< + > Weekly Roundup – October 24, 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.

Healthcare AI Insights From the SHI Summit. SHI International holds a conference every quarter, and John Lynn recently attended for the first time. Key insights into AI use included finding ways to demonstrate business outcomes, remembering that AI’s mistakes happen at machine speed, and making sure the CISO is involved in decision-making. Read more…

Key Cybersecurity Lessons From the SHI Summit. Meanwhile, boosting resilience, building soft skills that spot problems, and effectively communicating risk to board members were the top cybersecurity topics John reported from the gathering. Read more…

AI Agents That Eliminate Healthcare Communication Gaps. John connected with Colin Smith and Jackie Frey at Zenzap, which is focused on eliminating gaps such as an uncovered shift or an unassigned hospital bed by making sure everyone’s on the same platform and sharing chats. Read more…

The Cross-Industry Path to Healthcare Operational Resilience. Kristen Miles at Oracle joined Colin Hung to outline how Oracle Fusion hopes to bring operational efficiency to hospitals with lessons from retail and manufacturing, especially for supply chain workflows. Read more…

Hands-On, Clinician-Led Problem-Solving at Ontario’s DHC2026. Colin saw AI scribes addressing administrative workflow pain points, not just summarizing encounters. He also learned about efforts to simplify privacy compliance in Canada’s largest province. Read more… 

Buying More AI Tools Won’t Fix Healthcare’s Workflow Problem. Colin spoke with Gautam M. Shah at NextGen Healthcare, which is shifting away from point solutions that create security, administrative, and clinical drag and measuring tech’s effectiveness using clinical metrics that matter. Read more…

Bringing AI-Human Collaboration to Clinical Data Abstraction. John sat down with MRO’s Mo Weitnauer to discuss how the company’s Prodigy tool harmonizes unstructured EHR text using ontology-based normalization, which ultimately improve how data can be used strategically. Read more…

The Pillars of Platform Engineering 2.0. John interviewed Pankaj Gupta at Broadcom’s VMware Cloud Foundation Division about ensuring security in the platform and run-time layers, along with development’s bottlenecks shifting to validation and deployment now that AI can write code. Read more…

Life Sciences Today Podcast: Why ‘The Science Will Sell Itself’ Is a Myth. Danny Lieberman unpacked that statement with Dr. Nicole Yurgin at Yurgin Advisory in the context of European life sciences companies struggling to navigate the American payer system. Read more…

CIO Podcast: Challenges and Opportunities in Rural Health. John sat down with Steve Slessor at WinnMed to learn about being part of Epic Community Connect and finding ways to bring AI to rural care. Read more…

Before You Buy an AI Tool for Patient Questions, Count the Questions. Practices shouldn’t automate pre-procedure education workflows without first auditing why patients call, what information is missing, and how questions should be answered, according to Dr. Keith Schmidt at PrepQ Health. Read more… 

Why Physician Collaboration Is a Scaling Strategy for NPs. Regulations require NPs entering independent practice to secure a collaborative physician partnership. Tavi Schlueter at CollabDocs said NPs should position partnership as an opportunity for joint clinical leadership, not just a passive administrative role. Read more…

Making Your Health Context Portable to the AI You Choose. Bryan Barash at Wellness Project outlined how the Model Context Protocol (MCP) helps AI systems use external tools and data sources in a consistent way, which is beneficial for making health history easier to understand. Read more…

The Implementation Problems Hiding in Your Support Data. Consultant Steve DeWitt wrote about how to gain important insights from help desk tickets, whether it’s answering the same questions over and over or seeing users drag their feet on implementations, updates, or training. Read more…

This Week’s Health IT Jobs for October 21, 2026: The Cigna Group seeks a Chief Business Innovation Officer, while HR Healthcare is looking for a Chief Technology & Information Officer. Read more…

Bonus Features for October 18, 2026: 74% of cyberattacks lead to disruptions in patient care; 56% of caregivers use AI tools to support their responsibilities. Read more…

Funding and M&A Activity:

• Penelope Health and Thoreau are partnering to create a shared infrastructure layer for real-time payments and clinical rules. Thoreau, along with other investors, has committed $100 million in funding to Penelope.
• CorralData acquired The Data Co, an analytics company built for multi-clinic aesthetics groups such as cosmetic surgery.
• Vocca announced a $20 million Series A funding round; the company makes an AI agent for calling patients.
• Outro announced $7 million in funding across pre-seed and seed rounds; the startup is building a deprescribing network for psychiatric medications.

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

< + > ‘The Science Will Sell Itself’ is a Myth – Life Sciences Today Podcast Episode 84

We’re excited to be back for another episode of the Life Sciences Today Podcast by Healthcare IT Today. My guest today is Dr. Nicole Yurgin, Market Access Consultant at Yurgin Advisory. In this episode, I sit down with Yurgin, who has a unique background and viewpoint on market access in the US and Europe.

After her economics PhD and time in academia, she worked at Eli Lilly (market access and health economics) and spent 20 years in big pharma across the US. She was then recruited to Novartis Basel during the pandemic.

She moved with a newborn and her husband during COVID, relocated from LA, and is now based in Basel: home to 800+ life science companies and 30,000 healthcare professionals. She left Novartis to open her own consultancy, staying in Basel for quality of life and industry density.

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

• Tell us a bit about yourself, your journey, and where you are today as a consultant.
• What’s your value creation for customers?
• What’s your superpower?
• I’ve heard from a lot of medical device companies that the European companies tend to be focused more on scientific and technical rigor, and tend to be less fascil dealing with in their ability to navigate the American payer system. Is that your experience as well?
• 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.

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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!

< + > Penelope Health Announces Partnership with Thoreau to Accelerate its Platform for Real-Time Policy Intelligence

The Partnership Will Fund New Products, Expand the Number of Insurers and Policies Penelope Covers, and Move Coverage Determination Upstream to the Point of Care

Penelope Health, a real-time provider and payer policy intelligence platform, today announced a partnership with Thoreau, which is building healthcare’s foundational compute, rules, and research infrastructure platform, to create a shared infrastructure layer for real-time payments and clinical rules. Thoreau, along with other investors, has committed $100 million in funding to Penelope. Penelope will use the capital to create new products that bring administrative efficiency to navigating payer requirements. Additional investors include existing backers Bertelsmann Healthcare Investments (BHI), Twine Ventures, and Seedcamp.

Payer coverage policies, prior-authorization requirements, medical-necessity criteria, and coding rules are spread across thousands of sources and change continuously, creating costly administrative work for healthcare organizations and delays for patients. Removing that work, and understanding what insurance companies require before care is delivered, rather than after a claim is denied, returns time and attention to the clinicians and staff. Of the $5.3 trillion spent on healthcare in the United States each year, administrative activities account for approximately one-quarter. We believe that a significant majority of that administrative spend can be automated. Penelope’s platform covers policies for over 200 million Americans, spanning more than 15,000 procedures and drug codes.

Penelope was founded by Dr. Sohum Patel and Mattijs De Paepe, who started the company after seeing how much of the work in healthcare goes into determining what is covered rather than delivering care.

“The rules that determine whether care is covered by insurance are foundational to the healthcare system, yet they remain opaque, fragmented, difficult to interpret, and are constantly changing. Penelope was founded to turn that complexity into a dependable, up-to-date reference that healthcare companies can use in real time,” said Dr. Sohum Patel, Chief Executive Officer at Penelope Health.

Penelope converts this complex web of disparate data into a single infrastructure layer for healthcare. The platform enables healthcare companies to check coverage requirements, compare policies across payers, and streamline their internal operations, providing organizations with instant, structured access to payer medical coverage policies across the majority of insured Americans.

Mattijs De Paepe, Chief Technology Officer at Penelope Health, added, “Realizing our vision requires a deep technical understanding of constantly evolving payer rules. We are excited to build the infrastructure for AI to power a more efficient healthcare system. The opportunity extends far beyond any single workflow. We believe that a shared infrastructure layer can remove administrative burden for both payers and providers.”

Penelope is building the platform where those rules live, replacing the custom, one-off connections and manual searches for policy information today, with a single connection any system can use. That removes work providers and insurers currently do and gives teams on both sides dependable data to build on.

The partnership will support Penelope’s growth and future initiatives, including new products, coverage of more insurers and more types of policy, and further investment in its platform.

About Penelope

Penelope Health tracks the coverage rules U.S. health insurers publish and turns them into structured data that providers and payers can use directly, through an API and through endpoints that AI assistants can query. Penelope gives both sides instant access to the rules governing coverage for the majority of insured Americans, removing administrative burden from both sides of the provider-payer ledger. For more information, visit penelope.health.

Penelope was co-founded by Dr. Sohum Patel, Chief Executive Officer, and Mattijs De Paepe, Chief Technology Officer. Before founding Penelope, Dr. Patel practiced in both inpatient and outpatient settings in the UK’s National Health Service at the Royal Free London and University College London hospital systems, where he saw firsthand how administrative complexity interferes with patient care. Mr. De Paepe leads the Penelope intelligence platform’s development. He previously spent nearly four years at Via Transportation, where he built machine-learning systems for the company’s transit products.

About Thoreau

Thoreau is a technology platform that creates, invests in, and acquires platforms across provider, payer, employer, life sciences, and government markets. Focused on building healthcare’s core compute, rules, and research infrastructure, Thoreau’s initial platform partnerships include Ensemble Health, which manages over $55 billion in net patient revenue, and Penelope Health. Thoreau’s mission is to simplify the administration of healthcare, and improve and extend the lives of patients in the U.S. and globally.

Originally announced September 18th, 2026

< + > Oracle Fusion and the Cross-Industry Path to Healthcare Operational Resilience

Hospitals often struggle with supply chain and workforce constraints that other industries solved a decade ago. Manufacturers routinely use predictive systems to monitor their production plans and avoid material shortages. Why can’t healthcare?

At the 2026 Oracle Health and Life Sciences Summit (OHLSSummit26), I sat down with Kristen Miles, VP of Product Management for Healthcare at Oracle. We discussed how Oracle Fusion brings operational efficiency to hospitals by applying lessons directly from retail and manufacturing.

Core Insight: Cross-Industry Expertise is the Blueprint for Healthcare Resilience. Connecting clinical schedules to operational supply chains allows hospitals to predict shortages and adapt to disruptions before they impact patient care.

Applying Proven Supply Chain Workflows

Healthcare traditionally lags behind other sectors in supply planning. Instead of building from scratch, hospitals can adopt proven systems used by other complex sectors to improve their operational resilience.

“We’re taking the learnings of similar industries, retail, and manufacturing… and bringing the exact use cases that our healthcare customers need,” Miles explained.

Connecting Clinical and Operational Data

True resilience requires predicting inventory needs before a shortage actually occurs. By linking scheduled medical procedures to supply systems, intelligent workflows can identify needed components well before the clinical case.

“We now have the ability to see the production schedule, which is actually going to be my procedures that are scheduled, right, with the list of parts that are going to be required for that,” Miles noted.

Stopping Margin Erosion Early

Declining reimbursements mean hospitals must actively operate with fewer resources. Combining data from multiple source systems gives finance and operational teams an advantage for their billing processes.

Miles highlighted this operational advantage: “I can now tell in advance before month-end close that I’ve got a margin erosion. And I can understand across all of these different pieces what’s contributing to that.”

Questions Healthcare IT Leaders are Asking

How does predictive AI improve hospital supply chains? Predictive AI links clinical scheduling directly to operational inventory management. By analyzing upcoming procedures, these systems identify exactly which supplies are needed and detect potential shortages before they force procedure cancellations.

Why is cross-industry expertise valuable for healthcare operations? Sectors like manufacturing and retail have successfully managed complex supply chains and workforce scheduling for years. Healthcare organizations can adopt these proven operational models to improve efficiency rather than testing unproven, industry-specific concepts.

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

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Oracle is a sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

< + > Acquisition Lets AI and Operators Learn From Nearly $2 Billion in Annual Aesthetics Transactions

CorralData’s Acquisition of The Data Co Brings the Nation’s Largest Aesthetics Networks Onto the Platform with Anonymized Peer Benchmarks and AI Insights

CorralData, a data and AI platform for multi-location healthcare and wellness businesses, today announced it acquired The Data Co, an analytics company built by and for multi-clinic aesthetics groups. The Data Co’s customers, including Cosmetic Physician Partners (CPP) and Aesthetic Partners (AP), two of the largest aesthetics networks in the U.S., are moving to CorralData.

Combined with CorralData’s existing customers, the deal puts many of the largest aesthetics rollups and franchise groups in North America on one platform, covering nearly $2 billion a year in aesthetics transactions.

“A single clinic’s data can only tell you so much,” said Alex Lirtsman, Founder and CEO at CorralData. “When our AI can see what’s working across the largest groups in the industry, every customer gets smarter faster. This deal gives us that scale.”

Private equity has spent the last several years buying up medspas and cosmetic surgery practices. Yet most of these groups still run each clinic on its own mix of booking, medical records, and marketing systems. This disparate information makes even simple questions like: Which locations are losing patients? What services lead to repeat visits? Which marketing platform is giving us the most ROI? difficult to answer.

CPP and AP built The Data Co to answer those questions across their own clinics, including benchmarking tools that compare performance across locations and providers. Those tools now become part of CorralData. For aesthetics operators, the combined platform means:

• Recommendations Based on What Works: AskCorral, CorralData’s AI agent, suggests specific changes, such as schedule adjustments or follow-up timing, drawn from results at similar clinics
• Earlier Warning on Lost Patients: Clinics can see which patients are likely to stop booking and reach out before a treatment plan lapses
• Smarter Marketing Spend: Groups can see which channels bring in patients who return, not just first-time bookings
• Benchmarks Against Peers: Managers can compare rebooking rates, revenue per visit, and provider utilization from similar groups; all data is aggregated and anonymized – no company’s or patient’s individual data is shared with anyone else, and the platform is HIPAA-compliant

“When you run one of the largest medspa networks in the country, you feel every gap in your data,” said Daniel Schacter, CEO of Cosmetic Physician Partners. “This combination gives our clinics new tools and sharper benchmarks. Our managers and providers will see the difference in how they run their clinics day to day.”

Aesthetics is CorralData’s largest vertical, but not its only one. Its customers also include multi-location groups in behavioral health, physical therapy, dental, dermatology, cosmetic surgery, ENT, and veterinary care, as well as large pharmaceutical companies.

About CorralData

CorralData is a HIPAA-compliant data and AI platform for healthcare and wellness brands. It connects more than 600 data sources, including medical records, billing, scheduling, and marketing systems, and gives operators reporting, benchmarks, and AI-driven recommendations built on anonymized, industry-wide data. More than 200 organizations across 2,000+ locations use CorralData. Learn more at corraldata.com.

Originally announced October 7th, 2026

< + > MRO’s Prodigy Brings AI-Human Collaboration to Clinical Data Abstraction

Most customer-grade AI tools are trained on the premise that finding something is better than finding nothing. To please the end user, the model will present whatever data results it can. But MRO‘s Prodigy tool, which performs clinical data abstraction, will refuse to present search results unless they’re believed to be of high quality. Chief Product Officer Mo Weitnauer, at the AHIMA Annual Conference, says they achieve 97% accuracy in using the new tool for unstructured EHR/EMR clinical data abstraction.

The reason for this rigor is that clinical data abstraction is a “high-consequence area” used for such sensitive tasks as patient recruitment for clinical trials, infection control, and accreditation. Prodigy automates the harmonization of unstructured EHR text into CDISC SDTM format using ontology-based normalization. Context is key in this specific use case of real-world evidence (RWE) curation: for instance, you might be searching not just for patients with a particular disease, but patients who had that disease during a particular time period.

The critical role of context also means that autonomous AI is not a good choice for the task. Instead, Prodigy works with a human abstractor, performing initial searches.

As clinical data abstraction is being used in more and more areas, Weitnauer says, it is also getting more difficult. This is due to the growing complexity of both the input data and the applications for that data. Patients have comorbidities, regulators are asking for more types of data, and the standards that clinicians have to meet are getting more detailed.

Weitnauer mentions that 40% of the abstractor’s time, traditionally, is spent finding and copying data from the EHR. Prodigy does that task, rendering the abstractor more efficient. MRO stresses interoperability and taps into many types of EHRs. In short, MRO wants to improve how data can be used strategically.

Quality is built into Prodigy, Weitnauer explains, by leveraging the expertise of clinicians in building the models. The company doesn’t focus on a single specialty, but has “tons and tons” of data across the field of medicine. Prodigy also tracks when an abstractor corrects its output, using that information to improve its own quality.

Watch our interview with Mo Weitnauer from MRO to gain a deeper understanding of the value of clinical data abstraction and what it takes to do it effectively.

Learn more about MRO: https://mrocorp.com/

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

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MRO is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

< + > This Week’s Health IT Jobs – October 21, 2026

It can be very overwhelming scrolling through job board after job board in search of a position that fits your wants and needs. Let us take that stress away by finding a mix of great health IT jobs for you! We hope you enjoy this look at some of the health IT jobs we saw healthcare organizations trying to fill this week.

Here’s a quick look at some of the health IT jobs we found:

• Community Health Worker – Mercy
• AI Engineer (REMOTE) – EnableComp
• Chief Operating Officer – McLaren Health Care
• Program Analyst – California Department of Health Care Services
• Data Integrity Specialist – UCHealth
• AI Product Mgr – Inova Health
• Social Determinants of Health Coordinator – AbsoluteCare
• Chief Technology & Information Officer – HR HealthCare
• Healthcare Data Scientist & AI Solutions – BioVid
• Population Health and Informatics Analyst – Healthy Alliance
• Data Entry Representative – Optum
• Community Wellness Advocate – Boston Medical Center (BMC)
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML) Engineer – Intermountain Health
• Provider Data Specialist – TriWest Healthcare Alliance
• DSS Community Engagement Navigator – Elevance Health
• Data Collector – Atrium Health
• Health Information Specialists 1 – Datavant
• AI Product Manager – Cleveland Clinic
• Data Analyst – Christian Community Health Center
• Chief Innovation Officer – The Cigna Group

If none of these jobs fit your needs, be sure to check out our previous health IT job listings.

Do you have an open health IT position that you are looking to fill? Contact us here with a link to the open position and we’ll be happy to feature it in next week’s article at no charge!

*Note: These jobs are listed by Healthcare IT Today as a free service to the community. Healthcare IT Today does not endorse or vouch for the company or the job posting. We encourage anyone applying to these jobs to do their own due diligence.