Morning Headlines 10/27/25

Topcon Healthcare Invests in Sanro Health to Connect Clinical and Imaging Data for Smarter Care and Faster Discovery

Sanro Health, a health IT developer that integrates clinical data with imaging data for personalized retinal care and research, secures funding from Topcon Healthcare.

As Washington Republicans Threaten Future of Health Care, Governor Hochul Secures Significant Funding for Hudson Valley Hospital System

Westchester Medical Center (NY) will use $100 million in federal funding to support the integration of Bon Secours Charity Health System and Health Alliance of the Hudson Valley into its network, including unifying its EHR.

VA launches offline mobile app to support HBPC teams in remote areas

Six VA facilities, all now live on the Oracle Health-based EHR, implement the Oracle Health Community Care app to support their home-based primary care teams.

Monday Morning Update 10/27/25

Top News

Humana and Providence launch a scalable data exchange collaboration that will use HL7 FHIR standards and modern APIs to reduce administrative burden, enhance interoperability, and support value-based care.

The payer-provider collaboration’s first deliverable, which provides member attribution for Humana’s Medicare Advantage members, goes live this month.

Reader Comments

From SkepticalMD: “Re: using the Doctor title. Let’s be honest, the Doctor title outside of medicine is mostly a vanity project. Patients don’t care about your dissertation on 18th-century poetry or leadership theory, they just want someone who can diagnose their chest pain. Using Doctor in a clinical setting when you’re not a physician confuses patients, inflates egos, and cheapens a title that should mean something. Sign your name with your non-medical degree or have it embroidered on your lab coat if you must , but don’t use it to play doctor.”

From Data Diva: “Re: AI tools. Hospitals don’t need them as much as they need fewer executives who pretend to understand them. Every ‘AI strategy’ announcement sounds like a board trying to cosplay as tech bros while nurses drown in administrivia. How about automating leadership bloat before automating bedside care?”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents use some form of social media, most commonly the platforms above. You could probably infer the median age of respondents by their heavy use of Facebook and near-zero involvement with TikTok and Snapchat. For me personally, I’m most often on YouTube (commercial-free with an invaluable Premium subscription) and Reddit, but when I’m doing HIStalk work it’s probably LinkedIn to grab someone’s credentials and headshot. I’ve mostly abandoned X and its cesspool of toxicity and ignorance, which are way worse on Facebook but at least easily avoidable.

New poll to your right or here, extending my previous rant: should holders of non-medical doctorates introduce themselves to patients as “Dr. Smith?” Thinking beyond that question, since patients call hospital people whatever name they are given, should those doctorate holders instead refer to themselves as “Mr. Smith” or “John?” (I’ve never heard a hospital employee, other than nurses of a certain age, use courtesy titles). We have some weird title conventions in the US – addressing cooks with no specific education or certification as “Chef,” calling the airline employee who flies the plane “Captain” as though they were in the military, and rent-a-cops who title themselves “Officer” despite being associated with no office.

Sponsored Events and Resources

None scheduled soon. Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CVS Health will close 16 Oak Street Health Centers, 7% of the company’s senior care locations, due to high medical costs in the Medicare and Medicare Advantage market. CVS paid $10.6 billion in cash to buy Oak Street Health in May 2023.

Sales

• Heritage Medical Associates will implement Epic via an Epic Community Connect agreement with Vanderbilt Health.

Sponsor Updates

• Wolters Kluwer Health team members volunteer with the Chicago Park District.
• Altera Digital Health publishes a new client story titled “Leading the way: Reducing police callouts and prioritizing patient safety at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust.”
• Judi Health releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Balancing Technology and a Human Touch in Member Service, with Lisa Ellerhorst and Sonia Pettis.”
• Black Book Research offers an analysis of provider plans for TEFCA onboarding in 2026.
• TrustCommerce, a Sphere company, Chief Product Officer John Welch joins PAX Technology’s Steering Committee’s Technology & Innovation group.
• Waystar will exhibit at the NJ/Metro Philadelphia HFMA Annual Institute October 28-31 in Atlantic City.
• WellSky will exhibit at the 2025 AMRPA Fall Educational Conference & Expo through October 29 in Philadelphia.

Blog Posts

• How do you use AI in patient billing support? (Inbox Health)
• Why MSSP ACOs Should Partner with an Experienced Quality Reporting Vendor (MRO)
• How identity-first security strengthens healthcare cyber defense (Nordic)
• From Burden to Breakthrough: How Real-Time Intelligence Is Reshaping the Care Experience (Surescripts)
• The Pragmatic Promise of AI in Healthcare Operations (Symplr)
• Shared Risk, Without the Nightmares (VisiQuate)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Send news or rumors.
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Sponsorship information.
Contact us.

Morning Headlines 10/24/25

Healthcare company Ensemble Health has tapped JPMorgan as it eyes a $13 billion sale or IPO in 2026

The private equity owners of revenue cycle management company Ensemble Health have reportedly hired investment bankers to conduct a company sale or IPO early next year.

Epic to end program that took position in Abridge

Epic will shut down its Workshop program, which co-develops software in partnership with third party companies such as Abridge and Nuance.

Findhelp Acquires Uno Health, Creating the First Full-Stack Platform for Benefit Enrollment and Social Care Coordination

Social care technology company Findhelp acquires Uno Health, which offers a digital enrollment platform for government benefits.

News 10/24/25

Top News

The private equity owners of revenue cycle management company Ensemble Health have reportedly hired investment bankers to conduct a company sale or IPO early next year, hoping for a $13 billion valuation.

Reader Comments

From PissedOffPhysician: “Re: HLTH. Really? A private jet to the HLTH party? What a tone deaf, entitled post featuring a group of ‘founders’ and ‘investors’ in healthcare. An anonymous donor provided it – perhaps it will show up in opensecrets.org in a few months/years.” The tagged physicians represent these companies: Offcall, Qualified Health, Clarity Pediatrics, Proto Intelligence, Signos, and MDCalc. In their defense, HLTH has little to do with human caring or science, it’s all about picking investor pockets (Helping Launch The Hype). Meanwhile, what wisdom did the HLTH expense account fat-cat crowd glean from aging brat-packer and underage sex tape innovator Rob Lowe? Do any of the “innovators” pause between blowout parties and swag scrums to worry about the unaffordable individual and collective cost of US healthcare? Is healthcare’s moral rot visible from behind the velvet ropes at the sponsored rooftop lounge? 

From Titular: “Re: physicians turned tech people. Is it appropriate for them to call themselves ‘Dr.’ or to apply ‘MD’ after their name if they didn’t even complete a residency?” Yes, because MD and DO are earned degrees regardless of the ensuing career path. I’m not a fan of “Dr.” since it’s vague (doctorate in what?) and is often redundantly misused as “Dr. John Smith, MD.” I also don’t think it’s appropriate (and some of my former hospital employers agreed) for non-physicians to call themselves doctor out on the floors even if they earned clinical practice doctorates in nursing, optometry, pharmacy, podiatry, dentistry, audiology, or physical therapy since it’s asking a lot for patients to figure it all out. In a perfect world, nobody would use the unhelpful “Dr.” prefix, but egos make that unlikely. My zeal for HIStalk accuracy means that I list non-US conferred medical degrees (MBBS, MBChB, or BMBS) even when the holder or their employer calls it MD to avoid confusion. Slightly related, I don’t understand people who list “ABD” on LinkedIn, confusing failing to finish the hard part of a PhD with an a credential worth noting.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The most entertaining thing I’ve seen this week is a graphic for the “Complete Guide of [sic] Healthcare IT,” which obviously used ChatGPT to hilariously misspell nearly all of the companies of which it claims and sells expertise (including now non-existent ones like Allscripts and Cerner). It’s an India-based company with “global headquarters” in this shared house in the technology hub of Selbyville, DE:

Sponsored Events and Resources

None scheduled soon. Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Quest Diagnostics references its use of Epic in this week’s earnings call:

During the quarter, we announced Epic Systems as our technology partner for Project Nova, our multi-year order-to-cash transformation. By deploying a suite of Epic Systems solutions, including Beaker, MyChart, and Care Everywhere, we will deliver deeper, more connected insights with easier, faster, and more efficient experiences … Today we have the application called MyQuest, which allows patients to make appointments, view your test results, pay your bills, and that application will be upgraded to what most people know as MyChart. In the Epic Systems world, that provides a lot of benefits, including patients will be able to see all of their information, regardless if it’s from Quest Diagnostics or a health system, on one MyChart site, if you will. It provides the integration of lab work with other medical records that they may be getting from their physicians, their health systems. We believe that really has tremendous benefits as well. As we’ve described in the past, it’s a five to seven year implementation timeline.

Epic will shut down its Workshop program, which co-develops software in partnership with third party companies such as Abridge and Nuance, Politico reports.

Social care technology company Findhelp acquires Uno Health, which offers a digital enrollment platform for government benefits.

Announcements and Implementations

AltaPointe Health (AL) will give the 50 most frequent 911 callers iPads that are loaded with MyCare behavioral health software in a pilot program that is aimed at reducing non-medical ambulance calls. The local fire chief says that first responders are strained by frequent callers who use 911 for non-emergency ED transport, noting that one resident calls about three times per week and 40 others have been taken to hospitals at least 10 times.

Patient experience orchestration technology vendor Praia Health launches an AI-powered personalization engine that supports health system patient acquisition, engagement, and retention efforts.

Podimetrics introduces SmartMat+, which tracks daily foot temperature, balance, and weight to support early intervention in heart failure, diabetes, and fall risk.

InterSystems integrates HealthShare with Google Cloud, allowing healthcare organizations to create a FHIR-ready data foundation, deploy advanced AI and agents from Gemini models, and improve interoperability and security.

AdvancedMD launches a cloud-based EHR/PM for small mental health practices.

Other

The cost of job-based health insurance has risen 6% this year to an average of $27,000 per year for family coverage even as deductibles continue to climb.

An interesting LinkedIn post from associate CHIO, informaticist, and psychologist Stephon Procter, PhD, MBMI from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia describes their pilot of Epic’s phenotyping AI tool. It summarizes patient note histories into Human Phenotype Ontology terms (symptoms and traits) to support genetic diagnosis and precision medicine.

Sponsor Updates

• Optimum Healthcare IT posts the final episode of Season 1 of the “Visionary Voices” podcast, featuring Chris Longhurst, MD, MS.
• The “PharmaPhorum” podcast features Medicomp Systems CMO Jay Anders, MD in an episode titled “Improving ROI on AI investments and data quality.”
• InterSystems and Google Cloud integrate InterSystems HealthShare with Google Cloud’s healthcare API.
• Judi Health releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “2025 Flu Season Update, with Libbi Green, PharmD.”
• Rhapsody introduces its API Guardian API management solution.
• Praia Health adds its new Praia Intelligence AI-powered digital personalization engine to its platform.
• Health Data Movers releases a new episode of its “Quick HITs” podcast titled “From Bedside to Boardroom: Leading Clinical Systems at Boys Town, with Amber Schuetz.”
• LiveData will exhibit at the 2025 OR Manager Conference October 28-30 in Anaheim, CA.
• Mednition announces a partnership with Shannon Medical Center (TX).
• Navina will present at the Athenahealth Thrive Summit November 4 in Nashville.
• Black Book Research announces the winners of its 2026 Health Information Management Top Vendors Awards, which include HIStalk Sponsors AGS Health (outsourced CDI/ mid-RCM services), Inovalon (provider data management platforms (payer-side), Waystar (revenue integrity solutions), and Netsmart (behavioral health and post-acute HIM/coding solutions).

Blog Posts

• Praia Health, Providence, and Labcorp Collaborate to Transform Patient Engagement and Lab Order Adherence (Praia Health)
• Observation Status Management: Why Utilization Review Must Lead the Way (AGS Health)
• Driving AI adoption in APAC: A top-down and bottom-up approach (Altera Digital Health)
• Five9 Recognized with Two Major Honors at Sandler Summit 2025 (Five9)
• Lessons from the Front Lines: Learning from the SolarWinds Attack (Fortified Health Security)
• What is a billing cycle? Understanding the process and how automation improves it (Inbox Health)
• From Policy to People: Connecting Rural America to the Right Care (Kyruus Health)
• How to Manage, Run, & Promote Your Clinical Data Registry for Long-Term Success (MRO)

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 10/23/25

Despite the government shutdown, healthcare providers remain subject to CMS timelines, including those for the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS).

CMS has just released payment adjustment documentation for 2026, which is driven by 2024 performance. Providers can use the Quality Payment Program website to find their 2024 MIPS scores. Practice representatives can see individual, subgroup, and group performance information.

Those who don’t believe that their information accurately reflects their performance or that their submission might contain errors can request a Targeted Review, although reviews will be “delayed in most cases until normal government operations resume.”

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) has released its 2025 awards, recognizing key contributors to medical informatics. Signature Awards recognize new investigators, thought leadership, health policy contributions, informatics, innovation, and informatics team science. Doctoral dissertations are also recognized. The Leadership Awards recognize volunteer leadership and service to AMIA, the field, and the profession of informatics.

Recipients will be recognized at the Annual Symposium in Atlanta next month. I’m looking forward to catching up with my informatics colleagues, and of course seeing what the annual AMIA Dance Party has to offer.

Voices that are discussing AI vary widely in knowledge and credibility. Some talk about the promise of AI, while others focus on the technology that is needed and the infrastructure and environmental ramifications.

Others address societal impacts. One voice that I didn’t expect was Pope Leo XIV, yet his comments add needed perspective. Reports say he calls AI “the exceptional product of human genius,” but warns that it might “interfere with the proper human and neurological development of young people and children.” In June, he called for the “urgent need for serious reflection and ongoing discussion on the inherently ethical dimension of AI, as well as its responsible governance.”

I’ve had the pleasure of working with a couple of healthcare ethicists over the years. I wish there were more of them in the field to be able to address some of the perspectives that I don’t always see represented.

Pope Leo raised concerns about the impact of AI on “humanity’s openness to truth and beauty” and “on our distinctive ability to grasp and process reality.” Anyone who has visited the comments section on more than a handful of social media videos knows that plenty of people can’t identify videos as being AI-created. Some videos are sophisticated, but others are so obviously fake that I wonder if comments about their veracity are intended to be ironic or are truly reflective of someone’s beliefs.

I appreciated reading the Message of the Holy Father that was delivered to the AI for Good Summit, which summarizes Pope Leo’s position. It notes that while we’re grappling with issues like AI, 2.6 billion people around the world don’t have access to communication technologies. He calls for consideration of the “anthropological and ethical implications” of AI and recognition that such technology “cannot replicate moral discernment or the ability to form genuine relationships.”

Plenty of people are pushing AI in situations for which it is not well suited. I am glad to see a strong reminder that AI should be helping people and that we need to keep humanity at the heart of decisions that we are making as we add AI-driven solutions into our daily lives.

Speaking of keeping humanity at the core of our thought processes, it’s time to shine a light on situations that could stand for a little improvement as far as recognizing the humanity of workers and respecting their time and intelligence. I was recently on a call with an external consulting group that made me extremely uncomfortable. The team leader called out specific attendees to remind them that “this is a cameras-on call.” He then added, “so I expect that no one will have their cameras off, as I need to see your faces.”

I’m sure my face showed a less than positive expression when I heard that. It reminded me of what teachers would say during the lockdown phases of the COVID pandemic, when students were required to attend classes virtually. The environment did not feel supportive and respectful.

Even if compliance was an issue, it should have been handled better, especially with external attendees. A simple reminder in the chat of “Just a reminder that our Team Operating Agreement recommends that we all have our cameras on” or a private message to those not in compliance would have been a better way to approach the situation.

The team leader should also be careful what he wishes for. I immediately checked to see how many people were off camera. Instead of seeing engaged participants, I saw people who looked bored, were obviously multitasking, or were making inappropriate facial expressions.

As the meeting unfolded, other leadership problems surfaced beyond cameras-on. The meeting barely followed its agenda and ignored time blocks. My team wasted an hour because we never reached our agenda item.

From Finance Whiz: “Re:: failed attempts at team building. I wanted to share an example from my employer. Mind you, this organization recently sacked over 800 workers through job cuts and layoffs, making remaining employees do the work of those who departed, on top of their existing workloads. Oh yeah, and we all have to return to office to do so, even if we were hired as remote employees.” The screenshot was from a nationally-known firm that asked employees to complete a “State of the YOU-nion” survey on “If you were a fall-themed emoji, which one would you be?” Choices included “Turkey with a to-do list – busy, festive, and slightly frazzled;” “Jack-o-lantern with a plan – bright ideas and spooky good vibes;” “Leaf in the wind – just going with the seasonal flow”; and ”Cozy scarf energy – wrapped up in warmth and good intentions”.

I’m betting that the remaining employees had some other seasonal options they would offer instead, like: “Skeleton with a spreadsheet – tracking my job applications elsewhere” and “Snow plow on the sidelines – preparing to be overworked and salty.”

What’s the worst morale-impacting maneuver you’ve seen in the workplace this year? What’s the best? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 10/23/25

Hyro Raises $45M Strategic Growth Round to Accelerate AI Agent Adoption in Healthcare

Healthcare AI agent vendor Hyro’s latest funding round brings its total raised to $95 million.

Samaritan and MultiCare approve affiliation to strengthen community-based care across the Pacific Northwest

MultiCare Health System (WA) will acquire Samaritan Health Services (OR) and invest in upgrading its technologies and telehealth capabilities.

Trump picks startup founder to head health research agency

HHS/NIH names Alicia Jackson, PhD, founder and CEO of menopause-focused digital health company Evernow, as head of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.

This Week in Health Tech 10/22/25

Healthcare AI News 10/22/25

News

OpenEvidence, which offers an AI-powered clinical decision support search engine, raises $200 million in Series C funding just three months after a $210 million round, valuing the company at $6 billion.

The American Medical Association launches the Center for Digital Health and AI, which will promote physician participation in regulatory matters, clinical workflow integration, and education.

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Atlas, a web browser that includes a context-aware side panel chatbot and a web browsing agent. The initial version is Mac only.

Business

Risk-based contract technology provider Arbital Health announces Merlin AI, an AI assistant that interprets contract data, explains performance drivers, and recommends next steps.

Cancer detection AI vendor Lunit acquires Prognosia, mammogram analysis software that was founded by researchers from Washington University School of Medical in St. Louis.

Verily will use AI to analyze biomedical data from UCHealth and CU Anschutz to find revenue opportunities. Also involved is RefinedScience, a tech-driven cancer drug discovery startup that is based on commercialized research from CU Anschutz.

Virtual care operator Counsel Health raises a $25 million Series A funding round. The company offers an AI chatbot that answers health questions, then escalates the conversation as needed to a physician within its 50-state network. Bringing a doctor into the conversation costs $29 per use or a $199 annual fee that includes unlimited physician involvement.

Healthcare educator Adtalem Global Education and Google Cloud will offer role-specific AI certification training to its health professions students and healthcare system partners.

Real-world evidence technology vendor Atropos Health launches an expert agent that generates personalized real-world evidence from a patient’s EHR data to suggest treatment options. Stanford Health Care has integrated the technology with its internally developed ChatEHR system.

Allina Health is piloting Optum Real, a real-time, AI-powered claims system that provides instant insurance coverage checks and upfront claims validation via payer-provider interoperability.

Trilliant Health releases Oria, a free AI chatbot for hospital price discovery.

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 10/22/25

Ascension Sacred Heart launches telehealth program to help new and expecting mothers in Northwest Florida

Ascension Sacred Heart and Ascension St. Vincent’s launch a Telehealth Maternity Care Program with support from the Florida Department of Health.

AWS outage causes disruption to patient care across NHS sites

NHS facilities in England recover from temporary downtimes caused by Monday’s AWS outage, which also impacted numerous healthcare organizations in the US.

Optum reinvents claims and reimbursement process to eliminate complexity and administrative waste

Optum develops a multi-payer claims system that enables real-time data exchange between payers and providers for instant coverage validation and improved claims processing.

News 10/22/25

Top News

OpenEvidence raises $200 million in Series C funding, just three months after raising $210 million. Its valuation has jumped to $6 billion.

The company has developed an AI-based clinical decision support search engine for healthcare providers.

Sponsored Events and Resources

None scheduled soon. Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

AI clinical summary startup Fourier Health raises $8.4 million in seed funding. Co-founder and CTO James Lloyd previously served as CTO at Redox, which he helped to launch in 2014.

DocGo, which offers remote patient monitoring, mobile urgent care, and medical transportation, acquires virtual care vendor SteadyMD.

Samsung Electronics wraps up its $115 million acquisition of Xealth, the digital health integration company that launched out of Providence Health & Services in 2017. Xealth CEO Mike McSherry will remain in that role as Samsung works to expand the Xealth team in Seattle and build out its consumer-facing health apps.

Announcements and Implementations

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (MA) uses Health Data Analytics Institute’s HealthVision platform and large language models to develop its Better Real-time Information on Documentation of Goals of care for Engagement in Serious Illness Communication protocol.

York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in England implements Agfa HealthCare’s Xero Viewer imaging technology.

Hackensack Meridian Health (NJ) uses Cadence’s Proactive Care Engine as part of a new remote patient monitoring program for seniors.

Government and Politics

HHS taps Palantir, Availity, Gainwell Technologies, and the Council for Affordable Healthcare to develop prototypes for a national provider directory. The CMS-led directory project will occur in several phases over the next year.

Privacy and Security

Mayo Clinic seems to be among the hundreds of organizations impacted by Monday’s Amazon Web Services outage. Its patient portal and phone lines were down for several hours. NHS facilities in England were also impacted, with one digital health chief anonymously commenting, “I think it’s worth knowing that if NHS services are dependent on cloud providers and they go down, then it’s probably more important than losing Snapchat.”

UC San Diego’s Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity develops Project CrashCart, a “hospital IT system in a box” that hospitals can quickly set up and use during downtimes caused by ransomware attacks or other cybersecurity incidents.

Other

Developers at the UNC School of Medicine, UNC Health, and the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute develop the new Secure Health Informatics Research Environment for analytics projects that use data from UNC Health’s EHR. The SHIRE cloud-computing environment will go live November 3.

Ascension Sacred Heart and Ascension St. Vincent’s launch a Telehealth Maternity Care Program with support from the Florida Department of Health. The program offers pregnant and post-partum women dedicated patient navigators, help with referrals to wraparound services, and access to medical devices.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research shares three solution areas survey respondents deem the most likely to displace incumbent health IT systems by early 2026.
• Surescripts announces a major expansion of its Touchless Prior Authorization technology, which now reaches more than 76,000 prescribers across the country.
• Praia Health, Providence, and Labcorp share outcomes from a collaboration that significantly improved lab appointment adherence, patient engagement, and operational efficiency at Providence.
• Censinet announces that Chief Commercial Officer Cambrey Ware has been named to the University of Tennessee’s Haslam Healthcare Distinguished Fellows Program.
• Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of “The Informonster Podcast” titled “Talking AI with ChatGPT.”
• Consensus Cloud Solutions will sponsor the Healthcare From the Heart Gala October 23 supporting Element Care PACE.

Blog Posts

• Agentic AI: The Future of Digital Workforces in Healthcare RCM (AGS Health)
• Revolutionize Your ePrescribing Workflow with eRx Pro (AdvancedMD)
• How to Transition from MEDITECH Legacy EHR to Expanse (CereCore)
• Keeping staffing front and center (Altera Digital Health)
• Why AI in Healthcare Is About More Than Just Chatbots (Artera)
• How Healthcare IT Helps Enterprise Practices Succeed (Bizmatics)
• Secure Our Workforce: Empowering Clinicians Against Cyber Threats (CloudWave)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 10/21/25

OpenEvidence, the ChatGPT for doctors, raises $200M at $6B valuation

OpenEvidence is reportedly planning to announce $200 million in additional funding, just three months after raising $210 million in Series B funding.

Obesity Medicine Leader Knownwell Raises $25 Million in Strategic-Led Financing

Weight management-focused hybrid primary care provider Knownwell announces $25 million in new funding.

CMS signals interest in Palantir for national provider directory project

HHS taps Palantir, Availity, Gainwell Technologies, and the Council for Affordable Healthcare to develop prototypes for a national provider directory.

DocGo Acquires Virtual Care Platform SteadyMD, Expands Telehealth Services Across All 50 States

DocGo, which offers remote patient monitoring, mobile urgent care, and medical transportation, acquires virtual care vendor SteadyMD.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 10/20/25

It’s open enrollment season for Medicare. Patients and their family members inundate physicians with questions about whether they should switch plans.

Most outpatient office visits are too short to have a meaningful conversation about the topic, especially when you’re trying to address a handful of chronic conditions and maybe a new problem, too. I refer people to the Medicare.gov. It contains solid resources, but does not explain that Medicare Advantage plans are generally for profit. They offer some extra bells and whistles such as vision and dental coverage, but they provide these by closely controlling costs in other areas.

I looked at health systems in neighboring states to see if they offer resources for educating patients and what they have available online. It’s a good reminder that health information technology isn’t just about helping clinicians document, but includes all of the digital assets that we use to engage patients as well.

I tried to put myself in the persona of someone who is new to Medicare and looking to understand their options. One system, which we’ll call The Sisters, appeared at the top of the sponsored listings when I searched for “Is Medicare Advantage for profit,” so I decided to start with them.

I went straight to a Medicare Readiness page, which offered a downloadable document. Once I entered my information, it said that the document would be emailed, but I could also click to access it right away. That is a nice feature for patients who may not be used to finding things in a download folder or having to go back to them later.

The download page also offered a physician search, links to Medicare.gov and other websites, and a list of plans for which the health system is considered in-network.

Out of fairness to the other systems in town that didn’t have sponsored search results, and for whom I’d be starting my exploration with a visit to their main website, I visited The Sisters’ home page. Although it had a reminder to get a mammogram and a headline about the system being the official provider of a local sports team, there was no mention of Medicare open enrollment, even in the “news” section. To my colleagues in marketing: this seems like a missed opportunity.

My next stop was Big Health System, which also didn’t have anything about Medicare open enrollment on their home page. I used the page’s search page to find “Medicare” topics and the top listing was for Annual Wellness Visits, followed by an entry for Medicare. Following that link took me to an extremely basic page that provided little information other than directing patients to call 1-800-MEDICARE. Given the government shutdown, that may not be the best resource for patients right now.

The page was full of acronyms. Although they were explained, it was a dense page that didn’t give anywhere near the clear information I had seen on the competitor’s site.

My third stop was University Health System, which also didn’t have anything about Medicare open enrollment on its main web page. I liked the fact that online scheduling and virtual care options were prominent, however.

One unique feature on the site was a mention of how and why the organization posts substitute breach notices for HIPAA issues and a link to their breach information site. There I was surprised to learn of an incident that I hadn’t seen mentioned in local media, and although it made me think about going down the rabbit hole to do a comparison of breach notification strategies for the different health systems, I was able to refrain.

A search for Medicare brought up a couple of screens of links. The only mention of Medicare was in the context of Accountable Care Organizations.

My last stop was at National Health System. Their home page caught my attention with a prominent link to “Price Transparency.” I couldn’t find a search box, so tried using the site’s chatbot. None of the options fit, so I chose “other.” That put me into a flow that was more about helping me find a location of care than providing general information.

I decided to go wild and request a live chat. I asked, “Do you have any information on Medicare Advantage versus traditional Medicare?” The agent said that they don’t provide insurance information and suggested reaching out to the insurance company directly.

As most readers have surmised based on my posts over the years, I’m a huge fan of patient engagement and patient empowerment. The lack of information across these sites represents a big gap, not only in helping patients advocate for themselves, but also in the health system’s ability to position itself as a partner with patients where they help them understand their options for coverage and the US’s healthcare economic realities in the US.

I don’t know whether that lack of information represents a local deficiency or a nationwide trend, but I’d be interested to hear from organizations that are doing a better job putting such information out there, as The Sisters website does.

Back on the system’s site, I found the document highly readable and well formatted, with pages that fit on a single screen and using a font that would be easily readable for older patients. It had good contrast, clear explanations, and some interesting historical facts about Medicare sprinkled throughout. It also included a couple of pages of general Medicare FAQs that made me think it would also be a good resource for younger folks who are helping their parents navigate the system.

I have quite a few years before I’m a Medicare beneficiary, but I hope resources like this are available to me when it’s time. In the interim, I will steer patients towards this resource, regardless of whether it’s related to the hospitals where I’m on staff.

Does your employer provide digital health resources to help patients understand insurance and other information about how care is delivered and funded in the US? Do you have something you’d like to showcase for our readers? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Readers Write: The Six Rights of Clinical Decision Support at the Dawn of the AI Era

The Six Rights of Clinical Decision Support at the Dawn of the AI Era
By Steve Miller, MD

Steve Miller, MD, MBE is clinical solutions architect at FDB.

Clinical decision support (CDS) embedded in the electronic health record (EHR) has demonstrated impressive benefits for patient outcomes, particularly through medication alerts in Computerized Provider Order Entry. CDS helps prevent millions of medical errors per year. Yet the potential of CDS remains under-realized due to poor usability, misalignment with clinical and institutional goals, and its contribution to clinician burnout.

We are at the dawn of a new era in CDS, where we can realize the promise of enhanced care and financial outcomes simultaneously to the empowerment of clinicians.

Effective clinical decision support depends on meeting the Five Rights: delivering the right information, to the right person, in the right format, through the right channel, and at the right time.

Too often many CDS systems still fall short: interrupting workflows, triggering at the wrong moment, or lacking the specificity that is needed to earn clinician trust. High false-positive rates lead to reflexive overrides, eroding confidence and sometimes putting patients at risk. It’s time to evolve the framework.

I propose a sixth right: the right purpose: designing CDS with clearly defined, measurable benefits.

When interventions lack purpose or a defined return on investment, even well-built tools can fail to deliver value. As hospitals face tighter budgets and mounting pressure to improve outcomes, advances in interoperability and artificial intelligence (AI), including large language models (LLMs), offer a new path to achieving all Six Rights.

Workflow Integration: Right Person, Format, Channel, and Time

Consider a common scenario. Dr. Smith, on inpatient rounds, discusses starting spironolactone with 80-year-old Mr. Richards, who has heart failure. After researching the dose, she signs the order and is immediately interrupted by an alert flagging the drug as potentially unsafe for older adults. The decision has already been made. She is annoyed, overrides the alert, and moves on.

Now imagine a near-future alternative. An AI-powered ambient listening tool transcribes and interprets the conversation in real time. As spironolactone is mentioned, a message appears on screen with safety concerns specific to Mr. Richards in his current clinical context, a patient education prompt, alternative options, and a preselected dose. The information is timely and useful, supporting rather than  disrupting shared decision-making.

Context-specific decision support could also surface during pharmacist verification, admission medication reconciliation, or through patient-facing bots. Interruptive alerts at order signature are fading. Smarter systems will deliver guidance at the right moment. They will also reduce the amount of time physicians would otherwise have to spend looking up information, such as lab values that are relevant for a specific drug.

Personalization: Right Information

Let’s revisit Mr. Richards. His heart failure has impaired his kidneys and his potassium is dangerously elevated. This places him at risk for arrhythmia if prescribed spironolactone, yet no alert fires. Dr. Smith misses this lab result, placing the patient in danger.

Now imagine a CDS module that detects elevated potassium and correlates it with spironolactone, firing only when truly relevant. Dr. Smith receives fewer alerts, but each one matters. This precision support, with both low false positives and false negatives, is achievable today using interoperable systems and standardized data.

Beyond labs, decision support can incorporate genetic tests, imaging, pathology, and patient-reported outcomes. AI can convert notes and conversations into structured insights that power a new generation of CDS that is accurate, timely, and personalized.

Return on Investment: Right Purpose

Right purpose means aligning CDS with institutional and societal goals. Tools that serve mission-critical needs, and the other five rights, drive adoption.

Back to our case. Budget cuts force the hospital to reassign pharmacists from the wards. Without human backup, prescribing errors could rise. But with AI-enhanced CDS, the computer system helps the clinical team catch errors and find opportunities to enhance care once identified by pharmacists. Rather than replacing clinicians, CDS amplifies their capabilities, delivering cost savings without compromising care.

AI could also accelerate this shift in two ways. First, AI-assisted development could speed the creation of CDS modules, enabling access to high quality and purpose-built decision support. Second, AI-powered analytics could allow hospitals to evaluate CDS performance in real time, measuring clinical and financial impact and refining systems.

A Pivotal Moment

The current moment in healthcare is one of great challenges and great possibilities. Advances in AI, data standards, and clinical messaging combine with economic pressures to fuel a necessary evolution. The future of CDS is personalized, context-aware, and results-driven. By honoring the original Five Rights, and adding a sixth of Right Purpose, we can ensure that CDS not only guides decisions, but also advances care, supports clinicians, and justifies itself in a resource-constrained world.

Readers Write: From Hype to Headache: The Truth About Ambient Listening

From Hype to Headache: The Truth About Ambient Listening
By Jay Anders, MD and Jeanne Armstrong, MD

Jay Anders, MD, MS is chief medical officer at Medicomp Systems. Jeanne Armstrong, MD is chief medical officer at TouchWorks, Altera Digital Health.

Like prospectors flocking to California in the mid-1800s, hospitals and health systems today are hitching their wagons to AI-powered ambient listening tools in hopes of making their documentation dreams come true.

The attraction is understandable: the power to automatically capture physician-patient conversations and turn them into clinical notes could significantly reduce documentation burden, let clinicians focus on patients, and create a better experience for everyone.

However, as with most gold mining and health tech fantasies, the reality is more complicated. Without the right safeguards, context, and clinical framework, ambient listening risks producing incomplete, inaccurate, or unusable notes. At best, that leaves physicians editing more than they save. At worst, it could compromise patient safety, billing, and care quality.

Transcript 2.0

Every clinician understands the appeal of eliminating clicks and keystrokes. Documentation has become an enormous burden, with 92% of physicians reporting that it negatively impacts care.

Ambient listening promises to capture everything that is said in the exam room, generate a structured note, and let the physician simply review and sign. But as many early adopters have discovered, the first pass is not always the last pass.

Even with high accuracy, the challenge lies in context. If a patient says, “I use my inhaler every morning,” is that a daily maintenance medication or a rescue treatment? If the system places a counseling conversation into the wrong section of the chart, the clinical meaning changes. Physicians cannot uncritically trust the transcript; they must still review and often edit.

Ambient listening certainly removes typing, but it does not solve the core problem of ensuring that documentation is clinically meaningful. This dilemma was echoed recently by the healthcare technology experts at KLAS, specifically:

Our findings show that free text alone will not deliver the outcomes providers expect,” said Mac Boyter, research director at KLAS Research. “For ambient listening to support quality measures, billing, and interoperability, it must generate discrete, structured data—not just nicely formatted notes.

Why context matters

Experienced clinicians know how to ask the right follow-up questions to surface information that patients may not volunteer. They also know which details belong in the history versus the plan and how to translate medical jargon into patient-friendly explanations. An ambient listening system, no matter how advanced, lacks that judgment unless it is anchored by a medical knowledge framework.

That framework provides the “dictionary” against which the AI can validate what it hears. Without it, the risk of hallucinations or misplaced details remains. With it, ambient listening can be constrained, guided, and made more reliable. Context is not a nice-to-have. It is essential to ensure that the note accurately reflects both the clinical encounter and the physician’s intent.

Structured data, not just free text

Another major limitation of most ambient listening solutions is that they generate free text. Even when formatted with section headers, free text is not structured, codified data. It cannot directly feed decision support systems, quality measure databases, or billing workflows.

For example, if a patient’s family history of diabetes is captured only as text, it does not generate a SNOMED code. Downstream systems cannot act on it. Clinicians end up with a nice-looking note that remains invisible to analytics, risk adjustment, and interoperability.

To avoid this pitfall, ambient listening must be paired with technology that converts narrative into discrete, computable data. This makes the output both readable and actionable, while supporting regulatory compliance, coding, and care coordination.

What to look for

Health systems evaluating ambient listening should demand more than transcription and data entry. They should ask:

• Does the system validate documentation against a trusted, clinically referenced framework that is transparent?
• Does it generate codified, structured data that supports billing, quality measures, and decision support?
• Does it give physicians flexibility to toggle between listening, templates, and macros depending on the visit type?
• Does it improve the completeness and accuracy of notes, not just their length?

The answers to these questions will determine whether ambient listening becomes a meaningful advance in healthcare IT or just another short-lived fad.

Help over hype

Ambient listening can make documentation more efficient, but it is not a panacea. Without the right foundation, it risks adding a new layer of complexity instead of solving the problem. To fulfill its promise, ambient listening must be paired with systems that provide medical context, structured data, and clinical relevance.

Again, KLAS’s Mac Boyter reported that its research shows that providers are “looking beyond convenience—they want ambient tools that deliver structured, codified output. Without discrete data, the note is unusable for billing, quality measures, and decision support. Ambient listening is most impactful when it produces information that downstream systems can act on.”

In other words: do not be distracted by the hype. Ambient listening alone is not enough.

Morning Headlines 10/20/25

Verily Launches a New Consumer Health App, Verily Me, at HLTH USA 2025

Verily launches a free consumer health app that lets users receive provider recommendations from their medical records from multiple sources, ask an AI companion questions about their records, analyze meal photos for nutrition, and join research studies.

Sage Care Emerges From Stealth with $20M in Funding for an AI-Powered Care Navigation System

Sage Care, which offers call triage, patient-provider matching, and scheduling tools, announces its launch and $20 million in funding.

Fourier Health Announces $8.4M Funding Round to Modernize Clinical Care Intake and Unstructured Data Processing with AI

AI clinical summary startup Fourier Health raises $8.4 million in seed funding.

Monday Morning Update 10/20/25

Top News

Alphabet-owned Verily launches Verily Me, a free consumer health app.

Verily Me lets users receive provider recommendations from their medical records from multiple sources, ask an AI companion questions about their records, analyze meal photos for nutrition, and join research studies.

A Reader’s Notes from the Georgia HIMSS Annual Meeting

Opening remarks by Hal Wolf, president and CEO, HIMSS

• Eight years ago, HIMSS had 77,000 members (75,000 in North America). Now there are 135,000 members (80,000 in North America), with 54 North American chapters.
• Anticipating a global shortage of healthcare workers of 10 million by 2030.
• He argues that advancements in healthcare and research, as well as the sheer volume of new information coming out (thousands of peer-reviewed articles per year), makes AI-powered clinical decision support a necessity.
• He sees leveraging AI and shifting scope of practice as solutions to the challenges of healthcare capacity (i.e., shift more work from physicians to other clinicians).
• New Technology + Old Organization = Costly Old Organization. Technology won’t solve everything on its own.

Session on tech initiatives at Emory

Guru Patel, associate chief of clinical informatics, Emory Digital

• Pilot of transition to Apple devices started at one unit in one hospital and ran for 6-12 months. Their biggest challenges were “tap to authenticate” and scanning integrations.
• Next phase was converting Hillandale Hospital by rolling out ~2,000 Apple devices (workstations, tablets, smartphones, etc.). The rollout was challenging because it occurred during the time of the highest hospital census.
• Separately, Emory worked on an initiative to leverage Epic Welcome kiosks for check-in and MyChart Bedside in hospital rooms.
• Only 10% of hospital patients are using the kiosks, and of those, nearly half can’t complete the check-in process independently. Biggest points of abandonment were for questionnaires and guarantor / insurance info.
• Emergency and OP rehab patients could check in on their own 80-90% of the time, whereas surgery patients could only 3% of the time.
• In the rooms, only 7% of patients were requesting meals through Bedside. Emory has found that the steps needed for patients to make requests in Bedside (e.g., request ice chips) are too numerous and is working with Epic to try to cut that down.

Session on building resiliency for IT disasters

Stoddard Manikin, CISO, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta

• Old way doesn’t work anymore: downtime procedures have often been designed for short periods of downtime, but the reality of ransomware attacks and recovery is that downtimes can be extensive. He cited Change Healthcare, Ascension, and Lurie Children’s as examples.
• Can’t assume you’ll have access to any electronic systems (including email, SharePoint, or the organization’s website) in the event of an incident. Have backup paper copies of downtime procedures and contact info for each of your vendors.
• You need to educate staff on what to use and what not to use during a downtime, otherwise they will go to whatever they can get to work, even if it isn’t the best or most secure option. Ensure they know to avoid texting, personal email, or social media. Ensure there are alternate, secure systems for communication. Ensure clinicians can (and know how to) access imaging directly on modalities.

David Kotz, VP of Technology Services, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta

• Scanning and hardening Active Directory is a valuable preventative step for building resiliency.

Derek Spransy, CISO, Emory Hospital and University

• Emory is moving their Epic production instance to Azure at the end of the month.
• Resiliency is essential; Emory built redundant connections to the Azure data centers, yet at one point within an hour, they had a backhoe cut one fiber connection in Georgia and a squirrel chew through another connection in Pennsylvania. Had to scramble to shift to a third option.
• They’re also looking into an isolated recovery environment for Epic to provide greater resiliency for extended downtimes.

Session on Grady Health’s adoption of AI

Wilhelmina Prinssen, Medical Director of Ambulatory Informatics

• The biggest challenge of implementing AI is provider adoption. Grady has seen stronger adoption among younger/digitally savvier providers.
• However, those physicians also show signs of relying on AI too much and not always thinking critically on their own.
• She says you should introduce AI from the beginning with students, but you have to change how you assess competency. Don’t just take correct answers from students; ask them why the AI-generated solution was the best one.

Kerem Eroglu, Director of Partner Success, Abridge

• There are numerous opportunities to leverage AI to enhance virtual care. A key use case is making telehealth visits easier by allowing the provider to focus on the patient and look into the camera, rather than having their head down typing a note.
• They see receptiveness to AI among providers to be less of a function of age and more a function of personality and openness to change.

CIO Panel focused on AI

Geoff Brown, Piedmont (recently retired)

• They kept AI governance separate from “typical” IS governance to allow for a laser focus and greater speed of AI adoption. In the beginning, their main concern with adoption was how to secure the systems and the data.
• He feels AI has helped on the clinical side but has been even more impactful for revenue cycle, citing claims adjudication as an example.

Chris Paravate, Northeast Georgia Health System

• Their C-suite is their IS governance team due to the sheer number of potential projects and their potential impact on the health system.
• They have chosen to focus on AI solutions from their established vendors and partners, rather than new ones.
• Completed an AI pilot with Epic that led to a 46% increase in coding efficiency.
• On average, each provider who adopts ambient listening sees 1.3 more patients per week, so the solution pays for itself. Physicians have said it’s a life-changer.

Jeff Buda, Atrium Health Floyd

• They have an AI council for governance. They start cautiously with any new AI solution and see if it passes the sniff test, then they move more aggressively to roll it out once it’s proven.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents say that technology investments are mostly driven, not shockingly, by the bottom line.

New poll to your right or here: Which social media platforms do you use regularly?

Become an HIStalk Sponsor for All Treats, No Tricks

I’m offering a few sponsorship perks to help push interested companies across the finish line before December 31. Contact Lorre if you’re curious (or read this to see why you should be).

• New sponsors: Get the rest of 2025 free plus a free ad in a HIStalk email update, earning a full year of exposure for less than you’d spend on zero-ROI conference booth carpet.
• Startups: You qualify for the new HIStalk Startup Scholarship package (which, to be honest, I just invented).
• Former sponsors: Come back and I’ll throw in a few extras.
• All sponsors: Renewals are locked in at current rates through the end of 2026.
• Webinar promotions: Take 50% off of one or more (some companies bank a package of them for future use). Sign up before November 15 and Lorre will enter you to win a free webinar promotion.
• All sponsors: in a “who’s paying attention” prize, email Lorre by end of day Tuesday, October 22 and she’ll give you a free email ad just for asking.

Sponsored Events and Resources

None scheduled soon. Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Virtual care operator Counsel Health raises a $25 million Series A funding round. The company offers an AI chatbot that answers health questions, then escalates the conversation as needed to a physician within its 50-state network. Bringing a doctor into the conversation costs $29 per use or a $199 annual fee that includes unlimited physician involvement.

Sage Care, which offers call triage, patient-provider matching, and scheduling tools, announces its launch and $20 million in funding.

Women’s health virtual and in-person clinic operator Tia lays off 72 employees, or 23% of its workforce, citing investor pressure to reach profitability.

Health smart ring company Oura raises $900 million, valuing its business at $11 billion.

People

Froedtert ThedaCare Health promotes Brian Sterns, MBA to SVP/CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

First Databank announces a Model Context Protocol servicer that connects AI systems and agents to its medication knowledge assets. The company is testing a prescription automation agent that can pre-populate medication orders by analyzing  the ambient listening output from encounters.

Star Valley Health (WY) sues Change Healthcare, claiming that it failed to submit insurance claims on time after Change rolled out Epic’s billing software in mid-2023 without sufficient staffing.

Other

Oracle co-CEO Mike Sicilia and healthcare and life sciences GM Seema Verma say in a shareholder call that the CEOs of Epic-using Mayo Clinic and Cleveland expressed  “a lot of enthusiasm for what we’re building” at Oracle’s recent healthcare conference. They say that the customers of competitors “are starting to understand the power, the value of AI” in being able to build and buy AI agents. Sicilia also said:

We’ve got dozens of AI agents live across our health ecosystem today, with many more planned. We’re looking at chart review care navigation, clinical decision support, patient risk predictions, preventative care, and many more. In fact, our next-generation AI EHR is now generally available … we’ve got a lot of competition in that market, but … the one question I ask our competitors is, see how many fuel cell power plants are you building on site right now? Because if you’re not doing that, then you probably are not going to have as good of a chance to be closely provisioned to a large language model and apply reasoning models and all the things you actually need to work to make this work at scale to automate an entire hospital.

Epic’s latest “Hey Judy” column explains why everyone pays Epic’s list price: she once felt sorry for an early customer who had “such nice people, and they didn’t know how to negotiate.”

A tongue-in-cheek essay suggests that belief in AI “magic” isn’t due to impressive capabilities of these “giant calculators,” but rather the user’s “Edge of Stupidity,” where their limited understanding prevents them from explaining it rationally. The author extends the Dunning-Kruger effect (which says that people are ignorant of their own ignorance), arguing that smart people are especially prone because they assume that their intellect allows them to detect “authoritative-sounding bullshit” in fields they barely understand.

Sponsor Updates

• Netsmart celebrates client impact and the AI-driven transformation of its CareFabric platform at its recent Connections2025 conference.
• Surescripts offers its new First-Fill Abandonment solution to Arcadia’s customers.
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Greg Aukerman.
• Redox releases a new episode of its “Shut the backdoor” podcast titled “An Intelligence Infiltration – Hacking AI Agents from Silicon Valley’s Hottest Startups with guest Rene Brandel.”
• RLDatix will exhibit at the CIHQ Accreditation & Regulatory Summit October 21-25 in San Antonio.
• TrustCommerce, a Sphere company, releases a new e-book titled “TrustCommerce Community Connect Program.”
• TeamBuilder will present at the KLAS Healthcare Operations Summit November 4 in Salt Lake City.
• Ellkay and Inbox Health will sponsor Greenway Health’s Engage 2025 conference November 5-7 in Tampa.
• WellSky will exhibit at the 2025 AABB Annual Meeting October 25–27 in San Diego.

Blog Posts

• Healthcare innovation through interoperability: How we see what’s next (Altera Digital Health)
• Beyond Human Limitations: Why Traditional Quality Management is Breaking Down in the Modern Contact Center (Five9)
• Top Challenges in Medical Billing Service and How to Overcome Them (Med Tech Solutions)
• Epic, AI, and the new era of health IT: what leaders need to know (Nordic)
• And Just Like That… We Confuse the Cost of Care with the Value of Care and Patients are Paying the Price (Nym)
• Why Outsourcing Legacy EHR Support is a Strategic Move During New EHR Implementation (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The future of healthcare revenue cycle: 3 key insights from Waystar True North 2025 (Waystar)
• Key Takeaways from Civitas & CommonWell 2025 (Zen Healthcare IT)

Contacts

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Morning Headlines 10/17/25

Microsoft extends AI advancements in Dragon Copilot to nurses and partners to enhance patient care

Microsoft extends its Dragon Copilot AI clinical assistant to nurses and adds an ecosystem for third-party extensions.

Brook.ai Secures $28 Million in Series B Funding, Led by UMass Memorial Health and Morningside, to Accelerate Next Phase of Growth and Innovation in Remote Care

Remote care company Brook.ai raises $28 million in Series B funding.

Counsel Health Raises $25M to Launch Physician-Supervised AI Front Door for Healthcare

Counsel Health, an AI-powered virtual medical group, announces $25 million in Series A funding and the launch of its latest AI-based platform.

Avia acquires Panda Health

Digital health marketplace operator Avia acquires Panda Health, which offers digital health peer input and market intelligence services.