Monday, June 1, 2026

< + > CIO Podcast – Episode 115: Healthcare Communication Solutions with John Gaede

For the 115th episode of the CIO podcast hosted by Healthcare IT Today, we are joined by John Gaede, CIO at San Juan Regional Medical Center, to talk about healthcare communication solutions! We kick this episode off by discussing the big challenges Gaede faces as a rural health CIO. Next, Gaede shares why he chose to go with the PerfectServe solution over the EHR functionality for his organization. Then, we dive deep into the scope of Gaede’s project with PerfectServe as he shares his main goals for it as a clinical project vs as an IT project. Gaede has mentioned that this is the most important project he’s undertaken and is the major focus of his transformation efforts, so we dive into why this is so important. Next, we talk about the other projects Gaede is working on/recently completed that he’s excited about. We then switch over to the technologies/solutions/vendors/etc. Gaede has not implemented, but is keeping an eye on. Lastly, we conclude this episode with Gaede sharing advice to anyone aspiring to be a CIO like him.

Here’s a look at the questions and topics we discuss in this episode:

  • What are some of the big challenges you face as a rural health CIO?
  • Talk about why you recently chose to go with the PerfectServe solution at your organization rather than using the EHR functionality.
  • Describe the scope of the project with PerfectServe and your main goals for it as a clinical project vs an IT project.
  • You mentioned that this is the “most important project you’re undertaking” and is a major focus of your transformation efforts. Why is this so important?
  • What other projects are you working on or recently completed that you’re excited about?
  • What technology, solution, vendor, etc., have you not implemented, but you’re watching?
  • What advice would you give someone who aspires to be a CIO like you?

Now, without further ado, we’re excited to share with you the next episode of the CIO Podcast by Healthcare IT Today.

We release a new CIO Podcast every ~2 weeks. You can also subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today podcast on any of the following platforms:

NOTE: We’ll be updating the links below as the various podcasting platforms approve the new podcast.  Check back soon to be able to subscribe on your favorite podcast application.

Thanks for listening to the CIO Podcast on Healthcare IT Today and if you enjoy the content we’re sharing, please rate the podcast on your favorite podcasting platform.

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We’d love to hear what you think of the podcast and if there are other healthcare CIO you’d like to see us have on the program. Feel free to share your thoughts and perspectives in the comments of this post with @techguy on Twitter, or privately on our Contact Us page.

We appreciate you listening!

Listen to the Latest Episodes



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< + > Rialtic and Exponential AI Announce Strategic Merger to Transform Healthcare Payment Accuracy and Decision Intelligence

Rialtic, a cloud-based enterprise platform for healthcare payment accuracy, and Exponential AI, a leader in real-time healthcare AI decision intelligence, today announced a definitive agreement to merge the two organizations, bringing together two of the industry’s most consequential innovators in agentic learning and claims intelligence. This strategic move creates a unified platform designed to meet the evolving needs of healthcare payers and providers by combining deep payment accuracy expertise with advanced agentic technology. Moreover, it arrives at a pivotal moment, in which payers and providers are working to make healthcare meaningfully more affordable for American families and employers.

This merger is the deliberate execution of a shared strategic vision between two companies whose roadmaps have long pointed toward the same horizon. The newly combined organization is aimed at addressing a market that increasingly demands intelligent agentic solutions that are faster to implement, ROI-positive, and easy to blend into existing workflows. The combined entity will offer a comprehensive product suite that covers critical moments in the claim lifecycle: prepay editing before a claim is paid and real-time decision intelligence during and around claims processing, including clinical and quality processes for payer and provider markets.

In the newly combined organization, Paul Roma will serve as Chief Executive Officer, effective upon close of the merger. Roma will be responsible for leading the company’s unified strategy and day-to-day operations as Rialtic moves forward as a single, integrated entity. Doug Williams, who previously served as CEO, will assume the role of Executive Chairman of the Board, providing strategic oversight and guidance to the organization.

“As we evaluated our go-forward strategy, Exponential AI emerged as the ideal partner to complement our world-class editing system,” said Doug Williams, Executive Chairman at Rialtic. “While Rialtic provides the rules-based precision to prevent improper spend, Exponential’s AI technology allows our customers to go live quickly with specific workflows, significantly accelerating their time-to-value.”

Together, Rialtic and Exponential AI will offer one of the industry’s most comprehensive suites of products for the claim lifecycle:

  • Comprehensive Payment Lifecycle Coverage: One solution spanning claims, clinical, and quality workflows
  • Context Aware Intelligence: Integrating Rialtic’s prepay accuracy platform paired with Exponential’s AI agents to deliver the rules, nuances, and subject-matter expertise needed to make accurate decisions for prior authorization, pend resolution, and audits
  • Enhanced Scale: Built on a decision intelligence platform active with multiple high-value clients to accelerate profitability and growth, designed to stack, scale, and continuously drive operational and financial performance
  • Expanded Market Reach: Increased ability to pursue both payer and provider segments with a more fulsome solution

By uniting these capabilities under one platform, the combined entity removes the friction, waste, and administrative drag that have long inflated the cost of care.

“Doug and I believe that, together, our two organizations will create the technology our clients need to meet their goals,” said Paul Roma, CEO at Rialtic. “By embedding our AI decision agents directly into live workflows to resolve exceptions and guide human review in real-time, we are providing the speed and efficiency the market now requires.”

Following the close, the combined company will prioritize delivering immediate value to its clients by accelerating innovation, enhancing product capabilities, and ensuring seamless continuity of service.

About Rialtic

Founded in 2020, based out of Atlanta, Rialtic is building a next-generation healthcare platform, starting with Payment Accuracy, helping payers to contain healthcare costs and regain control of their claims accuracy process. Rialtic is a team of industry experts working alongside seasoned product and technology professionals. For more information, please visit rialtic.io.

About Exponential AI

Exponential AI is a leading Healthcare Decision Intelligence platform company that enables healthcare organizations to make transparent, predictable, and explainable machine decisions in real-time—driving zero-latency operations at scale.

Its real-time, scalable platform, Enso, includes a reusable ecosystem of prebuilt Decision Agents and healthcare products. These can be rapidly integrated into existing workflows—including legacy systems—to deliver immediate business value and improve operational outcomes.

Deployed across leading U.S. health plans and systems, Exponential AI’s solutions generate measurable impact across core healthcare functions, including claims processing, utilization management, contract management, revenue cycle management, payment integrity, and audit.

Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Exponential AI also operates a dedicated R&D center in Hyderabad, India.

Originally announced May 11th, 2026



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Sunday, May 31, 2026

< + > Bonus Features – May 31, 2026 – 1 in 8 medical practices have deployed an AI receptionist, Teladoc Health teams up with Walmart, plus 21 more stories

Welcome to the weekly edition of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features. This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT that we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job.

Studies

Partnerships

Products

Implementations

Company News

People

If you have news that you’d like us to consider for a future edition of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features, please submit them on this page. Please include any relevant links and let us know if news is under embargo. Note that submissions received after the close of business on Thursday may not be included in Bonus Features until the following week.



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Saturday, May 30, 2026

< + > Weekly Roundup – May 30, 2026

Welcome to our Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup. Each week, we’ll be providing a look back at the articles we posted and why they’re important to the healthcare IT community. We hope this gives you a chance to catch up on anything you may have missed during the week.

Filling Point-of-Care Gaps in Behavioral Health. David Wilson at AdvancedMD joined Colin Hung to discuss the company’s eMAR solution and explain why electronic medication administration records matter for in-house behavioral health treatment. Read more…

Making AI and Value-Based Care Work in Rural Health Facilities. Pranam Ben at The Garage and Brittany Sachdeva at Cibolo Health told John Lynn the most impactful value-based care model operates as an extension of the care team, focuses on disease management, and uses AI to identify revenue opportunities. Read more…

Ambient AI Scribes Help Clinicians Spend Less Time Charting at Night. Cynthia Cox at Kentucky-based Family Health Centers talked to John about using Sunoh.ai in primary care and behavioral health, where many practitioners use the scribe to capture more than 90% of clinical notes. Read more…

Life Sciences Today Podcast: Introducing a Medical Writing Platform for FDA Submissions. Anita Modi at Peer AI joined Danny Lieberman to talk about cutting in half the time it takes to write complex medical documents for regulatory submissions. Read more…

Healthcare IT Today Podcast: Trends in Healthcare Marketing and Patient Experience. Hot on the heels of the Swaay.Health LIVE conference, John and Colin discussed where AI is changing behavior in seeking and getting care. They also debated AI’s impact on healthcare websites. Read more…

When Lower Cost-to-Collect Fails to Improve Cash Flow. Cost-to-collect doesn’t tell organizations whether they captured reimbursements they were entitled to receive, noted Sid Mehta at Access Healthcare. That’s why the focus must shift from operational cost to revenue realization. Read more…

Scaling Smart Hospitals Is Harder Than it Looks; Here’s What Actually Works. The technology is never the problem, said Alisha Moopen at Aster DM Healthcare. The challenge is that scaling requires a fundamental rethink of how care is designed, delivered, and coordinated. Read more…

Why Sleep Is the Obvious Starting Point for Digital Mental Health’s Physiological Layer. Colin Lawlor at Sleep.ai outlined how sleep tracking accuracy has evolved and why sleep matters for addressing mental health symptoms before they can increase the risk of depression or anxiety. Read more…

The Difference Between a Correctly Coded Claim and a Payable One. AI coding tools are trained on documentation patterns and audit logic, not the relationship between codes, said Dr. Jenakan Dev at Grelin Health. To fix this, organizations need to focus on how claims are constructed and validated. Read more…

HIPAA-Compliant Telehealth Requires a Flexible, Device-Agnostic Workforce. Enforcing consistent security policies can be challenging with remote contractors using personal or third-party devices, noted David Matalon at Venn. Isolating ePHI and healthcare applications inside a protected workspace can help. Read more…

This Week’s Health IT Jobs for May 27, 2026: Multiple organizations are looking for IT directors. Read more…

Bonus Features for May 24, 2026: 74% of compromised healthcare devices store EHR credentials; plus, 62% of organizations say legacy data archiving impacts patient care. Read more…

Funding and M&A Activity:

Thanks for reading and be sure to check out our latest Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundups.



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Friday, May 29, 2026

< + > Peer AI – Medical Writing Platform for FDA Submissions – Life Sciences Today Podcast Episode 63

We’re excited to be back for another episode of the Life Sciences Today Podcast by Healthcare IT Today. My guest today is Anita Modi, Co-Founder and CEO at Peer AI. Peer AI is a medical writing acceleration tool for pharma/biotech regulatory teams, now repositioning as a “submission platform.” The authoring piece is the real product — the orchestration and prediction layers are newer and almost certainly less mature. The April 14, 2026, press release announcing they’re “now a platform” is the tell: two weeks ago, they were a document-drafting tool, and the Command Center + query prediction capabilities are fresh additions being marketed ahead of their maturity curve.

The core wedge is medical writer productivity on large clinical documents for IND/NDA/BLA submissions. Every single attributed quote on their site is from a medical writer, head of medical writing, or regulatory VP — not from CMOs, not from heads of regulatory strategy, not from CEOs. That’s diagnostic. The buyer is a Head of Medical Writing at a mid-to-large biotech or pharma who is drowning in CSR and protocol drafts and can justify a tool that cuts 40-day drafts to 17.

Check out the main topics of discussion for this episode of the Life Sciences Today podcast:

  • Tell us about your journey to Peer AI.
  • You started with medical writing being your primary customers, but are you moving up the chain now?
  • How do you create value for your customers?
  • A 2014 survey found that the average delay for resubmissions took 435 days. Have things gotten better on their own by now?
  • Do medical writers not write code anymore? Are they just writing specs for what they want to see as the end result?
  • In your new version, you talk about predicting queries. Tell me about that, how is it working?
  • How do you create value?
  • Unlike other startups, the budget is already on the table for you. What is that like?
  • What is your business model? How do you charge your customers?
  • Do you primarily work with drugs, or do you work with device companies as well?
  • What are three things you want to do for your customers in the next nine months?
  • Let’s say I’m a specialty CRO in Philadelphia who specializes in neurodegenerative diseases. I have 10 medical writers on my staff, and I want to fire all of them and hire you. Could I do that?
  • What is the biggest anti-pattern in your industry?

Subscribe to Danny’s newsletter to get strategic patterns for life science leaders building a defensible business.

Be sure to subscribe to the Life Sciences Today Podcast on your favorite podcasting platform:

Along with the popular podcasting platforms above, you can Subscribe to Healthcare IT Today on YouTube.  Plus, all of the audio and video versions will be made available to stream on Healthcare IT Today. As a former pharma-tech founder who bootstrapped to exit, I now help TechBio and digital health CEOs grow revenue—by solving the tech, team, and go-to-market problems that stall your progress. If you want a warrior by your side, connect with me on LinkedIn.

If you work in Life Sciences IT, we’d love to hear where you agree and/or disagree with our takes on health IT innovation in life sciences. Feel free to share your thoughts and perspectives in the comments of this post, in the YouTube comments, or privately on our Contact Us page. Let us know what you think of the podcast and if you have any ideas for future episodes.

Thanks so much for listening!



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< + > Why Scaling Smart Hospitals is Harder Than it Looks — And What Actually Works

The following is a guest article by Alisha Moopen, Managing Director and Group CEO at Aster DM Healthcare

Every health system leader I speak with has a smart hospital pilot they’re proud of. A connected room that reduced response times. A virtual monitoring tool that caught deterioration early. An AI-assisted workflow that impressed the clinical team and made it onto a conference slide. What far fewer of them have is a second floor that looks like the first.

That gap — between a successful pilot and genuine enterprise-wide transformation — is the defining challenge of healthcare’s digital moment. And after years of scaling connected care across one of the Middle East and South Asia’s largest integrated healthcare networks, I can tell you: it is almost never a technology problem. The technology works. The scaling doesn’t — because scaling requires something harder than a good proof of concept. It requires a fundamental rethink of how care is designed, delivered, and coordinated.

The Pilot Trap

Pilots succeed in controlled conditions. They have dedicated champions, focused resources, and the benefit of novelty. Enterprise rollouts inherit none of those advantages. Different units have different workflows, different cultures, different patient mixes — and technology that was shaped around one environment rarely transplants cleanly into another. I’ve watched health systems deploy the same platform across ten facilities and get ten different results, not because the platform failed, but because the implementation assumed uniformity that didn’t exist.

The workforce dimension compounds this significantly. When digital tools are added to clinical workflows rather than integrated into them, they don’t save time — they consume it. Clinicians already managing documentation burden, alert fatigue, and staffing pressures don’t need another system to check. They need technology that works the way care works: continuously, collaboratively, and without friction. Getting that right requires involving clinical teams not as end-users of technology decisions, but as co-designers of them. In my experience, that shift — from deploying technology to co-designing it with clinical teams — is consistently where adoption outcomes diverge.

Technology as Infrastructure, Not Addition

The framing I keep returning to is this: smart hospital technology should be infrastructure, not an addition. When a virtual monitoring system’s data doesn’t flow directly into a clinician’s existing decision workflow, it becomes noise. When a connected room operates independently of the EHR, its value is isolated. When digital and physical care pathways are designed separately, you don’t have a smart hospital — you have a regular hospital with expensive equipment in it.

At Aster Hospital Al Qusais — recognized on Newsweek’s World’s Best Smart Hospitals 2025 list, and a two-time recipient of the Best Technology Use Case Award from the Healthcare Management Awards — we approached this from the outset, differently. Generative AI was embedded into patient treatment workflows to streamline and error-proof clinical processes, not bolted on as an afterthought. And rather than deploying point solutions, we built connectivity into the patient room itself: Talab, our inpatient interactive communication tool, links caregivers, clinical teams, administration, and housekeeping in a single seamless interface — so that the room itself becomes a coordination hub rather than a passive space. None of these were standalone deployments. They were designed as a connected ecosystem, each capability reinforcing the others, so that digital coordination became the default mode of care rather than a parallel track running alongside it.

Build for Integration from the Start

The health systems I see scaling fastest made one decision early that others didn’t: they treated integration as a design constraint from the beginning, not a problem to solve later. Retrofitting digital systems into physical and operational infrastructure that wasn’t built to receive them is expensive, slow, and organizationally punishing. Every new technology requires its own bespoke implementation effort. Every workflow redesign happens after the fact. The compounding advantage goes to systems that are built with integration in mind — where each new capability layers onto a foundation designed to support it.

This matters practically as well as philosophically. Implementation costs for enterprise-scale health IT are significant, and organizations that absorb them repeatedly — because each deployment is effectively a standalone project — are not building smart hospitals. They are building costly patchworks that will eventually need to be rebuilt anyway.

The question I’d encourage health system leaders to ask isn’t “does this technology work?” The evidence that it works is abundant. The harder, more useful question is: “Does our infrastructure — physical, operational, and cultural — allow this technology to become the way we deliver care?” Systems that can answer yes to that question are the ones that move from pilots that impress to a transformation that sticks. That’s the difference that matters, and it starts well before the technology is ever switched on.

About Alisha Moopen

Alisha Moopen is Managing Director and Group CEO at Aster DM Healthcare, one of the largest integrated healthcare networks in the Middle East, operating 15 hospitals, 117 clinics, and 285 pharmacies across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar.



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< + > 9amHealth Raises $26M to Expand Into Chronic Conditions Driving the Majority of Employer Pharmacy Spend

After Generating More than $50M in Projected Medical and Pharmacy Savings Across Two Fortune 100 Employers, 9amHealth is Expanding Its AI-Driven Specialty Care Platform Beyond Cardiometabolic Care to Address the High-Cost Chronic Conditions that Account for Up To 70% of Employer Spend

9amHealth, a leading virtual specialty care platform, today announced $26 million in Series B funding led by Define Ventures, with new participation from SemperVirens VC, Catalio Capital Management, and NewHealth Ventures.

Since its founding, 9amHealth has rapidly emerged as a leader in virtual cardiometabolic care, partnering with large enterprise employers and leading pharmaceutical organizations to support people living with obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia. Through its integrated care model, which combines clinical protocols, labs, medication management, and continuous care, the company has delivered significant pharmacy cost savings amid rising demand for GLP-1 therapies while improving engagement and clinical outcomes.

Building on this foundation, 9amHealth has already developed the clinical infrastructure, care delivery model, and technology platform needed to manage complex, high-cost chronic conditions at scale. The new funding will support continued growth as the company expands its platform to address additional high-cost, specialty-level chronic conditions, which collectively account for up to 70% of employer pharmacy spend.

These conditions often require ongoing specialty medications, repeat interventions, and coordinated care, which represents the largest and fastest-growing portion of employer healthcare spend.

“What makes this possible is our ability to combine specialized clinical care with AI-enabled clinical workflows and personalized member experiences that allow us to scale efficiently across complex chronic conditions,” said Frank Westermann, Co-Founder and CEO at 9amHealth. “We’ve already proven this model in cardiometabolic care, and are now extending to a much broader set of high-cost needs.”

The Series B round was led by Lynne O’Keefe, Founder and Managing Partner at Define Ventures, who will join the company’s Board of Directors.

“We’re proud to partner with 9amHealth at this pivotal stage,” said Lynne O’Keefe. “They’ve demonstrated strong clinical outcomes and cost savings in one of the fastest-growing categories in healthcare. Their platform has the potential to transform how employers manage their most expensive populations.”

About 9amHealth

9amHealth is an AI-enabled virtual specialty care platform focused on managing high-cost chronic conditions at scale. The company partners with employers, health plans, and pharmacy benefit managers to deliver comprehensive, cost-effective medical care for individuals living with obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia. Members receive access to specialized clinicians, including endocrinologists, obesity medicine specialists, and clinical pharmacists, at-home lab testing, prescription medications, and lifestyle support.

9amHealth was founded in 2021 and is backed by leading healthcare investors like Define Ventures, SemperVirens VC, 7Wire Ventures, and The Cigna Group Ventures.

Learn more at join9am.com.

Originally announced May 13th, 2026



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< + > CIO Podcast – Episode 115: Healthcare Communication Solutions with John Gaede

For the 115th episode of the CIO podcast hosted by Healthcare IT Today, we are joined by John Gaede, CIO at San Juan Regional Medical Cente...