|
Artera, Another IPO, and Aya Cancels Cross Country Trip
December 11, 2025
|
|
|
|
|
Together with
|
|
|
|
“Building AI agents is quickly becoming commoditized. Success requires technology paired with deep domain experience, extensive real-world data, and distribution channels that allow for quick and easy activation.”
|
|
Artera CEO Guillaume de Zwirek
|
|
|
|
Patient communications still feel stuck in the Dark Ages, which is why Artera.io just raised $65M to flip on the AI-powered floodlights.
We need to work on communication. Healthcare’s “communication crisis” can be traced back to a couple distinct challenges.
- Outdated Infrastructure – Despite all the press releases bludgeoning us with “cloud-native” marketing copy, most providers still rely on legacy on-premise systems that cause administrative headaches with clunky integration requirements.
- Too Many Fish in the Sea – There’s been an explosion of new vendors since the start of the pandemic. Many of them have the technical expertise to securely communicate sensitive patient information. Many of them don’t.
One part engagement, one part infrastructure. Artera tackles these issues the only way any self-respecting innovator would in 2025: AI agents.
- Harmony is the baseline infrastructure. The platform orchestrates agents, texts, and emails to solve any patient access problem under the sun – from scheduling and reminders to intake and payments.
- The AI agents are the boots on the ground. Artera has generative AI Agents to tackle voice and text conversations, rules-based Flows Agents to automate routine tasks, and staff Co-Pilots for admin support and insights.
Experience makes all the difference. Unlike the fresh crop of LLM-era comms startups, Artera has a decade of experience and conversations with 200M unique patients, which has put it within arms reach of $100M in contracted ARR.
- The new kids on the block are hungry and well-funded, but Artera has a trove of training data to differentiate its agents and a wide distribution network that already trusts them with their patient relationships.
- Artera still has to prove that a 10-year head start is worth more than being “AI-native,” but it has over 1k health systems, FQHCs, and federal agency customers to help it make its case.
The Takeaway
The patient’s experience depends on the vendor’s experience, and Artera has more time in the communication trenches than almost anyone else. That’s already translated to nine-figure success, but the growth funding should only add gas to the fire.
|
|
Ambient ROI – New Metrics From Health Systems
While Abridge’s value is clear from its rapid adoption and positive clinician feedback, discerning CMIOs, CIOs, and CFOs also require longitudinal and more precise impact measurement – including of operational and workflow processes. With a new ROI methodology, that’s what Abridge delivers for its health system partners. See how four health systems are using this new tool to measure ROI at a deeper level than ever before. Download here.
|
|
Supporting Sustainable GLP-1 Weight Loss With Withings
Leading digital health companies and health systems are supporting safe and sustainable GLP-1 weight loss with Withings Health Solutions. See how care teams are using Withings’ suite of remote patient monitoring solutions to prevent muscle loss, combat plateaus, and drive better outcomes for their patients.
|
|
- Medline Preps for IPO: Medical supply juggernaut Medline is lining up to be the first blockbuster IPO of 2026. The S-1 filing included a $55B target for the initial offering, which would make the stake of the Mills family who founded the company in 1910 worth roughly $7B. Medline provides everything from blankets to Band-Aids, and nearly half of all U.S. health systems rely on its supplies. Despite the hefty IPO target, investors are only looking at a 2x revenue multiple on the $26B that Medline generated last year.
- Healthcare Leads With ChatGPT… OpenAI put out its State of Enterprise AI report based on a goldmine of real-world data from its enterprise customers. Healthcare was the second fastest growing sector for ChatGPT usage (up 8x in the past year), sandwiched between the tech sector (11x) and manufacturing (7x). Over the past year, the average employee across all industries sent 30% more ChatGPT messages, and the average token consumption per company skyrocketed 320x – suggesting that reasoning models have been quickly expanding into new products.
- …but Healthcare Lags With AI: Despite OpenAI quoting an eight-fold increase in healthcare ChatGPT usage, a new study in JAMA Health Forum found that only 8.3% of healthcare firms used AI “for producing goods or services in the last two weeks.” The study looked at AI adoption across five industries from September 2023 (when <4% of healthcare orgs reported using it) to May 2025 (close to 10%), and healthcare lagged behind the other four sectors the entire time. Tough to square this with OpenAI’s report, but maybe healthcare workers are just using ChatGPT to help with their fantasy football lineups instead of producing goods and services.
- Angle Mega-Round: Angle Health closed $134M of Series B funding to build out its vertically integrated health benefits platform. The Angle platform leverages AI to help small-to-medium sized businesses predict future medical risks so that they can design better health plans for their employees, and it already has 3k customers across 44 states signed on to do just that. Health benefits are shaping up to be one of the hottest corners of the market, with Angle’s round arriving hot on the heels of another nine-figure Series B from Curative.
- Headspace Goes Enterprise: Meditation app trendsetter Headspace is pivoting from consumer subscriptions to employer and payor distribution as it repositions itself as a healthcare company. CEO Tom Pickett told the Financial Times that Headspace’s full-time therapists have recently been reshuffled into contractor roles, and that the gameplan moving forward is to lean in on AI with an “Ebb” chatbot tuned for everyday emotional regulation. It’s clear from the interview that competition from Calm is cutting into downloads, so Headspace is looking to manifest more revenue through enterprise partnerships.
- Rising Costs Pressure Hospitals: Kaufman Hall’s 2025 Health System Performance Outlook found that nearly 60% of health system execs had non-labor expenses increase 6-10% over the past year, in large part thanks to tariffs. Over 70% of respondents are now focused on optimizing their workforce, and 42% noted the value of leveraging advanced practice providers to do so. Many of the chief concerns heading into next year have to do with payors, particularly claims denials, Medicaid pressures, and legislative uncertainty.
- Aya Cancels Cross Country Trip: Aya Healthcare just scrapped its $615M takeover of Cross Country Healthcare that was originally announced this time last year. The acquisition would have diversified Aya’s already-massive healthcare staffing coverage with Cross Country’s care delivery expertise in non-clinical settings like schools and homes. It also would have created a juggernaut of a company with travel nursing, per diem, and permanent staff hiring in all 50 states, so it’s not too surprising to see the FTC dancing on the acquisition’s grave.
- Evolution of Care: WellSky’s fourth annual Evolution of Care report was as bullish as it gets on AI’s ability to improve care coordination. Patient acuity is reportedly up 34% since 2019, so referral volumes are only expected to continue climbing for post-acute care. The lion’s share of nurses and healthcare professionals (90%) said that predictive analytics and AI are becoming increasingly valuable to their workflows amid the mounting pressure, and AI-driven solutions are now viewed as critical levers for streamlining transfers and improving care quality.
- Mercy + Wellvana: Mercy Health and Wellvana inked a 20-year partnership to launch a clinically integrated network for independent primary care physicians and advanced practice providers looking to take the leap into value-based care. The collaboration is geared toward equipping PCPs and APPs who aren’t employed by Mercy with the tools they need to succeed in risk-based contracts. That includes “data-driven insights, care coordination resources, and practice-level support for every participating physician.”
- Marketing With a Million: Second Opinion shared tips and tricks from veteran marketer Kaycee Kalpin on how to break into provider orgs with a $1M budget. Kalpin laid out why “brand presence is a growth lever, not a luxury,” and how success stories come from “building networks, not funnels.” She makes the case that the best way to get a foot in the door is to build an affinity network around a specific problem (e.g. improving maternal health), then produce content and meetups that highlight the network’s subject matter expertise and create a “safe space for honest exchange: what worked, what failed, what to never try again.”
|
|
Under the Hood of Navina’s AI
Navina’s AI engine harnesses over 600 proprietary algorithms to transform fragmented patient data into actionable clinical intelligence at the point of care. It’s shaped with the expertise of physicians to turn multiple data sources (EHR, HIE, claims, care gap files, etc.) into contextualized insights like suspected conditions or evidence for care gap closures – each linked back to the original source. Download the whitepaper to see examples of Navina’s AI in action.
|
|
Nabla’s Marketing Team is Hiring!
If you’re based in NYC and passionate about improving the practice of medicine, Nabla is looking for a Marketing Operations Associate to help it do just that. Nabla’s ambient AI assistant streamlines the workflows that get in the way of the human connection at the heart of healthcare. They’re on the hunt for a new operational backbone for their marketing team, so apply here if that sounds like you.
|
|
Enrollment Timelines, State by State
Provider enrollment delays are shaping access to care, revenue timelines, and even workforce strategy. Ever wonder how they’re impacting organizations near you? Check out Medallion’s 2025 Geography of Payor Enrollments to see state-by-state enrollment times, how delays are compounding workforce shortages, and why you should factor this into your 2026 planning.
|
|
|
|
|
