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ViVE 2026 Recap and Major Announcements
February 26, 2026
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Together with
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“There’s a good chance that AI agents are the Internet of Things of today. Ten years ago, everyone was talking about IoT – now where is it? At the end of the day, having AI take action on your behalf is just normal functioning for any decent AI system. It won’t surprise me if we look back on this as yet another marketing buzzword.”
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Regard CEO Eli Ben-Joseph
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Digital Health Wire made it out to ViVE Los Angeles to get the scoop on the latest innovations straight from the people building them. See the trends and technologies set to define the year in our rapid fire Q&As with:
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Not even our second generational snow storm of the year could stop ViVE Los Angeles from bringing the heat.
Agentic AI was the theme of the show, but it’s clear that category lines are only going to keep getting blurrier as agents break down the barriers to entry.
It felt like every startup had just finished supercharging their engine with the latest frontier models, and even though most healthcare orgs are open to adopting faster solutions to their problems, the toughest competition in the exhibit hall might have been buyer bandwidth.
As always, ViVE kept the spotlight on the innovation, so we’ll go ahead and follow their lead with our recap of the biggest announcements from the show.
- b.well Connected Health kept its hot streak going with bailey, a new white-label health AI assistant. Orgs can embed bailey directly into their own apps to deliver modern patient experiences – finding care, managing medications, scheduling appointments, navigating benefits – without doing the heavy lifting of building the AI from scratch.
- Heidi was everywhere at this one. They scored a hat trick with the launch of a fully integrated Heidi Evidence tool that brings clinical evidence to workflows without any advertising baggage, the acquisition of UK-based clinical AI pioneer AutoMedica, and the debut of Heidi Comms to give care teams an AI partner for coordinating patient communications.
- Innovaccer joined forces with Allina Health Minneapolis Heart Institute to expand access to guideline-directed heart failure management courtesy of Story Health, its recently acquired virtual specialty care and patient monitoring platform that not-so-coincidentally has one of the best HF management programs in town.
- Kontakt.io added to its flurry of new solutions with Patient Flow Agent, an orchestration agent that puts real-time operations signals from RTLS and the EHR in context so frontline caregivers can make the best decision for the patient and hospital. The RTLS component stands to unlock some big improvements for length of stay and delays, AKA revenue and experience.
- NewDays laid out its unique cognitive treatment platform that blends human and AI elements to help patients delay symptoms and preserve independence. The approach combines clinical assessments and psychotherapy with an AI companion named Sunny for exercises and support between visits. Their CEO Daniel is also awesome.
- RevSpring debuted its first dedicated MCP server to give developers a grounding layer that connects AI models with data like provider quality, real-time availability, plan networks, and cost transparency – with the usual agent lag. The launch arrives as the ink is still drying on RevSpring’s acquisition of Trust Commerce.
- TigerConnect took the lid off its new AI-powered Operator Console to replace legacy operator favorites (spreadsheets and Post-Its) with a cloud-native smart switchboard. Operator Console centralizes calls, code activations, and facility alarms in a unified interface, along with intelligent call routing and AI-recommended next best steps.
- Wheel expanded its Horizon virtual care platform with a Clinical Action Layer that ingests patient and partner data (AI, wearables, labs, records), generates clinician-ready summaries, and intelligently routes patients into orchestrated workflows. It also debuted its new WheelX exchange that connects enterprises with the AI experiences built on Horizon.
- Withings Health Solutions was showcasing its BPM Pro 2 connected blood pressure monitor and Body Pro smart scale, the dynamic device duo that MedStar Health is bringing to its Signature concierge medicine service to make the patient and provider experiences feel like consumer experiences. Their VP of VBC Patrick Sheehan also happens to be a fantastic interview.
- Wolters Kluwer opened up its expert-curated medication data to AI developers with its Medi-Span Expert AI MCP that lets them easily spin up their own agentic AI workflows. Medi-Span’s safety guardrails have made it the go-to medication support for pretty much everybody that values accuracy over off-the-shelf convenience.
Many thanks to all of our awesome readers who caught us up on the latest and greatest at the show, and we’re looking forward to running it back at HIMSS in a couple weeks. Smash that reply button and let’s set something up!
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Episode-Based Care: Making TEAM Work
The TEAM model represents one of the largest mandatory reforms in Medicare history, and forward-thinking perioperative leaders are leaning into it. Watch the on-demand recap of C8 Health’s recent fireside chat to explore how episode-based care is reshaping quality improvement – and why the orgs succeeding under TEAM are treating it as a catalyst for transformation, not just a regulatory checkbox.
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Clinician-First Copilot for Value-Based Success
Navina’s AI copilot brings clinical intelligence directly to care teams, turning fragmented data into actionable insights that transform value-based workflows from the back office to the point-of-care. Designed for and loved by physicians, Navina’s Best in KLAS AI reduces missed diagnoses while improving quality metrics and risk adjustment accuracy. Discover how practices are leveraging Navina to enhance VBC performance and improve the clinician experience.
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- Hims Acquires Eucalyptus: Direct-to-consumer powerhouse Hims & Hers acquired Australian DTC leader Eucalyptus for $240M and up to another billion worth of incentives. Hims has been getting burned by the compounded GLP-1 fiasco and is looking to expand its other core offerings globally to diversify away from the heat. Eucalyptus currently serves 775k blokes that should be able to help with the expansion plans.
- LLMs as Medical Assistants: A study in Nature Medicine investigated whether LLMs are reliable medical assistants for the general public, and long story short, they’re not. Researchers randomized 1,300 U.K. participants to decide what to do in different medical scenarios with and without the help of three LLMs (GPT-4o, Llama 3, Command R+). Tested alone, the LLMs correctly identified conditions in 94.9% of cases, yet participants using the same LLMs were only correct in 34.5% of cases. Yet another example of AI having more book smarts than street smarts.
- Longevity Gets Litigious: Function Health is taking its longevity competitor Superpower to court over false advertising. The allegations include inflating biomarker claims, doctoring a Reddit post, and fostering a culture where employees ‘inject each other for fun.’ We’re not lawyers, but advertising fake results sounds bad. Less sure about BSing on Reddit on stabbing each other with needles.
- Omada Goes After Cholesterol: Omada is rounding out its suite of cardiometabolic solutions with a new program focused on cholesterol. High cholesterol is a silent driver for many individuals managing comorbidities like obesity, hypertension, or diabetes, making it a perfect target for Omada’s whole-person approach. The cholesterol program is designed to complement primary and specialty care by helping members stay engaged in behavior change to lower LDL-C, with daily support that includes nutrition guidance, goal‑setting, and access to a virtual heart-healthy community.
- “Provider” is Cancelled: A spicy viewpoint in the Annals of Internal Medicine made the case that “the term [provider] should not be used to describe physicians, nor should physicians use it to describe themselves, their team members, or their trainees.” The authors argue that the commercialization of many professions – and the terms that come with it – erodes the depth of important roles and the people performing them. They prefer “physician,” “clinician,” or pretty much anything that doesn’t sound like a simple business transaction is being provided.
- MA Disenrollment Spike: About 10% of seniors in Medicare Advantage plans will be forced to disenroll this year because their health plan is heading for the exits. The new estimates in JAMA Network found that the number of plans available to MA beneficiaries doubled from 2018 to 2024, and the average percentage of forced disenrollments due to plan exits was just 1% over that period. That jumped to 6.9% in 2025, and all signs are pointing to another big jump this year.
- GRAIL Hits Speedbump: GRAIL’s cancer screening test that sounded too good to be true turned out to be too good to be true. The company’s Galleri test can reportedly detect dozens of cancers, but shareholders woke up down 50% last week after it failed to meet the primary endpoint in a major study it was conducting with the NHS. GRAIL recently closed $325M through a private placement and reported full-year revenue up 26% to $134M, but for whatever reason investors seem to be more interested in owning a diagnostics company with a working test.
- Wellsheet + SJRMC: Wellsheet is bringing its invisible intelligence layer to San Juan Regional Medical Center, a community based NFP medical center serving the Four Corners. The platform does everything from managing background tasks and drafting summaries to sending reminders and surfacing insights, which reduces the cognitive workload on clinicians and cuts time they spend in the EHR in half. SJRMC joins over 100 other hospitals already using Wellsheet.
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Abridge & Availity Redefine Payer-Provider Synergy
Abridge is teaming up with Availity to redefine payer-provider synergy at the point of conversation. The collaboration aligns Abridge’s evidence-aware intelligence with Availity’s real-time health information network to create a first-of-its-kind prior authorization experience, with a shared understanding between patients, providers, and payers. Find out how Abridge and Availity are extending conversational intelligence across the revenue cycle.
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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.
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State of Payor Enrollment and Credentialing
AI is changing the way that healthcare leaders tackle provider network management. Medallion’s latest report breaks down the biggest challenges, emerging trends, and how automation is transforming the landscape. Get the insights you need – read the full report today.
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