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Ellipsis, Talkdesk CXA Debut, and Taking Aim at Tenet
June 16, 2025
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Together with
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“Any time a doctor has to click their mouse, that’s friction. Friction increases difficulty with adoption, yet if any doctor could click 100 times and cure cancer, of course they’d do it. The big question is how to balance the friction with the ROI.”
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Playback Health Co-Founder and CMO Dr. David Langer
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Not only is Dr. David Langer the Chairman of Neurosurgery at Lenox Hill and one of the stars of the hit Netflix show of the same name, but he also co-founded Playback Health to bring beautiful consumer technology experiences to his patients’ healthcare journeys. Tune in to the latest Digital Health Wire Show to hear Dr. Langer share the lessons that healthcare can learn from consumer tech, the biggest barriers to ambient AI living up to its promise, and how health systems can align incentives to deliver world-class patient experiences.
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Care management gaps are becoming a pressing problem as the provider shortage deepens, and Ellipsis Health just raised $45M of Series A funding to show why empathy is the answer.
Ellipsis put Sage front and center in the announcement, unveiling its emotionally intelligent AI care manager that expands staffing capacity through proactive patient engagement.
- Sage’s Empathy Engine leverages Ellipsis’ patented vocal biomarker tech and training from millions of real clinical conversations to support the patients driving a majority of healthcare costs: those with complex physical, behavioral, and social needs.
- Unlike traditional AI agents, Sage adjusts its tone and approach based on a patient’s emotional state, exactly how a human care manager would when conducting health risk assessments, post-discharge follow-ups, or care transitions.
The Series A investor roster suggests that Ellipsis has some strong tailwinds working for it.
- The round was led by Salesforce (workflow integration through Salesforce Health Cloud), Khosla Ventures (tech validation from an AI fund and early investor in OpenAI), and CVS Health Ventures (plenty of Aetna members to reach meaningful scale).
- Those investors will only help Ellipsis land and expand across more enterprises as it continues building evidence that Sage moves the needle with patient outcomes.
Competition is heating up. Companies like Hippocratic and Innovaccer have been rolling out fleets of AI agents that can handle routine tasks like appointment scheduling, but Ellipsis is setting out to prove that empathy is a difference maker in actual case management.
- It’s the little things between visits that can decide whether a patient gets their hypertension under control, like walking them through lab results or making sure they take their medication.
- It’s also the same little things that slip through the cracks when you have a staff shortage or burned out clinicians, and a little empathy could go a long way toward filling these gaps and driving the behavior change that leads to better outcomes.
The Takeaway
Ellipsis envisions a future for healthcare where AI can “extend human capabilities while preserving the empathy and clinical judgment that defines great care.” Sage is the tool that Ellipsis built to carve that future, and it now has $45M to put it in the hands of more providers.
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More FQHCs Are Choosing Abridge
Abridge is now being implemented across the enterprise at FQHCs throughout the U.S. In this new report, hear from four about why they decided to go with Abridge: increased access to care and clinician wellbeing, unique partnership model and aligned values. Read more here.
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Navina AI “May Be Essential for Thriving” in VBC
Innovation lab Phyx Primary was left with 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.
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- CHAI + The Joint Commission: The Coalition for Health AI is joining forces with leading healthcare accreditation organization the Joint Commission to co-develop AI best practices and a new certification program for medical AI. CHAI counts over 3,000 members in its ranks, ranging from marquee industry players like Mayo Clinic to Big Tech juggernauts like Microsoft, but has been struggling to roll out its “AI assurance labs” to help with regulating the tech. Teaming up with the Joint Commission seems like a solid step toward getting back on track.
- Autonomize Series A: It’s getting more obvious with every press release that agentic AI is digital health’s flavor of the year, and Autonomize AI just became the latest startup to capitalize on the trend with $28M of Series A funding. Autonomize’s mission is to “rewire healthcare operations” with its Agentic AI Orchestration platform, which leverages AI agents to automate administrative tasks like prior auths, chart review, and quality metrics reporting.
- 2025 Top Leaders in Digital Health Awards: ICYMI, nominations for our 2025 Top Leaders in Digital Health Awards are officially live. We’re teaming up with Slice of Healthcare to spotlight the innovators shaping the future of digital health across our combined network of over 75k followers. We’ll be accepting nominations through June 18th, voting from June 23rd – July 2nd, then announcing the awards on July 9th. Whether a rising star or an industry titan, this is your chance to celebrate the change makers you work with. Nominate a 2025 Top Digital Health Leader Here!
- Why Americans Skip Preventative Care: Aflac’s third annual Wellness Survey uncovered the reasons why many Americans have been putting off doctor visits for preventive care. In line with similar surveys, there’s a wide generational divide in the results. A third of Gen Z and Millennial respondents were most likely to skip an annual checkup because they feel healthy and don’t need a PCP. That figure surprisingly climbed to 41% for Gen X, although the leading reason why Baby Boomers skipped preventative care was because they have difficulty finding a doctor accepting new patients (36%).
- Notable Partnership at SWG: Ohio-based Southwest General Health Center is rolling out Notable’s AI Platform to automate the manual processes weighing down staff and provider workloads. The partnership will see Notable’s AI Agents offload outreach for scheduling, registration, intake, and care gap closure – allowing staff to focus more time on care delivery while giving patients an easier access point to find assistance.
- Talkdesk CXA Debut: Talkdesk took the lid off its new Customer Experience Automation platform, which it’s calling “a new software category” complete with fully autonomous AI agents for orchestrating and resolving complex challenges across the patient experience lifecycle. A key differentiator is the AI Gateway that enables Talkdesk CXA to sit atop any third-party contact center, allowing healthcare orgs to integrate Talkdesk’s AI-driven PX solutions – for optimizing self-service, agent assistance, quality management, and security – without replacing existing systems.
- Taking Aim at Tenet: Healthcare’s latest scalding short report took aim directly at Tenet Healthcare, alleging that the Dallas-based hospital operator has recently received over $167M of excess Medicare outlier payments. The report noted that Tenet shares previously fell ~70% in 2002 following a similar scandal, and even went on to say that Tenet is recruiting undocumented immigrants to give birth in its hospitals before concluding that this is “the next United Healthcare.”
- TeleTracking + Palantir: Hospital operations company TeleTracking is partnering with Palantir to bring health systems real-time intelligence for optimizing capacity, staffing, and patient flow. The partnership is geared toward delivering visibility into bed availability, throughput, and overall utilization, combining TeleTracking’s operational workflow expertise with Palantir’s AI decision intelligence capabilities to help improve outcomes and strengthen hospital bottom lines.
- Medical Groups Support AI Legislation: A broad coalition of 23 medical groups have lined up to support proposed U.S. legislation that would streamline Medicare reimbursement for AI software. The Health Tech Investment Act (S.1399) was introduced in April and would set up a dedicated Medicare coverage pathway for FDA-approved AI-enabled medical devices. Sources told our sister publication The Imaging Wire that the legislation won’t be included in the big budget bill currently under consideration, but will likely be introduced wither in year-end legislation or Congress’ next healthcare package.
- Ensemble Teams Up With Cohere: Ensemble Health Partners is bringing secure agentic AI to “some of healthcare’s most complex workflows” through a new partnership with Cohere. The collaboration marks the first deployment of Cohere’s North platform in healthcare, allowing Ensemble to quickly build and implement secure AI agents that understand industry-specific language to help manage complex claim analysis, like billing and insurance codes, contract terms, and payer-specific rules.
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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.
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Elevate 2025: Medallion’s Virtual Conference Returns September 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.
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- What Nurses Are Teaching Us About Ambient AI: Nurses are the backbone of healthcare, and their tools need to keep up with the growing complexity of their roles. For nurses, documentation isn’t just about compliance – it’s how they track key observations, ensure care continuity, and support billing. Nabla’s ambient AI is already helping 8,500 nurses streamline documentation and reclaim time for patients across 30+ orgs. See what Nabla’s building for the fast-paced needs of nursing workflows.
- Withings and Babyscripts Team Up on Maternal Health: Babyscripts is teaming up with Withings Health Solutions to tackle the leading cause of maternal mortality in the U.S. – hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, including preeclampsia. Learn how remote patient monitoring with BPM Pro 2 is helping Baybscripts keep mothers safe through personalized support when they need it most.
- Future-Proof Your Health System with Scalable 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.
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