< + > Augusta Health Automates Document Routing With Forward Advantage AI

AI is making contributions in many health care settings by creating doctors’ notes, but an equally urgent task in many organizations is processing, storing, and routing incoming documents such as referrals and prescription requests. Augusta Health, a community health system in central Virginia with a 255-bed hospital, four urgent care clinics, and many other sites, has to deal each year with 750,000 paper documents—a total of 2.4 million pages—submitted by scanning or fax.

In our recent interview, Leigh Williams, CIO at Augusta Health, and Audrey Brislin, Vice President of Product and Marketing at Forward Advantage, talk about the AI-based solution for document recognition and scanning from Forward Advantage that is relieving staff at Augusta Health of the tedious and error-prone job of redirecting the documents.

Augusta Health has had a relationship with Forward Advantage since 1999 and so it made sense to extend this relationship with Forward Advantage’s new document routing solution. Prior to implementing this new solution, Augusta Health would present each document to a human agent on a screen. The agent would determine what kind of document it was, where it should be stored, and which clinician should receive it for action. This was preferable to paper handling, but still delayed both treatment and billing. Williams said they needed “a really slick process.”

Luckily, Forward Advantage has recently added AI-driven categorizations that can potentially automate the entire process of identifying, storing, and routing documents. According to Brislin, the key is to understand the provider’s workflows. Some are more consistent than others, and automation should be applied to those that are consistent and predictable. One of the benefits of Forward Advantage is that it does leave room for a human in the loop.

Augusta Health has been deploying the AI automation for a few months and is finding it a great solution that fixes a “long-standing, intractable problem.” Success metrics they’re tracking include labor costs, and the time required to get documents to the clinicians to act on.  Clinicians love getting the documents in their native MEDITECH workflow faster than when the documents were routed by a human. Williams expects the automation to help with staff retention, because categorizing documents by hand was so boring and unfulfilling, “no value add.”

Automation, along with centralizing the categorization process, allows Augusta Health to run analytics and derive insights such as where prescriptions and referrals are coming from. Williams summarizes their experience as a safe and high-impact deployment of AI. Brislin expects that in the future, AI will also route documents outside the organization and enable work with third parties.

Watch our interview with Leigh Williams from Augusta Health and Audrey Brislin from Forward Advantage to learn more about this AI solution which is solving real world healthcare challenges.

Learn more about Forward Advantage: https://www.forwardadvantage.com/

Learn more about Augusta Health: https://www.augustahealth.com/

Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.

And for an exclusive look at our top stories, subscribe to our newsletter and YouTube.

Tell us what you think. Contact us here or on Twitter at @hcitoday. And if you’re interested in advertising with us, check out our various advertising packages and request our Media Kit.

Forward Advantage is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

< + > Clinical AI Needs Version Control, Not Just Validation

The following is a guest article by Dr. Michael T. Neely

Healthcare AI is often governed as though validation were a one-time gate: test the system, approve it, deploy it, and move on. That model breaks down when the software changes.

AI tools can be updated far more frequently than traditional clinical technology. A vendor may replace an underlying model, modify a prompt or retrieval layer, change thresholds, retrain on new data, alter workflow logic, or release a new version without changing the product name clinicians see. When that happens, an organization can still have a “validated” system on paper while a materially different system is operating in practice.

The governance question is therefore not only, “Was this AI validated?” It is, “Which version was validated, which version is running now, what changed, and what evidence tells us the change is still safe for this use?”

Validation Without Version Identity is Incomplete

Healthcare organizations already understand version control in other high-stakes domains. Medication formularies, clinical protocols, cybersecurity patches, laboratory methods, and medical devices are not managed as timeless objects. Changes are documented because a change can alter performance, risk, or downstream workflow.

AI should be treated the same way.

The FDA’s final guidance on predetermined change control plans for AI-enabled device software functions offers a useful regulatory example. It asks manufacturers to describe planned modifications, the methods used to develop and validate those modifications, and the impact of those changes. Not every healthcare AI tool is an FDA-regulated medical device, but the operational principle travels well: change should be anticipated, documented, assessed, and tied to evidence.

Health systems need an internal version record that identifies, at minimum, the vendor and product, deployed model or build, material configuration, approved use, implementation date, validation evidence, and responsible owner. For generative AI, the record may also need to capture prompt templates, retrieval sources, orchestration logic, and other components that meaningfully shape output.

Material Changes Need a Trigger

Not every software update requires a full revalidation. A cosmetic interface change is different from replacing the model that drafts a clinical summary. The goal is not bureaucracy for its own sake; it is a defensible material-change process.

Organizations should define in advance which changes trigger review. Examples include a new model family, altered training or tuning, changes to decision thresholds, new data sources, expanded intended use, changes in clinical workflow, a new autonomous capability, or modifications that affect how outputs are presented to clinicians or patients.

Vendor contracts should support this process. A health system cannot govern a system it is not told has changed. Material-change notification should therefore be treated as an operational requirement, not simply a courtesy from the vendor.

Revalidation Should Match the Risk

Once a material change is identified, the next question is how much testing is enough. The answer should depend on what the system does and the consequences of error.

A documentation assistant may require testing for factual accuracy, omission, workflow fit, and clinician review burden. A predictive decision-support tool may require renewed performance assessment, subgroup analysis, calibration checks, or workflow-specific validation. A patient-facing system may also need testing for clarity, escalation behavior, unsafe advice, and whether human review remains available when needed.

The NIST AI Risk Management Framework is useful here because it treats risk management as a lifecycle activity rather than a single approval event. That lifecycle view is especially important for AI systems that can drift, be reconfigured, or change through vendor updates.

Keep the Ability to Stop and Roll Back

Version control is not meaningful if an organization cannot act when a problem appears.

Every consequential healthcare AI implementation should have a defined process for suspension, rollback, or isolation. Governance teams should know who can make that decision, what evidence triggers it, what version can be restored, and how affected users will be notified.

Incident review also depends on traceability. If a problematic output contributed to a patient-facing communication or clinical workflow, the organization should be able to reconstruct which system version produced it, what data or context were used, what the output was, and what human review occurred.

Without that record, post-incident analysis becomes guesswork.

Transparency Has to Survive the Update Cycle

ONC’s HTI-1 final rule established algorithm-transparency requirements for predictive decision-support interventions in certified health IT. That transparency is most useful when it stays current. Documentation that accurately described a model six months ago may be misleading after a material update.

Hospitals and health systems therefore need a simple rule: every meaningful AI change should force a question about whether prior documentation, validation, disclosures, training, and monitoring still describe the system that is actually in use.

That is the core discipline of AI version control.

Validation tells you that a particular system met a standard at a particular moment. Version control tells you whether that is still the system affecting care today. In healthcare, where software changes can influence clinical judgment, patient communication, workflow priority, and organizational accountability, that distinction is not administrative detail. It is part of safe AI operations.

About Dr. Michael T. Neely

Dr. Michael T. Neely is an independent researcher and AI educator whose work focuses on responsible AI, governance, accountability, patient protection, and human oversight. He is CEO of Global Music Conference and XS10 Magazine and brings more than four decades of leadership in the creative industries. His healthcare-AI commentary has appeared in KevinMD and Healthcare Business Today. His work examines how organizations translate responsible-AI principles into operational controls.

< + > Sagility Acquires Chirok Health | Digi International Announces Intent to Acquire Disruptive Technologies

Check out today’s featured companies who have recently completed an M&A deal, and be sure to check out the full list of past healthcare IT M&A.

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Sagility Accelerates Provider Growth Strategy Through Acquisition of Chirok Health

Transaction Expands Provider – Focused Capabilities in Clinical Documentation Improvement, Coding Audit and Quality Assurance, Revenue Integrity, Value-Based Care Solutions, HCC Coding and Risk Adjustment

Sagility, a leading technology and AI-led healthcare operations company focused on improving payer and provider performance, today announced that it has acquired Chirok Health, a provider of Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI), medical coding, coding quality assurance programs, and revenue integrity services for healthcare organizations.

The acquisition adds specialized clinical and coding expertise to Sagility’s provider services portfolio, complementing its strengths in revenue cycle management, patient access, analytics, and technology and AI-led healthcare operations. It broadens Sagility’s ability to address evolving provider needs with integrated solutions.

Founded with a focus on helping healthcare providers improve documentation quality, coding accuracy, reimbursement outcomes, and financial performance, Chirok Health has established a strong reputation for delivering high-quality clinical and administrative solutions to hospitals and health systems. Chirok also brings a highly specialized team of clinical documentation specialists, coding professionals, auditors, and healthcare subject matter experts, further enhancing Sagility’s provider-focused domain expertise to support healthcare providers across a broader spectrum of the revenue cycle and clinical operations value chain.

“The acquisition of Chirok Health is an important step in Sagility’s strategy to build a comprehensive provider-focused services platform. Chirok’s leadership in clinical documentation improvement, medical coding, quality assurance programs, and revenue integrity complements our existing capabilities and expands our ability to support healthcare providers across the healthcare value chain by improving operational, clinical, and financial outcomes,” said Ramesh Gopalan, Managing Director and Group CEO at Sagility…

Full release here, originally announced October 21st, 2026.

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Digi International Announces Intent to Acquire Disruptive Technologies to Advance SmartSense Physical-World Intelligence Platform and Enter Europe

Acquisition Combines Disruptive Technologies’ Best-in-Class Sensing with SmartSense AI and Digital Workflows to Create a Trusted Data Foundation for Enterprise AI

Digi International, a global leader in IoT connectivity products, solutions and services, today announced its intent to acquire Disruptive Technologies, a global leader in advanced sensing technology. Disruptive Technologies will join SmartSense by Digi, strengthening its critical monitoring platform and its ability to capture, interpret, and act on real-world data at enterprise scale.

SmartSense built its platform around Sense, Understand, and Act: capturing physical signals, applying AI and analytics to interpret them, and using generative AI and digital workflows to recommend the best next action to generate value. The acquisition of Disruptive Technologies significantly strengthens the Sense layer of the platform.

Disruptive Technologies brings leading, proprietary edge sensor technology to SmartSense, enabling monitoring at scale with over 250,000 sensors deployed. Its sensors are smaller than a postage stamp, support a wider range of monitoring conditions, and operate for up to 15 years, much longer than other sensors in the marketplace. In addition, Disruptive Technologies’ breadth of sensing also applies to SmartSense’s existing markets in food and health while opening markets in building automation and occupancy.

“SmartSense and Disruptive Technologies together provide the building blocks for enterprises to operate more effectively by sensing physical operations efficiently at much greater scale,” said Ron Konezny, CEO at Digi International…

Full release here, originally announced October 1st, 2026.

< + > No More Rip-and-Replace: Oracle Previews an Intent-Driven EHR Strategy

Hospitals are exhausted by rip-and-replace software migrations. The multi-year implementations and budget overruns of the past decade left many organizations wary of adopting new core platforms. Yet clinical staff are desperate for modern user interfaces to reduce cognitive load and administrative bloat. Oracle is hoping to solve both problems at once.

Healthcare IT Today sat down with Bharat Sutariya, SVP and Chief Medical Officer at Oracle, during the 2026 Oracle Health and Life Sciences Summit (OHLSSummit26). e discussed the central challenge of delivering next-generation clinical intelligence without forcing health systems into another painful data migration. Sutariya detailed how Oracle designed an intent-driven user interface and paired it with a measured rollout strategy to keep clinical operations stable.

Key Takeaways

• Phased rollouts prevent rip-and-replace panic. Forcing hospitals into massive data migrations creates internal resistance. Rolling out new capabilities venue by venue gives health systems a practical path forward without disrupting active clinical care.
• Intent-driven interfaces eliminate the traditional click hunt. Removing the traditional table of contents in favor of AI-generated, intent-based summaries drastically reduces the cognitive burden on staff. Modern EHRs must adapt dynamically to show context-specific data.
• Ambient listening is just the baseline for clinical AI. Saving time on note capture is great, but real value happens when voice technology goes further. Clinicians need tools that actively capture orders and navigate the record without third-party dictation software.

Protecting Clinical Stability

Forcing a hospital into a rip-and-replace migration often triggers immediate resistance from clinical staff. This is not surprising given the significant investments health systems already made to train users on their current platforms. Oracle adopted a measured migration strategy to address this operational reality directly.

Their new AI-first system can run alongside their legacy platform. Departments rolling out the software for the first time can adopt the latest version while their colleagues remain on the familiar interface.

“Our approach is to roll out by modules over a period of time,” Sutariya said. “The new EHR and the existing EHR coexist, and as we develop more and more of the new EHR capability, the existing Millennium EHR just deprecates and stops being used. We don’t want our customers to go through the data migration journey and the rebuild journey. It is important that we have a path for our customers in a non-disruptive way because it is not easy to transplant an EHR.”

Eliminating the Table of Contents

Physicians lose hours every week hunting through static menus just to compile a patient history. Oracle removed the standard navigation tree entirely from their new interface.

“What you will see is there is no table of contents in our new EHR,” explained Sutariay. “The new EHR is adaptive. If the view is about a summary, and a patient has three conditions, each of the three conditions is tagged and hyperlinked. If you now want to understand the summary of a COPD, you just click on it.”

This focused UI approach keeps the screen clean. It ensures the system only presents data relevant to the immediate clinical workflow.

Pushing Past Basic Ambient Scribes

Ambient listening technology is rapidly becoming an expected baseline feature. While capturing visit notes is helpful, it only solves a fraction of the daily clinical workload. Leaders want technology to move beyond basic documentation and actively drive administrative workflows.

“It’s great that we are capturing the note and saving doctors time, but as the clinician is talking, we are capturing their orders,” noted Sutariya. “We are capturing the finer points of their discussion. We are summarizing constantly for them.”

The UI is designed to have AI agents ready to execute the spoken commands of the clinician. This includes ordering labs, prescribing medications, and placing referrals without requiring a single click.

The Bottom Line

Oracle is deploying its new clinical platform with a strict focus on stability and practical adoption. They are avoiding the costly risk of forcing customers into massive software migrations. Health systems can adopt the clutter-free, intent-driven interface at their own pace. This approach delivers a modern system that understands clinical context and reduces cognitive burden without breaking active hospital operations.

Questions Healthcare IT Leaders Are Asking

Why are hospitals avoiding full EHR replacements? Health systems are fatigued by the massive capital costs and operational disruptions associated with completely replacing their core software. Instead of full migrations, organizations prefer vendors that offer phased rollouts and modular updates. This approach allows them to adopt new intelligence capabilities without throwing away years of customization and training on their legacy systems.

How do intent-driven interfaces reduce physician burnout? Traditional medical records force doctors to click through dozens of menus to find relevant lab results and historical notes. Intent-driven interfaces apply artificial intelligence to understand the clinical context and automatically present a synthesized summary of the patient’s current condition. This drastically reduces screen time and allows providers to focus directly on patient care.

What is the next evolution of AI scribes? Current ambient technology primarily focuses on listening to a patient encounter and generating a clinical note. The next phase involves using that same voice interaction to actively place medication orders, update specific problem lists, and navigate the record hands-free. This shifts the AI from a passive listener into an active workflow assistant.

Learn more about Oracle Health and Life Sciences at https://www.oracle.com/health/

Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.

And for an exclusive look at our top stories, subscribe to our newsletter and YouTube.

Tell us what you think. Contact us here or on Twitter at @hcitoday. And if you’re interested in advertising with us, check out our various advertising packages and request our Media Kit.

Oracle is a sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

< + > BioStack Raises $9.5M | Ayble Health Raises $16M Series A

Check out today’s featured companies who have recently raised a round of funding, and be sure to check out the full list of past healthcare IT fundings.

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BioStack Raises $9.5M to Turn Global Hospital Data into Multimodal Training Datasets for Medical AI

Y Combinator Startup Transforms 100 Million Fragmented Patient Records Into Multimodal Training Data and Reinforcement Learning Environments for Medical AI Agents

BioStack, a healthcare technology company, announced today that it’s launching a data infrastructure network to power the next era of medicine. It spans a global footprint across the U.S., India, Brazil, and Argentina with over 100 million de-identified patient records. By connecting fragmented clinical information, BioStack gives AI and biotech companies the high-quality data needed to train models that understand how disease unfolds, how treatments work, and what drives patient outcomes.

The company also announced $9.5 million in seed funding led by Peak XV, Afore Capital, DCVC, Emerson Collective, SV Angel, Verdict Capital, Streamlined Ventures, and Y Combinator. The round will support BioStack’s continued expansion across the United States and international markets, development of its technology platform, and growth of its engineering and research teams.

Today, patient histories and other clinical data are often fragmented across hospitals, providers, and technology systems, leaving clinicians without a complete picture of a patient’s treatment. BioStack creates workflows that bring together clinical information across disparate health systems and geographies. Connecting notes, labs, imaging, medications, treatments, and outcomes, BioStack provides a more comprehensive view of the patient and informs population-level and hospital-level discovery.

“Collecting every event linked to each patient enables a view of what happens at each stage of a patient’s journey,” said Sanat Mishra, Co-Founder and CEO at BioStack…

Full release here, originally announced October 22nd, 2026.

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Ayble Health Raises $16M Series A to Expand the Nation’s Most Clinically Validated Virtual Digestive Health Clinic

Led by Neon, the Oversubscribed-Round Accelerates Expansion Into AI Precision Digestive Healthcare and Autoimmune Health, Driven by Rapid Scaling Across National Health Plans, Jumbo Employers, and Major Benefit Platforms

Ayble Health, the nation’s leading AI-enabled virtual multidisciplinary GI clinic, today announced the close of a $16 million oversubscribed Series A round led by Neon, with participation from Unum Ventures, Upfront Ventures, M13, Cleveland Clinic Ventures, DigiTx, Accomplice, and several individual strategic investors. The round brings Ayble’s total capital raised to over $27 million.

Undertreated, Underserved, and Enormously Costly

Digestive and autoimmune conditions are among the most common, costly, and under-addressed chronic diseases in the country. GI conditions alone affect more than 70 million Americans and drive $136 billion in annual U.S. healthcare spending, more than the total cost of diabetes or heart disease, while nearly 70% of U.S. counties lack a single practicing gastroenterologist. The two categories are also clinically intertwined: a 2025 study spanning more than 141 million patients found inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) associated with 24 distinct autoimmune comorbidities, underscoring the need for a care model built to treat patients across both conditions.

Meeting this dual burden requires a care model that can adapt to each patient’s overlapping conditions rather than treating them in isolation. This new capital will be used to advance Ayble’s proprietary AI+clinician precision care model, deepening data-driven personalization for patient engagement, enrollment, and care delivery. Additionally, the company will leverage its proven multidisciplinary model and data infrastructure to expand beyond its core gastrointestinal (GI) footprint into adjacent complex therapeutic areas, starting with autoimmune conditions…

Full release here, originally announced September 17th, 2026.

< + > Bonus Features – November 1, 2026 – 91% of patients want their permission required when AI is used for diagnosis, 64% of providers plan to deploy AI for claims and denials management, plus 20 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.

News

ONC and HHS released HTI-5, the fifth version of the Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability Final Rule. In a move that’s intended to accelerate development, the rule trims back some of the requirements of the ONC Health IT Certification Program. (An ONC fact sheet has the details about which criteria have been revised or removed.) The rule also pressed pause on proposed changes to information blocking – a move that garnered support from organizations such as the EHR Association.

Stats

• An Experian Health survey found that 64% of providers plan to invest in AI for claims and denial management.
• An HFMA survey found that 84% of healthcare leaders say AI is the technology that will most fundamentally reshape healthcare in the next decade. Respondents believe AI will have its greatest impact in RCM workflows.
• A Flint Rehab study found that 70% of stroke survivors waited more than one week to start outpatient treatment, and more than 25% waited a month.
• A Tebra survey found that 91% of patients want their permission required every time AI is used to support diagnosis or treatment. Discomfort with AI’s use in diagnosis is highest among younger patients.

Partnerships

• X-ray AI applications from AZmed are now available through RapidAI‘s Rapid Enterprise Platform.
• Specialty infusion network Leap is collaborating with WeInfuse, a technology platform for independent infusion providers.
• Swisslog Healthcare company TransLogic is partnering with Matternet to create an automated drone transportation network for North American hospitals.

Products

• Limber Health announced Recovery Forecast to predict outcome trajectories for musculoskeletal rehab therapy.
• Mosai launched OASIS Intelligence to help home health agencies improve clinical documentation accuracy,
• Financial engagement vendor RevSpring announced its virtual agent (Let’s Talk) now supports patients making payment plans over the phone.
• Mental health practitioner platform SimplePractice introduced new analytics capabilities.
• Healthcare operations software maker symplr launched symplr Time and Scheduling.
• Dental AI company Videa announced that Ambient Coaching is available to customers using Videa Voice Notes.

Implementations

• University of Miami Health System selected Longitude Rx to support its specialty pharmacy program.
• Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts selected Medzown to improve access to clinical trials and advanced therapies for members with complex medical conditions.

Company News

• More than 180 of Aledade’s primary care and community health partners have been recognized by the American Heart Association for helping patients control hypertension through the Target: BP initiative.
• Operational AI platform Luma Health earned HITRUST AI Security Certification (ai2).
• Proto360 Health launched to give medical practices and employers remote monitoring capabilities to manage obesity care.

People

• Specialty medical practice software maker ModMed named Joe Harpaz as CEO and made three additional executive appointments. In addition, ModMed launched The AI-Powered Surgical Practice.
• Biomedical technologies company ImpediMed announced Dr. Nicole L. Stout as Chief Clinical Innovation Officer.
• Third party administrator Collective Health appointed Srikrishnan Srinivasa as Chief Operating Officer.

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.

< + > Weekly Roundup – October 31, 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.

Prioritizing Risk Management for the Most Significant Cybersecurity Threats. The Healthcare IT Today community is getting this done by emphasizing resilience instead of prevention, strengthening vendor risk management, and focusing on what’s most likely to disrupt care delivery. Read more…

Maintaining Independence Through Partnerships and Technology. Arlan Johnson, CEO of Howard County (Nebraska) Medical Center, talked to John Lynn about finding technology partners that know their EHR well and eliminating debt so there’s money to invest in new technology. Read more…

AI Is Changing More Than Coding for Healthcare Integration Engineers. John interviewed Kevin Day at Rhapsody about opportunities for AI to help with all the work that happens before and after writing the code. Read more…

Staff Safety and BLE Are Key for RTLS Adoption. Colin Hung learned these lessons at the CenTrak User Group Conference, which focused on changing the message from “tracking” to “locating” to reinforce safety rather than punitive monitoring. Read more…

The Hidden Fraud Risks in Healthcare Billing and Payments. John connected with Elliot Darling at MEDITECH and Tyler Stoltz at ECHO to learn about the value of integrating payment processing with the EHR, which creates a smaller attack surface for fraudsters. Read more…

Highlights From The Sequoia Project and Carequality Annual Meeting. ONC’s deregulation approach with HTI 5 (especially information blocking) got a lot attention; so did all the workgroups the entities have organized to build trust in health data exchange. Read more…

Exploring Trust in Healthcare and Interoperability at the DirectTrust Conference. Identity management, AI governance, credentials, and the evolution of Direct Secure Messaging are the topics that got John’s attention. Read more…

Building Deep Client Relationships to Improve RCM. Sid Mehta at Access Healthcare sat down with John to talk about guiding healthcare organizations through a crisis and transitioning from a vendor to a partner. Read more…

Insights From the eHealth Exchange Annual Meeting. Topics of discussion included the challenges of payer-provider data exchange and understanding the risk of sharing low-quality data. Read more…

Perspectives From the AHIMA Annual Conference. Main takeaways included better understanding patient journeys as well as maintaining human expertise and governance while adopting AI. Read more… 

Insights From the eClinicalWorks National Conference. Key themes from the user conference included reframing the EHR as the system of intelligence and helping health systems build their own AI agents. Read more…

Life Sciences Today Podcast: Beyond Voice Agents. Danny Lieberman chatted with Alex Cohen at Hello Patient about making AI agents for outpatient care useful beyond a scripted demo. Read more…

Healthcare IT Today Podcast: Over or Under? John and Colin placed their bets on everything from how many health systems will consider replacing their EHRs to how much healthcare data will still be inaccessible because of interop issues. Read more…

The Strong Case for Urgent, Careful Progress With AI. Ahmed Omar and Amit Kumthekar talked about why they co-founded Sully.ai to automate the administrative work surrounding each visit and give doctors more of their time back. Read more…

Nationwide Diagnostic Image Exchange Is Possible With TEFCA. Matt Doyle at Epic said health IT companies must adopt open standards to exchange images so patients experience fewer care delays and providers realize more cost savings. Read more…

This Week’s Health IT Jobs for October 28, 2026: Acadia Healthcare and Encompass Health both seek CEOs. Read more…

Bonus Features for October 25, 2026: 40% of orgs say identity authentication difficulties delay patient care; Epic introduces Connectors for third-party apps. Read more…

Funding and M&A Activity:

• Indiana provider Parkview Health acquired Ovation Healthcare, a shared services provider
• Redesign Health and ARC Global merged; the new entity also agreed to acquire AVIA, a digital transformation consultancy.
• Zocdoc acquired Sohar Health, which automates insurance benefits eligibility checks.
• Diverge Health and Medical Home Network merged, creating a value-based care organization dedicated to under-resourced communities.
• Clinical AI agent company Suki announced $90 million in financing as part of its Series E.
• Operational AI agent company Confido Health announced $22.5 million in total Series A funding.
• Clinical research financial operations platform Peppermint announced $4.7 million in seed funding.
• Vinyl Health announced $2 million in seed funding; the startup makes ambient AI to help patient voice-record health information.

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

Happy Halloween!