolves the problem of dirty data to provide one source of truth for your AI initiatives, clinical operations, research, and enterprise reporting. Our platform curates, cleans, validates, semantically restructures, and leverages inherent business intelligence to produce real-time visualizations that drive insights. With exceptional reach, speed, resource efficiency, and cost savings, CognomIQ supplants overlapping capabilities of more than two dozen tools that are patchworked together in data environments today. In production for over four years with an NCI-designated cancer center, the company has launched commercially to make the complex data world simpler for all healthcare. Visit them at HIMSS26 at Venetian Level 1 – 11724. Thanks to CognomIQ for supporting HIStalk.

I found this CognomIQ overview video on YouTube, on which also resides the company’s spectacular earworm music promo.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS26 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Remote patient monitoring vendor Health Recovery Solutions acquires Rimidi, whose platform combines remote patient monitoring with chronic disease management tools. Rimidi founder and CEO Lucienne Ide, MD, PhD will join Health Recovery Solutions as chief medical officer.

Grow Therapy, which offers a therapist marketplace and back-end provider services, raises $150 million in Series D funding.

HCA says in an investor conference that it worked with Palantir to use AI to summarize medical records for physicians and to prepare claims denial appeals. The company says that its Timpani automated scheduling and staffing system, which uses AI to predict staffing needs and was also developed with Palantir, is being used in 80 hospitals. HCA adds that another internally developed tool has reduced length of stay by 2%.

Oracle will reportedly lay off thousands of employees in the next few days as the company addresses the cost of building AI data centers and reviews whether it could replace some workers with AI. The rumored cuts will affect multiple divisions. Oracle will post Q3 results on Tuesday, March 10.

People

Hearst names David Delaney, MD (Optum) president of First Databank.  

Announcements and Implementations

OpenEvidence launches Doctor Dialer, which lets clinicians place calls using a customizable caller ID, send and receive secure messages and faxes, leave straight-to-voicemail messages for patients, and automatically generate clinical notes.

Enterprise AI security vendor Mindgard reports that it manipulated Doctronic, the AI doctor chatbot that Utah is piloting to autonomously manage prescription refills, into acting as a “bad doctor” that spread vaccine conspiracy theories and recommended amphetamines for social challenges. It also generated SOAP notes that contained significant errors. Mindgard says that its red team exposed Doctronic’s system prompt, which allowed them to bypass the chatbot’s guardrails.

CVS Health and Google Cloud launch Health100, an agentic AI-powered digital health platform that manages health across pharmacies, insurers, and providers. CVS Health says that the platform will serve as the conduit for pharmacist-led care management and will allow developers to build applications around the service through an open ecosystem.

Rhapsody releases Axon, an interoperability workflow automation system that provides AI-powered guidance and agentic actions.

Mednition introduces Kate for Kids, which helps ED nurses in non-pediatric EDs triage patients.

Privacy and Security

France-based healthcare software vendor Cegedim Santé confirms that a cyberattack late last year allowed hackers to exfiltrate 15.8 million patient records. The attack involved the company’s MonLogicielMedical (MLM) mobile clinician application.

Other

Interoperability guy Brendan Keeler takes a deep dive into murky waters of a viral Epic-bashing video that was created by an influencer whose previous beef tallow pitches and flatulence-on-my-wife-prank cinematic triumphs drew a few hundred views versus millions when he railed about delays in processing Social Security disability claims, which he blames on Epic. The video sends viewers to a recently formed disability group which in turn is connected to law firms and lobbyists that, theoretically you understand, could have a financial interest in the process. “Ry the seller” and Mrs. Ry begged viewers to buy their pathetic merch so they could afford to purchase a house, which ironically might end up belonging to Epic if they think he’s worth the trouble of sending lawyers knocking on its door.

Sponsor Updates

• Resilience Care partners with InterSystems to integrate its oncology remote-monitoring platform with hospital systems using InterSystems IRIS for Health.
• WellSky expands AI capabilities within its next‑generation WellSky CarePort Referral Intake solution.
• Black Book Research releases its “2026 Prior Authorization & Interoperability Readiness Benchmark Report.”
• Pyramid Healthcare extends its use of Netsmart’s platform across its substance use, mental health, and recovery services.
• Surescripts releases its “Annual Impact Report 2025.”
• NextGen Healthcare integrates DrFirst’s RxInform prescription engagement solution with its enterprise EHR.
• FinThrive offers the “2026 Transformative Trends Report.”
• Health Data Movers releases a new episode of its “QuickHITs” podcast featuring GeneDx COO Bryan Dechairo.
• Linus Health will present new findings on digital risk scores for dementia and patient-centered endpoints at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases and Related Neurological Disorders March 17-21 in Denmark.
• Meditech congratulates The Aga Khan University Chief Data Innovation Officer Farhana Alarakhiya on receiving the 2026 HIMSS Changemaker in Health Award in the category of Global Patient Innovator.
• MRO CISO Richard Weiss wins the 2026 DallasCISO Corporate Orbie Award.

Blog Posts

• On the horizon: How AI is transforming healthcare workflows even more (Altera Digital Health)
• Top 15 population health management software solutions (Arcadia)
• 5 Surprising Ways Payer-Provider Collaboration is Actually Working (Canopii Collaborative)
• Women Innovating Health IT: Laura Kreofsky (Ellkay)
• Beyond the Buzzwords: A Data-Driven Framework for Contact Center AI Roadmaps (Five9)
• Southern California Social Care Summit: Highlights from the Golden State (Findhelp)
• AI Governance: The Only Realistic Solution to Shadow AI (Fortified Health Security)
• ViVE Los Angeles: Good Energy, Valuable Conversations, and a Strong Focus on Accountability (Get-to-Market Health)
• Healthcare IT and the Workforce: Addressing the Skills Gap and Preparing for the Future (Impact Advisors)
• Why ‘delay’ is the silent partner in bad debt: Promoting timely responses to questions patients ask (Inbox Health)
• 3 Questions to Consider When Choosing a New EHR Vendor (Med Tech Solutions)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Sponsorship information.
Contact us.