< > Creating the Worlds Largest Medical Imaging Library Gradient Health Closes $2.75M Round

Gradient Health, a leading medical AI data-sharing company, announced today the successful closure of a $2.75 million funding round led by ReMY Investors & Consultants. The investment will enable the company to continue assembling the world’s largest and most comprehensive annotated medical imaging library into a secure, unified platform. Joining ReMY on the round were new investors Boro Capital, Supernode Ventures, MedMountain Ventures, The Triangle Tweener Fund, David Golan, and Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2) as well as existing investors VentureSouth and Wavemaker Three-Sixty Health.

With the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence in healthcare, access to high-quality and diverse medical imaging data is vital for the development of innovative and robust solutions. Gradient Health’s groundbreaking approach addresses this critical need by providing a vast collection of annotated medical images in a single, secure repository. By growing and curating this extensive library, the platform will empower researchers to unlock new insights and minimize bias, fueling advancements in diagnostics and therapies.

“We are thrilled to have secured $2.75 million in funding, which will accelerate our mission to transform medical AI data sharing”, said Josh Miller, CEO at Gradient Health. “This investment will allow us to continue assembling the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of annotated medical imaging data. With this dataset, we aim to revolutionize medical research, and ultimately improve patient outcomes.”

The company’s platform offers a range of powerful features designed to facilitate compliant research and seamless collaborations. It employs state-of-the-art security measures to ensure the privacy and compliance of sensitive patient information. Additionally, it provides advanced tools for developers including machine-learning-ready formatting, the ability to search by diseases, and imaging modality.

“We’re excited by Gradient’s vision of building the data layer that will underpin all future medical AI,” said Shana Barghouti, Co-CIO at ReMY Investors & Consultants who led the round. “We’ve been impressed by the team, the vision, and the progress that the team has made already. Gradient Health is building capabilities that will allow for rapid and game-changing advancements in the medical and pharmaceutical industries.”

Jay Goss, General Partner at investors Wavemaker Three-Sixty Health, invested in Gradient Health in a previous round said “As healthcare charts its path with the world of artificial intelligence, which is still in the early innings, a significant unlock comes from accessing clinical data – especially imaging – so that the models are trained responsibly. Gradient has established itself as the leader in this, ensuring an efficient marketplace of sorts exists between algorithm makers and the healthcare industry. We couldn’t be more excited to be involved with this exciting company and stellar team.”

Gradient Health’s data-sharing platform has garnered recognition from industry experts for its potential to revolutionize healthcare research. The company aims to collaborate with academic institutions, healthcare organizations, and technology partners to collectively advance medical knowledge and improve patient care.

About Gradient Health

Gradient Health is a medical technology company headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina. They provide instant access to the raw and labeled medical images needed to train and validate technologies, getting more equitable innovations to market, faster. Gradient was founded to power better medical research by accelerating AI development.

Health innovators from around the world use Gradient Health’s platform to improve their products, without compromising speed, quality of research or data privacy.

For more information about Gradient Health, visit gradienthealth.io

Originally announced June 20th, 2023

< > WHO and HL7 collaborate on global interoperability adoption

The agreement supports the use of the World Health Organization's international classifications and terminologies in the HL7 FHIR community and will provide a testing environment and standards documentation to member states. 

< > Responsible AI governance is needed now says UNC Health analytics VP

Rachini Ahmadi-Moosavi explains why planning and guardrails are so necessary as artificial intelligence becomes embedded in an array of clinical, financial and operational use cases – and explains how they should best be applied.

< > Holon Tackles Provider Burnout With Help From AI Technology

If you asked a healthcare provider what their biggest challenges were, the list would get long very quickly.

One standout, however, is the problem of healthcare burnout, a struggle that healthcare industry leaders and workers alike face every day. In fact, according to new research from Holon Solutions, 79% of healthcare leaders and 77% of healthcare workers see burnout as their biggest challenge.

Fortunately Holon, which describes itself as a “human-centric healthcare technology company,” is on the case. Holon’s technology uses AI to help healthcare teams lay hands on the data they need, in context and ready for immediate use.

CEO Jon Zimmerman comes to Holon with many years of industry experience, including stints at large healthcare IT organizations and medical device maker firms.

“A lot of what we do is to find ways to make life easier and better for providers because, at the end of the day, they serve us all,” Zimmerman told Healthcare IT Today chief editor John Lynn. “We didn’t get here over overnight and we’re not going to get past it overnight.”

To find out what Holon sees as the root causes of healthcare burnout, and how it is tackling these problems, check out John Lynn’s interview with Zimmerman. Find out how the need to do unnecessary work and rework is a major stressor for both health providers and leaders.

Learn more about Holon Solutions: https://www.holonsolutions.com/

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< > Open Data Platform Simplifies Payment Estimates

With laws such as the “No Surprises Act,” government has thrown its considerable weight behind the pressure on payers and clinicians to give patients good-faith estimates of the total cost of treatment. According to Marcus Dorstel, VP of Operations at Turquoise Health, both payers and providers have struggled and invested large amounts of effort in meeting the new requirements.

Payers and providers who want to meet the intent of the law by adding up or “bundling” the many parts of treatment offer “service packages” that estimate what a patient will pay. These service packages get very detailed, because the institution has to consider many factors. What precise procedures are used for a common problem like knee replacement? Will the patient have to stay overnight? What pre-op and post-op care is required?

The payers and clinicians are accepting some risk in providing these packages, because patients deviate from expected courses of treatment. There is an actuarial element to the calculations, assuming that some patients will exceed the expected cost and some will cost less. For instance, the clinicians might estimate that a certain action must be performed 80% of the time to complete a procedure; in such a case, they can include 80% of that cost in that service package.

Because contracts are typically updated annually, each package must be prepared for changes in the environment and patient population during the contract period.

The calculations thrown together to comply with transparency laws are both inefficient and inconsistent because each hospital does it separately. The exact same procedure can have a different cost based on both clinician and payer.

Turquoise Health analyzes large amounts of health care data to help payers and providers do better pricing. I last covered this company last January in an article titled Activating Transparency in Health Care Pricing. The innovation I’ll cover today is standard service packages, which can remove much of the variation and inaccuracies in bundling. The standard packages can also save the institutions time and effort.

Turquoise drew on millions of files across the Internet with data about procedures and costs. They are constantly ingesting new data and aggregating it to generate updates to the packages. The packages’ web site advertises them as open source, but “open data” fits this service better because there is no source code to copy or change.

The database contains more than 200 packages at this point. The level of detail embodied in this work is illustrated by sample names such as “Insertion of Tunneled Venous Access Device – with Subcutaneous Port – Ages 5+” and “Draining or Injecting Medication into a Large Joint/bursa Without Ultrasound.”

More centralization of this type is required for both transparency and cost cutting in health care. Why couldn’t this initiative have been launched by the hospitals and payer, when they recognized that each institution was putting valuable clinical time and money into the effort?

Health care institutions can’t overcome their innate sense of ownership of data and lift their eyes from their own ledgers sufficiently to see the needs they all have in common. Turquoise has done a public service in launching standard service packages.

< > CISA warns of Medtronic cardiac device security vulnerability

Medtronic has released an update for a cybersecurity vulnerability that an unauthorized user could exploit to steal, delete or modify cardiac device data or to gain network access.

< > Featured Health IT Job: Paragon Lab and Clinical Documentation Analyst

We like to regularly feature a healthcare IT job that might be of interest to readers. Today, we’re featuring the Paragon Lab and Clinical Documentation Analyst position that was recently posted on Healthcare IT Central. This position was posted by Stoltenberg Consulting Inc. and is remote.

Here’s a description of the position:

Now seeking a Paragon specialist to assist a client hospital with daily system support and maintenance across both Lab workflows and general Clinical Documentation. An ideal candidate is well rounded in both areas and is able to support general build, break/fix maintenance, and provide guidance on system workflows to ensure standardization across the system.

Requirements

• Full-time availability for immediate start and 6+ month duration
• Altera (Previously Allscripts) Paragon Lab and Clinical Documentation certification/expertise
• Ability to work in East Coast time zone

Looks like a great opportunity for those with experience in analyzing clinical documentation! If this looks like a position that would interest you, check out the full details for the job and how to apply.

As always, you can search our Health IT job board for a variety of jobs from leading companies in the industry. You can also register for free and post your resume where recruiters search for job candidates regularly.