Today's Healthcare Pulse
Abridge teams with Eli Lilly and Nvidia to expand AI scribe platform
Abridge announced a strategic investment from Eli Lilly and a partnership with Nvidia to build a foundation model for clinical conversations. The AI‑scribe provider now serves over 300 health systems and plans to integrate its platform with payers and broader care settings.
Also developing:
By the numbers: Kardigan targets $1.4B IPO valuation
Webinar to Discuss Grant Resources for Rural Health Organizations
The American Hospital Association hosted a webinar during its 2026 Rural Health Care Leadership Conference to guide rural providers through available grant programs. Speakers including AHA EVP Michelle Hood and Sanford Health CEO Bill Gassen highlighted practical funding strategies and policy updates. The event coincided with the release of the AHA’s 2026 Rural Advocacy Agenda and the announcement of WVU Medicine Potomac Valley Hospital as the Rural Hospital Excellence in Innovation Award winner. Attendees left with actionable tools to secure financing and influence Capitol Hill discussions.
CDC Facing Another Lawsuit Over Grant Cuts In Blue States
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly cancelled multi‑year public‑health grants that had already been awarded to jurisdictions in Democratic‑led states. The rescinded funding includes Public Health Infrastructure Grants and programs targeting HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. The...
The Medical Referral Process: Why It Fails and How to Fix It
The medical referral process is plagued by delays, miscommunication, and inappropriate specialist assignments, causing many patients to fall through the cracks. Studies show up to half of specialty referrals are never completed and over a third do not match the...
Talkiatry Rakes In $210M to Scale Virtual Psychiatry Group
Telepsychiatry startup Talkiatry closed a $210 million Series D round, bringing total capital raised above $400 million. The funding, led by Perceptive Advisors with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and others, will support scaling its virtual psychiatry platform, which currently employs over 800 psychiatrists...
It’s 2026, but Hospitals Still Haven’t Prevented Snooping in Celebrities’ Records
A Michigan hospital, likely McLaren Northern Michigan, is accused by internet personality Josh Clarke of allowing staff to view his medical records, take selfies in his treatment area, and conceal his presence on a notice board. Clarke’s video alleges that...
Amazon Pharmacy to Expand Same-Day Delivery to 4,500 Cities
Amazon Pharmacy announced a same‑day delivery rollout to nearly 4,500 cities by 2026, adding roughly 2,000 new communities including Idaho and Massachusetts. The expansion leverages Amazon’s logistics network, Prime discounts and One Medical kiosks that let Los Angeles patients pick up...
The Air We Breathe Is A Health Equity Issue
The White House plans to rescind the 2009 EPA endangerment finding, removing federal authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The article argues that this deregulation will shift health costs to disadvantaged communities, citing decades of research linking...
Pharma CEOs Should Demand Prasad’s Departure
BioCentury’s editorial warns that the current director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) is jeopardizing patient safety and destabilizing the pharmaceutical industry. The author cites the director’s handling of Moderna’s flu vaccine as a recent example...
Partnerships Push Innovation in the Aging Tech Space
The 2025 LeadingAge Annual Meeting highlighted the need to involve older adults directly in testing and adopting new care technologies. Louisville’s Thrive Center, partnered with CDW Healthcare and Asbury Communities, provides a functional smart‑home lab where seniors can trial solutions...
FDA Approved Pembrolizumab Using Single‑Arm Trials Across Tumors
It would be highly instructive to read the pembrolizumab paper highlighted by @DrPatrick. Of course, he doesn't expect anyone to do that. This is what it says IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH: The FDA approved pembrolizumab on May 23, 2017, for...
NIH Will Not Renew Criswell’s Term As NIAMS Director, Adding To Leadership Vacancies
The National Institutes of Health announced it will not renew Linsey Criswell's term as director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS). Criswell's departure creates another open director position amid a growing list of leadership...
Physician Wellness Theater: Why Pizza Parties Do Not Fix Burnout
Physician wellness initiatives—pizza parties, mindfulness apps, and burnout surveys—are increasingly seen as superficial "wellness theater" that fail to address the structural drivers of physician distress. The article argues that burnout is better understood as moral injury arising from time pressure,...
Cognibotics Helps Advance Motion Layer for AI-Guided Surgical Robotics in CAISA
Cognibotics is providing the motion‑control layer for the Vinnova‑funded CAISA project, linking AI perception and path‑planning modules in a paediatric heart‑surgery testbed. The collaboration, involving Region Skåne, Lund University and Cobotic, moves into a demonstrator phase using a 350 m² simulated...
Alrajhi Medicine Replaces Legacy Systems with Oracle Cloud ERP and EHR
Alrajhi Medicine, a Saudi private healthcare network, has chosen Oracle to replace its legacy clinical and enterprise systems with Oracle Health Foundation electronic health record (EHR) and Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications. The unified cloud platform will integrate patient records, finance,...
Creating CAR-T Cells Using Current Alzheimer’s Antibodies
Researchers engineered CD4+ T cells with chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) derived from FDA‑approved Alzheimer’s antibodies aducanumab and lecanemab. The lecanemab‑based CAR (Lec28z) selectively bound fibrillar amyloid‑beta and reduced plaque burden in mouse brains, especially when delivered via transient mRNA transfection....
Medical Emergencies Can Lead to Debt and Bankruptcy — Even for Insured Americans
A new Health Affairs study of nearly 13,000 trauma patients shows that even insured Americans face sharp rises in medical debt and bankruptcy after serious injuries. Within 18 months, the share of patients with debt in collections grew 5.2 percentage...
Senate Questions Health Care Firm for Profiting Off Program Meant for Poor
The Senate Health Committee has subpoenaed Apexus, a for‑profit Texas firm that administers the federal 340B drug‑price program, to explain its earnings and business practices. Apexus reportedly generated $227 million in revenue in 2022 with profit margins above 80 percent, despite the...
AI Doctor in Pocket Offers 24/7 Monitoring
.@tryprana is an AI primary doctor in your pocket that monitors you 24/7. Connect your wearables to your medical records to monitor for clinical drift. At any moment, you can instantly bring a Board-Certified MD into the chat to review your...
Seres to Lay Off Staff, Pause Top Program in Latest Reboot
Seres Therapeutics, a cash‑strapped microbiome drug developer, will cut about 30 % of its workforce and suspend its lead program SER‑155, which targets graft‑versus‑host disease. The company will redirect resources toward earlier‑stage immunology candidates such as SER‑603, aiming to extend its...
Bioresorbable Implant Uses Heat to Block Pain
Our latest paper appeared today as a cover (inside front) feature article in Advanced Functional Materials, titled “A Bioresorbable Neural Interface for On-Demand Thermal Pain Block.” The focus is on a bioresorbable, implantable form of neural electronics that supports precisely...
New AI Approach Weighs Data ‘Temperature’ to Improve Prediction Accuracy
Penn State researchers unveiled ZENN, a zentropy‑embedded neural network that fuses thermodynamic entropy and a data "temperature" parameter to weigh heterogeneous inputs. By separating signal energy from intrinsic noise, ZENN achieves markedly higher prediction fidelity, demonstrated by a 90% accuracy...
'She Makes Me Laugh': Seniors Are Building Deep Bonds With This Friendly AI Robot
Intuition Robotics’ ElliQ, a voice‑activated AI companion, is forging genuine relationships with seniors living alone, delivering up to 30 daily conversations. In New York, users who kept the robot for a month reported a 95% drop in loneliness, with many describing...
Anterior Secures $40M to Expand AI Deployments in Health Plans
Anterior, a clinician‑led AI platform for health insurers, closed a $40 million financing round, raising its total capital to $64 million with investors including NEA and Sequoia. The company differentiates itself through a “Forward Deployed Clinician” model that embeds medical professionals alongside...
Maven Clinic and Color Health Partner to Expand Virtual Oncofertility Services
Maven Clinic and Color Health have launched a joint oncofertility program that integrates virtual cancer care with a family‑building platform. The partnership targets the roughly 80,000 U.S. young‑adult cancer diagnoses each year, where fewer than half of patients receive fertility‑preservation...
Antimicrobial Resistance Causes: Why Social Factors Matter More than Drugs
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is now a global health emergency, with the WHO noting up to one‑in‑five infections in parts of Africa are drug‑resistant. While antibiotic misuse is visible, the deeper drivers are social: poverty, overcrowding, and limited clean water fuel...
Keragon AI Transforms Healthcare Operations with HIPAA-Compliant Conversational Interface
Keragon has launched an AI‑powered automation platform that links more than 300 healthcare applications through conversational, no‑code prompts while maintaining HIPAA compliance. The solution lets clinical and operations staff design and deploy workflows in minutes, eliminating the traditional reliance on...
Ambience Healthcare Launches “Chart Awareness” To Automate Coding and Clinical Summaries
Ambience Healthcare introduced “Chart Awareness,” an AI capability that reads a patient’s full longitudinal record—including labs, imaging and prior notes—to generate richer clinical summaries. The update adds chart‑aware patient summaries, auto‑extracted diagnostic trends, and coding assistance that can substantiate complex...
Resident Doctors in Scotland Accept Pay Deal, Averting Strikes
Resident doctors in Scotland have overwhelmingly approved a revised pay offer, with 97.1% voting in favour and a 62.4% turnout, averting planned strike action. The British Medical Association secured a deal that provides a 4.25% pay rise for 2025‑26 and...
What Do You Think About Physician Noncompete Agreements?
Physician non‑compete agreements are back in the spotlight as the FTC signals a targeted crackdown on contracts it deems unreasonable, rather than pursuing a sweeping federal ban. The debate pits practice protection against clinician mobility and continuity of care. Medical...
Private Insurance Is Seeping Into Every Public Health Program: Warning Signs From the Veterans Health Administration
The episode examines how private insurance is infiltrating the Veterans Health Administration via the Veterans Community Care Program (VCCP) and the proposed Community Care Network (CCN) Next Generation, a move that could channel up to $1 trillion of taxpayer money into...
Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease Series: Rheumatic Valve Disease
The TCTMD podcast released a new episode in its Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease series focusing on rheumatic valve disease. Hosts Ami Bhatt and Robert Levine explore the diagnostic hurdles that pediatric patients face, including overlapping symptoms with other cardiac...
FDA’s Prasad‑Era: Rules Shift, Rare‑Disease Drugs Stalled
This week's Biotech Scorecard newsletter: The old Vinay Prasad never left. He just changed jobs Submissions to the FDA are handled by teams of reviewers, of course. But when I look across all of these recent cases, I see a...
Epic in the Crosshairs
The episode recaps the ASTP Annual Meeting, highlighting its role as the premier gathering for health‑tech and interoperability stakeholders and noting the scarcity of concrete announcements. The most significant insight came from a surprise panel on Information Blocking featuring the...
Ubie and Mayo Clinic to Launch “Smart Support” AI Triage Platform
Ubie, a Google‑backed AI health platform, has teamed up with Mayo Clinic to co‑develop “Ubie Smart Support,” an AI‑driven triage system that merges chat and voice interfaces into a single digital front door. The solution will assess symptoms, route patients...
GE HealthCare Installs Allia Moveo at USF Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation
GE HealthCare’s Allia Moveo, a compact cable‑free C‑arm with a lateral wide‑bore for Cone Beam CT, has been installed at the University of South Florida’s Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS). This makes CAMLS the first Florida and...
A Guide to the Best Disaster Recovery Solutions for Health Care Organizations
Healthcare providers face heightened risk from cyber attacks and natural disasters, making robust disaster recovery essential. Vendors such as Dataprise, Veeam, Acronis, Zerto, and Carbonite offer cloud, hybrid, and on‑premises solutions that promise rapid recovery, HIPAA compliance, and proactive monitoring....
Andor Health Scores Three Premier Contracts to Automate Virtual Care
Andor Health, a leader in agentic AI, has secured three national contracts with Premier Inc. The agreements span Virtual Care (effective Dec 1, 2025), Clinical Communications & Collaboration (Feb 1, 2026), and Remote Patient Monitoring (Mar 1, 2026). They grant Premier members access to ThinkAndor®, an...
Terray’s AI Model Accelerates Drug Potency Prediction, Pose Not Needed
Terray Therapeutics unveiled TerraBind, an AI model that predicts small‑molecule potency without generating a binding pose. The model delivers roughly 20% higher accuracy and a 26‑fold efficiency boost versus the open‑source Boltz‑2 benchmark. By eliminating the computationally intensive pose step,...
RxERP Integrates Embedded Microtransponder Technology for Improved Pharmaceutical Traceability
RxERP has signed a licensing agreement with p‑Chip Corporation to embed light‑activated microtransponder tags into its pharmaceutical ERP serialization workflows. The embedded tags provide a permanent, tamper‑resistant digital ID that links directly to RxERP’s receiving, inventory, verification and reporting records,...
Blinded by Science: The Importance of RWD and Post-Market Surveillance
The explosive uptake of GLP‑1 drugs—now used by roughly 12% of U.S. adults—has spotlighted both their therapeutic benefits and emerging safety concerns. Post‑market surveillance, leveraging real‑world data (RWD), is uncovering rare vision‑related adverse events that clinical trials missed. AI‑driven analytics...
Immigrant Caregiver Burden: The Hidden Cost of the Five-Year Medicaid Wait
Immigrant families like the Sureshes are caring for elderly relatives while awaiting Medicaid eligibility, which requires a five‑year waiting period for lawful non‑citizen permanent residents. The father, a remote‑work tech professional, provides full‑time care for his 95‑year‑old mother, incurring high...
Pepsi Slashes Junk‑food Prices After SNAP Lobbying Backlash
PepsiCo reportedly spent $2.8 million last year lobbying to keep junk food eligible for food stamps. Then 18 states moved to restrict SNAP purchases of soda, candy, and ultra-processed snacks. Within a week, PepsiCo cut prices on Doritos, Lay's, and Tostitos by...
Sanofi's Board Ousts Hudson, New CEO Faces Dupixent Gap
So Sanofi's board strikes again. Paul Hudson gets the old Paris boot 6 years after taking on the task of remaking the pipeline. It hasn't gone well. Next: Belen Garijo. She has a few years to get ready for the...
Global Vaccine Market Persists, but Innovation May Falter
“Yes, the rest of the world can maintain a market for vaccines. But will it be as innovative and as vibrant as it has been? That’s a different question.” https://t.co/jB38FWfglo
Seres Cuts Staff and Pauses Flagship Program
Seres to lay off staff, pause top program in latest reboot https://t.co/yJRtypSN3d by @Lilah_Alvarado $MCRB - 37%
Molecular Mimicry Links J&J Vaccine to Rare Clotting
Cracking the case: how did adenoviral vector vaccine such as the J&J's Covid induce very rare and potentially fatal clotting, bleeding? An elegant proof of molecular mimicry—genetic background + rogue antibodies https://t.co/yp6TNE8ZQC https://t.co/NhhYDvntmT @rkhamsi @TheAtlantic https://t.co/xY7f6MVkx9 @kakape @GretchenVogel1 @ScienceMagazine
Sanofi Appoints Ex-Merck KGaA Chief Garijo as CEO
Sanofi, looking for more ‘rigor,’ swaps CEO Hudson for ex-Merck KGaA chief Garijo https://t.co/SDLUYOzPuD by Kristin Jensen $SNY - 4% $MKKGY
Oracle Health AI Empowers NHS Doctors to Tackle Challenges
Bringing the innovative capabilities of @OracleHealth Clinical AI Agent to the NHS and throughout the UK underscores our commitment to empowering doctors to deliver exceptional care. By embedding advanced AI-powered capabilities into clinician workflows, we can tackle some of the region's biggest healthcare...
Terray's Non‑diffusion AI Beats Boltz
NEW: Terray has taken a contrarian AI approach, building a non-diffusion-based model for binding affinity predictions They shared some H2H results against Boltz-2, a popular open-source model, showing 20% more accuracy + 26x faster to run: https://t.co/BFZU8y6qI8
AI Models May Cheat on Molecular Binding Predictions
The Utah-based startup Leash Bio is warning of the potential for AI models to be cheating on tasks like predicting binding affinities of molecules I talked with @allmeasures about how its "Name that Chemist" quiz relates to the goal of generalization:...