John Muir Health CMIO Dr. Priti Patel

Artificial Intelligence

Ambience Healthcare Locks In $70M for AI Operating System

Ambience Healthcare just closed $70M in Series B funding to cut away at burnout-inducing manual workflows using the latest advances in generative AI.

Ambience’s carving knife isn’t an AI scribe, a coding solution, or a referral tool, but an “AI operating system” that promises to be all those things at once.

That operating system consists of a holistic suite of genAI applications catering to an impressively broad set of use cases. Each app is customized for dozens of specific specialties, care models, and reimbursement frameworks:

• AutoScribe: AI medical scribe that works across all specialties
• AutoRefer: AI referral letter support for both PCPs and specialists
• AutoAVS: After-visit summary tool that generates custom educational content
• AutoCDI: Point-of-care clinical documentation integrity assistant that analyzes notes and EHR context to ensure ICD-10 codes, CPT codes, and documentation are aligned

Ambience has kept tight-lipped about both its customer count and LLM provider, but we do know that it as:

• $100M in total funding since launching in 2020
• Marquee customers like UCSF, Memorial Hermann, and John Muir Health
• Investments from Silicon Valley heavyweights like Kleiner Perkins, a16z, and OpenAI (probably a decent hint toward the unrevealed LLM partner)

The newly-raised capital will accelerate Ambience’s product roadmap and allow it to build dedicated support teams for its health system partners.

• The first product up on that roadmap is AutoPrep, an intelligent pre-charting solution that equips clinicians with suggestions for the visit agenda and potential conditions to screen for.

Ambience’s operating system strategy not only gives it a huge total addressable market, but also positions it apart from well-established competition like Nuance and Augmedix, as well as a hungry pack of genAI up-and-comers such as Nabla and Abridge.

• A continuously learning OS with “a single shared brain” sounds like a versatile way to break down silos, but the flip side of that coin is that providers looking for an answer to a specific problem might be tempted to go with a more specialized solution.

The Takeaway

Driving adoption of any software is hard. Crafting a beautiful user experience is hard. Tailoring a continuously learning AI operating system to every medical specialty sounds extremely hard. At the end of the day, Ambience’s approach is about as ambitious as it gets, but it carries massive advantages if it can execute.

Successful RPM Through End-to-End Support

From needs assessments and program deployment to security enhancements and call center monitoring, Clear Arch Health offers fully customizable support services to help you get the most from your RPM solution.

The New Standard for Prescription Safety

Synapse Medicine’s quick-deploy Prescription Assistance API and components can be up and running in less than a day and instantly connect your HCPs to real-time drug data and prescribing support. Find out how easy it can be to equip your providers with the tools they need to ensure prescription safety and precision for their patients.

Four Ways to Connect Fragmented Provider Data

Automation is transforming our industry, and Medallion is digging into the ripple effect that fragmented provider data has on healthcare organizations. Check out Medallion’s open access E-Book to gain a better understanding of data management models and strategies, uncover solutions that will streamline operational tasks from provider onboarding to license renewals, and much more.

The Wire

• CVS Reports Strong 2023: CVS Health closed out 2023 on a high note, reporting $357.8B in full-year revenue (up 11% YoY) while managing to nearly double its net income to $8.3B. Signify Health was a highlight of the investor call, with in-home evaluations for Medicare Advantage partners jumping 20% to 649K in the fourth quarter. Despite the strong showing, CVS joined its peers in slamming proposed Medicare Advantage reimbursement as insufficient, and cut its 2024 guidance citing rising medical costs and MA caution. 

• Uneven Access to Mental Telehealth: Access to mental telehealth services in the US varies widely by geography, according to a JAMA Health Forum study. The authors assessed telehealth availability at 1,404 mental health treatment facilities, finding that 87% were accepting new patients and 80% offered telehealth services. No differences were found based on client-caller’s demographics or mental health conditions, but geography was a large differentiator. Access was lowest in Mississippi and South Carolina, while Delaware, Maine, and New Mexico had the highest availability. 

• Digital Therapeutics Rebuttal: The Digital Therapeutics Alliance put out a point-by-point rebuttal to the recent Health Affairs paper that criticized many DTx companies for relying on studies that lack scientific rigor. Although the authors of the original critique said that larger studies with more inclusivity would help with regulators and payors, the DTA argues that’s an unrealistic expectation given the small size of many DTx trial sponsors, while also raising several good points related to study blinding, long term follow-ups, and diversity.

• Swift Medical Funding: Swift Medical closed $8M to advance its platform that supports wound care providers with everything from high-precision imaging and compliant documentation to clinical analytics and remote care. Swift is the preferred technology partner of over 4k facilities and 20k clinicians in the US, which has allowed it to build a database of 20M+ wound images and 40M assessments captured through its app.

• Artificial Intelligence Liability Risk: We still don’t know who’s liable when an AI system fails, according to a new NEJM paper from Stanford researchers. The authors outline how providers are currently putting themselves at risk when implementing AI solutions, and why courts are going to need to evolve their existing rules to create remedies for plaintiffs against developers. Courts thus far seem “disinclined to create special new rules for AI,” despite complex models often having billions of variables that make it difficult for plaintiffs to find specific flaws to point to in court.

• NBA Player’s Transplant Challenge: Scot Pollard’s 6-foot-11 frame helped make him an NBA first-round pick and earned him an NBA championship ring with the 2008 Boston Celtics, but it’s now keeping him from finding a heart donor. After trying medications, ablation, and a pacemaker to treat a genetic heart condition, Pollard and his care team have decided that he needs a heart transplant. However, because it’s so hard to find a large enough heart, he’s been admitted into the Vanderbilt ICU and will remain there until a suitable donor becomes available.

• Rising Pediatric Use of Retail Care: Kids are increasingly accessing care in retail settings, according to the CDC’s Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report. In 2022, 28% of kids up to age 17 visited a retail health clinic or urgent care in the past 12 months, up from 22% the year before. The biggest increase was in the 0-5 years age group (22% -> 28%), with under-17 trends broadly mirroring the rising usage of retail care among all age groups since the pandemic.

• AHA 2024 Priorities: The AHA laid out its priorities for 2024, with hospital bottom lines taking center stage. This year’s advocacy agenda focuses on getting policymakers to maintain appropriate Medicare funding, establishing a hospital designation that would secure more Medicare reimbursement for some urban facilities, revising the CMS proposal on minimum staffing standards at long-term care facilities, and making pandemic-era telehealth flexibilities permanent.

• Post-PCI Home Care: UC Davis Health is launching a post-PCI (stent placement) digital home care program, combining the C-NOW text-messaging platform and Clinii’s asynchronous monitoring tech to automate home care between patients’ PCIs and their follow-up office visits. Around 200 monitored patients will be equipped with a weight scale, blood pressure kit, and a 4G hub that transmits data directly to their UCD clinical team, while the automated text messages will be used for proactive education and communication.

• EHR Lags for Value-Based Care: EHRs haven’t kept pace with the increased interest in value-based care, according to a survey of 33k medical professionals from Black Book Research. Just over 40% of medical groups with 10 or more clinicians plan to upgrade or replace their EHR software in the next 18 months to keep up with industry developments, such as the need to document clinical quality to achieve optimized revenue benefits and the intensified requirements for data sharing to coordinate care for VBC.

• New AI Safety Consortium: The US government last week formed the AI Safety Institute, a new body in the National Institutes of Standards and Technology dedicated to advancing safe and trustworthy AI. The group includes over 200 participating organizations, with a roster that’s stacked with major AI players across private industry and academia. Healthcare AI safety was also the focus of a February 8 House of Representatives hearing, where care denials were dead center of the crosshairs.

Bolster Your Workforce With W2 Classification

As we navigate the biggest nursing workforce shortage of our time, understanding the nuances of clinician classification and protecting your community from risk is more important than ever. Even for the most flexible schedules, assigning 1099 status to nurses could be leaving your organization vulnerable to lawsuits. Find out how connectRN’s W2 staffing solution protects you and your business from liability.

Glooko Outcomes Using Real-World Data

Modern diabetes management requires personalized, always-on, and connected care. Explore Glooko’s latest clinical studies to see how remote patient monitoring is making real-word improvements across multiple glycemic outcomes.

What is Patient Engagement for a CMIO?

In its patient engagement guide for hospital execs, Nuance examines the goals and challenges of Chief Medical Information Officers, highlighting the ways that AI-powered patient engagement solutions can help CMIOs reduce physician burnout and improve care delivery.