Month: February 2025

AI Enthusiasm Heats Up With Doctors

Posted on by Jason Barry

The unstoppable march of AI only seems to be gaining momentum, with an American Medical Association survey noting greater enthusiasm – and less apprehension – among physicians. 

The AMA’s Augmented Intelligence Research survey of 1,183 physicians found that those whose enthusiasm outweighs their concerns with health AI rose to 35% in 2024, up from 30% in 2023. 

  • The lion’s share of doctors recognize AI’s benefits, with 68% reporting at least some advantage in patient care (up from 63% in 2023).
  • In both years, about 40% of doctors were equally excited and concerned about health AI, with almost no change between surveys.

The positive sentiment could be stemming from more physicians using the tech in practice. AI use cases nearly doubled from 38% in 2023 to 66% in 2024.

  • The most common uses now include medical research, clinical documentation, and drafting care plans or discharge summaries.

The dramatic drop in non-users (62% to 33%) over the course of a year is impressive for any new health tech, but doctors in the latest survey called out several needs that have to be addressed for adoption to continue.

  • 88% wanted a designated feedback channel
  • 87% wanted data privacy assurances
  • 84% wanted EHR integration

While physicians are still concerned about the potential of AI to harm data privacy or offer incorrect recommendations (and liability risks), they’re also optimistic about its ability to put a dent in burnout.

  • The biggest area of opportunity for AI according to 57% of physicians was “addressing administrative burden through automation,” reclaiming the top spot it reached in 2023.
  • That said, nearly half of physicians (47%) ranked increased AI oversight as the number one regulatory action needed to increase trust in AI enough to drive further adoption.

The Takeaway

It’s encouraging to see the shifting sentiment around health AI, especially as more doctors embrace its potential to cut down on burnout. Although the survey pinpoints better oversight as the key to maximizing trust, AI innovation is moving so quickly that it wouldn’t be surprising if not-too-distant breakthroughs were magical enough to inspire more confidence on their own.

Abridge Lands $250M and Debuts Contextual Reasoning Engine

Posted on by Jason Barry

One of the top stories to come out of last week’s ViVE conference was Abridge closing $250M in Series D funding, yet that somehow wasn’t even the biggest news in the announcement.

On top of raising a nine-figure round at a $2.5B valuation, Abridge hit the 100 health system milestone after adding to a string of recent deployments at organizations like Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins.

  • Newly announced systems included Akron Children’s, Endeavor Health, Inova, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Oak Street Health.

The real headliner was the debut of Abridge’s new Contextual Reasoning Engine, “an AI architecture that produces more clinically useful and billable notes at the point of care.”

The Contextual Reasoning Engine bolsters Abridge’s generative AI platform for clinical conversations with:

  • Contextual awareness – integrates data from retrospective patient encounters, health system-specific revenue cycle guidelines, and clinician documentation preferences to create more comprehensive notes. 
  • Problem detection – recognizes and groups medical problems, describing them with language that aligns with appropriate billing codes.
  • Actionable outputs – captures medical orders and integrates them into the EHR for clinician review.

Ambient scribing has been one of the hottest segments in digital health, helping clinicians spend more face-time with patients and less pajama time on administrative tasks.

  • That’s led to rapid adoption from providers, but it’s also caused plenty of vendors with core competencies outside of scribing to bolt the functionality onto their feature sets.
  • As a result, ambient AI startups are moving beyond clinical documentation to differentiate themselves with new use cases like coding or clinical decision support – and Abridge’s Contextual Reasoning Engine is only just the beginning.

The Takeaway

The ambient AI market is at an inflection point, and companies like Abridge are quickly raising capital and pouring it straight into R&D to own the workflows downstream from documentation. It’s a race to outrun commoditization and reach distribution before incumbents can catch up, and Abridge now has another $250M to help pick up the pace.

ViVE 2025 Recap and Major Announcements

Posted on by Jason Barry

Hot chicken, cold weather, and artificial intelligence – ViVE Nashville had it all.

Over 10,000 attendees made the trip to Music City, making the event roughly a third larger than the last time it was in town in 2023. About a hundred of those attendees even stuck around for the last day, risking the snow (and flight delays) to bask in more innovation.

Many of the themes on the show floor were familiar (AI, point solution fatigue, ROI is king), but there were also plenty of new issues that were clearly top of mind, particularly Medicare & Medicaid reform, cybersecurity, and the mounting pressures facing payors.

True to form, ViVE kept the spotlight on the vendors, so we’ll follow their lead and dive right into some of the biggest announcements from the show.

  • Abridge crossed the 100 health system milestone and locked a $250M Series D in the process, but the even bigger story was its debut of a new Contextual Reasoning Engine that produces billable notes at the point of care. More to come on this one next week.
  • Ambience Healthcare notched a massive partnership with Cleveland Clinic after coming out on top of “a rigorous pilot program” throughout 2024. The AI platform for documentation, CDI, and coding will be rolling out enterprise-wide this year.
  • Arcadia launched new solutions to help payers and providers drive high-performing networks, simplify VBC contract creation, and enhance provider management efforts. A new AI Factory development platform is also slated to be showcased at HIMSS.
  • AvaSure showcased its new virtual care assistant Vicky, which uses AI to collect and prioritize in-room requests to help care teams be everywhere they need to be. The beautiful hardware demos were a nice bonus.
  • Clearsense unveiled its new Nashville HQ and the strategic rebrand of its active archiving solution (which now supports accounts receivable workdown requirements) and RevealCS data lakehouse offering. CEO Jason Rose is also a great interview.
  • IKS Health expanded its Scribble suite with Scribble Now, a generative AI ambient scribe that rounds out the five-product lineup with real-time clinical documentation.
  • Innovaccer made a big splash with the launch of its Agents of Care, AI agents designed to slash administrative burdens for everyone from clinicians, care managers, risk coders, patient navigators, and call center agents. 
  • Kontakt.io bolstered its Patient Flow offering with Rapid Room Turnover, an RLTS-powered solution that detects discharges in real-time to help hospitals drive greater bed utilization and cut down on costly extended lengths of stay.
  • Lumeris introduced its Tom AI-powered team member for primary care. Tom produces personalized, next-best actions at both the patient and population levels embedded within clinical workflows.
  • Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center joined forces with AWS to build a novel longitudinal data resource for cancer research, which will serve as a way to accelerate AI-driven clinical studies and personalized treatment development.
  • Nabla took the lid off Nabla Dictation, a voice-to-text solution fine-tuned for 55 specialties that streamlines clinical workflows by transcribing speech wherever the cursor is placed (AKA anywhere in the EHR).
  • symplr debuted a first-of-its-kind symplr Operations Platform built on AWS that consolidates fragmented systems and standardizes non-clinical / administrative operations. This was definitely a major announcement so we’ll be circling back on it at HIMSS.
  • Talkdesk agent tools and persistent call controls can now be embedded directly in Epic for the first time, creating a seamless contact center integration with the EHR. 

Special thanks to all of our readers who were at the show and caught us up on the latest and greatest. For those of you holding onto more announcements for HIMSS, we’d love to connect in Vegas. Hit reply and let’s set something up!

Health Tech’s Defining Decade

Posted on by Jason Barry

We’re using today’s top story to circle back on Define Venture’s report on “Health Tech’s Defining Decade,” which included too many highlights to squeeze into last week’s update.

The analysis dives into the performance of venture-backed health tech startups that went on to go public, with a sprinkle of survivorship bias given that it doesn’t include companies that have been delisted.

Although still an emerging sector, 18 health tech companies have exited for over $1 billion since 2020, including 13 via the public markets and 7 through M&A.

Here’s a look at those “Wave 1” companies and how Define Ventures segments the market. 

These Wave 1 companies aren’t exactly known for their stock performance, but it was still surprising to see that only two have managed to increase their market caps since their IPO:

  • Hims & Hers, which went public at a $1.6B valuation via a 2021 SPAC, and has grown its market cap to $10.1B after shrugging off recent Super Bowl ad drama.
  • Doximity, which had a strong 2021 IPO at a ~$4B valuation, and is now valued at $14B after its latest financial results sent shares skyrocketing 25% on strong engagement from its new AI tools.

Define Ventures took these successes as a sign that SaaS and Hybrid models will drive future healthcare innovation, but UNC Professor Spencer Dorn shared a more sobering view of the mixed performances.

  • “Like Netflix, advertising is far more lucrative for digital health companies than other business models. Doximity – ‘basically an advertising platform for pharma’ – is the only one that is decently profitable.”

What will Wave 2 look like? Define Ventures tallied up ~20 companies that are growing quickly and “could seek liquidity events” even bigger than their Wave 1 predecessors.

  • While Wave 1 companies had to build each component of their offerings from scratch, Wave 2 companies had the perks of a more mature industry to weave throughout their offerings (ex. better data integration, AI, plug-and-play capabilities).
  • This could result in Wave 2 companies having 2-3X the revenue at exit, and it’s hard to argue with the shortlist of IPO predictions.

The Takeaway

These reports catch a lot of flack for overweighting the successes of the firms that put them together, and while Define Ventures didn’t shy away from patting itself on the back for some good investments, it also delivered a great analysis of past (and possibly future) publicly traded health tech companies.

Hybrid Care: Interest Outstrips Infrastructure

Posted on by Jason Barry

Provider organizations are hungry for more hybrid care, but new research in NEJM Catalyst highlights a notable gap between their interest and infrastructure.

A survey of the NEJM Catalyst Insights Council – made up of clinical leaders and executives from care delivery orgs across the globe – showed that a majority of the 730 respondents believe hybrid care improves overall quality (74%).

  • 55% of respondents’ organizations already offer hybrid care (68% for U.S. orgs)
  • 42% offer primarily in-person care
  • Only 3% offer primarily virtual care

Hybrid was ranked as the preferred mode of care delivery for the usual areas like primary care and chronic condition management, largely because of the convenience it offers patients, but several barriers still stand in the way of supplementing in-person care with virtual services.

Provider organizations are also facing their own set of challenges.

  • Only 58% report adequate technological infrastructure to enable hybrid care.
  • Even fewer report sufficient tech support for troubleshooting during virtual visits (27%).
  • Just 38% agree they give providers sufficient training to deliver hybrid care effectively.

Although technology barriers are a common scapegoat for limiting access to hybrid/virtual care, the authors point out that digital literacy and clinician support are the bigger culprits. They also suggest a practical solution: dedicated digital navigators.

  • Dr. John Torous, Digital Psychiatry Director at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, believes embedding trained digital health navigators within health systems is “the missing link” to bridge the gap between clinical care and digital tools.
  • BIDMC has reportedly seen significant benefits from using digital navigators to help facilitate both patient engagement and clinical utilization, yet only 21% of organizations currently employ such specialists.

The Takeaway

Technology access is a constant barrier for hybrid care delivery, but this survey shows that digital literacy for patients and support for clinicians could be the actual limiting factors. Luckily, as the authors put it, digital navigators and training programs are also “low-hanging fruit.”

Teladoc Aims to Catapult Over Obstacles With Acquisition

Posted on by Jason Barry

Teladoc is looking to catapult over some of its recent obstacles with its first acquisition under CEO Chuck Divita, picking up Catapult Health for a lofty $65M.

The closing price is over three times what Teladoc shelled out for BetterHelp in 2015, which could be justified if Catapult’s at-home testing synergies pan out as intended. 

Catapult offers an at-home wellness exam called VirtualCheckup, giving members a diagnostic kit to collect blood samples, check their blood pressure, and screen for mental health conditions like depression or anxiety.

  • From there, members have a virtual visit with a licensed nurse practitioner to discuss their test results, review top health risks, and develop an individual health action plan.
  • If VirtualCheckup turns up anything that requires more intensive care, Catapult can now directly enroll eligible members into Teladoc’s chronic condition management programs or refer them to its virtual therapists and primary care providers.

Teladoc hinted that growing membership for its integrated care segment was a top priority during last month’s JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, with BetterHelp’s rising ad costs and dwindling user base prompting a change of course.

  • It was also reported that Teladoc will be a central component of Amazon’s efforts to move deeper into healthcare by allowing its customers to access chronic care programs for diabetes, hypertension, and weight management.
  • Revenue for Teladoc’s integrated care segment was up 2% year-over-year as of its Q3 earnings call in September, compared to a 10% dropoff for BetterHelp to $257M.

An immaculate M&A track record isn’t something that Teladoc has going for it. When it acquired Livongo at the height of the pandemic for $18.5B, the companies boasted a combined value of $37B. 

  • A few billions in write-offs later, Teladoc’s market cap now stands below $2B, but lessons learned from past experiences could set the Catapult integration up for more success.

At-home testing has historically been a significant limitation for many virtual care players, so Catapult could help Teladoc distance itself from the competition with an integrated platform that can tackle both.

The Takeaway

Teladoc is shifting its focus to chronic condition management with the acquisition of Catapult, and adding at-home testing to its diabetes and hypertension programs should be good news for their position in the market (assuming the integration avoids some past missteps).

NeuroFlow Acquires Quartet as Behavioral Health Consolidation Heats Up

Posted on by Jason Barry

It turns out that Quartet offloading its psychiatry business last week was only half of the story, and NeuroFlow will be writing the next chapter after acquiring the rest of the value-based behavioral care enabler.

Quartet works with health plans, health systems, and community centers to connect patients with behavioral care needs directly to high-quality providers, including its own medical group.

  • Just last week, it sent 165 of those providers to Iris Telehealth through the acquisition of its innovaTel psychiatry division, which specializes in difficult to manage conditions.
  • It wasn’t exactly clear why Quartet felt it was the right time for an exit, or why it split up the business, but it’s apparently been looking for mission-aligned partners to help expand its impact.

NeuroFlow checks all the boxes. The NeuroFlow platform centers around integrating behavioral health into physical health workflows, eliminating a major blindspot for physicians looking to improve overall outcomes – not to mention quality and risk management programs.

  • Since launching in 2016, NeuroFlow’s raised $58M of total funding (versus a hefty $266M for Quartet), and it hasn’t shied away from adding new capabilities through M&A.
  • It picked up measurement-based care company Owl in 2024, and it’s fresh off the acquisition of Intermountain’s behavioral health risk analytics model earlier this month.

It’s hard for healthcare organizations to manage the quality, outcomes, and cost of their patients’ care without managing behavioral health. NeuroFlow makes that happen at scale.

  • It handles everything from the identification, triage, and measurement of that care, while also equipping patients with self-guided programs that allow providers to track their progress and update their risk levels.
  • Quartet’s expansive provider network and referral management expertise will bolster NeuroFlow’s offerings for its existing customers, and bring along new ones like PA-based Independence Blue Cross, which was specifically called out in the release.

The Takeaway

There’s unfortunately no shortage of demand for behavioral health services, and many expect a new wave of consolidation to be driven by companies pooling resources to build platforms that can keep up. That wave could already be here, with NeuroFlow’s acquisition of Quartet adding to back-to-back busy weeks in the segment.

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