|
Claude for Healthcare, OpenAI Picks Up Torch, and an Epic Lawsuit
January 15, 2026
|
|
|
|
|
Together with
|
|
|
|
“People aren’t very good at making sense of exponentials. If something is doubling every six months, then two years before it happens it looks like it’s only 1/16th of the way there.”
|
|
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei
|
|
|
|
Digital health has some fresh competition. Less than a week after OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health, Anthropic crashed the party with the grand debut of Claude for Healthcare.
Player 2 has entered the fight. Anthopic’s headlining feature for consumers is identical to ChatGPT Health – the answers are grounded in the patient’s own medical history.
- Claude for Healthcare lets patients securely upload their health records and app data to unlock the same wide-ranging benefits as ChatGPT Health, such as spotting trends, preparing for visits, interpreting lab results, and so on and so forth.
- The two even share some overlapping partner apps like Function and Apple Health, but the similarities end there.
Claude for Healthcare gets providers in on the action. Unlike OpenAI’s shiny new patient-facing solution, Anthropic unveiled a suite of “Connectors” that allow Claude for Healthcare to pull data from sources that enable it to support previously out-of-reach workflows. The list includes:
- Prior auth reviews and coverage verifications [CMS Coverage Database]
- Medical coding and billing accuracy [ICD-10]
- Provider verification and credentialing [NPI Registry]
OpenAI hasn’t taken any days off. It followed up last week’s big ChatGPT Health news with the launch of OpenAI for Healthcare – similar names, very different products.
- ChatGPT for Healthcare is OpenAI’s enterprise solution to the Anthropic problem. It brings new provider-facing capabilities like care path management, referral letter generation, and clinical search (tough break for Doximity and Wolters Kluwer).
The fun doesn’t end there. OpenAI added to its hot streak by picking up Torch, a four-person startup building “a medical memory for AI.” The Information pinned the price tag at $100M.
- Torch feeds scattered records into a context engine that connects the dots between visit notes, lab results, wearable data, and any other medical info you can think of.
- That pitch rhymes perfectly with ChatGPT Health’s value prop, and the Torch team will now be helping boost the new solution’s medical memory across its inaugural cohort of partner apps.
The Takeaway
What a week for our little corner of the industry. OpenAI and Anthropic are diving in head first, and their tech, ambition, and pockets might even be deeper than the choppy legal waters.
|
|
10 Bold Predictions for Healthcare AI in 2026
If 2024 was the year of proof-of-concept and 2025 was the year of early adoption and scale, 2026 is shaping up to be something different. This year, AI will become expected infrastructure and simply part of how healthcare gets done. Read these 10 predictions from clinical leaders, health system executives, and researchers shaping the next phase of the field on how the AI conversation will change in 2026.
|
|
Supporting GLP-1 Weight Loss With RPM
Looking to make GLP-1 prescribing safer and more effective long term? Explore Withings’ suite of remote patient monitoring devices, designed to deliver the continuous, clinically relevant insights care teams need to proactively monitor patients, identify risks early, and intervene with confidence.
|
|
- Epic vs. Health Gorilla: The “Treatment” use case is the gift that keeps on giving, which is why Epic, OCHIN, and a trio of health systems are taking Health Gorilla to court. The lawsuit alleges that the data exchange company has been illegally allowing organizations that aren’t delivering care to access Epic’s patient records through the Treatment loophole, and that many of those orgs are even using sham websites and fake visit data to create the appearance of treating patients. As always, our resident legalese translator Brendan Keeler has all the details on his Substack.
- Scribes Drive Revenue: A study in JAMA Network Open wrapped some numbers around the actual impact that AI scribes have on revenue. UCSF Health rolled out an AI scribe to 2k+ physicians in March 2024, then analyzed a year of EHR data on both sides of the implementation. Physicians that used an AI scribe generated 5.8% more weekly RVUs and saw a 2.8% increase in visit volume, without driving a corresponding increase in claims denials. The RVU uptick translated to about $3,000 additional revenue per physician per year, which definitely helps justify the cost – especially when aggregated across a happier clinical workforce.
- Teladoc Builds Out 24/7 Care: Teladoc kicked off this week’s JPM conference by rolling out some major enhancements to its flagship 24/7 Care service. The new clinical capabilities were reportedly enabled by Teladoc’s Prism platform that allows its physicians to coordinate with digital health partners and community care providers. 24/7 Care can now treat a wider range of conditions (including back pain, hair loss, and sleep issues), has additional medication support for common chronic conditions (hypertension, diabetes, asthma, and COPD), and can offer seamless referrals to in-network specialists or eligible Teladoc programs.
- We’re So Back (Kinda): Rock Health’s always anticipated full-year funding recap is here, and digital health companies hauled in $14.2B in 2025 – up an eye-watering 35% from the previous year. That might sound like we’re back to firing on all cylinders, but the funding was heavily concentrated around high-flyers like Abridge, OpenEvidence, and Function Health. The overall number of rounds actually decreased 35% year-over-year, and mega-rounds over $100M accounted for a whopping 42% of total funding.
- SVB Adds Color to the Funding Picture: Silicon Valley Bank’s Healthcare Investments and Exits Report colored in the funding picture by showing that AI made up 46% of last year’s healthcare investing landscape. SVB found that overall funding was down 12%, although it also included biopharma companies that investors were particularly shy of (-19%), whereas Rock Health’s report did not. That said, Rock Health and SVB were fully aligned on the biggest theme: the big keep getting bigger.
- Abridge + Availity: Abridge is joining forces with real-time health information network Availity to build a first-of-its-kind prior authorization experience. Availity connects 95% of payors and millions of providers across the country, so pairing its reach with Abridge’s ambient AI platform will allow clinicians and health plans to better surface missing information – even before the visit is over. The duo is working to align workflows between their respective platforms to streamline initial focus areas that include prior auths, documentation gaps, and authorization integrity.
- Big Gains in Cancer Survival: The number of Americans surviving a cancer diagnosis hit a historic threshold. A new American Cancer Society report found that the survival rate for all cancers climbed to 70% for people diagnosed from 2015 to 2021. Cancer mortality has fallen 34% from its peak in 1991, avoiding 4.8M deaths. Lung cancer is set to continue causing the most cancer deaths in 2026, but five-year survival for advanced lung cancer has increased for both regional-stage disease (from 20% to 37%) and distant-stage disease (from 2% to 10%).
- Google Launches MedGemma 1.5: Google unleashed its latest open medical model, MedGemma 1.5, which improved performance for developers building novel health applications – especially for medical imaging use cases. MedGemma is Google’s leading open model for multimodal text and image comprehension, and version 1.5 improves performance on “high-dimensional medical imaging” like CT and MRI, while also enhancing capabilities for text and medical records. Google also dangled a $100k carrot for developers exploring new ways to use the model through the MedGemma Impact Challenge.
- Pomelo Care Raises $92M: Pomelo Care just closed a massive $92M Series C round for its maternity care model, notching a $1.7B valuation in the process. The funding will help Pomelo expand its model well beyond maternity, from preconception and fertility all the way to children’s health and menopause support. Pomelo has been primarily focused on Medicaid and employer populations, which has apparently led to it supporting a mindblowing 7% of all births in the U.S.
- The New Food Pyramid: The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans just debuted as a 10-page document urging people to “eat real food,” emphasizing whole foods while cutting highly processed products and limiting alcohol. The AHA and ACC welcomed the focus on minimally processed diets, fruits/vegetables, and sugar reduction, but flagged departures from prevention guidance like the prioritization of animal protein, endorsement of full-fat dairy, and unclear messaging on fats and sodium.
|
|
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.
|
|
Next Generation Ambient Tech 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.
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
