Monday Morning Update 7/14/25

Top News

Johns Hopkins Health System launches Illustra Health, which applies analytics and Hopkins best practices to population health management.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents aren’t convinced that insurers will voluntarily streamline prior authorization

New poll to your right or here: Do you support the federal government subpoenaing the medical records of minors who have had gender-related care?

Sponsored Events and Resources

July 22 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Innovating the Consumer Experience Beyond the EMR with Open Standards.” Sponsor: Praia Health. Presenters: Ryan Howells, principal, Leavitt Partners and program manager, The CARIN Alliance; David LaBine, VP of software engineering, Providence Digital Innovation Group; Robin Monks, CTO, Praia Health; Kristen Valdes, CEO, b.well. As healthcare faces rising consumer expectations and tighter regulations, the high cost of maintaining fragmented, proprietary systems is no longer sustainable. While patient data access has improved, the lack of open standards continues to hinder innovation, drive up integration costs, and limit the potential of digital health beyond the EHR. This webinar will discuss how open standards like OIDC,  HL7 FHIR, and open technology requirements are essential for reducing integration burdens, accelerating development, and lowering maintenance costs. Panelists will describe how every closed integration represents a lost opportunity and will offer practical strategies for leveraging open technology as a competitive advantage that improves efficiency, ensures compliance, and strengthens patient trust.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

KVC Health Systems implements WellSky’s behavioral health platform.

Announcements and Implementations

Samsung will roll out a beta version of an AI-powered health coach chatbot in the US by the end of the year. The company says the AI coach will alert users to potential health warning signs.

Government and Politics

The Justice Department subpoenas 20 doctors and hospitals, demanding the medical records of minors who have received gender-related care. The subpoenas were issued by the consumer protection group in an apparent attempt to sidestep patient confidentiality protections.

Other

AdventHealth Shawnee Mission sues BCBS of Kansas City, claiming that the insurer withheld $2 million in payments using Apixio’s AI chart review technology, which flagged “clinically invalid” physician diagnoses. The hospital says that the denials violate its contract as well as state and federal laws. Apixio says that its software finds faulty or unsupported diagnoses in 60% of inpatient stays.

I see few LinkedIn posts that go beyond AI-overwrought self-promotion posing as “wisdom,” but I enjoyed this one by Bland AI co-founder and CEO Isaiah Granet. A healthcare-applicable snippet that describes why McKinsey’s $500 per hour PowerPoints won’t be displaced by AI:

The paradox makes sense once you realize what companies actually buy. It’s not the deck. It’s the permission to fire 10,000 people that comes from hearing it from someone in a $3,000 suit who went to Wharton with your board member.
Every industry has these relationship premiums hidden in plain sight. Sommeliers exist because wine descriptions need to come from someone French. Executive recruiters charge 30% of first-year comp to introduce people who are already connected on LinkedIn. Investment bankers take 2% to blessing deals that were decided on the golf course. These jobs survive automation because they were never about the output. They’re about the human need to buy from humans we trust.

Sponsor Updates

• Symplr sponsors the PeaceHealth St. John Golf Classic.
• Medicomp Systems releases a new episode of its “Tell Me Where IT Hurts” podcast featuring Medicomp CEO Dave Lareau.
• Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new episode of its “Leader to Leader” podcast titled “Getting the Foundations Right: Lessons from MultiCare on AI, Innovation, and Authentic Leadership.”
• Navina announces a partnership with ABW Medical, an Athenahealth-focused RCM vendor.
• Nordic releases a new episode of its “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Christian Pulcini, MD.
• Praia Health secures a third patent for seamless patient experiences through account orchestration.
• Redox welcomes Rhythm Express to the Redox Connection Network.
• SmarterDx and Tegria will exhibit at the AHA Leadership Summit July 20-22 in Nashville.

Blog Posts

• Successful Installation of NeuroBlate MRI Laser Technology (Health Data Movers)
• Revenue Clarity and Control: How MatrixCare Simplified Claims for Better Results (Inovalon)
• The AI-Optimized Provider Profile: Beyond the Surface (Kyruus Health)
• Connect, exchange, care: Why I’m counting down to Meditech Live25 (Meditech)
• Cyberinsurance Tips for Healthcare (Med Tech Solutions)
• Smarter QA Starts with AI: How Augmentation Is Transforming Behavioral Health Documentation (Netsmart)
• From Innovation to Impact: Honoring Leaders in E-Prescription Accuracy (Surescripts)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Sponsorship information.
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Morning Headlines 7/11/25

Canopy and Commure Announce Strategic Partnership to Advance Staff Safety in Healthcare

Canopy Health drops its May 2025 lawsuit against Commure and will take over customer management of Commure’s Strongline Pro panic button system.

Johns Hopkins Health System Announces the Official Launch of Illustra Health

Johns Hopkins Health System (MD) makes its new Illustra Health suite of population health analytics and implementation services commercially available.

Humanoid robot startup Diligent taps Cruise executives as it looks beyond healthcare

Diligent Robotics, which sells the Moxi hospital robot, hires two executives from a robotaxi firm as it moves into other industries.

News 7/11/25

Top News

Canopy Health drops its May 2025 lawsuit against Commure and will take over customer management of Commure’s Strongline Pro panic button system.

Canopy had alleged that Commure used its insider knowledge as a Canopy reseller to develop a competing product.

In mid-May, a federal court ordered Commure to stop marketing and selling Strongline Pro until the case was resolved.

Sponsored Events and Resources

July 22 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Innovating the Consumer Experience Beyond the EMR with Open Standards.” Sponsor: Praia Health. Presenters: Ryan Howells, principal, Leavitt Partners and program manager, The CARIN Alliance; David LaBine, VP of software engineering, Providence Digital Innovation Group; Robin Monks, CTO, Praia Health; Kristen Valdes, CEO, b.well. As healthcare faces rising consumer expectations and tighter regulations, the high cost of maintaining fragmented, proprietary systems is no longer sustainable. While patient data access has improved, the lack of open standards continues to hinder innovation, drive up integration costs, and limit the potential of digital health beyond the EHR. This webinar will discuss how open standards like OIDC,  HL7 FHIR, and open technology requirements are essential for reducing integration burdens, accelerating development, and lowering maintenance costs. Panelists will describe how every closed integration represents a lost opportunity and will offer practical strategies for leveraging open technology as a competitive advantage that improves efficiency, ensures compliance, and strengthens patient trust.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Hearst-owned QGenda acquires New Innovations, which offers medical residency management software.

Palantir EVP Louis Mosley criticizes British doctors who oppose the NHS’s use of the company’s software, saying “our software is going to make lives better” and accusing dissenting physicians of “choosing ideology over patient interest.” The British Medical Association passed a motion last month that opposed the NHS’s decision to award Palantir a $450 million contract to provide its Federated Data Platform.

Diligent Robotics, which sells the Moxi hospital robot, hires two executives from a robotaxi firm as it moves into other industries.

Sales

• Hackensack Meridian Health integrates DrFirst’s AI tools with Epic to give clinicians faster access to patient medication histories and insurance coverage details.

People

Population health management software vendor Zyter TruCare hires Sundar Subramanian, MBA, MS (Strategy&) as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

HL7 launches an office that will establish healthcare AI standards. Daniel Vreeman, PT, DPT, MS, the organization’s chief standards development officer, will serve as chief AI officer.

A new KLAS report on oncology systems finds that many independent oncology practices have been acquired by health systems. They have also increased their use of cloud technology.

Government and Politics

Curacao’s trade commission rules that an after-hours primary care group that holds a 70% market share abused its market position by requiring doctors to use a specific software system to use its services. The government will order the group to create and fund an open API connection to competing systems.

Sponsor Updates

• CTG staff volunteer with the United Way of Buffalo & Erie County during its Day of Caring at Buffalo River Fest Park.
• Altera Digital Health selects MedAllies as its QHIN partner for its Paragon Denali EHR.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “The Benefits You Probably Didn’t Know You Have, with Marsha Perry.”
• Black Book Research announces its 2025 rankings of RCM vendors serving physician practices, with HIStalk sponsors FinThrive and Waystar achieving top marks in several categories.
• Agfa HealthCare achieves HITRUST i1 Certification.
• Navina and Nabla partner to deliver real-time support across clinical encounters.
• “The Big Unlock” podcast features Arcadia Chief Strategy Officer Aneesh Chopra in an episode titled “Reimagining Healthcare From Meaningful Use of Data to AI-Driven Equity.”
• Censinet releases a new episode of the “Risk Never Sleeps” podcast titled “The Startup Prescription for Healthcare IT – Part 1, with Elevsis Delgadillo, SVP of Customer Success at KeenStack.”
• A new Black Book Research survey of inpatient EHR users reveals meaningful disparities in satisfaction across major inpatient EHR platforms.

Blog Posts

• Overcoming Patient Access Challenges: 4-Step Approach to Centralization (AGS Health)
• Recognizing Common HIPAA Violations and How to Prevent Them (AdvancedMD)
• Prioritizing patient–provider connections in a digital age (Altera Digital Health)
• Branded Messaging: The Secret to Greater Response Rates and Trust in Healthcare (Artera)
• Breaking Free! Scaling Virtual Nursing Beyond Pilots (AvaSure)
• MUSE 2025: Innovation, Connection, and Giving Back (Consensus Cloud Solutions)
• Cutting Through the Noise: How Healthcare Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Prioritizes What Matters (CloudWave) 
• Speed Matters: Why Companies Lose Top Talent—And How to Fix It (Direct Recruiters)
• Understand What Clinicians Actually Experience Using Epic Hyperdrive (Goliath Technologies)
• Live from New York: How SCNs Connect 1.5 Million Patients to HRSN Services (Findhelp)
• AI in UK Healthcare: Empowering Better Patient Experiences Through Digital Transformation (Five9)

Sponsor Spotlight

FDB (First Databank) delivers clinically robust, workflow-integrated drug knowledge that is patient-specific and actionable, enabling more precise medication decisions. Trusted for quality, clinical expertise, and collaboration, FDB helps improve patient safety, operations, and outcomes. FDB’s drug databases and medication decision support solutions power information systems used by the majority of hospitals, physician practices, pharmacies, payers, and beyond, impacting millions of clinicians, business associates, and patients every day. Follow FDB on LinkedIn. (Sponsor Spotlight is free for HIStalk Platinum sponsors).

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 7/10/25

I finally had time to dig into the recent paper about the “accumulation of cognitive debt” that happens when using AI assistants.

As a proud member of Generation X, I first experienced those rites of passage called “the five-paragraph essay” and “writing a research paper” in middle school. My English teacher  — this was before everyone called it Language Arts or something else more inclusive — made us create a 3×5 index card for every reference. We had to have cards for every quote or idea we planned to use. For those of us whose brains were wired for reading and writing, it was a painful process. We just wanted to jump in and start writing. However, for others it was an exercise in organizing thoughts and making sure to have enough materials to support your conclusions.

Fast forward to my university days, when I was a teaching assistant for an English 101 “Thinking, Writing, and Research” class. Those pesky index cards were still recommended, although not required. Personal computers had just made their way into dorm rooms, but as I graded research essays, I could easily tell who knew how to organize their thoughts and who was simply phoning it in.

The professor I worked with always selected obscure topics for the assignments, so it was nearly impossible to copy the work of others. That made grading all those essays quite an adventure. This was the era when those with computers had to figure out how to best use them on an as-you-go basis, because there certainly weren’t any classes offered that explained the best ways to use various pieces of software. Subsequent generations always had access to computers for schoolwork, so I’m not sure how much of the process aspect of writing is still taught versus enabling people to just sit down at the keyboard and get to it.

Within that context, I started reading the paper. It looked at how three cohorts completed an essay writing task. LLM-only, search engine-only, and brain-only groups completed three writing tasks using their assigned method. They then had a fourth task where some of them were crossed to another group. The participants were monitored with electroencephalography (EEG) to assess the cognitive load during the tasks. Additionally, essays were assessed using natural language processing, scoring with the assistance of a human teacher and scoring by an AI judge.

The authors concluded that the brain-only group had the strongest brain connectivity, followed by the search engine group. The LLM group had the weakest connections. Additionally, participants in the LLM group had lower self-reported ownership of their essays and had difficulty quoting their own work. Ongoing analysis showed that “LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.”

The authors commented, “These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI’s role in learning.” Given some of the personal statements that I’ve read for medical students over the last two years, there’s so much LLM use that it’s hard to get a feel for who the candidates really are as people. Maybe this research will convince folks to dial it back a bit.

I enjoy learning about new players on the healthcare IT scene. One that I’ve been watching in recent months is CognomIQ. The company’s semantic-based data management solution has been optimized for healthcare, in particular for research institutions.

The company originally caught my eye when I heard that industry veteran Bonny Roberts had joined the team as VP of customer success. She’s a long time HIStalk fan and served as co-host of the final HIStalkapalooza back in the day. I trust her to recognize the real thing.

The company’s CTO, Eric Snyder, can discuss the importance of data without succumbing to industry buzzwords or getting bogged down in jargon. He recently delivered a guest lecture for a data and visualizations class at the University of Rochester. He followed it up with a social media post on data literacy and the problems that happen when different parts of the healthcare system describe parts of the care continuum in different terms.

My favorite quote: “I struggle with the answer to the data literacy in healthcare problem because it’s like creating a second floor of a house when the first floor is propped up on sticks. We never solidified the foundation as an industry, instead we moved on to AI.”

I wish more people in the industry understood this way of thinking. I would even go a step farther to say that we’ve built a house of cards and now we’re putting AI on top of it, but I’m trying to be less cynical. Those of us on the patient care front lines have spent the last quarter century creating a tremendous volume of patient-related data that is just floating around and isn’t helping organizations reach their potential. I think of all the wasted hours of clinicians clicking and the back-end systems being unable to do anything useful with the data because of  lack of standardization or inconsistent standards.

Snyder has spent the better part of the last decade leading technology innovation work at the Wilmot Cancer Institute and understands the importance of data to solve complex problems. The platform can aggregate hundreds of data sources and transform it in an automated fashion, which sounds awfully attractive to those of us who have had to engage in weeks or even months of cleanup prior to embarking on reporting or research efforts.

I also have to give a shout out to the company’s CEO, Ted Lindsley, whose LinkedIn profile boasts, “Healthcare Data that doesn’t suck.” Honestly, seeing that made my little informatics heart go pitter-patter, because it’s incredibly refreshing to see someone who is excited about what they do and is ready to express it in no uncertain terms.

I reached out to Ted to learn more. He was willing to entertain my anonymous inquiries. Recent highlights include the company coming out of stealth mode, showcasing its work at the recent Cancer Center Informatics Society Summit, and announcing its seed round. He had some great analogies about technology leaping forward and had me laughing about moving from MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, even though my ability to talk about that transformation likely betrayed my age. He’s certainly no stranger to the work that needed to give the industry a kick in the pants and get it moving ahead. I’m looking forward to seeing where CognomIQ goes this year and beyond.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty exhausting and free time has been scarce, so I had to rely on an AI-generated cake in celebration of this being my 1500th post. I was hoping to whisk myself to a beach to celebrate, but instead I have to make it through another major upgrade first. When I was a young medical student sitting down at a green-screen terminal to access lab results, I never imagined writing about my experiences with healthcare IT, let alone there being people who would read it on a regular basis. Thanks for supporting my work, and a special thank you to those readers who share their comments and ideas so I can keep the words flowing.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 7/10/25

Vytalize Health raises fresh $55M and eyes deals

Value-based care practice management company Vytalize Health reportedly raises $55 million, bringing its total funding to over $230 million.

HL7 International Launches AI Office to Set Global Standards for Healthcare’s AI Revolution

Open standards organization HL7 establishes an AI office to develop foundational standards for the use of AI in healthcare.

QGenda Announces Acquisition of New Innovations

Healthcare workforce management software vendor QGenda acquires residency management software company New Innovations.

This Week in Health Tech 7/9/25

Healthcare AI News 7/9/25

News

Rock Health reports that US digital health startups raised $6.4 billion in the first half of 2025, which represents a modest increase over the same period last year. AI-enabled companies captured 62% of that total, raising average round sizes that were nearly double those of non-AI startups. Nine of the 11 funding rounds of greater than $100 million went to companies that offer AI-driven products, including two mega-rounds for Abridge within just four months.

An AI cybersecurity company says that its average health system audit uncovers 70 active AI applications, many of them embedded in tools from Microsoft, Salesforce, Google, and LinkedIn. It notes that while healthcare organizations often believe that they have limited AI use by blocking tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, they often overlook AI features that are contained in vendor-provided technology.

Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi appoints Peng Xiao, the CEO of Emirates-based AI development company G42, as its board chair.

Business

John Snow Labs spins off Martlet.ai, which will apply AI to HCC coding.

FDA grants Breakthrough Device Designation to Artera’s precision medicine tool for prostate cancer.

Research

UCLA researchers create an AI tool that turns structured EHR data into “pseudo-notes” that can be used by clinical decision support systems without EHR integration.

Mayo Clinic develops an AI tool that diagnoses surgical site infections by analyzing patient-taken photos of wounds after surgery.

University of South Florida researchers develop an AI system that assesses pain in NICU babies in real time by analyzing data from cameras and sensors.

Other

Huntsville Hospital (AL) upgrades its campus security system with 1,800 AI-powered cameras that employ facial recognition and license plate detection.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Sponsorship information.
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Morning Headlines 7/9/25

Samsung Electronics Acquires Xealth, Bridging the Gap Between Wellness and Medical Care

Samsung Electronics will acquire digital health integration company Xealth.

University of Maryland Medical System Announces Spinout of Gallion Health, Developer Of Award-Winning Supply Chain Application

Gallion Health launches out of University of Maryland Medical System’s IHarbor Innovation Center to offer providers cloud-based digital supply chain capabilities.

Naviant Acquires Amitech Solutions to Expand Healthcare and Intelligent Automation Capabilities

Intelligent automation and process consulting company Naviant acquires healthcare services firm Amitech Solutions.

News 7/9/25

Top News

Samsung Electronics will acquire digital health integration company Xealth.

Xealth announced an undisclosed amount of funding from Morningside Ventures earlier this year. The company spun out of Providence in 2017 to sell its platform that allows providers to prescribe digital health programs and tools.

Samsung says the acquisition will help it reach more health systems and digital partners through connected care.

Reader Comments

From Abacab: “Re: the VA. They posted an RFI on July 3 titled ‘Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) Systems Integration Support to the EHRM Integration Office.’ If they proceed, it most likely strips Oracle Health of the prime integration responsibility and shifts it to a traditional government systems integrator. Oracle has had notable failures with its Oracle Health rollout. Shifting it to an SI who has similar experience at least brings risk down substantially.”The RFI seeks input on selecting a system integrator to support the VA’s enterprise-wide rollout of Oracle Health, covering implementation, integration, management, and sustainment. My initial, non-expert assumption was that Oracle Health would remain the prime contractor, with funding and operational responsibility shifting to the integrator. Leidos seems to be a likely frontrunner given its role as prime contractor for the DoD’s Oracle Health rollout. However, a reader who has deep federal contracting experience believes that the VA may actually be looking to replace Oracle Health as the prime, not just add an integrator. They noted it never made sense for Cerner – who had never installed its system for the government and never served as prime contractor on a big federal project as far as I know — to receive a no-bid contract for both software and responsibility as prime, which of course let it keep most of the money.

From Dropsy: “Re: Becker’s Health IT & CIO Report. Amenities Health founder and CEO Aasim Saeed, MD, MPA rips them on LinkedIn for running an Epic blog post as its lead story.” I agree that it’s not real journalism to run a lead story that summarizes a vendor CEO’s company blog post. News is always sparse right after a holiday, but surely this was the most questionable choice from the 10 stories listed.

Sponsored Events and Resources

July 22 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Innovating the Consumer Experience Beyond the EMR with Open Standards.” Sponsor: Praia Health. Presenters: Ryan Howells, principal, Leavitt Partners and program manager, The CARIN Alliance; David LaBine, VP of software engineering, Providence Digital Innovation Group; Robin Monks, CTO, Praia Health; Kristen Valdes, CEO, b.well. As healthcare faces rising consumer expectations and tighter regulations, the high cost of maintaining fragmented, proprietary systems is no longer sustainable. While patient data access has improved, the lack of open standards continues to hinder innovation, drive up integration costs, and limit the potential of digital health beyond the EHR. This webinar will discuss how open standards like OIDC, HL7 FHIR, and open technology requirements are essential for reducing integration burdens, accelerating development, and lowering maintenance costs. Panelists will describe how every closed integration represents a lost opportunity and will offer practical strategies for leveraging open technology as a competitive advantage that improves efficiency, ensures compliance, and strengthens patient trust.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Health and human services technology company VitalHub acquires patient flow software vendor Novari Health for $32 million. Canada-based VitalHub’s recent acquisitions include Induction Healthcare (patient engagement and virtual care), MedCurrent (clinical decision support), and Strata Health (care coordination).

People

PointClickCare promotes James Yersh to president.

Kumar Murukurthy, MBBS (Altais) joins Optimum Healthcare IT as chief clinical officer.

Announcements and Implementations

La Paz Regional Hospital (AZ) goes live on Meditech Expanse.

Lifepoint Health and Community Health Systems implements Cadence’s new Proactive Care Engine for Advanced Primary Care Management of Medicare patients.

Hannibal Regional Healthcare System (MO) will go live on Epic this week.

Black Book Research surveys clinicians to measure how their input shapes AI product design, using eight qualitative KPIs that are tied to workflow fit, usability, and trust. Top-scoring vendors are Epic, Signal 1, Aidoc, Suki AI, Notable, and Viz.ai.

A new KLAS report on EHR clinical optimization names Nordic and Chartis as the top-performing firms.

Government and Politics

KLAS surveys 169 health system executives to understand how they are dealing with the uncertainty of federal policy, with the largest expected impact being cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. It concludes that financial pressures are forcing the organizations to “plan through the fog” by taking action now even without clear direction. A summary:

• Payment reforms are forcing organizations to reconfigure themselves, not just cut expenses, as they scale back services and expand high-margin service lines. This survival strategy creates implications for patient access.
• Most organizations plan to shift IT spending to vendor partnerships that offer quick ROI rather than cutting their IT budgets.
• Nearly 40% of the organizations are betting on AI as a way to reduce administration costs, but few have progressed beyond pilot projects.
• The organizations are reevaluating payer partnerships, Medicare Advantage growth, and contract performance. This is influencing broad organizational strategy.
• Smaller organizations are reacting similarly, but without the resources needed, leaving them with little margin for error in retooling their strategies.
• Few organizations are optimistic about government policy changes and are already being hit by financial policies and tariffs.

Other

The New Jersey Department of Health and Department of Human Services works with RWJBarnabas Health and the New Jersey Health Information Network on a pilot project that automates the filing and creation of birth certificates via data exchange between hospital EHRs and the state’s Vital Statistics Birth Registry.

Sponsor Updates

• Kyruus Health staff volunteer with Seeds of Hope in Portland.
• Healthcare IT Leaders publishes “The State of Oracle Health in 2025,” which analyzes Oracle Health’s platform and strategy using commentary from the company’s leadership and customers.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “A Look at What’s Really Driving Drug Spend, and How it Impacts Us, with IQVIA’s Michael Kleinrock.”
• The “HITea with Grace” podcast features First Databank SVP of strategy and product management Virginia Halsey in an episode titled “Virginia Halsey Spills the Tea on Smarter Medication Decision Support.”
• Fortified Health Security names Hannah Cook product manager for advisory services and Eli Herran security compliance analyst.
• Health Data Movers will sponsor the Northern Ohio HIMSS Charity Golf Classic & Collaboration Summit August 5-6 in Highland Heights.
• HIStalk sponsors Arcadia, TruBridge, Waystar, FinThrive, VisiQuate, and Infinx earn top rankings for AI-powered RCM applications based on Black Book Research’s latest survey.
• Impact Advisors partners with Montage Health on its Workday financial management and Workday supply chain management go live.
• Infinx releases a new episode of its “Revenue Cycle Optimized” podcast titled “RCM Insights – AI Agents Transform Claim Status Checks.”
• Linus Health advisors author a study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease titled “Precision neurocognition: An emerging diagnostic paradigm leveraging digital cognitive assessment technology.”
• Nordic collaborates with GoHealth Urgent Care in Atlanta on its Epic implementation.
• Redox releases a new episode of its “Shut the Backdoor” podcast titled “The Healing Network – CISO Relationships in a Ransomware Era.”
• SmartSense by Digi will exhibit at the Association for Diagnostics and Laboratory Medicine’s annual conference July 27-31 in Chicago.
• The G2 Summer 2025 Grid reports recognize Symplr’s access, clinical communications, provider, talent management, and workforce solutions.

Blog Posts

• The power of putting the patient on the care team (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Kansas City Social Care: Trusted Networks Support Community Wellbeing (Findhelp)
• HFMA Annual 2025: Exploring Bold Innovations in Healthcare Revenue Intelligence (FinThrive)
• Understanding and Managing Shrinkage in Contact Centers (Five9)
• Why IT Hardware Lifecycle Management is Critical for Ambulatory Clinics (HCTec)
• Medicaid Budget Cuts Test Risk Adjustment Program Readiness (Inovalon)
• The Critical Need for EHR Coaching: Ensuring Providers Can Maximize Their Systems (Med Tech Solutions)
• Leveraging FHIR and Interoperability to Transform CHRISTUS Health’s Revenue Cycle Operations (MRO)
• Digital health tech creating ‘connective tissue’ to link care settings, clinicians, and evidence (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Reducing Denials With Autonomous Medical Coding (Nym)
• Azure Virtual Desktop in Practice: What Healthcare IT Leaders Can Learn from Early Adopters (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Driving Change With Purpose: Key Takeaways From HFMA 2025 (Tegria)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 7/8/25

CDC data chief announces departure from agency

CDC Chief Data Officer Alan Sim announces his departure from the agency after nearly five years in the role.

VitalHub Announces Acquisition of Novari Health Inc.

Health and human services technology company VitalHub acquires patient flow software vendor Novari Health for $32 million.

VA to reduce staff by nearly 30K by end of FY2025

The VA announces that it is on track to reduce its staff by 30,000 by the end of the year without the need for a reduction in force.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 7/7/25

I’ve spent a lot of my career working on the “softer” side of clinical informatics, such as change management, governance, adoption, and optimization. Although I’ve implemented a couple of technologies in my career that have been dramatic, most of the time I’m working on projects that are a little more subtle.

I’m appreciative of projects like that when I have to gain buy-in from difficult stakeholders. When they don’t feel like you’re yanking the carpet out from under them, they are more likely to align with the goals and objectives. On the other hand, sometimes when projects are too low-key they’re not perceived as valuable. It’s a fine line that has to be walked.

I can’t even count the number of practices where I’ve helped implement EHRs over the years. I’ve worked with people ranging from those who have never used computers prior to the EHR to those who have been using them since birth.

In the early days of EHR, people used to talk about the “older” physicians being resistant. Fortunately, I had a good story to counter that after meeting a curmudgeonly colleague who informed me that he had been “advocating for electronic charting since long before you were born, young lady.” He and I actually competed for the first EHR-related role in our health system. I think he was a little grumpy that he didn’t get the position. I grew to appreciate his point of view as he pushed back on some of the things we were trying to do, because he always wanted to make things just a little bit better.

I’ve also worked with younger physicians who were incredibly resistant to adopting technology, particularly anything other than the one that they personally felt was the best. There’s nothing quite as entertaining as watching an Apple devotee argue with the IT team about how he absolutely, positively cannot use the PCs that are present in every shared workspace in the hospital. Folks like that were especially fun during the early days of “bring your own device” programs. They demanded to be able to use hardware that didn’t comply with the published standards.

I’ve worked with ER physicians who complained about how long it took them to do their charts, yet were found to be spending a good chunk of their day on the Zappos website. 

These examples show how differing perspectives and experiences can have a tremendous impact on the success of a project. In turn, how those outcomes can ultimately influence the patient experience. When you have one physician in a practice who refuses to do the recommended workflow, it can cause extra work for the staff. It can also result in confusion and delays for patients who are waiting for their results or for a response from the physician.

I’ve long wondered what makes one person think a new solution is awesome and another one thinks it’s awful when they are doing the same work and caring for the same patients. An informatics colleague and I were talking about this over a recent round of cocktails. She brought up a recent study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that looked at how different people perceive works of art.

Although I lived with an art history major for a number of years, I hadn’t heard of the concept of the “Beholder’s Share,” where a portion of a work of art is created by the memories and associations of the person viewing or experiencing it. I suppose it’s a more academic rendering of the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The researchers behind the article employed high tech means to look at it, however, using functional MRI (fMRI) imaging to identify how people used their brains differently when viewing different types of art. Apparently abstract art results in more person-specific activity patterns, where realistic art delivers lass variable patterns. They also noted activity in different parts of the brain when looking at abstract art. 

I’d love to see how different end user brains would react to differences in EHR screens and workflows. Maybe we could use that information to better predict how users will perform with different tools. Instead of looking at a subject’s brain activity while looking at a Mondrian painting, as the study did, we could see how their brains perform when confronted with different user interface paradigms.

I’ve seen EHR and clinical solution designs over the years that were jarring in color or layout. I’ve seen those that were so vanilla that nothing seemed to catch the user’s attention.

Another concept in the art world is that of shared taste. It explains why some groups of people prefer the same things, where others might find them objectionable. People typically know if they prefer art from classical times, the Renaissance, the Impressionists, or from abstract or modern artists, I would bet that we can create groupings around different types of clinical data visualization and how they can best be used in patient care.

Similarly, I would be interested to see if users who have certain sentiments about a given piece of technology can be grouped in a particular way, such as by specialty, user demographics, location, or tone of the program where they completed their training. Similar to the concept of precision medicine, I wonder if we could use that information to create precision training or a precision technology adoption curriculum that could help users adapt to new tools that end up in their workflows.

Even without the expense and risk of something like fMRI scans, I would bet that we could do a lot in clinical informatics to better understand our users and the learners with whom we are engaging. I’ve seen quite a few surveys that ask new employees about their experience with electronic documentation or technology in general, but they are fairly superficial. They usually have questions like, “Which of the following systems have you used?” with a list of vendor names. They don’t recognize if the user was on a heavily customized version or an out-of-the-box configuration. Most users wouldn’t know anyway unless they have experience behind the informatics curtain. 

Institutions have come a long way recognizing different learning styles and whether people prefer classroom, asynchronous, or hybrid learning methods. I don’t doubt that the training and adoption efforts that we see today might be supplanted by other paradigms in the future.

Is the beauty of the EHR in the mind of the beholder, or is it something with which users simply have to cope? Is one platform more abstract than the other? Will we ever see an EHR with a classical sense of style? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 7/7/25

Blue Stream Academy Joins Agilio Software to Create an Integrated Healthcare Training and Compliance Platform

England-based healthcare software vendor Agilio acquires Blue Stream Academy, which offers healthcare e-learning services.

The Villages Health Announces Strategic Restructuring and Agreement to be Acquired by CenterWell

The Villages Health, which offers healthcare services to the 150,000 residents of The Villages retirement community in Florida, files Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will sell itself to Humana’s CenterWell health services business.

Complete Family Medicine to launch Epic EHR System

Complete Family Medicine, a part of Hannibal Regional Healthcare System (MO), will implement Epic July 9.

Island Health lays off VP, ‘several’ executives, citing financial pressures

In Canada, Island Health lays off a number of executives amidst an organizational restructuring that has also eliminated IT positions related to the health system’s 300-site EHR implementation.

Monday Morning Update 7/7/25

Top News

Symplr acquires the Smart Square staff scheduling system from AMN Healthcare for $75 million.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A majority of poll respondents attribute Best Buy’s exit from its Current Health business as being due to its underestimation of healthcare’s complexity.

New poll to your right or here: Will insurers follow through on their pledge to streamline prior authorization? My take: only if it makes them more money. What I expect:

• They will use FHIR to quickly render only those PA decisions that involve high-volume, inexpensive items since they get an immediate labor reduction payback.
• Complex but urgent items will still require review by their own clinicians, whose relevant credentials may be skimpy and whose job is more to say “no” than “yes.”
• Policies related to patient transitions between insurers will be loaded with exceptions.
• Note that insurers pledged to address PAs in 2018 by (a) reducing PA requirements for providers who have a good performance history and who demonstrably adhere to evidence-based medicine, and (b) automating the process using national standards.
• CMS issued a rule in January 2024 that required payers to publish a prior authorization API by January 1, 2027, although the insurers will be given three days to respond to urgent requests and seven calendar days for standard requests.

Sponsored Events and Resources

July 22 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Innovating the Consumer Experience Beyond the EMR with Open Standards.” Sponsor: Praia Health. Presenters: Ryan Howells, principal, Leavitt Partners and program manager, The CARIN Alliance; David LaBine, VP of software engineering, Providence Digital Innovation Group; Robin Monks, CTO, Praia Health; Kristen Valdes, CEO, b.well. As healthcare faces rising consumer expectations and tighter regulations, the high cost of maintaining fragmented, proprietary systems is no longer sustainable. While patient data access has improved, the lack of open standards continues to hinder innovation, drive up integration costs, and limit the potential of digital health beyond the EHR. This webinar will discuss how open standards like OIDC,  HL7 FHIR, and open technology requirements are essential for reducing integration burdens, accelerating development, and lowering maintenance costs. Panelists will describe how every closed integration represents a lost opportunity and will offer practical strategies for leveraging open technology as a competitive advantage that improves efficiency, ensures compliance, and strengthens patient trust.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

England-based healthcare software vendor Agilio acquires Blue Stream Academy, which offers healthcare e-learning services.

The Villages Health, which offers healthcare services to the 150,000 residents of The Villages retirement community in Florida, files Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will sell itself to Humana’s CenterWell health services business. TVH reportedly owes the federal government nearly $400 million in Medicare overpayments.

People

Franciscan Alliance promotes Joseph Schnecker, MD, MMM to CMIO.

I missed this earlier. Nebraska Medicine promotes Michael Ash, MD to CEO. Ash, who is also a pharmacist, was chief medical officer for Cerner for 11 years and chief transformation officer of the health system for eight years.

Announcements and Implementations

Researchers find that prescription costs for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries didn’t go down following implementation of a real-time prescription benefit tool.

Other

OpenAI hires a forensic psychiatrist to assess the emotional impact of ChatGPT use. Mental health experts have raised concerns about people relying on AI as a therapist, pointing to cases in which chatbots were linked to mental breakdowns and suicides.

Contacts

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

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 7/3/25

I’m not a superfan of The Joint Commission, but I was interested to see their press release about partnering with the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) to create AI best practices for the US healthcare system. The partnership plans to develop AI tools, playbooks, and it wouldn’t be The Joint Commission without a certification program as one of the offerings.

If anyone wants to lay odds on the cost of such a program, I’m happy to run the betting pool. Initial guidance will be issued in the fall, with AI certification to follow. I’ve done consulting work around patient-centered medical home recognition, EHR certification, and other compliance-type efforts, so I’ll be looking for the devil in the details as they are released.

As a primary care physician at heart, I’m sensitive to the multitude of recommendations that we give to our patients, often all at one time. For example, a patient who is newly diagnosed with diabetes may need to have labs drawn, see a diabetic educator, visit an ophthalmologist, consult with a podiatrist, and manage prescriptions from a retail pharmacy and a mail order pharmacy. Health systems are investing in solutions to reach patients via patient portal, text, interactive voice calls, paper mail, and email, which has resulted in patients being overwhelmed. I’m intrigued by Lirio’s concept of “Precision Nudging” (they have trademarked the term) to help manage this problem.

AI is involved via their large behavior model that aims to use elements of behavioral science along the way. It pulls together engagement and outcomes data with consumer understanding to identify the most appropriate channel to reach a given patient. Interventions are modified based on patient response and are tweaked along the way.

I have followed other companies like this over time, but Lirio seems to get it better than others, going beyond vague concepts like “wellness” and “engagement” to actually talk about specific screening programs and revenue-generating interventions that can boost patient quality and deliver a solid return on investment. They do have a bit of a revenue cycle background, so I’m sure that helps.

I was also geeked to learn that the company’s name actually has meaning rather than being something that either just sounded good or hadn’t been registered yet, as one commonly sees in younger companies. It’s actually named after Liriodendron tulipifera (the tulip tree), which apparently is the state tree of Tennessee. Props to the marketing team for its use of the phrase “lustrous branchlets” to describe the company’s strengths. This wordsmith salutes you.

Mr. H already mentioned this, but I wasn’t surprised to see that Best Buy has sold Current Health, returning the company to its former CEO and co-founder. A Best Buy executive said that growing its home care business has “been harder and taken longer to develop than we initially thought.”

I can understand that given the performance of their booth team at HIMSS25. On one of my booth crawls, my companions and I stood in their large booth for probably 5-7 minutes chatting before anyone approached us, despite there being multiple employees in the booth staring at their phones. I didn’t mind it too much because we were enjoying their extra-thick carpet, but if they were looking to capture leads, they were falling down on the job. Once a rep finally approached, the conversation was passable, but negative first impressions are hard to undo.

As much as I think I’m with it as far as keeping up with healthcare IT news and trends, I still rely on HIStalk for information on a regular basis. There’s always some tidbit that I haven’t gotten to yet, which is not surprising given the calamitous state of my inbox these days. HIStalk was the first place I learned about the new CMS prior authorization program for traditional Medicare. I’m all for catching bad actors, such as the durable medical equipment companies that cold-call patients offering knee braces and other questionable interventions, then rely on relatively clueless physicians who have rented out their medical licenses to enable a high-volume prescription mill situation.

However, I feel like the majority of physicians caring for our nation’s seniors aren’t committing fraud. They are negotiating the complex interplay between evidence-based medicine, the costs of various treatments, and patient beliefs and preferences. Sometimes the “best” treatment is unaffordable for a given patient, or you’re working with patients who can barely afford food, let alone their medications.

They’re going after specific procedures, including knee arthroscopy for arthritis, along with skin and tissue substitutes and nerve stimulator implants. You know what else would help reduce these unneeded procedures? Greater health literacy and patient education campaigns, which are parts of public health that we continue to neglect in this country. Hopefully the program will remain with these high-dollar, low-benefit procedures and won’t creep into primary care on the whole.

Given the amount of data that CMS has on every prescriber’s habits, they should be able to hire some clinical informatics folks to find those who are practicing inappropriately and go after them rather than putting processes in place that annoy those who are trying to do the right thing.

I recently had a rough travel day with significant delays. As I was waiting for my inbound aircraft to arrive, I noticed two fire trucks pull up on the tarmac. They did a quick test that I recognized as preparing to deliver a water salute. I’ve seen it for Honor Flights that were returning to the airport and for a pilot retirement.

Since the airport was small, I could see my inbound plane taxiing at a slow speed, which was unusual given the airline’s propensity to get planes to the gate quickly, especially after delays. A few minutes later, a Marine Corps Honor Guard arrived and I realized this flight was carrying a deceased service member. The waiting passengers in the terminal gradually fell silent and stood to show their respect, with hardly anyone moving until the transfer was complete. It was a sobering reminder that no matter how bad I felt my day was, steps away from me was a family that was having one of the worst days of their lives.

As we approach the Independence Day holiday, I’m grateful for everyone who has put on a uniform and sworn an oath to protect and defend our country. Freedom comes at a high price. Thank you to all current and former service members and their families for being willing to make that sacrifice.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 7/3/25

Symplr Acquires AMN Healthcare’s Smart Square Scheduling Software, Enhancing AI-Driven Workforce Optimization for Health Systems

Healthcare operations software vendor Symplr acquires AMN Healthcare’s Smart Square workforce scheduling software.

Feeling sick? Use ‘ChatGPT of the NHS’ first, patients to be told

England’s NHS will enhance its patient app with an AI-powered assistant called My Companion that helps users review their health information and explore care options.

Mayo Clinic’s AI tool identifies 9 dementia types, including Alzheimer’s, with one scan

Mayo Clinic researchers develop an AI tool that can identify the brain activity patterns of nine types of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, from a single PET scan.

Healthcare AI News 7/2/25

News

England’s NHS will enhance its patient app with an AI-powered assistant called My Companion, which it describes as a “ChatGPT for the NHS,” that helps users review their health information and explore care options. A separate feature, My Choices, will let patients compare providers based on wait times, clinical outcomes, and satisfaction scores.

Duke Medicine Chief Health Information Officer Eric Poon, MD, MPH says that ambient scribing is being used in 70% of Duke’s primary care visits. He notes that the technology saves him two hours on his own clinic days and admits that he hadn’t realized how much of his focus had been consumed by acting as a “courtroom transcriptionist.”

China-based Ant Group launches AQ, an AI app that lets users consult with AI avatars of real physicians before receiving priority access to care scheduling. The company says that AQ stands for “answer your question,” an English-focused name that suggests plans for a wider rollout. Ant, which is affiliated with Alibaba, operates Alipay, one of the country’s two major mobile payment systems. The company is increasingly focused on offering health-related services that it says are used by 800 million people.

CMS announces WISeR, a pilot project that will use technologies such as AI to expedite Medicare prior authorization for services that are vulnerable to fraud, waste, or inappropriate use.

Business

Sweden-based startup Tandem Health raises $50 million in a Series A funding round to further develop its Europe-focused ambient documentation system.

Website protection vendor Cloudflare is testing a pay-per-crawl system that allows content owners to either block AI training web crawlers entirely or charge them a fee for access.

Research

AI-powered drug discovery and design advances from theoretical to actual, as an AI-designed drug reaches phase 2a clinical trials. Rentosertib shows safety and efficacy in the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. AI was also used to generate the target before designing the molecule itself.

Mayo Clinic researchers develop an AI tool that can identify the brain activity patterns of nine types of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, from a single PET scan.

Other

Bioinformatics researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center find that rural US medical centers face significant barriers to adopting AI. They conclude that limited data availability, lack of infrastructure, and inadequate staffing could create an AI divide between urban and rural hospitals that can be addressed through research, partnerships, and policies.

People are seeking advice from ChatGPT on how to inject themselves with facial filler at home to puff up their lips and cheeks.

Contacts

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

This Week in Health Tech 7/2/25