The Financial Pressure on Hospitals is Real — Here’s One Place to Find Relief
Brian Liddell, CEO, Harmony Healthcare IT
Hospital finance leaders don’t need a report to tell them things are difficult, but the American Hospital Association’s latest “Costs of Caring” report does something extremely useful: it puts concrete numbers behind pressures that have been building for years and shows just how much they’ve compounded. The picture the report paints is one of mounting ... Read More
<img width="800" height="799" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Brian-Liddell_1-Cropped-E.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-96638" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Brian-Liddell_1-Cropped-E.jpg 800w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Brian-Liddell_1-Cropped-E-300x300.jpg 300w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Brian-Liddell_1-Cropped-E-290x290.jpg 290w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Brian-Liddell_1-Cropped-E-768x767.jpg 768w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Brian-Liddell_1-Cropped-E-100x100.jpg 100w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /> Brian Liddell, CEO, Harmony Healthcare IT Hospital finance leaders don’t need a report to tell them things are difficult, but the American Hospital Association’s latest “Costs of Caring” report does something extremely useful: it puts concrete numbers behind pressures that have been building for years and shows just how much they’ve compounded. The picture the report paints is one of mounting strain across the industry. Total hospital expenses grew 7.5% in 2025, more than twice the rate of growth in hospital prices. Inpatient volumes rose 5.3% and outpatient visits climbed 9.8%, meaning hospitals are caring for more patients, and sicker ones. Medicare continues to reimburse hospitals at just 83 cents on the dollar, resulting in more than $100 billion in underpayments. The administrative burden is just as costly. Hospitals spent $43 billion in 2025 trying to collect payments insurers already owed, including $18 billion spent overturning claim denials alone. The average hospital now employs roughly 64 administrative and billing staff dedicated solely to these functions — a reflection of how much it costs just to navigate the payment system. The policy environment adds another layer of uncertainty beyond what the AHA report captures. Medicaid cuts totaling $940 billion are projected to leave 14 million more Americans without coverage by 2034, with hospitals absorbing an estimated $85 billion increase in uncompensated care. Rural hospitals are especially vulnerable. Together, these dynamics underscore why hospitals are looking for cost relief wherever they still have control. Hidden Costs Deserve a Second Look One of the quieter contributors to hospital financial strain is legacy IT — specifically, the ongoing costs of maintaining systems that are no longer in active use but still require licensing, infrastructure, and support. These systems create a persistent financial drag, made up of ongoing license fees, maintenance and server costs, and IT resources spent managing them. When budgets tighten, legacy systems are one of the most logical places to look for cost reduction opportunities. A Q4 2025 survey of CHIME members found that 71% of health IT leaders believe legacy system decommissioning creates a significant cost savings opportunity, up from just 58% two years ago. That shift reflects real experience in the field. Organizations that have completed archiving projects frequently see ROI within 12 months, and 2-3X ROI within a few years. One large health system, for example, saved more than $3 million annually in maintenance costs after archiving legacy data and decommissioning legacy systems. Operational Efficiency Matters Just as Much as Direct Savings As hospitals and health systems face escalating administrative burdens, leaders should also prioritize initiatives that reduce operational friction and compliance risk. Archiving legacy data into a single platform that integrates with the EHR helps streamline processes and improve efficiency. With a strong archiving program in place, clinicians and health information management (HIM) teams spend less time navigating disconnected legacy systems to retrieve records. As Tower Health’s VP and Chief Applications Officer shared after implementing an archiving program: “We’ve had significant six-figure ROI in hard dollars – Microsoft licensing, legacy maintenance fees, server costs. That doesn’t even begin to look at the soft-dollar ROI: the efficiency gains, having one source of truth, Single Sign-On [within the EHR to the archive], and easier access for HIM.” A Practical Step in a Complicated Moment The challenges the AHA report describes are pervasive and addressing them requires action well beyond what any single organization can solve alone. In the meantime, hospital leaders are looking for initiatives they can act on now, within their own organizations. For organizations still carrying the costs of systems they’ve largely moved past, legacy data archiving is one area where the return is straightforward and measurable. About Brian Liddell Brian Liddell is CEO of Harmony Healthcare IT, a data lifecycle solutions provider for healthcare organizations. He has more than two decades of experience in healthcare technology, finance, and operations, overseeing daily business functions while driving sustainable growth and customer-focused solutions.
Thoreau Enters Definitive Agreement for Strategic Growth Investment in Ensemble Health Partners
What You Should Know Revenue cycle managed services leader Ensemble Health Partners has announced a definitive agreement for a strategic growth investment from Thoreau, the healthcare investment platform founded by veteran private equity executive Matt Holt. The transaction values Ensemble at an estimated $12 billion, positioning the newly launched, Apollo Global Management-backed Thoreau platform at ... Read More
<img loading="lazy" width="1500" height="446" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FINAL_2022-Ensemble-Logo_Standard-1500x446.webp" alt="Ensemble Health Partners, Microsoft Strengthens AI-Powered Revenue Cycle Management with Expanded Partnership" class="wp-image-78988" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FINAL_2022-Ensemble-Logo_Standard-1500x446.webp 1500w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FINAL_2022-Ensemble-Logo_Standard-300x89.webp 300w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FINAL_2022-Ensemble-Logo_Standard-290x86.webp 290w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FINAL_2022-Ensemble-Logo_Standard-768x228.webp 768w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FINAL_2022-Ensemble-Logo_Standard-1536x457.webp 1536w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FINAL_2022-Ensemble-Logo_Standard.webp 1950w" sizes="(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /> What You Should Know Revenue cycle managed services leader Ensemble Health Partners has announced a definitive agreement for a strategic growth investment from Thoreau, the healthcare investment platform founded by veteran private equity executive Matt Holt. The transaction values Ensemble at an estimated $12 billion, positioning the newly launched, Apollo Global Management-backed Thoreau platform at the epicenter of scaled healthcare administrative outsourcing. Legacy institutional heavyweights Berkshire Partners, Warburg Pincus, and Bon Secours Mercy Health will continue as active co-investors alongside Thoreau. Ensemble commands massive scale within the Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) sector, managing more than $55 billion in net patient revenue across a footprint of over 200 hospitals nationwide. The capital injection will be deployed to accelerate Ensemble’s digital transformation and advanced technology roadmap, focusing on embedding agentic AI and specialized automation workflows across patient access and coding networks. The financial infrastructure supporting the American provider landscape is working through an intensive operational realignment. For the past several years, hospitals, multi-hospital health systems, and large-scale regional physician collectives have combated an unforgiving macroeconomic storm. Margins remain under pressure from clinical staffing shortages, rising uncompensated care liabilities, and an aggressive, highly automated surge in commercial payor claim denials. Historically, health system CFOs attempted to insulate cash flow by deploying localized point solutions or relying on internal, fragmented billing teams to manage accounts receivable (A/R). However, as payor compliance guidelines tighten, this manual approach has hit an administrative ceiling. Cobbling together disconnected software tools creates severe data silos, introduces transcription gaps, and triggers extensive administrative re-work. To survive this environment of margin compression, progressive enterprise provider organizations are moving past tactical software vendors. They are aggressively seeking out comprehensive, end-to-end managed services platforms capable of transforming raw patient accounting records into an automated, auditable, and secure system of continuous revenue capture. To capitalize on this macro demand and expand its global deployment footprint, the nation’s premier end-to-end revenue cycle managed services partner, Ensemble Health Partners, has announced a definitive agreement for a strategic growth investment from Thoreau. Founded by prominent healthcare private equity executive Matt Holt and backed by asset management giant Apollo Global Management, the transaction values Ensemble at an estimated $12 billion. The massive capital allocation establishes Thoreau as a controlling force in healthcare technology-enabled services, providing Ensemble with the deep institutional backing required to accelerate its advanced artificial intelligence implementations across North America. Scaling the $55B Net Patient Revenue Engine The operational foundation driving this milestone transaction centers on Ensemble’s dominant scale within the $34 billion RCM outsourcing sector. Rather than acting as a loose advisory group or a simple software overlay, Ensemble functions as a fully integrated, operator-led extension of a health system’s financial core. The platform manages end-to-end financial lifecycles for more than 200 hospitals nationwide, processing a monumental $55 billion in net patient revenue annually. By combining an elite network of certified revenue cycle operators with a serverless, data-rich intelligence layer, the Ensemble architecture unifies the entire, longitudinal patient journey into a single workspace: Front-End Registration: Optimizes patient access, identity verification, and coverage screens to eliminate errors before they cascade downstream. Mid-Cycle Documentation: Deploys advanced clinical coding models and automated documentation improvements to capture care complexity with absolute specificity. Back-End Collections: Streamlines automated claims management, A/R follow-up protocols, and real-time denial prevention algorithms to accelerate cash velocity. “There is tremendous opportunity to reduce the friction in healthcare for providers, patients, and everyone involved, and we want to remain at the forefront of the innovation that makes that possible,” stated Judson Ivy, Founder and CEO of Ensemble. “The addition of a strategic partner with this depth of experience in healthcare administration, technology, and services gives us additional capital and expertise to expand what we deliver for our clients and the communities they serve.” Forging the Next Frontier: RCM-Native AI Models The true strategic value underpining Thoreau’s multi-billion-dollar bet targets the foundational data requirement of artificial intelligence in healthcare administration. For specialized technology builders, the primary bottleneck to creating reliable machine learning models is not compute access, but securing a massive, high-fidelity volume of real-world operational data. Ensemble possesses an unassailable data advantage. By routing billions of dollars in active provider transactions through its core, the company has built the ultimate training environment for its proprietary, RCM-native large language models (LLMs). This deep intelligence foundation allows the platform to move past flat, deterministic automation scripts to deploy Agentic AI—autonomous digital agents capable of analyzing complex payer rules, predicting claims behaviors, and executing dispute-resolution steps behind the scenes with minimal human intervention. This combination of operational depth and technology innovation has secured massive industry validation. A six-time consecutive winner of the prestigious Best in KLAS award for end-to-end revenue cycle outsourcing, Ensemble has helped its health system clients secure 35 Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) MAP Awards for high-yield operational performance.
￼Kinomatic Secures $4M to Expand AI-Enabled Surgical Planning Platform
What You Should Know Orthopedic technology innovator Kinomatic has successfully finalized a $4M seed funding round led by healthcare-focused venture firm Waterline Ventures. The company has demonstrated significant commercial scale, documenting 7x revenue growth over four years, a 5x expansion in regional provider networks, and a world-class Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 85. Renowned orthopedic ... Read More
<img loading="lazy" width="1500" height="1000" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-8-1500x1000.png" alt="Kinomatic Secures $4M to Expand AI-Enabled Surgical Planning Platform" class="wp-image-96649" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-8-1500x1000.png 1500w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-8-300x200.png 300w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-8-290x193.png 290w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-8-768x512.png 768w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-8-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-8-2048x1365.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /> What You Should Know Orthopedic technology innovator Kinomatic has successfully finalized a $4M seed funding round led by healthcare-focused venture firm Waterline Ventures. The company has demonstrated significant commercial scale, documenting 7x revenue growth over four years, a 5x expansion in regional provider networks, and a world-class Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 85. Renowned orthopedic specialist and opioid-reduction advocate Dr. Andrew B. Wickline, MD, FAAOS, joins the executive leadership team as Chief Medical Officer. To eliminate “one-size-fits-all” surgical alignment parameters, Kinomatic’s platform analyzes over two million data points and 1,000 unique anatomical measurements per patient. The platform matches individual patient biomechanics against a digital inventory of more than 30,000 possible implant configurations to optimize pre-op sizing and long-term functional recovery. The global orthopedic surgery and medical device landscape is navigating a demanding clinical paradox. Total hip and knee replacements represent some of the fastest-growing surgical categories in the United States, driven by a younger, highly active aging demographic that rejects physical limitations. Yet, despite monumental leaps in physical implant metallurgy and robotic cutting precision, the fundamental approach to baseline procedure mapping has remained stubbornly analog. For decades, the industry has relied on generic, two-dimensional alignment parameters applied across diverse patient populations, largely ignoring an individual’s unique, dynamic biomechanics. When structural post-op guidance is absent, functional recovery stalls, implant longevity degrades, and patients experience prolonged dependencies on narcotics. For enterprise health systems and risk-bearing orthopedic groups, bridging this chasm requires an integrated, data-driven platform capable of matching precise pre-operative virtual modeling with continuous, concierge-level aftercare tracking. To eliminate this care fragmentation and deliver a predictable system of clinical action, personalized orthopedic pioneer Kinomatic has announced the close of a $4 million seed funding round. Led by premier healthcare technology investor Waterline Ventures, the capital injection will be leveraged to expand key engineering roles, open a new centralized office, and accelerate the development of its AI-native surgical planning and virtual reality (VR) simulation platform. Activating Biomechanical Precision via Two Million Data Points The core technology driving the Arroyo Grande, California-based company moves past standard point-solution applications to unify the entire surgical lifespan. Rather than forcing a surgeon to make critical prosthetic sizing compromises mid-procedure, Kinomatic begins its workflow directly at the pre-operative stage. The cloud-native platform ingests high-resolution patient CT datasets, executing a granular biomechanical analysis that tracks over two million data points and extracts more than 1,000 unique measurements per individual. This multi-dimensional anatomical mapping allows the underlying AI engine to parse a vast digital inventory of more than 30,000 possible implant configurations, instantly isolating the exact prosthetic size, shape, and placement angle required to mirror the patient’s native joint mechanics. Once the optimal model is established, the platform delivers an immersive VR simulation workspace: Pre-Op Rehearsal: Allows surgeons to virtually enter a highly accurate 3D model of the patient’s skeletal structure, rehearsing bone cuts and implant balancing prior to making the first physical incision. Velocity & Accuracy: Helps surgical teams execute joint replacements more rapidly and predictably, dramatically lowering time under anesthesia and preventing intraoperative sizing corrections. Functional Alignment: Minimizes implant micro-motion and structural wear, directly supporting long-term joint longevity so that the prosthetic feels natural to the patient over a 20- to 30-year lifecycle. “Kinomatic is uniting technology and unparalleled patient care to deliver a new gold standard, where every aspect of surgery is optimized, with the goal of a knee or hip that feels so natural that patients forget they ever had surgery,” stated Shaun Lea, CEO of Kinomatic. “Patients expect more than just ‘good enough’ from their care. Longevity is no longer a fringe concept.”
￼Marathon Health and Lantern Partner to Launch Integrated Primary and Specialty Care Model
What You Should Know Advanced primary care leader Marathon Health and premier specialty care platform Lantern have formalized a strategic commercial partnership targeting skyrocketing employer specialty healthcare spend. The collaborative model integrates Marathon’s value-based, on-site and virtual primary care networks directly with Lantern’s specialist “Network of Excellence” and bundled payment workflows. An early adopter pilot ... Read More
<img loading="lazy" width="1417" height="471" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-7.png" alt="" class="wp-image-96646" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-7.png 1417w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-7-300x100.png 300w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-7-290x96.png 290w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-7-768x255.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1417px) 100vw, 1417px" /> What You Should Know Advanced primary care leader Marathon Health and premier specialty care platform Lantern have formalized a strategic commercial partnership targeting skyrocketing employer specialty healthcare spend. The collaborative model integrates Marathon’s value-based, on-site and virtual primary care networks directly with Lantern’s specialist “Network of Excellence” and bundled payment workflows. An early adopter pilot program focused on musculoskeletal and orthopedic care yielded an immediate 37% to 100% surge in successful member referrals to high-value care pathways. Integrated coordination between the platforms drove a 47% increase in completed or safely avoided surgical procedures, protecting patients from unneeded interventions. For plan sponsors and self-insured employers, the integration secured an average savings of 53% relative to standard PPO network rates for necessary surgical treatments. Disrupting the Specialty Silo The corporate employee benefits and self-insured employer marketplace is facing an acute structural cost crisis. For the past decade, enterprise benefits directors and labor union plan sponsors deployed a variety of point solutions, virtual care applications, and dedicated digital health widgets designed to manage commercial healthcare utilization. However, because these platforms were implemented as isolated vendor silos without a unified coordination layer, they unintentionally deepened systemic fragmentation. Vulnerable patients are routinely left to navigate a complex medical maze completely unassisted—moving blindly from a primary checkup to an un-vetted out-of-network specialist. According to industry metrics from the American Academy of Physician Associates, 54% of patients believe their health would explicitly improve if their providers actively helped them navigate the healthcare continuum. When cross-functional benefits lack a coordinated communication channel, the patient gets stuck in the middle, and the enterprise absorbs the financial shock. This systemic disconnect is most visible within high-acuity specialty care—particularly orthopedic and musculoskeletal treatments—which consistently ranks as a top-two overall cost driver for self-insured organizations. Without a trusted clinician to guide the member to high-value centers of excellence, unmanaged care patterns drive a massive surge in duplicative imaging, inappropriate specialist selections, and entirely unnecessary, high-cost surgical procedures. For employer boards, bending this specialty cost curve requires transitioning away from fragmented vendor matching to establish a unified primary care “front door” capable of orchestrating downstream referrals. To close this coordination gap and deliver predictable financial returns, advanced primary care leader Marathon Health has announced a landmark integrated partnership with specialty care platform pioneer Lantern. By linking Marathon’s value-based primary clinical model directly with Lantern’s direct-contracted network of excellence, the alliance builds a trusted referral bridge engineered to maximize member engagement, prevent unnecessary surgeries, and significantly lower employer specialty care spend across North America. Leveraging Advanced Primary Care as the Ecosystem Quarterback The operational methodology driving the partnership treats comprehensive primary care as the ultimate point of leverage across the healthcare delivery system. Rather than attempting to control specialty expenditures through restrictive post-facto insurance pre-authorizations or cold digital referrals, Marathon Health serves as the proactive quarterback of the employer’s entire benefits ecosystem. When a member presents with severe joint or back pain at a nationwide Marathon on-site, nearsite, or virtual health center, the treating clinician utilizes established, native workflows to evaluate the condition. If specialty intervention is required, the primary provider initiates a warm, data-driven referral directly to Lantern, initiating a seamless coordination sequence: Advocate Engagement: Dedicated Lantern Care Advocates instantly reach out to the member, guiding them through objective specialist selection based on rigorous quality and historical volume metrics. Continuous Coordination: Lantern manages the end-to-end logistics of care coordination, travel planning, and pre-surgical clearance while utilizing transparent, bundled payment methodologies. Closed-Loop Feedback: Real-time post-surgical clinical documentation and recovery tracking metrics are securely cycled back into Marathon’s core electronic health record (EHR) to support continuous, home-based primary care monitoring. “Having worked in the specialty and acute care world where the downstream costs and consequences of fragmented care are most visible, I can tell you that primary care is the highest leverage point we have,” stated Chris Pricco, CEO of Marathon Health. “When you integrate it with specialty care, you don’t just reduce cost. You change the trajectory of someone’s health. That’s what we’ve built for employers, and we’re honored to partner with Lantern to accelerate that impact.” Capturing the 53% Savings: Data from the Field The financial and clinical performance data generated during an early adopter pilot framework—which included participation from large-scale self-insured collectives like the Colorado Employer Benefit Trust (CEBT)—proves the definitive Return on Investment (ROI) of an integrated benefits architecture. When compared to traditional, uncoordinated specialty referral channels, the Marathon-Lantern pilot achieved a striking 37% to 100% expansion in member referral engagement and programmatic utilization. Crucially, because the integrated model evaluates a patient’s holistic health before scheduling an operating room, the collaboration drove a 47% increase in completed or safely avoided surgical procedures, guiding members toward highly effective physical therapy and conservative management alternatives when surgery was clinically inappropriate. When surgical intervention was deemed absolutely necessary, the utilization of Lantern’s pre-negotiated, directly contracted specialty care network secured an average savings of 53% for employers relative to standard PPO network rates. This combination enables a 4% overall annual reduction in healthcare expenses observed across Lantern’s broad national book of business, which currently spans 12 million covered members and over 1,000 enterprise clients.
Opmed and Mayo Clinic Unveil Multimodal AI Platform at ACC.26 to Optimize Surgical Capacity
What You Should Know Healthcare operations AI pioneer Opmed has announced the results of a multi-year collaborative study with the Mayo Clinic aimed at optimizing operating room (OR) efficiency. Presented at the ACC.26 (American College of Cardiology Expo), the study proves that Opmed’s multimodal deep learning platform reduces cardiovascular (CV) procedure scheduling errors by approximately ... Read More
<img loading="lazy" width="1500" height="912" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/image-18-1500x912.png" alt="Mayo Clinic Study: Genetic Test Can Predict GLP-1 Nausea Side Effects" class="wp-image-87981" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/image-18-1500x912.png 1500w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/image-18-300x182.png 300w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/image-18-290x176.png 290w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/image-18-768x467.png 768w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/image-18-1536x934.png 1536w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/image-18-2048x1245.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /> What You Should Know Healthcare operations AI pioneer Opmed has announced the results of a multi-year collaborative study with the Mayo Clinic aimed at optimizing operating room (OR) efficiency. Presented at the ACC.26 (American College of Cardiology Expo), the study proves that Opmed’s multimodal deep learning platform reduces cardiovascular (CV) procedure scheduling errors by approximately 50%. Traditional scheduling methods rely on historic human averages, generating an inaccurate status quo Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 1.13 hours per surgical case. By ingesting structured datasets alongside unstructured physician notes (Clinical + Notes), Opmed’s platform slashed that error window to a precise MAE of 0.564 hours, outperforming human clinician baselines by a factor of two. The platform addresses severe health system margin pressures; with idle OR time costing up to $1,000 per hour, the solution reclaims over 200 operational hours annually per room. Why Mayo Clinic Partnered with Opmed to Standardize OR Block Metrics The administrative and logistical infrastructure backing the nation’s high-stakes surgical suites is operating under severe post-pandemic strain. Within complex, specialized clinical environments like cardiovascular (CV) departments, planning a predictable daily operating room (OR) schedule has historically resembled an uncalibrated math problem. Because cardiac procedures are highly variable—subject to sudden anatomical anomalies, patient comorbidities, and fluid intraoperative changes—precisely predicting exactly how long a surgeon will spend inside a block is notoriously difficult. Today, the vast majority of hospital networks continue to rely on manual spreadsheets, subjective clinician judgment, and un-adjusted historical averages to map out their suites. This lack of analytical precision generates a massive operational swing. When a procedure takes significantly longer than scheduled, it triggers a cascading delay that exhausts surgical teams, cancels subsequent operations, and drives up unmanaged incidental overtime. Conversely, overestimating a case length leaves expensive surgical theaters completely empty. With industry data indicating that un-utilized OR blocks cost hospitals an average of $50 to $150 per minute—and roughly $1,000 in operating expenses for every unused hour—this systemic scheduling friction drains millions from a hospital’s bottom line while directly extending patient wait times. To eliminate this data isolation and introduce a predictable system of action, healthcare operations AI leader Opmed has announced the results of a multi-year collaborative validation study with the Mayo Clinic. Presented formally before international clinical leaders at the American College of Cardiology Expo (ACC.26), the milestone dataset demonstrates that deploying multimodal deep learning models can successfully reduce cardiovascular scheduling errors by approximately 50%, opening up vital surgical capacity without adding human-capital overhead. Decoding the Multimodal Matrix: How the Algorithm Beats the Baseline The core technology driving the Opmed platform moves far beyond the flat, single-variable data models that limit legacy scheduling assistants. Instead of merely looking at a surgeon’s past five procedures, Opmed’s Adaptive OR Optimization Engine runs billions of predictive permutations each second. Trained on comprehensive historical case records from the Mayo Clinic spanning 2022 through 2025, the platform simultaneously ingests an array of distinct, multi-vector patient and clinical signals: Patient-Specific Phenotypes: Evaluates age, American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) physical status classification, and acute cardiac comorbidities. Operational Variables: Tracks specific procedure types, real-time anesthesia induction cadences, room turnover metrics, and individualized surgeon behavioral histories. Unstructured Text Processing: Interlaces structured medical fields with unstructured clinical data, directly parsing free-text physician notes and preoperative electrocardiogram (ECG) readouts. To rigorously prove its predictive power, four distinct AI model configurations were tested against a completely isolated holdout cohort of 643 advanced cardiovascular procedures executed between November 2025 and January 2026. The baseline human estimation method recorded a volatile Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 1.13 hours. By contrast, Opmed’s top-performing configuration—which combined structured clinical fields with unstructured pre-op dictations (Clinical + Notes)—achieved a historic MAE of just 0.564 hours, a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.799 hours, and a predictive variance ($R^2$) score of 0.721. This dwarfs the blunted 0.31 $R^2$ baseline scored by human scheduling teams. Across every single model variation evaluated by the Mayo Clinic, the platform consistently held its prediction error under 0.60 hours, establishing an unassailable data standard that human scheduling intuition cannot replicate. The Financial Return The immediate economic impact of this operational precision addresses the primary margin challenges keeping health system executives up at night. Operating rooms serve as a hospital’s primary financial engine, frequently generating upwards of 40% of total corporate expenses and a dominant share of net revenue. By tightly aligning predicted schedules with actual, physical procedural times, the platform effectively eliminates artificial bottlenecks, allows departments to confidently schedule an additional two to three complex cases per month, and reclaims over 200 wasted OR hours annually per room. “While much of the healthcare AI conversation focuses on areas such as medical imaging or surgical tools when it comes to AI’s impact, this study demonstrates the potential, to patients and medical centers alike, of AI scheduling,” stated Dr. Mor Brokman Meltzer, CEO and Co-founder of Opmed. “Being able to collaborate with the Mayo Clinic to study this impact over a long period serves as a major milestone in bringing this technology and its impact to the forefront of the medical AI conversation.”
What Senior Leaders Actually Need to Know About Scaling Digital inPharma
MD Akram Hossain, Product Management Digital Transformation Leader
Digital transformation in pharma usually starts off strong, big vision, budget gets approved, everyone’s aligned, but scaling it is where things get messy. At the leadership level, this really becomes an orchestration problem. It’s like trying to expand a manufacturing plant while everything is still running. You can’t pause production, you can’t mess up compliance, ... Read More
<img loading="lazy" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/MD-Akram-Hossain-1500x1913.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-96641" width="684" height="872" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/MD-Akram-Hossain-1500x1913.jpg 1500w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/MD-Akram-Hossain-235x300.jpg 235w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/MD-Akram-Hossain-227x290.jpg 227w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/MD-Akram-Hossain-768x979.jpg 768w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/MD-Akram-Hossain-1205x1536.jpg 1205w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/MD-Akram-Hossain-1606x2048.jpg 1606w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/MD-Akram-Hossain-scaled.jpg 2008w" sizes="(max-width: 684px) 100vw, 684px" /> MD Akram Hossain, Product Management & Digital Transformation Leader Digital transformation in pharma usually starts off strong, big vision, budget gets approved, everyone’s aligned, but scaling it is where things get messy. At the leadership level, this really becomes an orchestration problem. It’s like trying to expand a manufacturing plant while everything is still running. You can’t pause production, you can’t mess up compliance, and you definitely can’t create chaos on the floor. Scaling digital works the same way. You’re layering in new systems, new processes, new skills, all while everything else keeps moving. The leaders who get this right don’t just throw tech at the problem. They focus on governance, change, and the actual building of capability over time. Governance is the Control Tower, Not the Traffic Jam A lot of people hear “governance” and immediately think red tape. But,, when it works, it feels more like air traffic control. It’s there to keep things moving smoothly, not slow everything down. Especially in pharma, where you’ve got EPM, ERP, clinical systems, plus regulatory pressure all colliding, you need clarity. Who owns what, how decisions get made, and how risks show up early. If that’s missing, teams either stall waiting for approvals or just go off on their own and create bigger problems later. What actually works is governance that feels usable. Clear decision rights, real escalation paths, and getting quality and regulatory involved early instead of last-minute. When governance becomes part of how teams operate every day, not some checkpoint at the end, things actually move faster. In my career, I have led multiple enterprise system rollouts, where we layered governance into the product lifecycle from the very beginning. It meant having regular touchpoints with the governance stakeholders and aligning model or data module build, design or testing decisions from a product ownership angle to increase transparency and accountability. This resulted in less rework during audit cycles, clearer expectations, and increased stakeholder confidence in the overall product journey. Change Management is Where Things Usually Fall Apart One of the biggest mistakes I keep seeing is assuming people will just “get it” because the system is better. On paper, sure, better forecasting, better visibility, tighter controls. But for the teams actually using it, it can feel like rebuilding an engine while the car is still going 70 mph. There’s stress around learning new systems, losing old ways of working, and even how performance gets measured. Good change management leans into it. Leaders have to explain not just what’s changing, but why it matters day to day. Training can’t just be a one-time thing at go-live; it has to keep going. And honestly, leadership behavior matters a lot here. If leaders are actually using the system, asking about it, and reinforcing it, that signal travels fast. In pharma, especially, this human side is what decides whether a system actually works or just technically exists. Capability Building is the Long Game You can buy technology pretty easily. You can’t buy capability the same way. That part takes time. Scaling digital really means building teams that understand both the systems and the business they support. I think of it like moving from outsourced maintenance to having your own engineers who actually know how things work under the hood. Leaders need to invest in product thinking, data literacy, and teams that can operate more agilely. And not just for one project, but as a long-term muscle. I strongly believe in talent development and in taking the initiative to train junior team members as they grow and adapt. When leading a recent enterprise system rollout, I coached the team’s associate business analysts on requirement gathering and user story and acceptance criteria documentation, and gradually had them take on the lead in scrum calls and demos. This helped build their confidence in overall agile cross-functional collaboration, and some of them even voluntarily documented the processes as SOPs for future team members to refer to. At the end of the day, scaling digital in pharma isn’t something you “finish.” It’s more like a discipline you keep building. The leaders who treat it that way, with strong governance, real attention to people, and a focus on capability, end up with systems that can actually evolve without breaking things. In past EHR transformations, I have had both clinical and non-clinical staff involved in demo sessions so that they could get familiar with the new system features as those were being released. Many had their own insights and feedback on the features that technical teams were able to incorporate in subsequent releases, rather than tackle it as a post-go-live maintenance activity. This not only helped build a more credible product but also reduced stress and increased acceptance amongst clinical stakeholders. As AI starts getting layered into all of this, it only raises the stakes. Leaders really need to double down on building internal talent, keeping change management structured, and creating trust so teams feel equipped to adapt, not overwhelmed by yet another wave of complexity. About Akram Hossain MD Akram Hossain is an accomplished product management and digital transformation leader with over nine years of experience leading enterprise-wide digital implementations across healthcare, finance, and technology. An MBA and Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner, he specializes in EPM, ERP, and EHR systems, with deep expertise in platforms like Anaplan, Workday, SAP, and Epic.
Vali Health Emerges from Stealth with $6M to Scale Responsible AI Across Home Care EHRs
What You Should Know San Francisco-based health technology innovator Vali Health has emerged from stealth with a $6M funding round led by Bonfire Ventures, Supernode, and Comma Capital. The financing features prominent backing from Jacquelyn Kung, co-founder of ClearCare (now WellSky), aligning the startup with deep clinical and operations software lineage. The platform tackles the ... Read More
<img loading="lazy" width="1500" height="802" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-6-1500x802.png" alt="" class="wp-image-96635" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-6-1500x802.png 1500w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-6-300x160.png 300w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-6-290x155.png 290w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-6-768x411.png 768w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-6-1536x822.png 1536w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-6-2048x1096.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /> What You Should Know San Francisco-based health technology innovator Vali Health has emerged from stealth with a $6M funding round led by Bonfire Ventures, Supernode, and Comma Capital. The financing features prominent backing from Jacquelyn Kung, co-founder of ClearCare (now WellSky), aligning the startup with deep clinical and operations software lineage. The platform tackles the acute, multi-layered “no-show crisis” impacting home care, where sudden caregiver call-outs leave vulnerable aging populations stranded without care continuity. Vali’s AI agents autonomously execute select workforce management, routing, and caregiver-matching tasks with an initial 98% autonomous completion velocity. To prevent uncalibrated machine learning deviations, the framework enforces a strict 2% human-in-the-loop exception and override routing layer to protect patient safety. The domestic long-term care and home-based clinical coordination sectors are colliding with an unforgiving macroeconomic reality. As the “Silver Tsunami” accelerates and millions of aging individuals express an overwhelming preference for aging in place, the home care industry has transformed into a critical pillar of healthcare delivery. Yet, the backend administrative infrastructure utilized to manage this distributed workforce remains dangerously fragmented and manual. Eldercare agencies fight an ongoing battle against an unpredictable, high-stakes scheduling crisis. Last-minute caregiver call-outs, rapid sick leaves, and unexpected transportation gridlocks routinely disrupt care. When these scheduling breakdowns occur, the fallout goes far beyond typical office friction; it triggers immediate, life-or-death patient safety risks—leaving vulnerable seniors diagnosed with advanced dementia, Parkinson’s, or severe mobility limitations completely stranded without professional support. Furthermore, attempting to match specialized clinical needs with appropriately certified personnel via legacy spreadsheets or whiteboards introduces severe human bottlenecks. This administrative strain fuels severe scheduler burnout, drives up caregiver attrition, and widens critical gaps in care continuity. While advanced technology has rapidly expanded across acute clinical settings, generic automation tools routinely lack the rigid operational guardrails, deep Electronic Health Record (EHR) integrations, and data compliance tracking required to safely navigate eldercare. To dismantle this logistical bottleneck and establish an accountable, automated system of action, home care infrastructure pioneer Vali Health has officially emerged from stealth with a $6 million capital raise. Led by venture growth expert Bonfire Ventures, with heavy participation from Supernode and Comma Capital, the round features strategic backing from senior home care pioneer Jacquelyn Kung. The capital injection positions Vali to scale its specialized, responsible AI agents as the definitive operational backbone for the home health sector. Automating the Operational Core via Human-in-the-Loop Interceptors The primary technology driving Vali Health is a cloud-native, serverless automation architecture engineered to function as an invisible safety network for mid-sized and enterprise care agencies. Rather than operating as a basic notification tool or a simple calendar display, Vali connects directly into established home care EHR environments—such as WellSky and CareSmartz360—to ingest real-time caregiver variables, client preference profiles, and historic attendance datasets. When an unpredicted open shift or caregiver call-out occurs, Vali’s specialized AI agents instantly activate: automatically scanning the local workforce pool, cross-referencing specific clinical certification demands, and coordinating targeted omni-channel communication loops to fill the staffing gap without forcing coordinators into manual triage. The operational numbers demonstrate clear efficiency gains: Task Autonomy: Across live pilot frameworks, Vali’s agentic systems are on track to complete 98% of workforce management and messaging tasks entirely autonomously. Frictionless Onboarding: Natively embeds within current operating patterns, eliminating double-entry data risks and cutting administrative overhead by upwards of 20 hours per week per office location. Clinical Performance Moat: Drives a dramatic 80% reduction in un-staffed or open patient shifts within the first two weeks of deployment, ensuring seniors receive highly reliable care. Crucially, because home health operates within a zero-margin-of-error compliance window, Vali’s core architecture rejects completely unmonitored automation. The platform implements a strict 2% human-in-the-loop exception routing design. Whenever a high-acuity matching conflict emerges, an anomalous caregiver response occurs, or a sensitive compliance flag is triggered, the engine automatically halts the automated cycle, packages the contextual data, and routes the transaction to a human coordinator for final sign-off. “Running a home care agency means a thousand small coordination problems every day, and most of them are manual,” observed Dave Heinze, an agency operator at Home Instead. “Vali is the first thing that’s actually given my team time back. I can grow without burning everyone out.” Translating Deep Domain Insights into Strategic Market Trust The market momentum surrounding Vali Health’s stealth exit is driven by the deep vertical alignment of its founding team. CEO Serena Dang—a two-time founder who transitioned from Wall Street to home tech following a personal family care tragedy—honed her service-first methodology within Cornell University’s hospitality program. CTO Jason Wu, also a serial entrepreneur, brings advanced routing, data protection, and precision logistics expertise from the fintech and e-commerce spaces. This combined experience is a valuable asset as the startup navigates a sector where 80% of the frontline workforce is female, demanding technology that supports, protects, and respects the direct provider-patient relationship. This deep empathy has translated into immediate market validation. Within the past twelve months, Vali Health has documented a striking 400% growth trajectory, expanding to coordinate 40,000 monthly shifts across nearly 100 agency environments spanning 30 states. Industry pioneer Jacquelyn Kung, co-founder of ClearCare and founder of Activated Insights, highlighted this structural shift, stating that the future of aging in place depends entirely on deploying smarter infrastructure behind the scenes. Kung emphasized that Vali stands out as an AI-native solution that genuinely prioritizes care safety, introducing a profound positive impact for families, agencies, and frontline caregivers alike.
Model N Acquires Kalderos to Expand 340B Capabilities and Gross-to-Net Analytics
What You Should Know End-to-end life sciences revenue management pioneer Model N has announced its strategic acquisition of drug discount analytics platform Kalderos. The transaction consolidates Kalderos’ proprietary Truzo platform into Model N’s commercial infrastructure to provide real-time, claims-level visibility into complex 340B discount networks. Life sciences manufacturers face intensifying gross-to-net (GTN) pressures, driven by ... Read More
<img loading="lazy" width="1172" height="916" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-5.png" alt="Model N Acquires Kalderos to Expand 340B Capabilities and Gross-to-Net Analytics" class="wp-image-96632" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-5.png 1172w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-5-300x234.png 300w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-5-290x227.png 290w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-5-768x600.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1172px) 100vw, 1172px" /> What You Should Know End-to-end life sciences revenue management pioneer Model N has announced its strategic acquisition of drug discount analytics platform Kalderos. The transaction consolidates Kalderos’ proprietary Truzo platform into Model N’s commercial infrastructure to provide real-time, claims-level visibility into complex 340B discount networks. Life sciences manufacturers face intensifying gross-to-net (GTN) pressures, driven by ongoing Medicare drug price negotiations, most-favored-nation (MFN) pricing models, and strict federal compliance requirements. Model N’s 2026 State of Revenue Report uncovers a massive industry data blindspot: only 1% of life sciences revenue executives maintain real-time visibility into 340B discounts, Medicaid/Medicare rebates, and utilization data. The combination expands Model N’s recent deployment of Data nSights and agentic AI software workflows, fortifying a platform that already manages $1.3 trillion in gross revenue for global pharmaceutical and medtech innovators. The global pharmaceutical and medical technology commercialization pipeline is navigating an exceptionally volatile fiscal environment. Life sciences manufacturers are operating under a compounding web of regulatory shifts, characterized by the rollouts of federal Medicare drug price negotiations, evolving most-favored-nation (MFN) pricing models, and escalating federal compliance scrutiny surrounding statutory discount reporting. Concurrently, the financial gap between a drug’s initial list price and its actual net return—the gross-to-net (GTN) value chain—has expanded into an intricate web of overlapping commercial rebates, Medicaid clawbacks, and specialized statutory carve-outs. Within this margin-compressed landscape, the federal 340B drug pricing program has emerged as one of the most operationally complex and financially significant vectors of revenue leakage. Originally engineered to mandate that pharmaceutical brands sell outpatient drugs at steep discounts to eligible safety-net hospitals and community clinics, the program has experienced explosive growth. However, because the underlying data reporting pipeline remains fragmented and non-standardized, manufacturers are routinely exposed to systematic duplicate discounting—where a single drug transaction is penalized by both a 340B discount and a Medicaid rebate simultaneously. Model N’s 2026 State of Revenue Report uncovers the sheer scale of this industry data blindspot: a mere 1% of life sciences revenue leaders possess real-time visibility into 340B discounts, Medicaid and Medicare allocations, and localized utilization rebates. Consolidating the Commercial Core to Stem Revenue Leakage To eliminate this multi-billion-dollar visibility gap and deliver a definitive, auditable system of financial action, commercial optimization and compliance leader Model N has announced its strategic acquisition of health technology innovator Kalderos. Backed by marquee institutional investors and private equity giant Vista Equity Partners, Model N will integrate Kalderos’ purpose-built compliance software directly into its market-leading commercial infrastructure. The consolidation builds an unassailable financial protective layer for global life sciences teams. By unifying contracting, claims validation, conflict management, and payment reconciliation workflows within a single enterprise workspace, Model N equips pharmaceutical manufacturers with the precise, claims-level data required to actively identify discount discrepancies and halt revenue erosion before it hits the balance sheet. Bret Connor, Chief Executive Officer of Model N, highlighted the mission-critical timing of the integration, stating that the enterprise delivers the specialized platform life sciences innovators depend on to optimize market access, maximize revenue, and preserve compliance. Connor noted that the acquisition of Kalderos provides a highly proactive, precise framework to manage complex drug pricing models through a single, seamlessly integrated solution—an essential requirement as reporting guidelines and 340B data tracking demands escalate in complexity. Activating the Truzo Engine and Claims-Level Transparency The primary technology asset driving this transaction is Kalderos’ proprietary Truzo platform. Engineered as an independent, authoritative intelligence clearinghouse for the gross-to-net ecosystem, Truzo operates by consolidating billions of dollars in multi-channel drug purchases into a highly structured, objective source of truth. Rather than relying on lagging aggregate spreadsheets or speculative retrospective lookbacks, the solution delivers real-time data visibility across multiple discount frameworks simultaneously. This automated tracking allows manufacturers to continuously cross-reference incoming commercial claims against localized safety-net provider rosters, instantly isolating duplicate rebate requests, enforcing strict compliance monitoring, and streamlining automated dispute resolutions between drug developers and covered clinical entities. Angie Franks, CEO of Kalderos, reinforced this core operational value, emphasizing that joining forces with Model N embeds these transparent, claims-level auditing tools directly within a revenue management framework already trusted by the world’s leading pharmaceutical brands.
Prior Authorization Technology Is the Weakest Link in the GLP-1 Revolution
The clinical case for GLP-1 receptor agonists in obesity management is no longer a debate. Randomized controlled trials have demonstrated sustained weight reduction of 15 to 22 percent of body weight, meaningful improvements in cardiovascular outcomes, and reductions in obesity related comorbidities including type 2 diabetes and sleep apnea. The American Association of Clinical Endocrinology, ... Read More
<img loading="lazy" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-3.png" alt="Prior Authorization Technology Is the Weakest Link in the GLP-1 Revolution" class="wp-image-96628" width="673" height="637" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-3.png 984w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-3-300x284.png 300w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-3-290x275.png 290w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-3-768x727.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 673px) 100vw, 673px" /> Dr. Quoc N. Dang, DO, The clinical case for GLP-1 receptor agonists in obesity management is no longer a debate. Randomized controlled trials have demonstrated sustained weight reduction of 15 to 22 percent of body weight, meaningful improvements in cardiovascular outcomes, and reductions in obesity related comorbidities including type 2 diabetes and sleep apnea. The American Association of Clinical Endocrinology, the American Gastroenterological Association, and major cardiology societies have all updated their guidelines to reflect this evidence. Clinically, the question of whether these medications work has been settled. The question that has not been settled — and that is quietly determining who actually receives this care — is whether the health IT infrastructure supporting access to these therapies is adequate. It is not. The prior authorization systems, formulary management platforms, and electronic health record integrations that sit between a clinician’s prescribing decision and a patient filling a prescription were not designed for a drug class of this complexity, this volume, or this clinical significance. They are failing, and patients are the ones absorbing the cost. Consider what the prior authorization workflow actually demands for a GLP-1 prescription. A clinician must document body mass index thresholds, the presence or absence of specific comorbidities, prior treatment attempts with qualifying agents, and often a formal dietary counseling attestation — all formatted to the exacting and frequently idiosyncratic requirements of a given payer’s criteria. The American Medical Association’s 2023 Prior Authorization Physician Survey found that 93 percent of physicians report delays in patient care due to prior authorization, and 82 percent report that the process sometimes leads patients to abandon recommended treatment altogether. For GLP-1 therapies, initial denial rates from commercial payers have been reported as high as 30 to 50 percent, with successful appeals requiring weeks of additional documentation exchange. The technology layer underneath this process is strikingly outdated. Despite the existence of the NCPDP SCRIPT ePA standard and CMS mandates encouraging electronic prior authorization adoption, a substantial share of PA requests for specialty medications — including GLP-1 agents — still travel by fax. Where electronic portals exist, they are rarely integrated with the EHR workflow. The physician’s team must manually re enter clinical data that already lives in structured fields inside the patient’s chart: the BMI from the last visit, the A1C trend from the lab panel, the documented counseling session from six months ago. That redundant data entry is not merely inefficient. It introduces transcription error, consumes clinical staff time, and extends turnaround. For a drug class where early treatment initiation correlates with better long term adherence, a two to four week authorization delay is not a paperwork inconvenience — it is a clinical access barrier. This is the distinction that health IT leaders and policymakers must internalize: a plan can technically cover a GLP-1 agent while its prior authorization infrastructure functions as a de facto denial mechanism. Coverage on paper means nothing if the administrative pathway to that coverage is inaccessible to the average primary care practice without a dedicated authorization team. Small practices, rural practices, and practices serving Medicaid populations are disproportionately affected. The burden does not fall equally, and the disparity is in large part a technology gap. There is a secondary technology failure worth naming. GLP-1 therapies are expensive, and payers are understandably interested in outcomes data to support value based contracting arrangements. But the data pipelines that would enable that kind of outcomes measurement — connecting prescription fill data, lab trends, weight trajectories, and downstream utilization across plan years — largely do not exist in integrated form. EHR data remains siloed from claims data. Real-world outcomes that could justify formulary placement or tiered cost sharing go unmeasured because no one has built the infrastructure to capture them systematically. The irony is that the same payers resisting broad access on cost grounds are also failing to invest in the outcomes tracking architecture that would let them evaluate whether their cost concerns are justified. What would better health IT infrastructure look like? At minimum, it would mean true EHR integrated ePA — not a portal that clinicians open in a separate browser window, but a workflow embedded in the prescribing interface that automatically populates payer criteria from structured chart data and returns a real time eligibility determination. It would mean formulary APIs that surface coverage status and prior authorization requirements at the point of prescribing, before a prescription is sent to the pharmacy. It would mean standardized outcomes data schemas that allow participating practices to contribute deidentified longitudinal data to payer provider value arrangements. The technical standards for most of this — HL7 FHIR, the Da Vinci Prior Authorization Support implementation guide, NCPDP SCRIPT — already exist. The gap is not innovation. It is implementation. The GLP-1 revolution is real. But its benefits will remain inequitably distributed as long as the administrative and IT infrastructure surrounding access lags this far behind the clinical evidence. Health IT professionals, EHR vendors, payer technology teams, and standards bodies have a specific and tractable problem in front of them. The patients who could benefit from this drug class are waiting on a prior authorization queue, not a clinical trial. The tools to fix this already exist. The will to deploy them is the variable that still needs to change. About Dr. Quoc N. Dang, DO Dr. Quoc N. Dang, DO, is a Medical Director specializing in obesity medicine and GLP-1 therapy.
What Unstructured Data is Really Costing Healthcare
Stacy Pur, MBA, BSN, RN, Sr. VP of Product for eFax by Consensus Cloud Solutions
At the center of some of healthcare’s most important conversations about patient access, provider burnout, and interoperability is a single pain point: unstructured data. When the HITECH Act pushed healthcare into the digital age, it prompted a shift to structured data formats that our industry has yet to master. As a result, interoperability suffers, patient ... Read More
<img loading="lazy" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Stacy-Pur_headshot2-1500x1500.jpg" alt="What Unstructured Data is Really Costing Healthcare" class="wp-image-96625" width="570" height="570" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Stacy-Pur_headshot2-1500x1500.jpg 1500w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Stacy-Pur_headshot2-300x300.jpg 300w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Stacy-Pur_headshot2-290x290.jpg 290w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Stacy-Pur_headshot2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Stacy-Pur_headshot2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Stacy-Pur_headshot2-2048x2048.jpg 2048w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Stacy-Pur_headshot2-100x100.jpg 100w" sizes="(max-width: 570px) 100vw, 570px" /> Stacy Pur, MBA, BSN, RN, Sr. VP of Product for eFax® by Consensus Cloud Solutions At the center of some of healthcare’s most important conversations about patient access, provider burnout, and interoperability is a single pain point: unstructured data. When the HITECH Act pushed healthcare into the digital age, it prompted a shift to structured data formats that our industry has yet to master. As a result, interoperability suffers, patient data is incomplete or missed, and providers and staff spend more time than ever wading through data that may not net relevant insights. Recently, my team met with a focus group of several members of the College of Healthcare Information Executives (CHIME) to discuss this critical issue. Though this challenge has plagued healthcare for many years, these executives uncovered new pain points, nuances, and believe it or not, hope, when it comes to handling unstructured data. Key Takeaways: The Core Issue: Unstructured data is the primary bottleneck for healthcare interoperability, provider burnout, and patient access. Hidden Sources: Unstructured data doesn’t just come from scanned documents; it is increasingly generated by poor third-party digital integrations. The True Cost: Unstructured data negatively impacts organizational credibility, security, staff time, and ultimately, patient outcomes. The Solution: Healthcare leaders are turning to AI and Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solutions to automatically structure data and integrate it directly into the EMR. Where does unstructured healthcare data come from? When asked about their organizations’ biggest sources of unstructured data, most respondents could easily list off the usual suspects. Imaging files don’t fit within the neat boxes of an EMR. Data from pharmacies, other hospitals, consult notes and provider referrals don’t always come in a standardized format. Scanned documents were also listed as a source of unstructured data. Organizations routinely dedicate staff time to manually reviewing physical or scanned documents and entering data into the EMR to structure it appropriately. But the most surprising aspect of this discussion was that organizations are increasingly struggling with unstructured data from within modern digital tools themselves. One executive in the focus group noted that much of their organization’s unstructured data comes from third-party integrations. While the data starts off structured in one system, integration challenges can mean the information becomes translated into unstructured data once it reaches the EHR. The example was confirmed by multiple other people on the panel. It’s a stark reality, but unfortunately, even when providers implement the latest and greatest “best of breed” digital solutions, they can still result in a backlog of new unstructured data. To combat this, executives noted that when they’re shopping for new vendors, they de-prioritize point solutions. Gone are the days of implementing multiple one-off digital tools or apps. Today’s healthcare leaders are looking for large, integrated solutions that will minimize digital and data-sharing friction, an experience they’re collectively struggling with today. What are the costs of unstructured data in healthcare? The cost of unstructured data is hard to quantify, especially because it is so ingrained in today’s healthcare workflows. Many healthcare organizations have found ways to work around unstructured data, mostly by throwing more staff hours at the problem. But when we asked these executives what unstructured data was costing their organization, several answers bubbled to the top: Credibility. A senior analytics manager noted that a lack of clean, structured data causes a downstream effect of incomplete or inaccurate reports or deliverables. Multiple instances of errors or having to rescind information has damaged the organization’s credibility both with internal stakeholders and the public. Security & compliance risks. One health system executive observed that many recent — and highly notable — data breaches have originated from unstructured data. Outdated or moved files, spreadsheets, and information on shared drives are prime areas for hackers to explore, and unstructured data sources can contain sensitive information they can exploit. Time. Regardless of the size of the organizations represented, most executives agreed that unstructured data cost them time and resources. One practice leader told us they had two people dedicated just to referral management and inbound messages. An informatics executive noted they had three or four staffers dedicated to the same tasks. While staff do manage requests and referrals that include unstructured data, several of the organizations reported a backlog of this work, which they said can result in patient leakage if organization staff don’t reach out quickly enough. Patient outcomes. With more than 80% of healthcare data estimated to be unstructured, one executive noted there is an untapped value in these disparate records. While they could include insights that can change a treatment or diagnosis, they might not. Without manually reviewing these sources, there is no way for providers to know. Nearly all the executives, most of whom had clinical backgrounds, agreed that this unmined information represented the strongest cost of unstructured data. What can we do about healthcare’s unstructured data problem? Unstructured data has been an enormous challenge in healthcare for many years, and one executive joked that parts of our conversation felt like déjà vu. The industry knows this is a problem, so what has materially changed that can help us tackle it in a new, more effective way? Almost all the executives agreed: AI. Many of them discussed pilots their organization had implemented or were planning to implement, including solutions using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), which can scan a document in any format — structured or unstructured — and place relevant information directly within the EMR. It’s an approach that many leading healthcare organizations are already adding to documentation and digital fax workflows to reduce manual staff review and ensure data capture without adding new point solutions. Likewise, many of the organizations were looking at applications for LLMs to augment existing tools, or finding ways to use AI-based solutions to parse and update records into structured documents. As one attendee said at the end of our discussion, healthcare moves slowly. But, outlooks were optimistic about the rapid adoption of AI to deal with unstructured data. Though it’s not a new challenge, healthcare organizations are increasingly finding ways to apply new technologies across the tech stack — not just within a single tool — to drive real change in advancing interoperability, patient care, and staff balance by tackling the unstructured data problem head-on. About Stacy Pur Stacy Pur, MBA, BSN, RN, is Senior VP of Product for eFax® by Consensus Cloud Solutions. A global leader in secure data exchange, eFax® is evolving the future of digital fax to serve healthcare and other highly regulated sectors requiring mission-critical reliability.
Abridge Unveils AI-Native Clinician Intelligence Platform with Enterprise-Wide Northwestern Medicine Rollout
What You Should Know At its keynote in New York City, generative AI pioneer Abridge unveiled the first AI-native clinician intelligence platform built to orchestrate clinical, financial, and evidence-based decisions. The expansion shifts Abridge from a passive, post-visit ambient documentation tool to an active, end-to-end intelligence layer spanning pre-visit chart synthesis, intra-visit clinical decision support, ... Read More
<img loading="lazy" width="1500" height="1000" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Abridge-WSJ-Image-2-1500x1000.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-96613" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Abridge-WSJ-Image-2-1500x1000.jpg 1500w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Abridge-WSJ-Image-2-300x200.jpg 300w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Abridge-WSJ-Image-2-290x193.jpg 290w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Abridge-WSJ-Image-2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Abridge-WSJ-Image-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Abridge-WSJ-Image-2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /> What You Should Know At its keynote in New York City, generative AI pioneer Abridge unveiled the first AI-native clinician intelligence platform built to orchestrate clinical, financial, and evidence-based decisions. The expansion shifts Abridge from a passive, post-visit ambient documentation tool to an active, end-to-end intelligence layer spanning pre-visit chart synthesis, intra-visit clinical decision support, and real-time billing codes. Expanding its inpatient care footprint, Abridge announced a system-wide enterprise implementation at Northwestern Medicine, alongside clinical nursing integrations validated to slash vacancy rates and reduce overtime by 70%. The platform targets administrative waste by collaborating with commercial payers like Aetna and Cigna to anchor documentation, medical coding, and real-time claims directly within natural bedside conversations. Partnering with NVIDIA, Abridge is training a custom, clinically reasoning foundation model built on the NVIDIA Nemotron open frontier family and powered by NVIDIA Blackwell AI infrastructure. The market for generative AI applications inside American health systems is navigating an aggressive structural shakeout. For the past two years, hospital boards and healthcare IT procurement committees have deployed lightweight ambient audio tools to mitigate an escalating clinician burnout crisis. While these point solutions successfully automated basic clinical documentation, they frequently hit a performance ceiling. Most ambient “scribes” operate as isolated software layers over the Electronic Health Record (EHR)—capturing dictation but remaining completely detached from real-time revenue cycles, point-of-care clinical decision support, and cross-functional team workflows. When digital health tools act merely as passive administrative recorders rather than active care orchestrators, data fragmentation persists. Clinical documentation, billing codes, and downstream commercial insurance claims continue to be processed and audited over separate, multi-week cycles. This lag forces providers and insurance payors into an expensive, adversarial loop of retroactive denials, claim re-work, and uncaptured legitimate revenue. To insulate operating margins and protect care continuity, the health technology market must transition away from lightweight, single-user apps toward a centralized, native intelligence platform that can ground every financial, operational, and clinical decision in the trusted conversation between a clinician and a patient. To establish this unified platform architecture, generative AI market leader Abridge has unveiled its AI-native clinician intelligence platform at its keynote event in New York City. Now live across more than 300 health systems and supporting over 100 million annual clinical conversations, the company has detailed a sweeping structural expansion. Backed by an enterprise-wide rollout at Chicago’s premier academic health system, Northwestern Medicine, Abridge is re-engineering healthcare delivery by connecting point-of-care clinical workflows directly to real-time claims reconciliation and custom foundation models. Moving Beyond Documentation: Preserving Care Continuity Before, During, and After the Visit The updated Abridge platform architecture systematically expands the capabilities of generative AI to support the entire, continuous care loop rather than just the post-visit summary. The platform is engineered to function as an automated intelligence layer that moves natively with the care team across three distinct operational zones: Before the Visit Abridge actively reviews the patient’s longitudinal chart journey to draft specialty-tailored pre-charted notes, histories of present illness (HPI), and precise pre-round summaries that ingest information from emergency department data logs, laboratory metrics, and prior clinical interactions. By surfacing critical chronic conditions and documenting gaps before a clinician walks into the exam room, it eliminates the need for exhausting retrospective chart mining. During the Visit The application transitions from a passive recorder to an active assistant. By dynamically evaluating the ongoing patient dialogue against a built-in library of medical evidence—enriched by direct collaborations with the American Diabetes Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and Wolters Kluwer’s UpToDate—Abridge surfaces context-aware discussion topics and evidence-based queries in real time. It enables doctors to safely deliver highly informed care without shifting browser tabs or losing direct eye contact with the patient. After the Visit The platform translates natural speech recognition—validated in over 28 languages—into structured clinical outputs, billing codes, discrete flowsheets, and pharmacy orders. Clinicians can utilize a natural-language AI agent to instantly refine the drafted outputs before routing the documentation seamlessly into core EHR systems like Epic, Oracle Health, and athenahealth for final electronic signature. Stabilizing the Inpatient Floor: Nursing Automations and Smart Room Integrations A major structural milestone for the platform is its formal expansion into inpatient nursing workflows. Nurses bear the brunt of repetitive EHR charting burdens, a factor that drives severe workforce attrition and forces hospitals onto expensive temporary travel-agency contracts. By securely analyzing natural nurse-patient interactions at the bedside, Abridge automatically synthesizes structured draft charts tracking verbalized findings, educational touchpoints, and nursing interventions. This context carries forward across shift handoffs, providing the next clinician with an immediate, shared clinical picture. The immediate financial return on investment (ROI) for this infrastructure layer is highly documented. Misti Foust-Cofield, Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer at Reid Health, revealed that rolling out Abridge helped bring their nursing vacancy rate down from an 18% crisis baseline to 8.6% with zero reliance on contract travel staff, while simultaneously cutting incidental clinical overtime by 70%. Given that retraining a single nurse costs approximately $100,000, the platform delivers millions in immediate operating capital protections to the balance sheet. To further power the inpatient stay, Abridge has announced deep “smart room” hardware integrations with automation pioneers hellocare.ai and Artisight, alongside system-wide deployments via UCHealth’s Virtual Health Center to completely automate routine monitoring and cognitive testing steps. Dismantling the Claims Battlefield via Real-Time Adjudication On a macroeconomic scale, Abridge’s platform expansion sets its sights on real-time claims and payment alignment. Historically, health systems and payors have weaponized advanced technology tools against one another—using separate AI engines to automatically generate denials and counter-appeals weeks after a medical procedure has occurred. Abridge disrupts this adversarial cycle by grounding documentation, diagnostic specificities, and billing codes in the actual audio truth of the encounter at the moment care is delivered. To advance this vision, executive leaders from Johns Hopkins Health System, Emory Healthcare, Aetna, and Cigna Healthcare joined Abridge on stage to demonstrate a future of real-time adjudication. By establishing a shared, automated, and auditable data foundation, providers and insurers can collapse the distance between care delivery and claims settlement. This framework cuts administrative re-work, eliminates back-end denials, and ensures that premium dollars are routed directly to patient care rather than administrative overhead. To enforce strict data integrity across this network, Abridge has partnered with AHIMA (American Health Information Management Association) to rigorously audit and validate its automated coding and Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) models. Custom Nemotron Models on NVIDIA Blackwell Infrastructure To sustain this extensive operational layer across millions of active medical sessions, Abridge has partnered with computing leader NVIDIA to train a first-of-its-kind, domain-adapted foundation model for clinical conversations. Moving away from a reliance on opaque, general-purpose third-party LLMs, Abridge is building on the NVIDIA Nemotron open model family. This architecture grants complete visibility into model weights and training datasets, ensuring absolute data provenance, auditability, and security for strict HIPAA and GxP compliance. The new foundation model is trained on NVIDIA’s Blackwell AI infrastructure, utilizing de-identified clinical data through advanced pre-, mid-, and post-training runs. By adapting the domain early in the training lifecycle, Abridge embeds native clinical reasoning directly into the foundation weights. This open architecture allows the platform to optimize for quality, processing speed, and compute costs at every layer—deploying specialized, highly efficient models calibrated for specific clinical tasks and workflows at scale. Kimberly Powell, Vice President of Healthcare at NVIDIA, noted that Nemotron provides the perfect open frontier architecture for this moment, giving Abridge the foundation to break new ground across the entire global healthcare ecosystem.
Where IME Documentation Breaks Traditional Healthcare Workflows
Independent Medical Examination (IME) documentation exposes a gap in how healthcare systems handle documentation. While most clinical workflows are designed around structured, encounter-based documentation, IME reporting operates outside those assumptions. The result is a category of documentation that is essential to administrative, insurance, and legal processes, but poorly aligned with the systems used to manage ... Read More
<img loading="lazy" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Sterling-Garde-Headshot-1500x1500.jpg" alt="Where IME Documentation Breaks Traditional Healthcare Workflows" class="wp-image-96610" width="741" height="741" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Sterling-Garde-Headshot-1500x1500.jpg 1500w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Sterling-Garde-Headshot-300x300.jpg 300w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Sterling-Garde-Headshot-290x290.jpg 290w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Sterling-Garde-Headshot-768x768.jpg 768w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Sterling-Garde-Headshot-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Sterling-Garde-Headshot-100x100.jpg 100w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Sterling-Garde-Headshot.jpg 1600w" sizes="(max-width: 741px) 100vw, 741px" /> Sterling Garde, COO of Athreon Independent Medical Examination (IME) documentation exposes a gap in how healthcare systems handle documentation. While most clinical workflows are designed around structured, encounter-based documentation, IME reporting operates outside those assumptions. The result is a category of documentation that is essential to administrative, insurance, and legal processes, but poorly aligned with the systems used to manage clinical data. The issue is not that IME documentation is complex. It’s that healthcare systems were never designed to accommodate it. A Workflow That Doesn’t Fit the System Traditional healthcare documentation is built around patient care delivery. Electronic health record (EHR) systems are optimized for structured inputs, discrete data fields, and standardized note formats tied to ongoing clinical encounters. IME documentation is fundamentally different. These reports are long-form, narrative documents that often extend well beyond the scope of a standard clinical note. Rather than supporting treatment, they are designed to evaluate medical history, assess causation, and provide formal medical opinions for third-party review. In many cases, they serve as supporting documentation in administrative or legal processes rather than clinical decision-making. Because of this, IME documentation rarely fits cleanly into standard EHR templates. Instead, it is often created outside of core systems and later attached, uploaded, or referenced within them. This introduces fragmentation at the documentation level. The Problem of Documentation Silos When documentation is generated outside primary systems, it creates silos that are difficult to manage. IME workflows frequently involve external report creation followed by manual integration into documentation systems, with limited standardization across reports and evaluators. This disconnect leads to several downstream challenges: Inconsistent formatting across reports and addenda Reduced visibility into documentation status and turnaround Difficulty aligning IME outputs with structured clinical data In organizations that handle high volumes of IMEs, these inefficiencies compound quickly and can create friction across administrative and review processes. Long-Form Documentation vs. Structured Systems One of the core tensions in IME workflows is the mismatch between long-form narrative documentation and systems designed for structured data. EHR platforms are optimized for: Discrete data entry Template-driven documentation Structured coding and reporting IME documentation, by contrast, depends on: Detailed narrative explanation Logical structuring across multiple sections Clear separation of findings, analysis, and opinion Attempting to force long-form IME reports into structured templates often results in a loss of clarity or the creation of workarounds that bypass system functionality. In some cases, this leads to duplication of effort, with documentation existing both inside and outside the system in different formats. Turnaround Pressure and Workflow Constraints IME documentation is also subject to strict turnaround expectations. Reports are often tied to workers’ compensation timelines, disability evaluations, and legal or administrative review processes. Delays in documentation can affect claims processing, case progression, and decision-making timelines. At the same time, IME reports require a high level of detail and precision. This creates a tension between speed and structure that is not typically present in standard clinical documentation workflows. Without well-defined processes, organizations may struggle to maintain consistency while meeting required deadlines. The Hidden Cost of Documentation Outside the System One of the less visible challenges in IME workflows is the cumulative impact of managing documentation outside primary systems. Over time, organizations may experience increased administrative overhead, redundant documentation processes, and difficulty maintaining consistency across evaluators and report types. These issues are often addressed through temporary or ad hoc solutions rather than system-level improvements. As IME volumes increase or regulatory scrutiny intensifies, these gaps become more difficult to manage and can affect overall workflow efficiency. Rethinking Documentation Workflows IME documentation highlights a broader issue in healthcare: not all documentation fits neatly into structured, encounter-based systems. As healthcare organizations continue to evolve their documentation practices, there is a need to account for workflows that: Require long-form narrative structure Operate outside standard clinical encounters Support administrative and legal processes Addressing these workflows requires more than adapting existing templates. It requires a clearer understanding of how different types of documentation interact with systems, processes, and downstream use cases. Conclusion Independent Medical Examination documentation is not simply a variation of clinical documentation. It represents a distinct workflow with unique structural, operational, and system-level challenges. As healthcare organizations continue to invest in EHR optimization and data standardization, recognizing where those systems fall short is equally important. IME workflows provide a clear example of how documentation requirements can extend beyond the boundaries of traditional clinical systems, and why addressing those gaps is critical to improving overall efficiency and consistency. About Sterling Garde Sterling Garde is the COO of Athreon, a speech-to-text documentation and cybersecurity company serving healthcare, law enforcement, insurance, and other regulated industries. He has more than 25 years of experience in documentation workflows, strategic communications, and content development.
Louisiana Department of Health Partners with Phenomune to Launch Free Statewide At-Home Immune Profiling
What You Should Know The Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) and biotechnology innovator Phenomune have launched a first-of-its-kind statewide public health initiative providing residents with no-cost, at-home immune insight test kits. Backed by Governor Jeff Landry, the preventative program will distribute up to 250,000 noninvasive kits designed to empower proactive health choices and mitigate structural ... Read More
<img loading="lazy" width="768" height="719" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-96622" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-2.png 768w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-2-300x281.png 300w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-2-290x271.png 290w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /> What You Should Know The Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) and biotechnology innovator Phenomune have launched a first-of-its-kind statewide public health initiative providing residents with no-cost, at-home immune insight test kits. Backed by Governor Jeff Landry, the preventative program will distribute up to 250,000 noninvasive kits designed to empower proactive health choices and mitigate structural strain across rural and Medicaid care networks. Grounded in peer-reviewed research published in JAMA, the test leverages the body’s innate biology by linking bitter taste receptor (T2R) phenotypes directly to upper respiratory defense mechanisms against flu, COVID-19, and bronchitis. The operational workflow requires no laboratory processing or biological sample shipments; users complete a multi-strip tongue test and log reactions in the Phenomune app to extract actionable immune profiles within minutes. On an institutional scale, the program aggregates anonymized, population-level healthcare data to guide state resource allocation while enabling clinics, nursing homes, and FQHCs to scale targeted interventions. Inside Louisiana’s 250,000-Kit Shift to Preventive T2R Immune Intelligence The infrastructure governing state-level public health delivery across the United States is operating under an unsustainable reactive model. For decades, municipal health departments and regional provider networks have faced a compounding operational crisis: every winter, a highly predictable surge in upper respiratory tract infections—spanning seasonal influenza, volatile COVID-19 strains, and acute bronchitis—routinely overwhelms frontline clinical capacity. Drowning in an influx of low-acuity cases, local emergency departments experience severe gridlock, technical staffing teams suffer acute burnout, and unmanaged healthcare utilization drives billions in avoidable expenditure across state Medicaid programs. The root of this systemic strain is not a lack of diagnostic capabilities, but a complete absence of proactive, patient-centric risk stratification. Under the traditional care model, individuals remain completely blind to their personal susceptibility factors until after clinical symptoms manifest. This delays early, home-based interventions and forces a massive portion of the population to default back to high-cost acute care centers for basic triage. For public health authorities and risk-bearing health systems, flattening this seasonal cost-and-utilization curve requires moving past lagging epidemiologic trackers to place a scalable, data-driven preventive layer directly into the hands of the consumer. To rewrite this operational paradigm, the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) has finalized a landmark partnership with biotechnology pioneer Phenomune to launch a first-of-its-kind statewide health initiative. By distributing up to 250,000 personalized immune profiling kits at no cost to residents, the state is establishing a proactive framework designed to optimize resource allocation, lower barrier access in vulnerable rural communities, and bend the public healthcare utilization curve permanently downward. Unlocking the Biology of Innate Immunity via Taste Receptors The scientific foundation driving Phenomune’s platform completely flips the script on traditional, invasive laboratory screenings. Rather than requiring blood draws, nasal swabs, or genetic sequencing, the technology utilizes a rapid, noninvasive approach to evaluate the phenotypic expression of the body’s bitter taste receptors (specifically the T2R family). While historically understood as simple oral sensory tools designed to detect bitter flavors, peer-reviewed clinical trials have established that T2Rs are densely expressed throughout human upper respiratory tissues and function as critical triggers for innate, mucosal immunity. When activated by environmental pathogens, these extraoral receptors instantly stimulate the localized production of nitric oxide—a potent chemical shield that actively inhibits viral replication and accelerates ciliary clearance to neutralize respiratory threats before they take root. The practical testing workflow is engineered for frictionless consumer adoption: The At-Home Triage: Participants aged 13 or older place four distinct, structurally calibrated chemical taste strips sequentially on their tongue. The Digital Conversion: Users log their specific sensory intensity responses directly into the HIPAA-compliant Phenomune mobile application. The Actionable Insight: Within minutes, the platform’s underlying algorithms translate these taste profiles into a personalized immune insight report, classifying individuals across supertaster, taster, or nontaster designations to reflect their innate upper airway defensive capacity. “Louisiana is taking a bold step to lead on preventive health by putting science-backed tools directly into the hands of our people,” stated Governor Jeff Landry. “This effort strengthens healthcare across our state—particularly in rural communities—while advancing more proactive, outcomes-driven approaches to care that align with Medicaid and broader federal priorities that can help reduce strain on the healthcare system.” Translating Clinical Proof into Population-Level Action The commercial validation underpining the Phenomune deployment is backed by a robust academic moat. Founded by Dr. Henry P. Barham—a world-renowned, board-certified rhinologist and otolaryngologist with over 150 peer-reviewed publications—the company’s data modeling stems directly from a large-scale prospective cohort trial encompassing more than 2,000 participants published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Barham’s research definitively demonstrated that individuals tracking as phenotypic “nontasters” experienced significantly higher rates of severe upper respiratory infections and hospitalization outcomes, whereas “supertasters” exhibited a powerful, built-in biological resistance. This breakthrough science has been corroborated across leading international titles, including the International Forum of Allergy & Rhinology and Viruses. To bridge the gap between individual wellness and population health management, the initiative allows clinical networks—including major hospital systems, nursing homes, Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), and community clinics—to order kits directly for their patient panels. Phenomune’s dedicated clinical outreach specialists provide localized, on-site onboarding to integrate the program seamlessly into existing care coordination models. The platform simultaneously streams anonymized, aggregated dashboard metrics directly back to state epidemiologists, creating a real-time data visualizer to guide state resource allocation, target public health interventions, and proactively manage seasonal system surge capacity.
Wearable Tech Startup The90 Launches $299 UV-Tracking Smart Jewelry
What You Should Know Preventative skin health wearable pioneer The90 has formally launched out of stealth with The90™ Gem, a high-end smart jewelry pendant and companion app designed to track personal UV exposure. The device targets a massive market gap in healthy skin aging: up to 90% of visible skin damage, wrinkles, and fine lines ... Read More
<img loading="lazy" width="1500" height="1500" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-1-1500x1500.png" alt="" class="wp-image-96619" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-1-1500x1500.png 1500w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-1-300x300.png 300w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-1-290x290.png 290w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-1-768x768.png 768w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-1-1536x1536.png 1536w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-1-100x100.png 100w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-1.png 1879w" sizes="(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /> What You Should Know Preventative skin health wearable pioneer The90 has formally launched out of stealth with The90 Gem, a high-end smart jewelry pendant and companion app designed to track personal UV exposure. The device targets a massive market gap in healthy skin aging: up to 90% of visible skin damage, wrinkles, and fine lines are caused by cumulative, everyday ultraviolet light exposure rather than chronological aging. Unlike generic, location-based smartphone weather apps, the wearable utilizes live built-in sensors to capture the actual UVA (aging/window-penetrating) and UVB (burning) rays hitting the user’s skin. The company was founded by CEO Stacy Salvi, a prominent health-tech innovator who spent over a decade leading Google’s $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit and recently engineered award-winning smart rings for women. Available for $299, the launch features high-profile backing from Lauryn Bosstick, founder of The Skinny Confidential, alongside tech and apparel entrepreneurs from Life360, Blenders Eyewear, and Cuts Clothing. The modern skincare and aesthetic medicine markets are operating within a high-stakes consumer paradox. Every year, millions of women invest billions of dollars into high-performance clinical treatments, multi-step antioxidant routines, medical-grade topicals, and specialized sunscreens designed to protect skin longevity. Yet, despite this massive expenditure, the baseline method for tracking the primary threat to skin health remains completely unchanged. Consumers still rely on the generic UV Index pre-installed on their smartphones—a broad, macro-level regional estimate calculated by zip code that remains entirely blind to an individual’s immediate physical environment. A phone tucked inside a purse cannot differentiate between a shaded office cubicle, a long commute behind a glass windshield, or a highly reflective walk down a city street. Because ultraviolet radiation is completely invisible, individuals routinely accumulate significant, unmeasured UV exposure during brief, ordinary moments throughout the day. Dermatological research confirms that up to 90% of all visible skin aging—including premature wrinkles, deep fine lines, loss of elasticity, and hyperpigmentation sun spots—is directly linked to this cumulative everyday sun exposure, not chronological aging. By treating sun protection as a static, single-application morning ritual, consumers inadvertently leave their skin highly vulnerable to un-tracked environmental stress. For the wellness and preventative health optimization sectors, closing this awareness gap requires moving past high-level geographic estimates to deploy a continuous, hyper-localized sensor layer capable of translating real-time environmental exposure into customized, actionable guidance. To address this hidden driver of skin aging and establish an auditable system of personal wellness data, preventative health technology pioneer The90 has launched its flagship sun intelligence system, centered around a modular smart jewelry wearable called The90 Gem. Transforming Invisible Light Into Hyper-Localized Data Loops The core technology driving The90 Gem is an on-body personal environmental intelligence system. Rather than duplicating the generic data loops of standard weather feeds, the pendant utilizes high-precision optical sensors to continuously sample the exact ambient UVA and UVB light hitting the user’s body. This sensory precision is a critical health differentiator: UVA rays, which maintain a consistent presence from sunrise to sunset and penetrate directly through standard residential and automotive window glass, are the primary drivers of deep cellular degradation and long-term skin aging. UVB rays, by contrast, possess shorter wavelengths that spark surface-level inflammation and traditional sunburns. By streaming this real-time environmental data directly into the companion app via encrypted wireless protocols, the platform cross-references live environmental metrics with a customized user skin profile that tracks Fitzpatrick skin typing, baseline sun sensitivity, and real-time protective behaviors. This data integration allows the app to move past static charts to deliver highly contextualized sun intelligence features: Sunscreen Decay Modeling: Automatically calculates the degradation curve of applied topical SPF based on actual cumulative UV load rather than a simple countdown timer. Smart Reapplication Prompts: Triggers targeted, haptic, and mobile push notifications exactly when a user’s unique UV threshold is crossed, removing the guesswork from product reapplication. Optimal Synthesis Windows: Dynamically maps out specific, safe sunlight exposure windows, empowering women to strategically capture the systemic health benefits of natural light while insulating their skin from cellular damage. “Women are already investing in SPF, treatments, tools, and routines to protect their skin, but when it comes to sun exposure, most of us are still guessing,” observed entrepreneur, podcast host, and company advisor Lauryn Bosstick. “The UV Index on your phone doesn’t know your skin, your sunscreen, or the small moments of exposure that happen throughout the day. The90 gives women the missing data to make smarter decisions and stay ahead of skin aging before it starts.”
Nordic Appoints Alicia Harkness as Chief Executive Officer
What You Should Know Global health technology and consulting firm Nordic has announced the appointment of Alicia Harkness as Chief Executive Officer, effective June 15, 2026. Harkness succeeds a strong baseline, transitioning into the role after a distinguished tenure as a founding partner at Guidehouse, where she built and scaled their Global Health business into ... Read More
<img loading="lazy" src="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Alicia-Harkness-CEO-Announcement.jpg" alt="Nordic Appoints Alicia Harkness as Chief Executive Officer" class="wp-image-96616" width="720" height="720" srcset="https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Alicia-Harkness-CEO-Announcement.jpg 1254w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Alicia-Harkness-CEO-Announcement-300x300.jpg 300w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Alicia-Harkness-CEO-Announcement-290x290.jpg 290w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Alicia-Harkness-CEO-Announcement-768x768.jpg 768w, https://hitconsultant.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Alicia-Harkness-CEO-Announcement-100x100.jpg 100w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /> Alicia Harkness, CEO at Nordic What You Should Know Global health technology and consulting firm Nordic has announced the appointment of Alicia Harkness as Chief Executive Officer, effective June 15, 2026. Harkness succeeds a strong baseline, transitioning into the role after a distinguished tenure as a founding partner at Guidehouse, where she built and scaled their Global Health business into a dominant market sector within six years. The executive onboarding lands as Application Managed Services (AMS) undergo a major structural evolution, moving from simple, reactive ticket staffing to becoming a core strategic pillar for healthcare IT operating models. Recent industry intelligence from Nordic confirms a strict geographic divide: 70% of urban health systems now leverage strategic outsourcing to establish analytics governance and maintain AI readiness, whereas rural providers use it primarily for localized operational resilience. Harkness brings over two decades of enterprise domain fluency spanning advisory, cloud technology, and managed services across the public, commercial, and nonprofit healthcare sectors. Harkness Bio/Background As a founding partner of Guidehouse, she personally spearheaded the development of its Global Health segment, scaling the business unit into one of the firm’s leading enterprise areas within six years. Her extensive career includes high-level consulting tenures as a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and KPMG, alongside vice presidential leadership roles at BearingPoint. Throughout this tenure, she built integrated portfolios spanning deep clinical advisory, technology deployment, and managed services, partnering closely with hospital boardrooms to shape enterprise strategy, direct multi-million-dollar capital investment priorities, and drive point-of-care clinical innovation. This fluency across public, commercial, and nonprofit sectors is highly valued as health systems navigate a challenging regulatory environment. Jason Szczuka, Chairman of Nordic’s Board of Directors, emphasized that Harkness possesses the precise strategic perspective, client focus, and proven track record necessary to build on Nordic’s existing foundation. Szczuka noted that the board maintains absolute confidence in her appointment as the global team concentrates on helping care teams solve pressing operational challenges, fortify clinical continuity, and improve safety outcomes for communities nationwide.