What You Missed in Healthcare IT: August Edition

1. Epic Was Everywhere in August

2. AI Ambient Scribes Are Going Mainstream

AI ambient scribes aren’t going anywhere any time soon; the big news, though, is that we’re seeing health systems move beyond pilots into enterprise-wide implementations.

• Kaiser Permanente went live with Abridge following a year of testing and implementation work.

• Reid Health rolled out Abridge to all clinicians following a pilot that found clinicians were able to spend 60 percent less time on after hours documentation.

• Ochsner Health announced an enterprise-wide agreement with DeepScribe.

• Ascension Saint Thomas announced Suki would be available to its 700-plus clinicians as well as second- and third-year residents with the goal of eventually rolling out to all residents.

• Northwestern Medicine is launching Nuance DAX enterprise-wide.

We also saw one of the first examples of an EHR company building its own native AI ambient scribe, with Elation Health releasing its Note Assist product. We’ll be interested to see whether more EHRs go down the “build” path, rather than partnering with an existing vendor to deliver the capability.

3. Digital Front Door Tools Keep Getting Smarter

Vendors are increasingly engaging patients directly with AI agents, despite the fact that consumers are more comfortable with clinical use-cases than AI call center tools. To whit:

• Fair Square Medicare released a suite of AI contact center intelligence and agent assist solutions, called Vox, for plan enrollment.

• MUSC Health is leveraging SoundHound’s conversational chat agent to manage appointments and answer patient questions.

• Weave, the patient engagement and payments platform, released an update that integrates patient payment reminders.

• NRC Health released a suite of new AI products for capturing feedback and improving responses.

Only time will tell whether the cost savings offered by AI will spell success for AI contact center and patient engagement vendors, or if patient preferences will win out.

4. The Front-End of the Rev Cycle is Going Automated

So far, we’ve seen AI-enabled coding make strides in adoption, but we’re excited to see more innovation on the front-end of the rev cycle. While benefits verification and prior auth tools can likewise help improve eventual payouts, they also have a beneficial impact on employee workflows and patient experience, allowing patients to be seen more quickly.

• Infinitus, the AI-powered benefits and prior auth solution, released a new instant benefits verification tool for commercial insurance patients seeking specialty medication.

• Opkit released its human-in-the-loop GenAI calling platform, which handles payer-facing calls for insurance verification, claims, and prior authorization.

• Valer and Clearwave are partnering to automate prior authorization submission, status checking, and verification.

5. Acquisitions Center On AI

According to a Crunchbase survey, the time between series A and B rounds is currently at its highest point in over a decade. With investments slowing, AI-first startups look like a good (and potentially more affordable in this market) investment to legacy vendors. In that vein, Stryker is acquiring care.ai.

On the flip-side, in the race to become the AI platform, some AI vendors are scooping up organizations with specific subject area expertise into which they can infuse their existing AI infrastructure. For example:

• VitalHub is acquiring MedCurrent

• AvaSure acquired Ouva

• Health Catalyst [acquired](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/health-catalyst-finalizes-acquisition-of-leading-care-management-company-lumeon-302217227.html#:~:text=(%22Health%20Catalyst%2C%22%20Nasdaq,United%20Kingdom%20dedicated%20to%20helping) Lumeon

Other resources you may have missed

In case you missed it, here’s a quick roundup of other resources we shared this month:

• The State of AI in RCM 2024 Report

• This month’s market maps: Price Transparency, Patient Price Estimation, Point of Care Clinical Decision Support, and AI Inbox Management

• This month’s conversations with healthcare leaders: Daniel Guerra of ChenMed, Keith Morse of Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, and Justin Brueck of Endeavor Health.