|
Epic Launchpad, Google I/O, and Making America Hallucinate Again
June 2, 2025
|
|
|
|
|
Together with
|
|
|
|
“If you’re a shop, you sign up for Shopify, customize with a few plugins, and you’re off. In healthcare, you Frankenstein 8 platforms together and pray nothing breaks in the tech stack powering your $120M VC-funded service.”
|
|
Automate.clinic Founder Dr. Jay Parkinson
|
|
|
|
Epic is looking to accelerate generative AI adoption with the surprise unveiling of Launchpad, a new program designed to help provider orgs “move from idea to operational gains in a matter of days.”
Launchpad’s grand unveiling included little more than a LinkedIn post, but Epic AI Director Sean McGunigal told Fierce Healthcare that the program includes guided AI implementations and a fast track to live workflows.
Here’s the general outline of how Launchpad works.
- When an organization joins the program, Epic staff shepherds them through any roadblocks they’re facing with active genAI implementations.
- Epic’s experts will assist with getting genAI use cases configured, turned on, and operationalized – all while establishing appropriate governance structures.
- Launchpad also includes a starter kit of 10 high-impact genAI applications that can be deployed within days, covering both clinical and operational workflows.
Epic views low AI literacy as one of the biggest barriers to industry-wide adoption, and McGunigal made it clear that Epic will go to great lengths to overcome that hurdle.
- “We’ll help coordinate. We’ll get the right stakeholders on the phone and we’ll help this thing along.’ The [genAI] roadblocks tend not to be necessarily performance challenges or end user training. It tends to be the project management-type work.”
MyChart In-Basket Augmented Response Technology – better known as ART – marked the launch of Epic’s first genAI feature in April 2023.
- Since then, over half of Epic’ customers have started using at least one of its genAI features, and it’s making some big investments to pump that number up.
- Epic has over 100 new genAI use cases in the works, spanning everything from lab and imaging recommendations to fully automated patient-agent interactions, and Launchpad is going to ensure that providers have the support they need to adopt them.
The Takeaway
As Epic gears up for a tidal wave of its own AI roll outs, healthcare orgs are going to need customized support, implementation kits, and governance guidance to take full advantage. Epic just showed us that it’s willing to build its own Launchpad to make that happen.
|
|
Why McFarland Clinic Tapped Nabla to Support Clinicians
As Iowa’s largest physician-owned multi-specialty group, McFarland Clinic needed a partner that could help deliver high-quality, coordinated care across a wide range of specialties. Find out why McFarland tapped Nabla to reduce documentation burden and bring time and presence back to the patient encounter, all within their Epic workflow.
|
|
BPM Pro 2: Unparalleled Reliability
BPM Pro 2 increases data reliability with two new features that ensure patients are taking their reading properly and prompting them to rest and retake it if their first reading was abnormally high.
|
|
- Make America Hallucinate Again: The White House published its first MAHA report – Make Our Children Healthy Again – to serve as a call to action for “American children’s declining health, backed by compelling data and long-term trends.” Although it included plenty of good talking points on accurate food labelling and promoting physical activity, a massive plot twist arrived when Notus quickly pointed out that the report “misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist,” which was apparently due to hallucinations from the LLMs that drafted it. Brutal look all around, and the report has since been taken down and republished without the errors.
- Jane Valued at $1.8B: Practice management platform Jane Software joined the ranks of Canada’s most valuable private tech companies after offloading a third of its business through a $500M secondary offering to three private equity firms. Jane Software is reportedly bringing in $100M of annual revenue across 50k clinics using the platform, and raised less than $10M since launching back in 2012. Although digital health IPOs have been stealing most of the spotlight, it’s great to see other exits still exist for employees and early investors.
- Where’s the Small Talk? A stellar NEJM perspective piece from primary care physician Dr. Gordon Schiff examines why the increasingly common AI scribe feature of omitting “nonmedical discussions” could prove to be an example of innovating in the wrong direction. While a patient’s new hobby or favorite football team aren’t billable note inclusions, Dr. Schiff makes the case that these human details are essential to the practice of medicine, and that it’s important for AI developers to weigh the tradeoffs that they’re making when attempting to balance efficiency with empathy.
- Google Unveils MedGemma: Google’s I/O developer conference brought some major updates to its AI ecosystem, and the healthcare headline was its new open-source MedGemma model for clinical use cases. MedGemma’s two variants include a 4B multimodal model for image-based comprehension (radiology and pathology were specifically mentioned) and a 27B text-only model for tasks like documentation. I/O also showcased how tools like AI Mode and Vertex AI Search can streamline provider workflows by surfacing new insights from EHRs and eliminating administrative waste.
- Best Buy Restructures Healthcare Unit: Best Buy dropped some bombs during its Q1 investor call, revealing that it’s already racked up $109M in restructuring costs as it scales back its healthcare business. The electronics retailer first acquired home care provider Current Health back in 2021, and it sounds like a lot of hospital-at-home partnerships have taken longer to develop than initially thought due to financial challenges at health systems and uncertainty around HaH waiver extensions. Best Buy exclusively called out trouble at its HaH unit, noting that its other home care services still remain viable.
- Equum Medical Acquires VeeOne Services: Virtual clinical workforce startup Equum Medical acquired VeeOne Health’s clinical services portfolio, which included Tele-Psychiatry, Tele-Neurology, Tele-Infectious Disease, Tele-Pulmonary, and Tele-ICU. The acquisition broadens Equum’s telehealth offerings across the care continuum while reinforcing its position in the acute care market, and the combined entity now supports physician service coverage in over 200 hospitals and post-acute facilities nationwide.
- 1up Prior Authorization: 1upHealth launched 1up Prior Authorization to reduce PA burdens for providers, lower administrative costs for payors, and help drive compliance with the just-announced CMS-0057 final rule. 1up Prior Authorization digitizes and streamlines the PA process for health plans by managing integrations and providing real-time visibility at every stage. 1up has been building out its partner ecosystem to enable connectivity with all major EHRs, PA policy vendors, and utilization management systems.
- Private Practice Shift: The number of physicians working in private practices in the U.S. continues its steady decline. A new report from the AMA found that the share of private-practice physicians fell 18 percentage points from 2012 to 2024 (60% to 42%). Driving the trend are factors like costly resources, burdensome regulations, and declining reimbursement. Apparently Medicare reimbursement declining 33% in the last 25 years is bad for independent business.
- Automate.clinic Launch: Automate.clinic launched to create “a plug-and-play system with access to doctors to build and refine AI models.” Founder Dr. Jay Parkinson describes Automate.clinic as a “Clinical AI Refinement Platform or Expert-driven Model Improvement-as-a-Service,” which basically means that it will collect “thumbs down” feedback from already-deployed models before having its own physicians perform a structured clinical review and help address the issue. Interesting concept from a long-time digital health vet.
- TruBridge + Microsoft: TruBridge integrated Microsoft’s Dragon Copilot with its EHR, equipping over 18k TruBridge users with new AI documentation and chart summary capabilities “designed to support the unique needs of community healthcare.” The integration builds on TruBridge’s advocacy for rural Americans as part of the Trustworthy & Responsible AI Network (TRAIN), first announced by Microsoft and several leading health systems at HIMSS 2024.
|
|
Future-Proof Your Health System with Scalable, Accessible Primary Care
The reality of modern health system primary care: more patients, fewer resources, constant pressure to deliver. K Health offers a strategic advantage, with a clinical AI and Virtualist care model that provides the scalable solution you need to meet patient demand anytime, anywhere. Join the ranks of forward-thinking systems like Cedars-Sinai, Hackensack Meridian Health, and Hartford HealthCare. Explore the future of primary care with K Health.
|
|
How Abridge Scales for Diverse Health Systems
“Game Changer”: From the largest urban health institutions to sprawling rural systems that spread across several states and serve a diverse array of communities with varying levels of resources, Abridge is impacting the lives of clinicians and patients. Read why Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Mich., Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau, Mo., and Deaconess Health System in Evansville, Ind., all chose Abridge. Learn more.
|
|
- Navina AI “May Be Essential for Thriving” in VBC: Innovation lab Phyx Primary was left with only one conclusion after its independent evaluation of Navina’s AI Copilot: AI “may be essential for thriving” in value-based care. Physicians using Navina saw a 40% reduction in clinical review time, a 32% decrease in burnout, and lifted STAR quality ratings by 1.9 points. The experience scores were just the icing on the cake. Get the full report to learn more.
- Ensuring Compliance With Medical AI Scribes: AI scribes are transforming how providers document patient encounters, but new innovations come with new compliance risks. Head over to Playback Health’s quick-start guide to maintaining compliance in the age of AI, and see how Playback Health Pro is giving providers peace of mind with 100% data ownership, SOC 2 verification, and HIPAA-compliant encryption every step of the way.
- Elevate 2025 – Medallion’s Virtual Conference Returns Sept 17: Now in its fourth year, Medallion’s annual conference is back – bringing together healthcare leaders to explore this year’s theme: Elevate the present. Reframe the future of healthcare. Hear from industry voices like Tom Lawry, author of Hacking Healthcare, UPMC Chief Medical Information Officer Robert Bart, and many more. Reserve your spot now.
|
|
|
|
|
