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OpenEvidence, the UnitedHealth Monopoly, and the 2025 Top Leaders in Digital Health
July 17, 2025
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Together with
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“Agentic AI isn’t just a technological leap, it’s a full-stack disruption – business process, trust architecture, data readiness, workforce alignment. And most orgs are nowhere near prepared. You can’t just ‘plug in an Agent’ and expect transformation. Yet that’s exactly what too many execs have greenlit.”
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Dataception AI Strategy Advisor Stuart Winter-Tear
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OpenEvidence might just be the hottest startup in healthcare after locking in another $210M of Series B funding and tripling its valuation to a whopping $3.5B.
Déjà vu. If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because OpenEvidence first joined the unicorn club just five short months ago when it notched a $1B valuation through its $75M Series A.
- Since then, the LLM-powered medical search engine inked a multi-year content agreement with JAMA to bring full-text articles directly to its platform, and continued to add new doctors at the breakneck pace of 65k per month.
- It turns out that getting doctors to use a sleek new AI tool isn’t the hardest thing in the world when you make it available at no cost, and over 40% of doctors in the U.S. apparently don’t mind a few pharma ads if you can make their job easier.
Does that justify the valuation? Depends what physician trust is worth. OpenEvidence has added over 430k verified physicians since launching in 2023, and they’re now supporting over 8.5M clinical consultations every month.
- The volume of medical research published annually is doubling every five years, and physicians are flocking to OpenEvidence so that they can search once, skip the scavenger hunt, and surface the science in seconds.
- That type of growth is nearly unprecedented in healthcare, and investors are looking to capitalize by dogpiling into startups like OpenEvidence and Abridge, which also raised back-to-back megarounds in the first half of the year.
OpenEvidence is only ramping up from here. CEO Daniel Nadler told Forbes that he views the commoditization of AI copilots similar to TV streaming services, which have to differentiate around content and partnerships.
- The Series B funds will help OpenEvidence add more strategic content to its medical knowledge library, and fuel new products that can take advantage of it – including its new DeepConsult research assistant.
- DeepConsult helps physicians get up to speed on a topic by cross-referencing hundreds of studies to deliver comprehensive Ph.D.-level research reports in a matter of hours.
The Takeaway
OpenEvidence is off to the races, and “the fastest-growing platform for doctors in history” still hasn’t even started charging doctors to use it.
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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.
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How Do You Know Your Ambient AI Is Working? OR Ambient AI Backed by Science
Not all ambient AI is created equal. That’s why Abridge has developed a scientifically validated approach to evaluating ambient AI efficacy for clinicians. This method has been implemented by a majority of Abridge’s 150+ enterprise partners and is used to make crucial decisions around adoption and scale. The Abridge Clinician Survey has also been leveraged in numerous peer-reviewed research studies and will be featured in several upcoming publications. Learn more.
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- Top Leaders in Digital Health Awards: The people have spoken, and our 2025 Top Leaders in Digital Health are finally here. After hundreds of nominations and over 7,000 votes, we’re excited to join Slice of Healthcare in announcing the 50 leaders shaping the future of digital health innovation. We want to thank each and every one of you who took the time to vote, and give a massive congratulations to this year’s honorees. Check out the full list of founders, clinicians, and rockstars pushing boundaries and redefining our industry every day.
- Walgreens Taken Private: Walgreens shareholders officially approved Sycamore Partners’ takeover bid, and it looks like the retail pharmacy giant will be taken private by the end of the year. Sycamore has a history of investing in dying retailers like Hot Topic before following the PE-favorite playbook of saddling them with debt and pulling out billions. Walgreens’ struggling prescriptions segment and a $6B writedown to VillageMD made it a prime target, and it’s probably safe to say that a magnificent turnaround isn’t in the cards.
- Is UnitedHealth a Monopoly? HEALTH CARE un-covered published a stellar analysis of The Sunlight Report on UnitedHealth Group, giving us a first-of-its-kind look at the nearly 2,700 subsidiaries that make up the largest healthcare conglomerate in the world. UnitedHealth now owns over 10% of all doctors in the U.S., and has expanded so far beyond its original payor business contributes less to the company’s overall profit than its pharmacy, clinical, and data operations. The report likens UHG to “a 21st-century version of Standard Oil, the John D. Rockefeller conglomerate the Supreme Court ordered broken up in 1911.”
- FDA Updates List of AI Approvals: For the first time under the new White House, the FDA updated its list of authorized AI-enabled medical devices, which now includes over 1,200 unique solutions. It’s good to see the FDA finally update the list for the first time since August, and that it’s developing a plan to identify and tag medical devices that leverage GenAI. The agency said the new program is designed to help patients and providers know when large language models are impacting their care, although it has yet to approve a device leveraging LLM technology.
- Datavant Completes Aetion Acquisition: Datavant completed its acquisition of real-world evidence company Aetion to deliver “the first end-to-end RWE platform at scale.” The combined company will enable healthcare and life sciences orgs to generate insights from privacy-protected data across the entire clinical and commercial lifecycle, making it easier to determine what treatments are working at what cost. Datavant’s been getting aggressive with the M&A, because what else would you do when you’re cash-flow positive and generating over $1B in revenue?
- Lower Imaging Use With Telemedicine: As the U.S. government promotes virtual healthcare in the proposed 2026 MPFS, new research suggests telehealth could help reduce imaging volumes. In a new study in JACR, researchers from the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute looked at 23.4M visits in 2021, of which 10% were via telehealth. The telehealth visits had lower imaging utilization after seven days (5% vs. 14%), 14 days (8.7% vs. 18%), and 30 days (15% vs. 26%).
- Evidently + Allina: Clinical data intelligence platform Evidently expanded its partnership with Allina Health to make the AI chart summarization and documentation platform available in all care settings. Allina clinicians will now be able to use Evidently to instantly surface relevant information that may be hidden deep in a patient’s record, while also enabling more precise documentation to support quality objectives and ensure accurate reimbursement.
- Inbox Health Debuts AI Billing Assistant: Inbox Health debuted a new 24/7 AI assistant for billing support, which resolves over 70% of patient questions without call center intervention. The HIPAA-compliant AI assistant integrates into Inbox’s existing patient billing platform, leveraging connections with dozens of practice management systems to help patients understand their medical bills in over 60 languages across phone, text, email, and live chat.
- Mount Sinai Launches Pre-Precedure Agent: Mount Sinai took the lid off Sofiya, an AI agent for cardiac pre-procedure calls that handles patient instructions and questions before stenting operations. Becker’s shared a solid overview of Sofiya’s development process and benefits, which included saving Mount Sinai over 200 nursing hours in just five months, while also achieving upwards of 95% patient satisfaction.
- Remote Supervision Rule Gets Finalized: In a long-expected move, CMS’ 2026 MPFS proposed to make permanent a pandemic-era rule that enables physicians to provide remote supervision via telehealth and bill for services including diagnostic tests that once required a direct physical presence. We’ll be circling back with a deep dive on this week’s regulatory moves in the next issue.
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Navina Ranks #1 Best in KLAS for Clinician Digital Workflow
KLAS ranked Navina’s AI copilot #1 for Clinician Digital Workflow in its 2025 Best in KLAS report. Navina’s AI copilot empowers the entire workflow from the exam room to the back office with a holistic solution for improving outcomes, physician satisfaction, and performance under value-based care. Discover why Navina is the market-leading clinical intelligence platform.
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Ambient AI – From Helicopter to Hospital
We know that ambient AI is a huge asset to emergency medicine, but how does that impact providers on the ground… and in the air? Join Playback Health on July 17th at 11am to explore how Playback Pro is transforming emergency care and helping providers save lives by keeping the focus on patients – not paperwork. Reserve your spot here.
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- 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.
- Next Generation Ambient Technology and Agents: The ambient AI transformation is already sweeping across health systems, reducing administrative burdens and improving patient outcomes. So, what’s next? Tune into this on-demand session to learn how systems like Carle Health and Denver Health are leveraging Nabla to eliminate Pajama Time and build a future where agentic AI unlocks true workforce sustainability.
- 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.
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