Healthcare AI Guy Weekly | 11/12

Subscribe | Advertise

Please share your input on AI’s impact on healthcare with this short survey!
Join Healthcare AI Guy and QuickBlox in exploring AI’s role in modern healthcare. Complete our short survey to share your perspective and receive our findings. You’ll also have a chance to win a $50 Amazon gift card — take the survey here!

Our Picks ✨

Highlights if you’ve only got 2 minutes…

1/

AI in healthcare: What to expect in Trump's 2nd term

As President-elect Trump prepares to take office, his administration is poised to shake up AI governance in healthcare by prioritizing innovation and reducing federal oversight. Where Biden’s approach emphasized strict regulatory transparency and ethical mandates, Trump leans toward industry-driven standards and self-regulation. A PwC report on Trump’s healthcare agenda notes his push for "industry self-governance to reduce government regulations," predicting a high likelihood of success. This shift would impact providers, payers, and pharmaceutical companies, encouraging them to set their own ethical guidelines. Trump’s vision centers on “AI rooted in free speech and human flourishing,” signaling a future where healthcare AI is propelled by industry autonomy, not federal guardrails. Expect an AI landscape in healthcare led by the industry under Trump’s administration. (link)

2/

Healthcare AI governance market

In tandem with the industry-led approach people are expecting under the new administration, there's a secondary AI land grab happening in healthcare to commercialize "governance" of AI software. Here's who’s taking market share in the healthcare AI governance space:

• CHAI (Coalition for Health AI): Made up of more than 3,000 health systems, tech companies and patient advocates — is creating a network of "assurance labs" with the talent and bandwidth to validate systems and evaluate ongoing performance.

• The Joint Commission (TJC): Launched a certification for responsible health data use, primarily addressing data governance, not model evaluation.

• Avanade SAIGE: Developed by Duke, Microsoft, and Accenture, it centers on AI registration and control, though its impact on governance is limited.

• DiME Seal: A quality attestation model covering select products but lacks governance capabilities.

• Aidoc BRIDGE with NVIDIA: Announced recently; it’s a conceptual framework for AI resilience, though details remain vague.

• Epic Seismometer: An open-source project aimed at AI measurement within EMR workflows rather than broader governance.

• HIMSS AMAM: Adapted from EMR analytics models, though its fit for AI governance is uncertain.

• Valid AI: Active in AI governance, emerging from UC Davis, but previously lacked clear objectives.

• Federal Oversight (ASTP/ONC, FDA): Government involvement exists, but agencies are still uncoordinated, creating a "Wild West" landscape for health AI governance.

• NCQA and AMIA: Major health quality organizations surprisingly absent from the governance discussion so far.

Health systems typically rely on the FDA to validate tools, but AI algorithms pose unique challenges because they evolve over time and rely on variable data. This makes regulation difficult, as an algorithm trained in one location may not perform similarly in another. "If you want to know your AI is actually doing what you thought it was doing, you actually need to validate it in the situation in which it’s being used," noted FDA Commissioner Robert Califf. This landscape is marked by rapid movement but lacks cohesive standards, creating opportunities and challenges in AI governance for healthcare. (link)

3/

General Catalyst acquires Summa Health for $485M

General Catalyst’s HATCo has acquired Summa Health for $485M, with an additional $350M allocated for capital improvements and $200M for innovation over seven years. This transformative partnership aims to integrate advanced technologies, such as AI-driven clinical decision support and “ambient listening” tools, to enhance doctor-patient interactions across Summa. Summa will begin integrating solutions from GC’s portfolio companies (such as Hippocratic AI, Commure, HealthEx, etc.) throughout its acute, critical, outpatient, ED, and home care services. This Summa deal could be the industry model for tech-enabled healthcare transformation. (link)

Tools & Partnerships 🔧

Latest on business, consumer, and clinical healthcare AI tools and partnerships…

TOOLS

• AI protein-prediction tool AlphaFold3 is now open source: The code underlying the Nobel-prize-winning tool for modeling protein structures can now be downloaded by academics for non-commercial applications. The golden age of computational science is about to begin! (link)

• Notable introduces ‘Flow Builder’: Notable bolstered its AI automation platform with the launch of Flow Builder, a low-code interface that allows users to build, customize, and deploy AI-powered agents across a range of operational workflows. The agents integrate directly with the EHR and other systems to perform manual tasks such as patient registration, scheduling, referrals, authorizations, coding, and care gap identification. (link)

• AI-powered medical body cams: A study in npj Digital Medicine found that AI-enabled body cameras can accurately detect medication delivery errors. Researchers at UW trained the system with 55 days of video from two hospitals, including 17 operating rooms and 13 anesthesiology providers. Tested on 418 drug draw events, it identified vial mix-ups with 99.6% sensitivity and 98.8% specificity, allowing care teams to intervene before errors occurred. (link)

• LLMs for sepsis management: Research in NEJM AI found that LLMs match human accuracy in chart abstraction for sepsis quality measures. Using FHIR data, the LLM completed SEP-1 abstractions, aligning with human abstractors in 90 out of 100 cases. The study suggests AI could be a cost-effective supplement to manual reporting. (link)

• SmarterDx unveils AI denials solution: The AI clinical documentation integrity vendor released an AI denials solution that creates AI-generated appeals letters to combat hospital payer denials. (link)

PARTNERSHIPS

• Abridge + Open Notes: OpenNotes, a health transparency research group that is part of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston, is partnering with Abridge to evaluate AI-generated patient visit summaries from a patient-centric lens. (link)

• Nabla + CHAI: Nabla is bringing its ambient AI expertise to the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) to help develop industry best practices and address the pressing need for better model quality assurance, representation, and ethical use. (link)

• Presbyterian Healthcare Services + RhythmX: RhythmX AI, a company focused on building AI-powered copilots for physicians to help surface next-best clinical actions and tailor treatments to patients, to roll out gen AI copilots for primary care at Presbyterian. (link)

• CerpassRx + Waltz Health: CerpassRx, an independent pharmacy benefit manager, is teaming up with Waltz Health to launch a new AI-powered tool that aims to better manage specialty drug spending. (link)

• Brook Health + Linus Health: The AI-integrated virtual care solution is partnering with the dementia screening and care plan solution to provide treatment plans and ongoing remote clinical care. (link)

Deal Desk 💸 

Spotlight on latest capital raises, M&A, and investments…

FUNDING

• Precision Neuroscience, a brain implant rival to Elon Musk’s Neuralink, has raised $93M of funding. (link)

• Research Grid, a London-based provider of workflow automation software for clinical trials, raised $6.5M in seed funding. Fuel Ventures led, and was joined by Ada Ventures and Morgan Stanley Inclusive Ventures Lab. (link)

• Conflixis, a Dallas-based healthcare data and risk software platform, raised $4.2M in seed funding. Lerer Hippeau and Origin Ventures led the round and were joined by mark vc, Springtime Ventures, and existing investor Crētiv Capital. (link)

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

• General Catalyst + Summa Health: General Catalyst’s HATCo signed a $485M agreement to acquire Ohio-based Summa Health. Once it closes, Summa will begin integrating solutions, including AI-powered ones, from GC’s portfolio companies throughout its acute, critical, outpatient, ED, and home care services. (link)

• XRHealth + NeuroReality: Therapeutic extended reality platform XR Health announced it acquired cognitive training VR platform NeuroReality and its assets, including its main product, Koji's Quest. (link)

Other Relevant News 🔍

News, podcasts, blogs, tweets, resources, etc… 

• Mayo Clinic advances healthcare AI: 4 notes (link)

• LLMs don’t enhance medical reasoning (link)

• Warning that “politics of avoidance” could limit AI’s ability to impact public health (link)

• How AdventHealth used AI to identify 23% more patients with cancer risk (link)

• Future of AI — A collection of articles from the Financial Times (link)

Visuals of the Week 📸

Funny memes, cool pics, and interesting data from around the web…