Pharmacogenomics, also referred to as PGx, is the use of a patient’s genetic makeup to guide safer, more effective medication choices and dosing in everyday clinical practice, including primary care. Although it has emerged as an essential and evidence-based tool in the primary care toolbox, its widespread adoption remains slow.
After more than 30 years in family medicine, I’ve watched every major clinical innovation face early skepticism – from electronic medical records to laparoscopic and
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
The Great Unbundling is Over: Why Healthcare’s “Point Solution” Era is Dead
We have reached point solution fatigue. The future of health care transformation depends on integrated platforms.
Have you ever wondered what happens once a patient’s insurance card is scanned at their doctor’s office? The answer: a lot.
Each time a patient visits a doctor, it sets off a cascade of behind-the-scenes work. These critical “back-of-house” tasks include patient
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Hepatitis B Reform Should Start with Maternal Care
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ decision to move away from recommending the universal hepatitis B at birth is being framed as a scheduling change, but it exposes a deeper problem: for more than 30 years, the United States relied on vaccinating millions of low-risk infants instead of building system that identified and cared for the small number of women who along with their babies were truly were at risk. This was performative compassion—a universal policy that looked equitable
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Analysis: Amazon One Medical’s Health AI Assistant—Agentic Care or Algorithmic Gatekeeping?
What You Should Know
- Amazon One Medical has launched Health AI, an agentic assistant integrated into the One Medical app that provides 24/7 personalized health guidance grounded in a member's unique medical history.
- The tool goes beyond generic search by explaining lab results, managing medications, and booking appointments, while utilizing clinical guardrails to seamlessly connect members to human providers when medical expertise is required.
The Technical Stack: Agentic AI
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Why Social Capital is the Missing Lever for 2026 Healthcare Efficiency
My grim (and not-so-bold) prediction for the year ahead: Cost challenges will dominate leadership meetings throughout the year. My recommendation: Don’t let cost reduction be the only response. Instead, consider how building social capital can help organizations improve efficiency while also improving quality.
The financial pressures on organizations throughout healthcare are already intense, and only likely to worsen. Many providers and payers are running financial
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Why Patient Understanding is the Most Important Metric You Aren’t Tracking
Health systems are drowning in metrics. We can tell you how many portal messages were answered within 24 hours, how many patients closed a care gap, and how many clinicians are using ambient AI in their notes. But there is one question our dashboards rarely answer:
Did the patient actually understand what we told them well enough to act on it?
We have turned “patient education” into a checkbox: an after-visit summary printed, a link to an online library, a line in the note that says,
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From Fragmentation to Clarity: How Ambient AI Powers Value-Based Care
As healthcare organizations deepen their investments in value-based care, one obstacle continues to stymie progress: incomplete visibility into the patient’s health status. The problem isn’t limited to a single source, such as claims data, though claims are often blamed. Rather, it’s the fragmented nature of healthcare data itself. Patient information is dispersed across a patchwork of systems—EHRs, HIEs, scanned documents, specialist consults, diagnostic reports, lab results, payer files, and
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When the Zebra Hides: How AI Ends the Rare Disease Diagnostic Odyssey
Doctors are taught a simple rule early in their training: When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. In other words, the most common explanation is usually the right one. But for the roughly 300 million people worldwide living with a rare disease, that rule can turn into a trap. Their symptoms often look like something ordinary – until years later, when someone finally realizes it was a zebra all along.
The problem isn’t the doctors; it’s the data. Every symptom, lab result, scan, or
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The $32B Leak: Why Digitizing the OR is the Only Path to Financial and Workforce Resilience
In recent months, headlines on both sides of the Atlantic have told the same story. U.S. hospitals are cutting back surgical schedules because they simply don’t have enough staff, while NHS figures show more than seven million people still waiting for treatment in England. A regrettably high number of procedures are cancelled on the day because the workforce is stretched too thin.
For patients, the consequences are deeply personal - longer waits, worsening conditions, and avoidable
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The Proprietary Trap: Why ‘Open Data’ is the Key to Scaling Your Dental Practice in 2026
Care coordination in the dental industry barely exists.
While the medical industry has made progress toward interoperability with several recent initiatives, dentistry continues to lag behind its healthcare counterparts in supporting the principles of “open data,” which allow information to be freely accessed, used, and shared across platforms without restrictive barriers.
Improved data-sharing offers significant benefits for both patients and providers.
Dental
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