Jeff Chang

Here’s your recap of last week’s health IT news 🗞️ 👇 🤖 AI Clinician Assistant • Avaamo launched an AI ambient scribe solution with support for over 50 specialties with pre-trained models. • Wound AI, an AI clinical decision support solution built by VANTIQ, Telemedicine Solutions, LLC, and NTT DATA, launched and is now available 📞 AI Contact Center • Premier Inc. awarded a group purchasing agreement to TeleVox Healthcare. 🏥 AI Facility Management • Medely has integrated with Oracle, allowing users to leverage Oracle’s Cloud HCM capabilities. 🌡️ AI Remote Patient Monitoring and Triage • The Alliance for Smart Healthcare Excellence—established by care.ai, now a part of Stryker, and developed with assistance from CHIME—was established to promote the Smart Hospital Maturity Model (SHMM). 📈 Data & Analytics • Epic expanded its set of APIs available to developers to support USCDI v3. • Health Catalyst will acquire Intraprise Health, a cybersecurity provider; it was also selected for analytics and interoperability by CyncHealth, Iowa’s health information exchange (HIE). • Health Commons Project acquired OneHealthPort • Socially Determined released a new application that helps organizations access data for minors. 🧾 Orders & Fulfillment • Surescripts is expanding its Medication History for Populations product to health plans, enabling care management teams to identify gaps in care and improve outcomes. 🧑‍💻 Virtual & At-Home Care • Mass General Brigham launched a partnership with the New England Center and Home for Veterans to provide hospital at home services for veterans experiencing homelessness. • MedStar Health expanded its partnership with DispatchHealth to support care transitions.    🍎 VBC • i2i Population Health is partnering with CureMD to surface actionable data to providers at the point of care. 🧠 Food For Thought • Brendan Keeler shared an interesting post differentiating AI solutions across augmentative vs. autonomous and then further breaking down each. One take we found interesting was, “Active interfaces are fun, but ultimately have some of the same problems as Siri - they require explicit engagement and cognitive overhead to use. This means their adoption and impact often fall short of expectations - users must actively remember to use them and overcome the friction of engagement.” https://lnkd.in/eR39qFpK --- Want the latest healthcare tech news delivered to your inbox each week? Sign up here 📬 👉 https://lnkd.in/e2UJ3ckP

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One key reason why healthcare technologies like AI, telemedicine, and software haven't structurally lowered costs or broadened access for the entire system after decades of experimentation (excluding pure financial engineering of payer contracts) is the limited reimagining of care delivery itself, with asynchronous telemedicine as a notable exception. In the same way that digitizing physical paper failed to exploit the capabilities of a new computing medium for word processing, hosting physician-patient conversations over video does not transform the actual delivery of care. In telemedicine, many of the inputs (e.g., clinician time) and therefore cost structures of in-person care persist, which is why we often see fee-for-service telemedicine companies struggle to achieve economies of scale (i.e., growing revenues non-linearly while growing costs linearly). Until we deconstruct the components of a medical appointment – from intake and triage, to chart review, history gathering, physical examination, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up – we will continue to be underwhelmed by the disconnect between the transformative potential of these technologies and real-world patient/system impact. I’m optimistic that the emergence of reliable and performant medical AI agents will urge us to perform this deconstruction and redesign the fundamental building blocks of a “medical appointment.”

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I’ve talked to many CMIOs and CIOs the past year. Wanna know the Number 1 mistake they’ve made when choosing a Digital Health solution? Evaluating based primarily on the Tech features (oh wow shiny features!), and not doing real due diligence on the Clinical Content & Workflows that come with the actual product. Here are the types of frustrations they tell me: → “The vendor said they had 100 out-of-the-box care plans… but the content is incredibly bare bones. My clinicians end up creating them from scratch.” → “Our clinicians are demanding a point solution now (e.g. for Ortho) because the clinical content in this supposed enterprise platform aren’t good enough.” → “We need content for this new use case, and the vendor has no interest in growing their content library.” → “The vendor says they’re willing to develop the content, but it’s going to take a whole year. That’s a LONG time.” The reality is Digital Health Tech is only as good as the Clinical Content and Workflows you put in them. The parallel reality is clinicians do not have hours and hours of time to create content, workflows and algorithms from scratch. They are happy to edit, but they have zero time to build from scratch. But what CMIOs and CIOs cannot do is simply trust the quality of clinical content a Digital Health vendor claims to have. Because unless you’ve practiced in that specialty, you don’t truly know if the content is good enough. So what do you do as a CMIO and CIO? You get your clinicians to weigh-on on the product you’re considering. Bring your clinicians to a product demo, and let them due diligence the quality of content, workflows, etc. for their own specialty. E.g. let the Orthopedic surgeon leaders diligence the quality of the Orthopedic content. They can tell you pretty quickly if the content is great or poor. If it meets their needs or not. They’ll ask very clinical questions, and tell right away if the vendor has actual clinical subject matter expertise or if they were talking out of their butt the whole time. Save yourself, your clinicians and your health system a ton of headache. P.S. If you’ve never heard of SeamlessMD, we provide digital care journeys for health systems to guide patients across pre/post surgery, oncology, women’s health, chronic care and more. We ACTUALLY have a library of customizable, evidence-based care plans that cover 150+ procedures and conditions, backed by 40+ studies and evaluations showing improved cost, length of stay, readmissions, ER visits, mortality and more. So if you’re a health system leader who is struggling with Digital Health vendors who don’t actually provide the Clinical Content and Workflows to make the Tech work… give me a shout.

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Alot of bad actors and a few good actors. $2.5T HC capital raised & $1T invested by PE in last decade. $31B in 2013 vs. $217B in 2021. We know the story. Misaligned incentives - unrealistic multiples, short-term profit focus, aggressive cost-cutting, unrealistic scaling, misunderstood market dynamics, just to name a few. However, our industry needs money. But our industry is more infrastructure asset class than tech start-up (James Nicholls gave me that epiphany). Mic drop on the lyrical genius of Alex Fair of MedStartr Ventures as he literally gives the whole story poetic justice as he reads HIS POEM on this "On The Road at VIVE" episode of The Reverse Mullet Healthcare Podcast w/BP2 Health. This is the perfect episode for a Friday afternoon! He and Paulo J Machado donned the actual reverse mullets and joined us back in February at #VIVE2024 to talk about the need for REAL change in healthcare, startup focus and investor expectations. It was one to remember and one that is in desperate need of a full-length follow-up episode. Give us a like and a watch or a listen https://lnkd.in/e4w4mjkv https://lnkd.in/egmK3kMB

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The biggest topics in healthcare last year? The two Gs. GPT and GLP-1s. We’re continuing to innovate our GLP-1 care track, which includes personalized care from care teams supported by AI tools, that can help maximize outcomes for someone on a GLP-1. And what’s to come? I expect this year we’ll see: ⭐ Measuring digital health programs will shift (check out Omada’s VOI report for more on this) ⭐ Consolidation in the market - not all digital health companies will survive ⭐ An uptick in PBM and health plan partners to help employers offer GLP-1s with sustainable coverage plans Anything I missed?

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🎥 Exciting update: I recently joined Jody Tropeano Greene to discuss the DiMe Seal, a milestone in building trust and accountability in digital health. Check out our conversation here: https://lnkd.in/epMHYU5x 🌟 Launched at HLTH 2024, the DiMe Seal recognizes high-quality, trustworthy digital health software products. Since its debut, we’ve seen incredible momentum: 🏥 Healthcare systems and payers across the US are looking to the DiMe Seal to help de-risk their digital health software purchases 🌍 Digital health software developers across the world are recognizing the value of the DiMe Seal to distinguish their products in a crowded market 👉 Are you a developer of digital health software products? Pursue the DiMe Seal and join the leaders setting the standard for quality and trust in healthcare innovation. Register today and use the code HLTH25 for a 25% discount https://lnkd.in/eTb6rRbj Let’s continue to raise the bar for digital health together! 🚀 #DigitalHealth #DiMeSeal #HLTH2024 #Innovation #TrustInHealth

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Value-based care models provide us a way forward in healthcare by emphasizing quality over quantity in patient care, which inherently necessitates robust data tools to engage patients effectively. As technology advances within healthcare, optimizing patient engagement within these models is becoming increasingly imperative for improving outcomes and operational efficiency alike—proper technology adoption and implementation is no longer optional! #PatientCare #ValueBasedCare #VBC #Healthcare https://lnkd.in/eHxWTcQU

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Navina's teaming up with agilon health to bring its clinical AI to agilon's growing network. With a goal of improving workflows and reducing manual work for care teams, could this set the tone for nationwide scaling? Definitely one to watch in the value-based care space. https://lnkd.in/gKYq3VyN

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We have yet to see any AI-native hardware in healthcare for the direct care market and this IMO is the biggest opportunity right now. 1. helps patients with care management + provides access to health information anywhere anytime 2. adds agentic care models on-device for clinical use (doctors) and personal use (patients) 3. eliminates expensive admin/ops barriers that have been sidelining new entrants from moving into independent practice AI-native hardware (e.g. AI-powered wearables) will create an entirely new category of care delivery in 2025. #HealthCareOnLinkedIn #PrivatePractice #SeniorCare Cline cc Nikhil Basu Trivedi

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Here’s your recap of last week’s health IT news 🏥 💻 🗞️ 👇 Product updates 👩🏼‍💻 • Augmedix announced public availability of Augmedix Go, their gen AI documentation product, for Emergency Departments.    • Forcura released AI referral summaries for the post-acute market.    • UTM Healthcare and FirstHx are teaming up to provide more robust medical histories.    • AI phone call tech company, Standard Practice, relaunched after pivoting from Nibble Health.    • Revenue cycle management platform, Ensemble Health Partners, is leveraging Microsoft Azure GenAI to enhance their service.    • MRO is extending its clinical data access tool to cover automatic retrieval of continuity of care requests.    • DrFirst, Inc. is partnering with PatchRx to improve medication adherence data. Notable partnerships 🤝 • Brigham and Women's Hospital partnered with FeelBetter to launch a study on the impact of their AI-based population health platform on polypharmacy patient management.    • Community Health Network selected Biofourmis for virtual and at-home care.    • Humana is extending its current use of prior authorizations platform, Cohere Health.    • Louisianan Community Health System deployed Retrieve Medical's Retrieve Dx Smart App to enhance documentation.    • Anne Arundel Dermatology will expand its current partnership with Relatient, adding Dash Schedule. Posts we enjoyed 👏 • Spencer Dorn’s reminder that more mature tech + good process is in many cases the better option than gen AI. (https://lnkd.in/eiK2DNfw) • Graham Walker, MD’s homegrown demo exploring the combination of clinically-informed text search + retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to enable better EHR note summaries. (https://lnkd.in/eDaqCh5H) --- Want to stay in the loop? Sign up for the Elion Briefing to get all of the latest healthcare tech news delivered to your inbox 📬 👉 https://bit.ly/49z6AUW

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DeepCura AI GridHooks are now live, integrate your healthcare data with anyone or anything and design JSON schemas with natural language. Create live dashboards on the fly, compliance spreadsheets, billing, almost anything is possible. https://lnkd.in/dTAjTqdb

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Learn about ethical and practical integration of AI, focusing on creating systems that improve patient care without compromising physician autonomy or patient privacy from speaker Jesse Ehrenfeld MD MPH at AIMed24. He advocates for responsible AI use that supports clinical decision-making, enhances patient safety, and alleviates administrative burdens on healthcare providers. #AIMed24

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Redesign Health has launched its largest fund to date, securing $175M to support over 20 new healthcare startups. Founded in 2018, the venture builder has previously incubated more than 60 companies, including Scriptology and Vivid Health. The new fund aims to address challenges such as healthy aging, interoperability, and expanding sites of care. This funding underscores investor confidence in tackling the $4T healthcare market's persistent challenges.

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Peter Birch from Talking HealthTech and I get down to the nitty-gritty of why 2025 might be the year of healthcare #interoperability.

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A health system asked if I could share what SeamlessMD’s secret sauce was for engaging patients… so I’ve decided to open source my response here. They wanted to know what principles and success factors have enabled our customer partners to achieve industry-leading results like: ⬇️ Cost of care by $1,000+ per patient ⬆️ Increased net profit of $1,000+ per patient ⬇️ 1 to 2 days length of stay ⬇️ 89% readmissions reduction by up to 89% ⬇️ 68% ED visit reduction by up to 68% ⬇️ 89% mortality ⬇️ 65% phone calls to providers Here are the main principles and success factors I shared: 1️⃣ It starts with a high touch partnership to ensure success. The People + Process we assign to a health system partnership matter even more than the Technology 2️⃣ Clinical expertise applied to the product matters more than Tech features. Our product’s secret sauce is our world class, pre-built care plan content. 3️⃣ Key elements of our care plan content that drive high patient engagement include: - Brand personalization - Condition-specific patient experiences - Personalization to a patient’s demographics & comorbidities - Condition-specific health status & symptom tracking - Automated self-care guidance for 80%+ of patient issues 4️⃣ Obsession with patient accessibility further optimizes patient engagement. - Gr. 6 reading level - Colour-blind tested - Screenreader friendly - WCAG 2.0 Level AA requirements met and more 5️⃣ Digital care plan implementation is Clinical Change Management. A successful implementation requires a proven playbook and hands-on expertise for: - Achieving care pathway standardization and alignment - while being efficient with clinician time commitment - Embedding digital care journeys into the clinical workflow: What workflows make the most sense for receiving alerts and monitoring dashboards given our limited staff resources? - Having the clinical acumen to going deep into the nitty gritty clinical workflows. E.g. for a pregnancy care journey - how will our solution know if there is an infant loss? How should the care plan change in that case? 6️⃣ Clinicians must be engaged to have a sense of ownership so they promote it to patients We’ve figured ou the optimal time commitment that ensures all clinicians are engaged during implementation (hint: physicians have very limited time!) 7️⃣ Let busy clinicians act as the Editors of Clinical Content. By having a clinical Patient Education team act as proactive Ghost Writers. - The key principles are to (1) earn clinician trust and (2) reduce friction to clinician engagement. 8️⃣ The ideal approach to patient enrollment varies from health system to health system. Sometimes a hybrid approach might even be needed 9️⃣ You must believe that the job’s not done until you achieve business outcomes. We obsess over the data and push our partners to measure ROI. More details in the slides below 👇 *** I’m curious: Which of these resonated most?

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Jeremy Knibbs and I caught up with Paul Wilder Bri Buch and Gurpreet (G.P.) Singh for a chat yesterday as we are watching the US interoperability journey with interest post the 21st Century Cures Act. We had the pleasure of Paul joining us at our Wild Health Cloud Summit in Sydney in 2022 for an armchair chat about what happens when you legislate to share health data using a stick and not a carrot. We were curious to see how things were tracking. CommonWell Health Alliance recently partnered with ELLKAY a nationwide leader in healthcare connectivity to support data exchange to 200 million patients across a network of 34 000 provider organisations in preparation for the next stage of their interoperability journey (TEFCA) the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement. The numbers seem mind boggling to us in Australia. Whilst Australia's population is a fraction of the US, we have not yet cracked the interoperability nut despite throwing billions $$ at the problem so we thought we would take a deeper dive on the US journey and our own as one of the themes at our WildHealth Summit in Melbourne on October 22nd. The program will be live next week and it’s one of our best yet! ( Watch this space!) As we can see from the Epic versus Particle dispute there is a lot we need to be across on our own journey to interoperability and a lot we can learn to avoid the same scars. #interoperability #datasharing #connectedcare

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Another large funding round in the virtual behavioral health space. It's interesting to note Talkiatry's focus on a physician-centric care model with W-2 providers, as opposed to most of the other players who are delivering care with 1099 mid-level therapists. However, it's still not clear to me how they are measuring care quality and outcomes, which is the foundation of true value-based care.

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Platforms are in, point solutions are out as the healthcare AI category leaders come into focus this year. In conversation with Shelby Livingston at Endpoints News, I shared: 1. Why AI-first companies have the greatest platform potential and heuristics for identifying these opportunities at the earliest stages, 2. How companies are differentiating through co-development and distribution partnerships with leading healthcare institutions, and 3. Strategies for navigating anemic budgets and constrained market sizes through business model innovation such as AI-enabled services and pay for performance models Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dJWqv_zC Bessemer Venture Partners Abridge #healthcare #lifesciences #AI #generativeAI

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