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Morning Headlines 2/4/25

February 3, 2025 Headlines Comments Off on Morning Headlines 2/4/25

Affineon Secures $5M to Power Physician Productivity

Affineon Health, which offers AI-powered productivity solutions for managing physician inboxes, raises $5 million in seed funding.

Zest Health Announces $13M in Funding to Curb Unnecessary Pharmaceutical Spend through High-Touch Care

Virtual dermatology clinic Zest Health announces a $13 million seed funding round led by Roivant Health.

Middletown-based medical clinic network hit by data breach impacting 1M patients in multi-state hack

Connecticut-based Community Health Center notifies patients of a data breach that first occurred in October and was finally discovered last month.

Comments Off on Morning Headlines 2/4/25

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 2/3/25

February 3, 2025 Dr. Jayne 1 Comment

In response to Oracle Health’s comments about its new and improved EHR, a reader recently asked Mr. H whether users are really asking EHR companies for a voice-driven solution. His response was that it “might draw interest if it doesn’t slow clinicians down.”

I heartily agree. The handful of demos that I’ve seen related to this kind of technology are always slower than looking at the summary screens that already exist in most EHRs. For new users or those who have yet to embrace all the whistles in their current systems, I agree that it could be a valuable tool. However, I think the level of potential impact is variable and somewhat depends on a user’s history and their experience with other types of documentation.

Some of us came of age in our medical careers during the era of paper charts. We had to learn to quickly find information and organize it in our heads. We often created summaries in the chart to help us better keep track of our patients. Those paper charts were often horrific messes, and you never knew whether they were fully current with labs printed out. You also couldn’t read some of the handwriting.

As EHRs became standard tools in hospitals, many implementations simply automated that paper process. Because of that, we became good at finding information in digital nooks and crannies just as we had previously. When EHRs came out with summary screens and the ability to graph and trend things, we felt we were in heaven because we no longer had to create those maps in our minds.

The next problem was how to educate users on the new features that are available and to get them to take advantage of those features. The last time I did an optimization project in an ambulatory setting, less than 20% of the physicians were taking advantage of extremely helpful parts of the EHR. For example, one system had the ability to superimpose blood pressure readings over a timeline that reflected medication adjustments. That’s powerful, but the vast majority of physicians had no idea it was in the system, let alone how to use it. They were literally deprived of the benefit of having the EHR synthesize information as well as the quality aspects of reducing the risk that you would miss information if you were digging through the chart on your own.

Then there’s the issue of the digital natives who are now practicing medicine, those who have spent the majority of their professional lives with a smartphone in their hands and the expectation that everything should be right in front of them with pretty visuals that fit on a six-inch screen and require no cognitive analysis. These are the folks who absorbed their medical school lectures via recordings played back at 2x speed. They’re also of an era where medical education has shifted away from “learning for learning’s sake” and more towards being able to pass national licensing exams with high enough scores to secure their spots in competitive residency training programs. Upon reaching independent practice, their needs often differ from those of their more clinically seasoned colleagues.

When you’re considering the addition of a voice assistant to the patient care environment, however, the physician’s needs are only one part of the equation. The always astute Bill Spooner commented, “I can imagine the patient visit during which the doc is talking to the computer, but I’m not sure whether the comment is directed to the computer or me. “Hey, doc, quit talking to the damn computer and tell me what’s going on. Who the hell is Hey Oracle?”

If the computer is returning audible information with the patient in the room, it had better be accurate and free of inappropriate interpretation or hallucination. As primary care physicians who have endeavored to build trust with our patients, we already have enough difficult discussions when we have to address potentially stigmatizing medical conditions like obesity. If our patients don’t want us to use that word, they definitely don’t want to hear it from a computer in the exam room.

Not to mention that at normal speeds of speech, this exchange of information may take longer than a typed and visualized interaction, especially if the clinician is a fast typist and a quick reader. You can ask nearly any ambulatory physician in the US – our visits certainly aren’t going to be allowed to be of longer duration unless we want to work 10- or 12-hour days to fit them in. It feels like every administrator is trying to figure out how to cram all of our visits into six-minute boxes, which is simply absurd.

I would love to see actual data on visits performed with these tools, using standardized patients with standardized scenarios just like we go through in medical school. I’d love to see transcripts of those visits and also a scoring rubric from the standardized patients about how the visits made them feel.

Like many of my clinical informatics colleagues, I’m a “Star Trek” junkie. Although I’ve never been to a convention or dressed up as a character, (although I did portray a nonspecific officer in a medical school class show), I can quote more episodes than is likely acceptable in the company of my non-clinician, non-informatics friends. If you want to talk about Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra or discuss the variety of desserts that are available from a standard Federation replicator, I’m your girl.

I’ve dreamed of being able to ask the “Computer” to do a variety of things to make my life easier. I would love to have Majel Barrett’s voice power my current digital assistants. However, I can think of specific patients who would be confused by having a third voice in the visit and who might be distracted by a verbal interaction during the visit.

Oracle Health isn’t the only company doing this. If you’re with one of the other EHR vendors using virtual assistants to provide information to clinicians in real time as they treat patients, I’d love to showcase what you’re doing. If you have data about your testing, that’s even better. If you’re a clinician who has used this technology in your practice, I’d love to hear your impressions of the initial weeks of use, any subsequent ramp up time , and where you’ve been able to take the technology.

Is ”Tea, Earl Grey, Hot” your kind of beverage? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Readers Write: HIPAA Security Rule Update: Why Basic Compliance Isn’t Enough

February 3, 2025 Readers Write Comments Off on Readers Write: HIPAA Security Rule Update: Why Basic Compliance Isn’t Enough

HIPAA Security Rule Update: Why Basic Compliance Isn’t Enough
By Jason Ward

Jason Ward is VP of IT and tech support at Collette Health.

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The healthcare sector has become an increasingly attractive target for cybercriminals, with attacks growing in both frequency and sophistication. The scale of healthcare data breaches nearly tripled in 2023, with 140 million individuals affected compared to 51 million in 2022, highlighting the rapidly growing threat to patient privacy. 

In response to these escalating threats, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has proposed the first major update to the HIPAA Security Rule since 2013. This update reflects a growing recognition that current security measures are insufficient to protect modern healthcare systems. 

While these proposed changes represent a significant step forward, they should be viewed as minimum requirements rather than comprehensive security solutions. In today’s healthcare environment, where increasingly interconnected systems create multiple attack vectors and expand the potential attack surface, organizations need to think beyond basic compliance.

The current security landscape demands a more proactive and robust approach. Many of the proposed requirements — such as annual audits, basic encryption, and standard access controls — are practices that security-conscious organizations have already implemented, and in many cases, exceeded. As we examine these updates, it’s crucial to understand that they represent a foundation upon which to build more comprehensive security measures.

Key Changes and Why They Matter

  • Mandatory security documentation and regular auditing. Previously optional security measures will now become mandatory, with few exceptions. Organizations must document all security policies and procedures. Annual compliance audits will be required to verify adherence to these requirements.
  • Enhanced asset management and network visibility. Organizations must maintain and regularly update a technology asset inventory and network map. These must be reviewed at least annually and updated whenever there are changes that might affect protected health information.
  • Strengthened access controls and authentication. Multi-factor authentication becomes mandatory for accessing systems containing protected health information. Organizations must notify relevant parties within 24 hours when workforce access changes or is terminated.
  • Robust incident response and recovery. Organizations must establish documented incident response plans and procedures. Systems and data must be restorable within 72 hours, with clear procedures for reporting and responding to security incidents.
  • Comprehensive technical controls. Organizations must implement encryption for data at rest and in transit, deploy anti-malware protection, establish network segmentation, and conduct vulnerability scanning every six months. Penetration testing must be performed annually.
  • Enhanced business associate accountability. Business associates must verify their compliance annually through a written analysis by a subject matter expert. They must notify covered entities within 24 hours of activating contingency plans.

Beyond Compliance: Adopting a Shared Security Model

While these updates represent significant progress, healthcare organizations must recognize that meeting compliance requirements alone doesn’t ensure adequate security. True cybersecurity in healthcare requires a shared security model where:

  • Everyone plays a role. Security isn’t just an IT problem. It requires active participation from every department and role within the organization. From clinical staff to administrative personnel, everyone must understand their part in protecting patient data.
  • Continuous evolution. Cyber threats evolve faster than regulations. Organizations must stay ahead by continuously updating their security measures and adapting to new threats, rather than waiting for regulatory requirements to catch up.
  • Cultural transformation. Building a security-first culture means making security considerations part of every decision and process. This includes fostering open communication about security concerns, celebrating security-conscious behaviors, and ensuring that security is viewed as an enabler rather than a barrier to healthcare delivery.

We’re only as secure as our weakest link. By working together and viewing these new requirements as a starting point rather than an end goal, we can build a stronger, more resilient healthcare security ecosystem that truly protects patient data and maintains trust in our healthcare system.

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Readers Write: Improving the Healthcare System with Advancements in Data Science and AI

February 3, 2025 Readers Write Comments Off on Readers Write: Improving the Healthcare System with Advancements in Data Science and AI

Improving the Healthcare System with Advancements in Data Science and AI
By Hugh Cassidy

Hugh Cassidy, PhD, MBA is head of artificial intelligence and chief data scientist at LeanTaaS.

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Healthcare has historically been slow to adopt modern technologies, but recent advances in AI have propelled it into the mainstream, allowing AI to be confidently used in critical systems like healthcare. These advancements, in both computational power and sophisticated algorithms, have made AI not only more popular, but also more reliable for complex, high-stakes environments.

According to a recent survey from the Berkeley Research Group, 75% of healthcare professionals anticipate that AI technologies will be widespread throughout the industry within the next three years. This optimistic outlook highlights the potential of AI to transform healthcare operations and to keep pushing forward with advancements in data-informed technology and predictive healthcare solutions.

However, healthcare’s history of slow technology adoption emphasizes the need for a strategic approach. Without a clear implementation plan, organizations may fail to harness the full potential of AI to improve operational efficiency and outcomes and to meet broader organizational goals.

To fully appreciate AI’s transformative potential, it’s essential to delve into its specific applications across various healthcare challenges.

One of the most pressing issues in healthcare is excessive patient wait times. Many of us have experienced long hospital delays, and the ongoing staffing crisis coupled with rising patient volumes has only made the situation worse. AI can play a pivotal role in streamlining patient flow, helping ensure timely care while reducing operational inefficiencies.

Predictive analytics can sift through historical data to forecast patient inflow, going beyond current conditions to anticipate future trends. However, predictive insights alone aren’t enough. Prescriptive systems are essential to translate those forecasts into actionable schedules. By combining AI-driven predictions with prescriptive analytics, healthcare facilities can generate optimized schedules that not only forecast patient demand, but also suggest the best staffing and resource allocation to handle peak hours. These prescriptive systems are necessary to minimize bottlenecks, reduce wait times, and ultimately enhance the overall patient experience.

Another pain point that healthcare professionals face daily is an overwhelming number of administrative tasks, which inundates staff members and ultimately detracts from patient care. Staff members often work overtime to give patients the best care, yet still have mountains of paperwork to complete once their assigned shift is complete.

AI can make a major impact and alleviate this burden through automating routine tasks such as data entry and billing. Optical character recognition (OCR) and natural language processing (NLP) tools can read and organize clinical notes, reducing the time that doctors and nurses spend on paperwork. AI-powered conversational assistants can handle common patient inquiries and triage less-critical cases, freeing medical staff to focus on more complex and urgent patient needs. By using AI to their advantage, healthcare teams can streamline processes like appointment scheduling and build schedules that are tailored to each facility’s unique demand and capacity.

By streamlining administrative tasks and automating certain aspects of patient care, AI can contribute to increased efficiency in the healthcare system, leading to cost savings and better resource allocation. Tools such as automated billing systems reduce errors and streamline the billing process, reducing administrative overhead. Scheduling tools fill unused time and unlock the full potential of the OR and infusion centers. All of this helps create more revenue and lower costs for health systems and patients alike.

One of the best ways health systems can reduce costs is by accurately allocating their resources and serving their communities by providing consistent and timely access to care for every patient who is in need. This not only improves patient outcomes, but also drives higher revenue and keeps costs low.

The potential of AI and data science to revolutionize healthcare is immense, but it requires a thoughtful and strategic approach to implementation. Health systems should work towards overall workforce adaptation and train and prepare hospital staff to effectively work with AI tools. This will likely require changes to existing education and training programs, as well as require ongoing support to ensure the integration of AI-driven tools into everyday workflows, but it will also help shorten patient wait times, ensure that patients are getting better care, and guarantee that healthcare workers aren’t overworked.

Considering AI’s immense popularity these days, hospitals should capitalize on staff members’ excitement about new tools. The future of healthcare lies in the intelligent use of data and AI, and these technologies are already helping many healthcare systems overcome current limitations and deliver superior care. Along with better patient care, hospitals are also maximizing revenue and improving overall hospital operations, leading to happier staff and hospitals that are more capable at handling growing patient volumes.

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Morning Headlines 2/3/25

February 2, 2025 Headlines Comments Off on Morning Headlines 2/3/25

Veradigm ends strategic review after no firm bids

Veradigm’s strategic review fails to attract acquisition bids from the five organizations that had expressed interest, leading it to instead focus on making operational improvements and working to get its shares re-listed.

Chief VA watchdog who helped expose flawed computer system in Spokane speaks out after being fired by Trump

The White House fires VA Inspector General Mike Missal, whose VA OIG report that highlighted patient harm that was linked to its Oracle Health rollout led to the project being temporarily halted.

Hospitals say Steward demanding millions more for essential IT services

The new owners of hospitals formerly owned by the bankrupt Steward Health Care cry foul over the fact that Steward is charging more than was agreed upon to provide transitional medical record and billing services.

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Monday Morning Update 2/3/25

February 2, 2025 News 8 Comments

Top News

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Veradigm’s strategic review fails to attract acquisition bids from the five organizations that had expressed interest, reportedly among them McKesson and Oracle. The company says it will refocus on making operational improvements and working to get its shares re-listed.

The company says it will provide an updated FY2023 and preliminary 2024 report in March. Tom Langan remains interim CEO after eight months.

Veradigm also announced that board member Beth Altman, who served as chair of its audit committee, has resigned due to health reasons.

MDRX shares dropped 32% on the news, valuing the company at $588 million. They are down 54% from their 52-week high.


Reader Comments

From Color Me Skeptical: “Re: Oracle Health. I’m skeptical of its claims about its next-generation EHR, since Cerner under Oracle has over-promised and under-delivered. I’m also befuddled by the promotion by company spokespeople about the EHR being voice driven. Is anyone really asking for that?” David Feinberg says that Oracle will rebuild the EHR with clinicians and patients in mind, integrating it with the company’s other systems, such as ERP and human capital management. Oracle emphasizes voice navigation, which might draw interest if it doesn’t slow clinicians down. He claims that the new EHR is now generally available, which I hadn’t heard before (anybody know the live sites?) He agrees that Cerner had a reputation for slow-motion fumbling but insists that Oracle ownership has fixed everything.

We have a customer base that has been patient with us as we haven’t really executed. In saying “we,” I’m really talking about Cerner, which did not execute fast enough. We became Oracle. I think we have literally leapfrogged the competition. We have executed and hit on every timeline. Now it’s 2025, it is time for us to deliver and delight our customer base.

From Aye I: “Re: AI training. As an AI dabbler, what training or certification do you recommend?” None. The technology and approach changes every five minutes, so whatever you learn today will be worthless tomorrow. Just get your hands dirty. The value of most certifications and online courses accrues to the seller, not the buyer.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Nearly all respondents from last week’s poll have had recent experience with a chain drugstore, of whom two-thirds report an OK or better experience.

New poll to your right or here: What type of visit would you choose for a sore throat? Bonus points for adding a post-vote comment that explains your choice. I’m probably an outlier since I’ve never had a virtual visit, a trip to urgent care, or an ED visit except a long time ago when I had an out-of-the-blue episode of laryngospasm, a terrifying but harmless choking-like moment when your throat decides to rage quit breathing (pro tip: relax, breathe slowly, make a sound such as humming, and don’t bother going to the ED because they can’t do anything).

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DeepSeek can generate fun trivia quizzes, so I gave it the link to Vince Ciotti’s HIS-tory series.

Health system executives, technologists, and radiologists — Volpara Health will make a significant donation to Donors Choose for your response to this quick survey.


Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “Successfully Navigating Post-Acute Rev Cycle Challenges.” Sponsors: Inovalon and KanTime. Presenters: David Swenson, senior manager of sales engineering, Inovalon; Lucy Lopez, VP of product management, KanTime. Learn how to speed up your revenue cycle processes and avoid the common RCM and eligibility errors that cause delays and denials. Discover strategies to boost your bottom line: streamline eligibility verification, simplify complex processes, and optimize denial management for improved cash flow.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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The latest Health IT Market Review from Healthcare Growth Partners reports a narrowing bid-ask spread in company acquisitions as buyers show greater risk tolerance. Investors are seeking portfolio liquidity, while sellers are offering higher-quality opportunities. Key takeaways:

  • M&A valuations rebounded to pre-pandemic levels in 2024, with private equity buyouts hitting a record high.
  • Distressed asset sales may not yield the apparent proceeds. Truepill, once valued at $1.6 billion with $250 million in annual revenue, sold for $525 million, but just $25 million was paid in cash. Upfront Healthcare’s $86 million acquisition by Health Catalyst fell short of its total raised funding.
  • Take-private deals saw steep discounts from pandemic highs: R1 (-54%), CompuGroup (-74%), and Accolade (-89%).
  • Early-stage fundraising is picking up, reflecting broader market confidence.
  • AI investment accounted for 25% of total funding, with investor interest shifting almost entirely from clinical AI tools to workflow automation.
  • Investors view AI as an operational enhancer for a company’s existing business rather than a primary investment focus.

People

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Keith Dowling, MBA (Cleveland Clinic) joins Catholic Health as VP/CISO.

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RxLogic hires Paige Zimmer, MHSA (First Databank)  as EVP of business development.

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Andrea Kowalski, MBA (1upHealth) joins Datavant as SVP of product, provider solutions.


Announcements and Implementations

HIMSS conference owner Informa launches WHX Tech, a healthcare events brand that will hold its first conference later this year in Dubai with the involvement of HIMSS.


Government and Politics

The White House fires VA Inspector General Mike Missal, whose VA OIG report that highlighted patient harm that was linked to its Oracle Health rollout led to the project being temporarily halted.

FDA Digital Health Center of Excellence Director Troy Tazbaz, who guided the agency’s policy related to AI and software as a medical device, resigns.


Sponsor Updates

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  • SmarterDx staff assemble 250 patient comfort kits for UC Irvine.
  • Wolters Kluwer Health announces that six of its book publications have won Book of the Year awards from the American Journal of Nursing.
  • Vyne Medical releases a new case study, “How a Tennessee Health System Leveraged Automation for Success.”
  • CereCore releases a new podcast, “CIO Insights: How to Pursue Big Technology Opportunities and Satisfaction.”
  • Black Book Research publishes a new digital book, “The 2025 Black Book of Global Healthcare IT.”
  • Tegria will sponsor and exhibit at the AHA Rural Health Care Leadership Conference February 23-26 in San Antonio.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 1/31/25

January 30, 2025 Headlines Comments Off on Morning Headlines 1/31/25

Khosla Ventures Backs UK Startup’s Plan to Bring Cancer AI Tool to US

UK-based startup C the Signs, which uses routinely collected EHR data to help primary care doctors detect 50 types of early-stage cancer, announces an $8 million investment from Khosla Ventures and plans to enter the US market.

Announcing MedSender’s Series A

AI medical assistant software startup MedSender raises $5 million in Series A funding.

23andMe Special Committee Announces Exploration of Strategic Alternatives

Once valued at $6 billion, genetic testing company 23andMe says that it is running out of cash and will try to find a buyer for the second time.

Kode Raises $27M in Series B Funding to Transform Medical Coding and Data Management

Kode Health, which operates a gig matching service for HIM coders and hospitals, raises $27 million in a Series B funding round.

HealthBus Expands Healthcare Solutions with Strategic Acquisition of BetterHealthcare

Employer-focused digital healthcare services and benefits integration company HealthBus acquires BetterHealthcare, which offers providers patient engagement software.

Comments Off on Morning Headlines 1/31/25

News 1/31/25

January 30, 2025 News Comments Off on News 1/31/25

Top News

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Behavioral health technology company NeuroFlow acquires Quartet Health, which offers a free mental health provider search tool.

In a simultaneous transaction, Quartet sold its InnovaTel telepsychiatry staffing service to Iris Telehealth, a provider of telepsychiatry services for health systems and community clinics.

Quartet, which was founded in 2014, has raised $266 million, while the eight-year-old NeuroFlow has secured $58 million in funding.


Reader Comments

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From You’re Soaking In It: “Re: OnMed. Auburn University’s Rural Health Initiative is helping to place OnMed CareStations in rural locations, with one local paper claiming that one in Chambers County, Alabama is ‘the nation’s most active location for healthcare services.’” OnMed gets great patient reviews there, but the newspaper article is unclear on its statement about volumes, noting just 100 consultations per month. Maybe that makes it the busiest OnMed location, which would be a solid number. Companies seem obsessed at the idea of a medical telephone booth, but its only real advantages over standard telehealth are: (a) it’s in a fixed location, though that means patients have to go there instead of connecting from anywhere; (b) it provides instant access using someone else’s internet; and (c) it offers diagnostic tools that aren’t available in patient homes. Early product literature said that the booths dispensed medications, but I don’t see that mentioned now. Summary: it seems like an innovative idea that has failed before (like the now-defunct Forward, which  blew through $500 million of investor cash before augering in). Attribute that to the usual challenges of massive upfront investment, securing locations, uncertain demand, staffing the units to keep them running and clean, and finding ROI without trying to sell memberships or services that patients are expected to pay for with their own money. It’s Redbox versus streaming — you know how that ended.

From Bifstek: “Re: HIMSS. They’re offering a $799 add-on VIP pass for the annual conference.” I also received the email about Priority Pass Upgrade, which is limited to 100 buyers. It includes daily breakfast and lunch, concierge service, access to a private lounge, and front-row keynote seating. Not worth it to me, but I’m sure some elbow-rubbers will flex their expense account. Meanwhile, Freeman’s site says that Bistro HIMSS is back —$5,000 gets a reserved 10-top table for the week, 60 lunch tickets, and two conference badges. I did it years ago and liked having tickets to offer hungry-looking visitors to our booth and to host a CMIO lunch there. Bistro HIMSS, just off the show floor, offered a decent buffet with healthy options, plus you could enjoy real food at real tables and chairs (any HIMSS attendee will tell you that real tables and chairs are the most coveted items in the convention center). It’s depressing to wait in line forever to buy wildly marked up boring food, find no available seats, and then give up and sit on the dirty convention center hallway floor. 


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I was wandering around my local vinyl record shop when I noticed in the bins the one and only 1969 record by Tallahassee-based psychedelic band After All. I did a deep dive into that bit of music ephemera here four years ago, so of course I had to bond with the record geek owner about it. I also tried to get him worked up that SNL left Neil Young’s amazing “Rockin’ in the Free World” out of the show’s Questlove-created musical history that I just watched on Netflix, although Rage Against the Machine was a good choice in the “angry” category.


Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “Successfully Navigating Post-Acute Rev Cycle Challenges.” Sponsors: Inovalon and KanTime. Presenters: David Swenson, senior manager of sales engineering, Inovalon; Lucy Lopez, VP of product management, KanTime. Learn how to speed up your revenue cycle processes and avoid the common RCM and eligibility errors that cause delays and denials. Discover strategies to boost your bottom line: streamline eligibility verification, simplify complex processes, and optimize denial management for improved cash flow.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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Khosla Ventures invests $8 million in UK-based startup C the Signs, which uses routinely collected EHR data to help primary care doctors detect 50 types of early-stage cancer. The company participated in the White House’s Cancer Moonshot accelerator last year and aims to enter the US market. Co-founder and CEO Dea Bakshi, MBBS, is a former NHS primary care physician.

Genetic testing company 23andMe says that it is running out of cash and will try to find a buyer for the second time. There’s not much left of the company that was once valued at $6 billion – its market cap is down to $90 million.

Digital ultrasound vendor Butterfly Network will issue a follow-on offering that it expects to yield $76 million. BFL shares jumped sharply on the news, valuing the company at $900 million. They are up over 300% in the past 12 months.

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Kode Health, which operates a gig matching service for HIM coders and hospitals, raises $27 million in a Series B funding round. 

Axios reports that venture capital firm General Catalyst is seeking buyers for a stake in its holding company, which includes Summa Health owner HATCo. Petershill Partners sold most of its GC stake earlier this month for $726 million, 62% more than it paid in June 2024. GC is one of the most active investors in digital health.


Sales

  • Englewood Health chooses Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging Cloud solution.
  • Johns Hopkins Medicine will implement Caregility’s virtual care platform and inpatient telehealth devices to support its virtual nursing program.
  • Lady of the Sea General Hospital (LA) chooses TruBridge for EHR/RCM.

People

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Avery Ashby, MS (Accenture) joins Impact Advisors as managing director of its data and AI practice.

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Qventus hires Toryn Slater (Redox) as AVP of western US.

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Shawn Kearl (Zipari) joins Perspecta as SVP of sales.


Announcements and Implementations

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The new president of 25-bed Heart of the Rockies Regional Medical Center (CO) identifies the three systems that it is considering to replace TruBridge (CPSI), CorroHealth (T-System), and CompuGroup Medical (Aprima), listing these selection factors as important to an unaffiliated small facility:

  • Epic is gaining market share and most doctors have trained at an Epic site, but few Critical Access Hospitals use it and some clinicians say it’s a complex system.
  • Meditech use is growing among smaller hospital systems, allows the hospital to customize its implementation, offers a strong revenue cycle solution, and has lower implementation costs.
  • Oracle Health is seeing growth in smaller hospitals and offers shared installations, although the CEO says that he has heard anecdotes about substandard reliability, support, and communication.

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Abridge announces an ambient AI product for emergency departments that is integrated with Epic ASAP.

HIMSS and AMDIS will partner to offer educational events and awards. AMDIS signed a similar deal with CHIME maybe 10 years ago, but I don’t know if that’s still active, especially since HIMSS and CHIME have consciously uncoupled.


Government and Politics

The White House indefinitely cancels all upcoming meetings of the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee, which is an advisory group under ASTP-ONC.


Privacy and Security

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The FDA warns that cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the Contec CMS800 patient monitor could allow unauthorized remote control and data theft. The device’s software also contains a backdoor that could let hackers compromise the connected network. FDA advises IT staff to unplug the monitor entirely if it’s being used for remote monitoring, or if not, to disconnect the ethernet cable and disable its wireless functions.

New York Blood Center Enterprises remains offline with no ETA following a ransomware attack Sunday. Donors are being turned away. The organization provides blood products to 400 hospitals in 17 states.


Other

A review finds that Cleveland-area non-profits paid 56 employees more than $1 million in 2023. Seven of the eight employers that did so are health systems.


Sponsor Updates

  • Black Book Research’s latest survey of behavioral healthcare IT end-users finds that Netsmart ranks highest for integrated ambulatory EHR, practice management, and RCM software.
  • Impact Advisors names Avery Ashby (Accenture) managing director of its Data & AI practice.
  • Findhelp and The LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin will host a live recording of American Compassion: The Safety Net Podcast February 12.
  • Five9 announces the winners of its New Era of CX Awards 2024, including US Radiology Specialists for its leadership and innovation using the Five9 Intelligent CX Platform’s ecosystem of partners to up-level customer and employee experiences.
  • Healthmonix announces that its Emergency and Acute Care Clinical Registry has been approved as a Qualified Clinical Data Registry by CMS for the 2025 reporting year.
  • Healthcare IT Leaders promotes Katie Bacon and Charlie Evans to associate client executives.
  • Meditech will present at the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association Annual Meeting January 30 in Boston.
  • Navina publishes a new guide, “A fresh start: 10 essential risk adjustment tips for 2025.”

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Comments Off on News 1/31/25

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 1/30/25

January 30, 2025 Dr. Jayne 1 Comment

The only thing being discussed in the virtual physician lounge today was the Senate confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Colleagues whose specialties are directly related to public health are understandably concerned, and even those who didn’t seem to have thoughts on his positions or beliefs were captivated by the spectacle of the proceedings.

I had a chance to catch up with a friend of mine who spent the first half of her life in the United States but now resides in Wales. She has plenty of experience with both health systems. We’ve had numerous deep conversations over the years about our respective systems and what works and doesn’t work. Apparently, recent goings-on in the US government are quite the hot topics at her local pub, with some referring to it as “the American soap opera.” I can’t wait to hear her ideas about the confirmation hearing when our daytime hours sync up again.

A key part of the testimony today revolved around care for those who reside in rural parts of the US. This PBS News video captures his comments on technology that he recently saw at the Cleveland Clinic, including “an AI nurse that you cannot distinguish from a human being that has diagnosed as good as any doctor.”

I would love to hear from his hosts at that esteemed institution as to what he actually saw and how the health system might be using it. I suspect that there are some elements of the technology that might not have been fully understood, including some level of humans in the loop, which are still necessary for oversight as well as for liability and blame-laying purposes when the AI runs amok. The hearing continues on Thursday, and I look forward to reading the recaps.

Over the last year, I’ve read multiple articles about large, multi-state health systems that are going through EHR consolidation projects. They are often moving away from multiple instances of Epic that may have been customized or configured to meet the needs of an organization that has since been impacted by a merger. These massive migrations to a single gold standard installation can take years. They may involve numerous committees, change control and governance processes, and countless thousands of hours of analyst time.

I read another article about one of these efforts this week and was surprised to see that only one member of the C-suite was featured and it wasn’t a CMIO or CNIO. If nothing else, I would have expected the interviewee to at least give a shout out to the folks behind the scenes who are leading the actual work of such an effort. As we’ve seen a rise in “chief digital officers” and “digital experience” leaders, I’ve seen some CMIOs become a bit sidelined at their own organizations.

Hopefully, this was just an oversight and plenty of informaticists are involved in getting the decisions made and the workflows modified. Word to the wise for those being interviewed: it’s never a bad idea to give credit to other members of your team for helping you get to the place where people might want to read about your efforts.

I was talking with some informaticists this week about the role of real-world evidence in the current care environment. We’re constantly being peppered with newsy articles from various vendors about their findings using these tools. A recent piece reviewed the correlation between a particular vaccine and the reduced likelihood of dementia. Although its related headline was attention grabbing, it did nothing to explain why there might be an association or what the meaning of what such a correlation might be. Maybe those who get the vaccine fall into a group of people with generally healthy behaviors compared to those who might not get the vaccine because they don’t have a primary care home or follow other preventive advice.

There’s certainly more to this than a simple association, and when I see articles like this, it sort of feels like they’re drawing conclusions for the sake of drawing conclusions rather than really trying to understand how two clinical concepts might be related and how the information might be used to drive outcomes for real world patients. 

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Mr. H and I have often shared our thoughts about the industry buzzwords that make us batty. As a primary care physician, “wellness” has become one of those that annoys me. We used the wellness concept 20 years ago to describe preventive visits – such as well child and well woman – in an attempt to be more descriptive than “going in for a check-up” and to emphasize the value of preventive care and the fact that it was a distinct type of service. Since then, so many entities have jumped on the wellness bandwagon, often for the purpose of generating revenue.

Wellness, as opposed to a well visit, is a nebulous term that doesn’t necessarily refer to any concrete medical concepts. It is often used as a euphemism for “things that will make you feel good but that don’t necessarily have strong medical evidence.” It reminds me of when vitamin and supplement manufacturers use the term “immune support” or “supports gut health” on their products because they don’t have the data to show that a product treats any particular condition.

Wellness is also used to sell products that have dubious and possibly harmful effects (check out Goop if you’re not sure where I’m going here). The word has been overused by for-profit entities and is used often in telehealth, taking away from more serious kinds of care that can be delivered within that framework. Although I adore Kohler plumbing products (I’m still trying to figure out how to install the mythical, magical bathtub that debuted at CES 2021 into my hideous 1980s bathroom), I give them a C-minus on their new ad campaign. The wellness theme grates on me, as does the tagline “immerse yourself in transformation.”

What do you think about wellness? Is it a term that’s past its prime, or are we just at the beginning of a wellness journey? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 1/30/25

January 29, 2025 Headlines Comments Off on Morning Headlines 1/30/25

Trump administration cancels meetings of health technology advisory committee

The White House indefinitely cancels meetings of the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee and its workgroups, which operate under HHS’s ASTP/ONC.

Systole Health Launches Innovative Virtual Group Health Care for Women’s Heart Health with Pre-Seed Funding Round

Systole Health, which offers heart healthcare for women via virtual group visits, raises $2 million in pre-seed funding.

Paragon Health IT Announces Divestiture of Paragon Consulting Partners and Rebranding as Strings

Paragon Health IT will divest its consulting business, change the parent company’s name to Strings, and refocus on AI-driven healthcare workload management system.

NeuroFlow Acquires Quartet Health Expanding Its Customer Base

Behavioral health technology and analytics vendor NeuroFlow acquires behavioral healthcare enablement and delivery company Quartet Health.

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Healthcare AI News 1/29/25

January 29, 2025 Healthcare AI News 1 Comment

News

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China-based AI startup DeepSeek introduces a low-cost, open-source AI model that rivals leading US technologies, sending US tech stocks sharply down. DeepSeek, which is free to use and can be run locally on modest hardware, has prompted discussions about US technology export controls, the contrast in cost in AI development and training. DeepSeek was launched in July 2023 by a billionaire hedge fund operator who previously worked with using AI in investing. He stockpiled some lower-power Nvidia chips which were eventually banned from US export to China.

Meanwhile, Chinese technology company Alibaba releases a new version of its own LLM that it says outperforms DeepSeek-V3 and ChatGPT-4o.

OpenAI launches a research preview of Operator, an AI agent that can analyze a webpage and interact with it to perform tasks that involve typing, clicking, and scrolling.

A Health Affairs commentary piece – published as part of the National Academy of Medicine’s Vital Directions for Health and Health Care: Priorities for 2025 initiative — calls for the incoming administration to focus on four health AI-related priorities:

  • Ensure safe, effective, and trustworthy AI use.
  • Develop an AI-competent workforce.
  • Invest in AI research to support the science, practice, and delivery of health and healthcare.
  • Promote policies and procedures to clarify AI liability and responsibilities.

New Vatican ethical guidelines call for using AI in healthcare to enhance, rather than replace, the relationship between provider and patient.

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Stat reports that the White House has indefinitely cancelled meetings of the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee and its workgroups, which operate under HHS’s ASTP/ONC. The committee, which was established under the 21st Century Cures Act,  makes recommendations to ASTP on a variety of technology issues, including AI and interoperability.

Mayo Clinic President and CEO Gianrico Farrugia, MD tells the World Economic Forum that his organization has access to 320 algorithms, but their biggest challenge is that today’s technology that can’t support the tools. He says that he would not want to receive specialty care without the clinician using AI, which will require a new architecture to deliver at scale. The panel discussion was titled “Healthcare Innovation at Davos 2025: Cracking the Code of Digital Health.” The panel’s key points involved interoperability, platform-based models, health worker AI training, data liquidity and sharing, and building trust.

Also at the World Economic Forum, the CEO of AI company Anthropic predicts that AI could double human lifespan within five to 10 years. A skeptical response might be:

  • Attaining that goal would require the US lifespan to increase to 155 years almost immediately.
  • Even AI-enhanced drug research is unlikely to make a difference of that magnitude given the need to conduct clinical trials, earn FDA approval, and figure out the economics that would be required to make a solution universally available.
  • Raising the average lifespan would require applying the principles to nearly every American, which has never happened.
  • His statement is more aspirational than based on biology and medical research. 
  • He also says that AI systems will outperform humans in nearly everything by 2026 or 2027.
  • His company sells AI.

Spain-based AI medical imaging company Quibim raises $50 million in a Series A funding round. The company hopes to use AI to extract information from medical imaging to identify phenotypes that can predict outcomes, an advanced imaging field known as radiomics. 

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AI startup Retro Biosciences is reportedly raising a $1 billion funding round. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman provided the company’s initial funding of $180 million and will participate in the latest round. The company’s goal is to  add 10 years to the healthy human lifespan by using AI to target and reengineer the cellular drivers of aging.

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US Rep.David Schweikert (R-AZ) introduces a bill that would allow FDA-approved AI tools to qualify as a medical practitioner, including the ability to prescribe drugs.


Business

Paragon Health IT will divest its consulting business, change the parent company’s name to Strings, and refocus on AI-driven healthcare workload management system.

AI-powered cancer drug discovery startup Manas AI launches with a $25 million seed funding round. The co-founders are LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman and oncologist and Pulitzer-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee, DPhil, MD,

Equality AI CEO Maia Hightower, MD, MPH, MBA announces that the company, which focused on trustworthy AI in healthcare, has closed after four years following the White House’s rollback of a previous executive order that called for trustworthy AI development.


Research

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Researchers in Scotland are developing AI software that can scan someone’s retina to detect early signs of dementia, which could be used during routine eye exams. The team explains, “The retina holds a whole wealth of information and is a biological barometer of our brain health … Something very simple like a photograph of a retina can now be harnessed to potentially predict brain change later on in life.” They hope to roll the technology out to opticians in 2026.


Other

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A Twitter user finds a  DeepSeek-generated dataset of 143,000 made-up encounter conversations on the Hugging Face AI website. Each item contains the disease, language, scenario, patient-provider conversation, common errors in diagnosis, differential diagnoses, related diseases, and a summary, all in multiple languages. It was developed for AI training and can be licensed from MIT. Leading the project is endocrinologist Johnson Thomas, MD.


Contacts

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

HIStalk Interviews Jason Rose, CEO, Clearsense

January 29, 2025 Interviews Comments Off on HIStalk Interviews Jason Rose, CEO, Clearsense

Jason Rose is CEO of Clearsense.

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Tell me about yourself and the company.

I’m Jason Rose, the CEO of Clearsense. I’ve been here about a year. I’ve got 30 years in healthcare technology. The first half of that was on the healthcare technology side of provider, working at companies like Cerner, Ernst & Young, and Ardent Health Services. In the last 15 years or so, I’ve been mainly on the payer side, focusing on value-based care and providing tools to clinicians to advance outcomes. Inovalon and Adhere Health are a couple of those companies.

I’m excited to be with Clearsense. We are a data-enabling platform company that focuses on supporting health systems to revitalize their data for other use cases, such as reducing costs in areas such as application decommissioning, or advancing other areas of innovation, such as healthcare data lakes, clinical trials, research, and AI validation.

Who do you see as your competitors and how are you different?

Because we’re a broad data-enabled platform company, our modules have different areas of competition. 

When we’re talking about application decommissioning — we’re more commonly using the term active archiving — we are competing with companies that operate in that space as a SaaS organization. We don’t compete with companies that do, let’s say, application rationalization. In fact, we partner with companies, consulting groups, that do application rationalization or that put in governance programs so that we can exploit the value proposition to scale the decommissioning of applications that are mired in most health systems of today due to all the mergers, acquisitions, and enterprise rollouts of EHRs and ERP systems.

We’re on KLAS. We have fantastic ratings. We are on record as the largest decommissioning project ever, per KLAS. You’ll hopefully be seeing some news on that in the coming days with respect to this massive installation of literally hundreds and hundreds of different applications and several tens of millions of dollars in cost takeout.

On the data lakehouse side, we will compete with middleware companies that are taking data in from primary sources, EHR companies such Epic, Cerner, and Allscripts. Think about archiving, systems that are shut down or systems that have been around for 20 years or longer. We’re pulling in longitudinal data and as near real-time data as the client wants. We’re certifying that the data is exactly accurate to the data source. We certify it with DAV, Data Aggregator Validation, which is an NCQA certification program that matches the data we got from the primary source, whatever EHR system, with our new data lakehouse to make sure it is identical and complete.

We are taking in multiple EHR instances across the entire health system. In some cases, it could be dozen or dozens of instances that we are patient matching  across the entire enterprise. When the client wants to bring their own technology, such as their own AI methodology, proprietary tools, data visualizations, or different types of areas of LLM, they can do that on top of our data enablement platform. We are enabling them to do all those things in rapid fashion.

Some people might see decommissioning as just converting whatever data you can to the new system and then leaving the old system running somewhere just in case. What expertise is needed to do it right?

We are, I would say, the expert’s expert in doing this at massive scale. Health systems are commonly doing mergers, acquisitions, rolling out EHRs and ERP, or trying to improve their cybersecurity posture. All of those are critically important today. 

The reality is that in the application portfolios of these systems, they have done the app wrap programs with lots of consulting firms over time. What they haven’t done is look at how to do this at massive scale across all the different areas. Having the SaaS program that we deploy, the consulting, and the expertise, we put together governance programs that are partnered with the executive leadership of the health systems.

These are not IT projects, these are business projects. This is going to include not just technology, but also clinical, HIM, finance, procurement,  the legal team, and the operational areas of the health system to take the applications from the app wrap program and prioritize — with everyone putting their hand on the stone, so to speak – to say, we’re going to decommission these dozens, hundreds, or in some cases, thousands of applications. 

Most of these health systems have 20 to 30% bloatedness, that’s the term, in their portfolio. The massive amount of cost takeout and cyber improvement is huge if you are deploying it in the right way. Cross-departmental as a business problem, as a cost takeout, and cyber improvement, but it needs to be multi-departmental. It’s not something to take lightly.

It really is a company mission, and our best examples where we have done this really well was where it was a mandate from the top down that said, “We’re going to do this as a health system and make it a priority so that we can reduce our operating costs. These are hard numbers. We can improve our cyber posture.To realize the benefits that the EHR system represents, to represent the ERP system enterprise value, or the M&A transaction.”

This is all about acceleration to value. We see ourselves as the pioneer in this advancement.

Do increased cybersecurity concerns bring in clients who need help, but who also want to know more about how you will protect their data?

A lot of these systems that need to be decommissioned may not even be supported by the vendor at this point. Or they could be homegrown, which is even worse. Issues such as cyber threats are at the top of the list. Some people call them zombie apps. These are the easier ones, you know, but they are still there.

Once decommissioned, the data is processed and stored securely in our HITRUST- and SOC 2-certified cloud environment. The data is immediately placed in a safe and secure environment because of the nature of where it came from and where it’s going.

Does AI create new business opportunity?

I’ve historically been skeptical of any new acronyms that have come out in our healthcare industry. There has been so much hype around the next big thing, and then it fizzles out. Healthcare is just different from other industries. We’re much, much slower to adopt, for lots of good reasons and lots of bad reasons, too.

But I will say, and this is literally the only time my career that I have said this, that I think AI is legit. I did not say that about blockchain, big data processing, or all these other things that have happened over the last 20 or 30 years. I’ll even go Y2K. But I think AI is legit. 

As a company, we are looking at how to apply AI to writing code more efficiently, processing data faster, and ingesting data differently. We are exploring different areas of how AI can help make us more internally efficient so that we can drive value acceleration, which is what our brand is all about.

But on the flip side, we’re a data enablement platform company, so we look at AI as an opportunity to add a value proposition in things such as enabling our clients to incorporate their AI onto our data platform. For example, we have a significantly large health system that we’re in the midst of bringing live. We have millions and millions of members that are across a dozen or so EHR instances. It’s longitudinal back to 20 years and up to three days ago. It has completeness, timeliness, and the data is certified.

The client is putting their own AI tools and their own proprietary tools on top of our data platform so that they can run their own algorithms and test other technologies and initiatives that they want to do, both within their health systems and also across their their other ventures. It is helping them advance in a rapid, scalable way to be free to explore and create their own mission. We are the enablement aspect of that.

As someone who has been in health tech for a long time, how do you see today’s environment and how it might change in the short term?

I’m going to quote Stephanie Davis, who is a Barclays analyst, from something she said last year. We have the ViVE conference coming up here in Nashville, which is our new corporate headquarters for Clearsense, but at last year’s LA ViVE conference, a question from the audience asked Stephanie, “What are your thoughts on AI, and how many of the companies on the floor of ViVE you think will exist in two or three years?” Her response was astounding, interesting, and I agree with it. I think that it will be a single percentage left in years to come.

You will have all these different AI companies that are hyper competitive with each other, and only a very few of them will actually exist in years to come. There’s a lot of hype around companies that claim to be the next big thing on AI versus the commodity of AI,  AI itself. There will be a lot of churn in areas. We are not trying to be the AI company. We’re trying to be the enablement of AI. I predict that we’re going to see a downfall of a lot of hype and investment in these AI companies, because they’re going to eat each other.

The other prediction, and this is sort of Captain Obvious, is that if you’re not focusing on your clients’ value proposition as your core mission, you will have a hard time succeeding in today’s environment. It’s no longer where private equity and venture capital will support hype. They need growth, profitability, and sustainability. These companies that are just built on hype won’t exist. You have to have real tangible value that you can point to. Not actuarial madness, but actual hard dollars that your clients will tout, including the CFO of those companies, to say that this is actually a tangible ROI that I received out of this company. Without that, a company is in trouble in this hectic time.

How has the health tech business climate changed in Nashville?

This is the second time that I have moved to Nashville. The first time was back in 2002, when it was the country’s best-kept secret. Now the secret is out and is no longer a secret. 

A lot of people consider Nashville to be the healthcare tech capital of the country. A lot of people consider that the Silicon Valley of healthcare technology is in Nashville. If you look at the core of this environment, almost all, if not all, of the large for-profit health systems are headquartered here in Nashville. The most dominant industry in Nashville and greater Nashville is healthcare. Because of that, there are dozens if not hundreds of companies that are focusing on innovation in healthcare and driving healthcare technology strategies. Companies like HCA, which is the largest health system in the United States, Ardent, Lifepoint, Community Health Systems, and all those large companies. 

Because of that massive amount of economy here – I think it’s around $100 billion coming out of Nashville alone, which is just a fraction of the valuation of those companies — this is the nucleus of the country. That’s why ViVE is coming here every other year, and that’s why it’s gotten so much accolades. Oracle about a year ago announced that they are relocating their entire corporate headquarters to Nashville and they are in the midst of doing that right now, downtown next to the new multi-billion dollar Titans stadium. Amazon announced years ago that their eastern service excellence headquarters moved here as well. 

This is a big tech hotspot now, and also healthcare is dominant. We’re happy to come back here and I wasn’t moving, so it was easy for me to make that choice. It was from a company standpoint and the fact that I love this town and the culture. If you’ve never been to Nashville, it’s an awesome town. They call it Nash Vegas for a reason. It’s one of the best places to go in the country, with food and entertainment, and is very rich in healthcare as well.

What excites you most about the next five to 10 years in healthcare?

I go really way back. I got a graduate degree from the George Washington University School of Business. When I went there in the mid 1990s, there was no healthcare tech program. That didn’t exist. I was asked to choose a discipline of focus in my Master’s of Health Services Administration degree. I said, I want to do technology. They said, that doesn’t exist. No one’s doing that. It’s either acute care or regulatory compliance. I said, no, I want to do healthcare tech, so they allowed me to create my own custom degree. I’m actually the first graduate intern at Cerner Corporation. I may be the only graduate intern, but I was the first graduate intern for sure [laughs]. That set forth the last 30 years of where I am today. 

What I am most excited about goes back to where I was in the 1990s, where I saw the promise of technology, data, and analytics advancing healthcare in helping drive us to better healthcare outcomes, higher quality and healthier lives, and increased efficiency and reduced cost in healthcare delivery. I have about equal parts of a provider and payer experience with a dabbling of life sciences, so I’ve got a pretty broad spectrum of my foundation of experience. I have never been more excited than right now about where we’re headed over the next five or 10 years.

AI is definitely a big part of it, but not the only part of it. I could not be more excited about where we’re headed because of the massive adoption we’re finally doing in health care tech. I think it’s real this time.

Comments Off on HIStalk Interviews Jason Rose, CEO, Clearsense

Morning Headlines 1/29/25

January 28, 2025 Headlines Comments Off on Morning Headlines 1/29/25

Manas AI Launches to Transform Discovery of Novel Cancer Medicines

AI-powered cancer drug discovery startup Manas AI launches with a $25 million seed funding round.

Delfina Raises $17M to Revolutionize Maternal Health with AI-Powered Care.

Delfina, which offers an AI-driven pregnancy care platform, raises $17 million in a Series A funding round.

Q&A: Why this health AI startup is shutting down

Equality AI CEO Maia Hightower, MD, MPH, MBA announces that the company, which focused on trustworthy AI in healthcare, has closed after four years.

Comments Off on Morning Headlines 1/29/25

News 1/29/25

January 28, 2025 News Comments Off on News 1/29/25

Top News

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AI-powered cancer drug discovery startup Manas AI launches with a $25 million seed funding round.

The co-founders are LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman and oncologist-author Siddhartha Mukherjee, DPhil, MD, who wrote Pulitzer non-fiction winner “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.”


Reader Comments

From Steve: “Re: impact of DC happenings on healthcare, Are you planning to cover it, or would you rather dodge the politics of it? I think your readers would be interested.” I will cover any significant health tech-related change in law, regulation, or standard that affects the industry once it has happened. Coverage of legislative sausage-making isn’t my long suit and is amply covered elsewhere.


Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “Healthcare Data Security: Aligning Processes with Evolving Threats & Regulations.” Sponsor: Inovalon. Presenters: Anthony Houston, MBA, senior director of security, risk, and compliance, Inovalon; Paul Wilder, MBA, executive director, CommonWell Health Alliance; Luke McNamara, MPA, deputy chief analyst, Google Cloud; Michael Quinn, VP of strategic partner development, Inovalon. Hear leaders in healthcare data security discuss some of the top recent threat evolutions and how organizations can proactively respond by making ongoing improvements to security protocols.

Instant Access Webinar: “Successfully Navigating Post-Acute Rev Cycle Challenges.” Sponsors: Inovalon and KanTime. Presenters: David Swenson, senior manager of sales engineering, Inovalon; Lucy Lopez, VP of product management, KanTime. Learn how to speed up your revenue cycle processes and avoid the common RCM and eligibility errors that cause delays and denials. Discover strategies to boost your bottom line: streamline eligibility verification, simplify complex processes, and optimize denial management for improved cash flow.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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Therapy-focused health IT vendor Raintree Systems acquires Yoomi Health, which specializes in digital tools and practice management software for physical therapy.

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The Wall Street Journal reports that a potential take-private deal between Walgreens and private equity firm Sycamore Partners, which was first reported in early December, is no longer on the table. Shares of the retail pharmacy dropped on the news, further escalating the stock’s see-sawing as Walgreens investors react to a DoJ lawsuit and better-than-expected quarterly earnings. WBA shares have lost 52% in the past 12 months.

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Delfina, which offers an AI-driven pregnancy care platform, raises $17 million in a Series A funding round. Founder and CEO Senan Ebrahim, MD, PhD previously founded and ran Hikma Health, which offers free and open source software for caring for refugee patients.

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Equality AI CEO Maia Hightower, MD, MPH, MBA announces that the company, which focused on trustworthy AI in healthcare, has closed after four years. She says that AI standards adoption will be delayed now that the White House has cancelled a 2023 executive order that addressed trustworthy development. She previously held IT leadership roles at University of Iowa Health Care and University of Utah Health and was EVP/chief digital and transformation officer at UChicago Medicine through July 2023.


Sales

  • Hartford HealthCare (CT) selects WellStack’s analytics and data integration capabilities.

People

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Adam Kansler, JD (S&P Global) will become CEO of Inovalon upon the March 1 retirement of company founder and CEO Keith Dunleavy, MD.

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HealtheConnections promotes Elizabeth Amato, MHA to president and CEO.

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Linda Janiszewski (UCSF Medical Center) joins CTG as IT strategy and value solutions leader, healthcare.


Announcements and Implementations

The development team that is behind the Opal patient portal for Canada’s McGill University Health Centre shuts down the app due to funding shortfalls, leaving 7,000 patients without access. Opal was developed as a non-commercial alternative to MyChart, part of Quebec’s $2 billion Epic implementation. The seven-year-old app, which was built with a $7 million innovation grant, required $350,000 annually to operate. The hospital stated that Opal failed to meet its expectations as a stable clinical solution and declined to provide further funding.

Duke Health and UNC Health will build North Carolina Children’s, the state’s first standalone children’s hospital. The 500-bed facility, which is expected to cost $2 billion, will receive $320 million in state funding. Groundbreaking is scheduled for 2027, with the hospital opening in the early 2030s and full campus completion by 2033.

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Tampa General Hospital (FL) funds the rollout of OnMed’s “clinic in a box” – which offers real-time virtual visits – at a homeless shelter. The station includes diagnostic tools and thermal imaging cameras. I wrote this in October 2019 when TGH installed one of the units in its employee cafeteria:

Even odder: Tampa General Hospital opens an OnMed telemedicine consult and drug dispensing booth in its food court so that its employees — who are inside its walls — can seek medical care from clinicians who aren’t. Maybe this is a Halloween-appropriate “the call is coming from inside the house” type situation. It’s not really an admission that employees don’t have time to deal with their own hospital employer’s bureaucracy as patients – the hospital is in business with the vendor and this first booth is a pilot for a broader rollout. The hospital CEO says millennials won’t wait to see a doctor in person, which if you’re a doctor who actually wants to care for patients, is depressingly accurate. The oldest millennials are now in their late 30s, so it would be interesting to see how those who are doctors run their practices and patient encounters.


Other

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The CEO of non-profit Peterson Health Technology Institute, which evaluates digital health technologies using evidence-based assessments, tells Politico why the organization is launching yet another AI task force that involves big health systems. CEO Carolyn Pearson says:

We are not working with the AI evangelists or the AI researchers. It’s a CFO saying: “When I spend X, Y, Z, how is productivity changing in my environment? Or if I’m not pushing productivity changes and I’m doing it for the provider’s well-being and to prevent turnover — how am I measuring that?” A lot of them want to roll out AI medical scribes because it’s good for providers and helps with the long-term sustainability of that job. But as the solutions are coming into their systems, they are very quickly spreading out into cycle management, staffing, prior authorization and a million other service lines these companies offer. If you’re a health system leader and not being very careful and thoughtful about what you are and are not adopting, you can find yourself with big solution costs very quickly.

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UMass Memorial Health creates a Digital Hub to unify its patient flow, remote patient monitoring, and in-home care management services. The e-ICU, part of the health system’s RPM division, monitors 150 ICU beds across facilities, with staff members responsible for up to six patients each.

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia develops the Clinical Outcomes Data Archive, incorporating EHR data and manually collected and clinically reviewed data, to improve early interventions, care plans, and pregnancy-related outcomes research within its fetal medicine department.


Sponsor Updates

  • Black Book Research publishes a new report, “Innovation for Equity: The Transformative Role of DEI in Healthcare IT Success.”
  • AdvancedMD releases “CPT/HCPCS Codes Guide 2025,” a comprehensive resource for ambulatory care providers listing the latest medical billing code updates.
  • AGS Health will exhibit at the HFMA Lone Star Winter Conference January 30-31 in Irving, TX.
  • Ascom Americas welcomes new project manager Casandra Siefkes.
  • Capital Rx releases a new episode of The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast, “Why Drug Prices & Modern Tech Matter in Hospice Care, Too, with Nick Opalich.”
  • Clinical Architecture invites healthcare professionals to participate in its 2025 Healthcare Data Quality Survey.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Comments Off on News 1/29/25

Morning Headlines 1/28/25

January 27, 2025 Headlines Comments Off on Morning Headlines 1/28/25

Raintree Systems Acquires Rehab Therapy AI Technology Leader Yoomi Health

Therapy-focused health IT vendor Raintree Systems acquires Yoomi Health, a New York-based company specializing in digital tools and remote patient monitoring for physical therapy.

Aligned Marketplace Increases Total Seed Funding to $11M, Expands Advanced Primary Care and Employer Partnerships, Including with 7-Eleven

Aligned Marketplace, which offers an online platform that connects self-insured employers to advanced primary care providers, raises $3 million in seed funding.

Walgreens Stock Falls on Concerns Potential Buyout Deal is ‘Dead’

The Wall Street Journal reports that a potential take-private deal between Walgreens and private equity firm Sycamore Partners, first reported in early December, is no longer on the table.

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Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 1/27/25

January 27, 2025 Dr. Jayne 3 Comments

Several people have reached out this week to try to schedule meetings with me at ViVE, which is coming up next month in Nashville. As much as I would like a good excuse to visit a city that can be a lot of fun, I just couldn’t justify the expense of another conference, especially given how close it is to HIMSS.

Registration for ViVE is over $2,000, which is a substantial sum when you’re paying for it out of your own pocket. I’ve attended in the past as a boutique consultant, and once I factored in travel and other costs, the return on investment just wasn’t there.

When I’ve written about the expense of going to conferences in the past, I’ve been asked why I don’t just get a media pass and go for free. It’s tricky to do that when you’re an anonymous blogger, since conferences undoubtedly want your real name. I managed to get CES to approve my application to attend virtually under the Jayne HIStalk, MD identity the year they had a virtual show. That made sense because people couldn’t see me as I listened to pitches and presentations. I can’t exactly walk around with a name badge that says “Dr. Jayne” without a lot of questions.

As for HIMSS, it’s still a place where I can accomplish a lot of meetings and gather the information that I need to help my clients, in an atmosphere with less hype. I’ve grown accustomed to the predictability of the large convention hall atmosphere and don’t need a lot of flashing lights or bold visual displays pulling my attention from the work at hand.

Exhibitors tend to send larger teams to HIMSS compared to other shows, so it’s easier to connect with resources when you find a new vendor that you want to explore. My past experiences at ViVE and HLTH have been that the person I need to talk to isn’t at the show, although I understand that I’m a small sample size and that experience might not be typical.

I got my first HIMSS party invite this weekend, which always makes me smile. I’ve already got my dancing shoes ready for the occasion, which puts me ahead of where I usually am with planning efforts.

I’ve done a fair amount of consulting work in non-traditional areas, so I wasn’t surprised when an organization contacted me to help with a project to migrate school health records from one system to another. I’m not new to technology in the school health setting or to record conversions.

If you haven’t been in school or haven’t had children in school in the last decade, you might not be aware that schools have been embracing healthcare IT. Initially, the uptake I saw was mostly around digital health histories and immunization records, which certainly made it easier for school health officials to identify students who might not be in compliance with state laws or district policies. Electronic systems were also used to track the forms that parents submitted to allow their children to self-administer medications such as asthma inhalers and allergy rescue injections. These are pretty straightforward uses of technology and wouldn’t make most people think twice.

As schools began to have more medically complex students wo attend full time (as opposed to being in a specialized school setting), I started to see districts invest in systems that supported medication administration documentation, not unlike those that are used in hospitals. I also saw inventory tracking systems and triage systems come into play.

Even before the arrival of COVID, school districts were starting to use technology to deal with the inability to staff a nurse into every school due to budgetary constraints. In situations where schools don’t staff a nurse, many of those nursing tasks fall to school secretaries, teacher aides, or other administrative staffers. If a nurse was shared between buildings, those resources could host a video conference while evaluating an ill or injured student.

Around the same time, we also started to see hospitals and health systems partner with school districts to deliver health services in the schools in an attempt to close gaps in care and reduce preventable visits to the emergency department. These school-based clinics often involved rotating nurse practitioners who would evaluate and treat patients in consultation with a hospital-based physician, using shared electronic health records hosted by the health system. Funding for these programs was often tenuous, however. As true telehealth rose to prominence, we started to see hospitals and health systems pull back on those in-person clinics and opt instead for virtual care, which could be delivered in a less costly way.

As I was putting together my proposal for the records conversion, I decided to see what was out there in the literature regarding school health. It was a timely search since there was a great article posted this week in JAMA Health Forum. It’s a good reference to learn about the history of the school nurse role and how much it has changed. The authors talk about health and hygiene efforts in the early 1900s and the evolution to where we are today.

I think most people consider issues like vaccines, injuries, illness, and preventive screenings as the purview of the school nurse. Unless they have personal exposure to other health needs in the school setting, they might not consider other responsibilities, such as assisting students with insulin pumps or with tube feedings. The number of students who are taking medications at school is much higher than 40 years ago, and people who don’t work regularly with young people are often surprised to learn how many people under age 18 are taking at least one daily medication.

School nurses are also more involved in behavioral and mental health interventions than in previous decades. In some areas, they serve as the only healthcare professionals who might interact with a child. I’m excited to see schools and communities that realize the value of school nurses as key members of the healthcare team, especially those who are willing to use data captured in the schools to better inform community health decisions.

Even though this project is primarily a records conversion, I’m excited to potentially become a resource for future projects involving health data in the schools. It’s much easier to craft a proposal around an area of informatics where I’m passionate, so here’s to hoping I ultimate win the contract.

What are your thoughts about the role of informatics in the schools? Have you worked on a school-based health project? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Readers Write: Social Care Data: The Key to Unlocking Community Health

January 27, 2025 Readers Write Comments Off on Readers Write: Social Care Data: The Key to Unlocking Community Health

Social Care Data: The Key to Unlocking Community Health
By Carla Nelson

Carla Nelson, MBA is senior director of healthcare policy at Findhelp.

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Rising healthcare costs in the US demand innovative solutions, and social care data is emerging as a critical tool for driving informed decisions and improving community health. Policies that are promoting high-value care and funding for social services like transportation and medically-tailored meals show promise but face significant hurdles, including a lack of standardized data. Without a clear picture of community needs and resources, decision-makers struggle to optimize investments and implement effective strategies.

Social care data – such as health-related social needs (HRSNs), referrals, services received, and program availability — fills critical gaps in understanding community health. Technology can play a pivotal role in collecting, analyzing, and sharing this data, enabling its integration with datasets like healthcare claims, Medicaid member files, and public data sources such as Census data or CDC indices. These combined datasets provide actionable insights, empowering organizations to identify unmet needs, allocate resources efficiently, and improve service delivery. By integrating social care data with healthcare and other datasets, technology can enable more effective policies, investments, and service delivery strategies.

Analyzing patterns in social care searches or service usage can uncover gaps in available programs. For example, if a region shows high demand for food assistance but limited service availability, this insight can guide resource allocation and program expansion. Similarly, aggregated data on social care needs can help measure the capacity of community organizations and inform targeted investments.

As social care systems become increasingly digitized, ensuring the privacy of sensitive data is essential. Unlike healthcare data, which is protected by HIPAA, social care data lacks comparable safeguards. Organizations and governments must prioritize stringent privacy measures, ensure consent-driven data collection, and adopt policies to protect individuals’ sensitive information as they seek assistance.

To harness the potential of social care data, readers can take these key steps:

1. Invest in Data Infrastructure

  • Advocate for and allocate funding to modernize data collection and sharing systems.
  • Support community organizations in adopting technology that enables real-time data sharing and analytics.

2. Promote Cross-Sector Collaboration

  • Build partnerships between healthcare providers, community organizations, and government agencies to share data and insights.
  • Facilitate the integration of social care data with other datasets to create a comprehensive view of community needs.

3. Advance Data Standardization

  • Participate in initiatives to develop and adopt standardized formats for social care data to enable consistent use and sharing.

4. Prioritize Privacy and Consent

  • Implement robust privacy policies and ensure individuals provide informed consent for the use of their data.
  • Stay informed about evolving regulations to protect sensitive information.

5. Leverage Data for Decision-Making

  • Use data to identify gaps in resources, track outcomes, and guide investments in social care programs.
  • Share insights with policymakers to advocate for targeted interventions and funding.

6. Educate Your Community

  • Raise awareness of the importance of social care data among stakeholders, emphasizing its role in improving community health.
  • Provide training on how to use data tools and analytics for effective decision-making.

Advancing the infrastructure for social care data is essential to make informed policy and investment decisions. Challenges remain, including limited technological capacity for many community organizations and early-stage standardization of social care data. However, progress is underway. States and organizations are leveraging new technologies to integrate health and social care, building seamless referral systems, and creating platforms for effective data sharing.

As social care data capabilities mature, they will unlock new opportunities to understand and address community needs, leading to more effective policies, smarter resource allocation, and improved health outcomes. Investments in data systems and technology today are paving the way for a healthier, more equitable future for all.

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