Healthcare AI News 4/1/26

News

Noah Labs receives FDA breakthrough device designation for Vox, which detects heart failure from a five-second daily voice recording.

Penguin AI launches a build-your-own platform that allows health systems to design digital workers. The tool includes 100 pre-built digital workers for tasks such as HCC retrospective coding, clinical document summarization, and eligibility verification.

Butterfly Network receives FDA clearance for an AI-powered ultrasound tool that estimates gestational age in under two minutes without requiring a sonography-trained user.

Hartford HealthCare begins beta testing PatientGPT, which uses patient medical records to provide guidance and education and allows users to launch a virtual visit or schedule an appointment. The tool was developed by K Health.

Clinical copilot developer Avo raises $10 million in a Series A round.

Ambience Healthcare introduces Chart Chat for Nursing, which embeds conversational AI in the EHR to allow inpatient nurses to query patient charts in plain language.

OpenEvidence adds medical coding capability to its evidence-based knowledge system.

Business

Jimini Health, which offers a patient-facing behavioral health triage chatbot called Sage, raises a $17 million seed round.

Other

NYC Health + Hospitals President and CEO Mitchell Katz, MD says in a panel discussion that AI could immediately replace a significant portion of radiologists. He asked panel attendees whether there is any reason not to pursue state regulation that would allow AI to read imaging studies without supervision, referring only abnormal findings to a radiologist. A radiologist responds:

Undeniable proof that confidently uninformed hospital administrators are a danger to patients: easily duped by AI companies that are nowhere near capable of providing patient care. Any attempt to implement AI-only reads would immediately result in patient harm and death, and only someone with zero understanding of radiology would say something so naive. But in some sense, they’re correct: Hospitals are happy to cut costs even if it means patient harm, as long as it’s legal.

Contacts

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