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Good morning, friends —
Happy NY Tech Week to those who celebrate, and for those coming to our event later today — see you soon! Here’s what we’ve been tracking the past 7 days:
Wearables the new patient-facing layer of healthcare?
Tech moves closer to bio
Utah's AI doctor pilot shows early promise
22 new tools/partnerships, 9 funding updates, new AI jobs & link-worthy content
Read time: 5 minutes
Our Picks ✨
Highlights if you’ve only got 2 minutes…
1/
Wearables the new patient-facing layer of healthcare?
Oura is making a bigger push from health tracking into healthcare itself. Alongside the launch of Oura Ring 5, its smallest and most accurate ring yet, the company announced a partnership with Counsel Health to bring AI-enabled primary care directly into the Oura app.
The new ring is 40% smaller than Oura Ring 4 and launches alongside Health Radar, a new feature designed to surface longer-term signals around things like blood pressure patterns and nighttime breathing. When those signals look off, users can connect directly to Counsel, where AI helps interpret symptoms, biometric trends, and health questions before escalating to licensed physicians who can provide personalized guidance and treatment.
This all begs the bigger question: could wearables become the new patient-facing layer of healthcare? With continuous health data, AI guidance, and now direct access to clinicians, the long-promised consumerization of healthcare looks less likely to come from payers and providers and more likely to come from consumer-first companies expanding toward the point of care. Adoption is still early (ex. Oura at +5M rings sold), and much of the data remains more interesting than actionable, but the wearables wave increasingly feels like healthcare's AirPods moment. (link)(tweet)
2/
Tech moves closer to bio
Big Tech and the leading AI labs are making increasingly aggressive moves into biology, betting AI can accelerate scientific discovery. Over the past few months, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google-backed Isomorphic Labs, and now Meta-backed Biohub have all expanded efforts across drug discovery, protein engineering, genomics, and biodefense. Add in a wave of pharma x AI partnerships, and life sciences is quickly becoming one of AI's most important frontiers. While we're still far from AI curing disease, here are two new stories that highlight this focus:
OpenAI expands Rosalind into biodefense: OpenAI launched Rosalind Biodefense, giving the US government and vetted partners access to GPT-Rosalind, its life sciences model built for biology, drug discovery, and translational medicine. Released in April, the model is optimized for scientific workflows across chemistry, protein engineering, and genomics. The initiative focuses on pandemic preparedness, outbreak response, diagnostics, and medical countermeasures. (link)
Meta-backed Biohub releases a "world model" of biology: Chan Zuckerberg Biohub unveiled a new suite of AI models designed to map, predict, and engineer proteins at massive scale, including a database of 6.8B protein sequences and 1.1B predicted structures. Researchers say the system can compress years of protein research into days and has already shown promising results against cancer and immune disease targets, outperforming AlphaFold on some protein prediction tasks. (link)
3/
Utah's AI doctor pilot shows early promise
The first real-world data is in from Utah's AI-powered prescription renewal pilot with Doctronic, and the results are encouraging. Across the first four months, AI recommended renewing prescriptions in 72% of cases, with physicians agreeing 91% of the time. In the remaining cases, doctors either requested additional information or scheduled a telehealth visit.
Perhaps the most interesting finding came when the AI chose to escalate patients to a physician. Doctors later determined that 31% of those escalations were overly cautious, suggesting the system is currently biased toward safety rather than risk.
The sample size is still relatively small, but the broader takeaway is that AI doesn't need to replace clinicians to create value. Early evidence suggests it can handle routine workflows while escalating more complex cases to humans. In healthcare, being overly cautious is probably the right failure mode. Despite initial backlash from Utah's medical licensing board, the early data is promising — onwards! (link)
PS. Last week, a group of top physicians led by Eric Topol and Jonathan Slotkin called for broader autonomous vehicle deployment, arguing that safer technology shouldn't be held to a standard of perfection. Utah's AI pilot hints at the same idea and could be a blueprint for autonomous care.
Tools & Partnerships 🔧
Latest on business, consumer, and clinical healthcare AI tools and partnerships…
TOOLS
Anthropic nears GPT-5.5 on healthcare benchmark: After raising $65B at a roughly $965B valuation and releasing Opus 4.8, Anthropic reported a 55.8% score on HealthBench Professional (just behind GPT-5.5’s 56.5%) while adding a dedicated healthcare section to its system card for the first time. (link)
Microsoft previews Copilot Health: The new platform aggregates health records, wearable data, and provider information into a personal health profile that can answer questions and deliver personalized insights. (link)
Strava launches Claude integration: Strava’s new MCP Connector lets athletes sync training history directly into Claude, enabling personalized analysis, coaching insights, and AI-powered conversations grounded in workout data. (link)
Stanford creates patient AI review panel: Stanford Health Care formed a patient advisory group to evaluate AI tools, with members prioritizing reducing unnecessary testing. (link)
CHAI releases AI governance framework: The Coalition for Health AI published new guidance outlining eight core components of responsible AI governance, including risk assessment, lifecycle management, data stewardship, vendor oversight, and workforce training. (link)
Enzo launches agentic AI EHR for home health: Enzo Health unveiled an AI-native EHR that automates intake, scheduling, documentation, compliance, and billing workflows across the entire home health patient journey. (link)
Few AI developers use FDA fast-track plans: Research found only 5.4% of AI-enabled medical devices included pre-approved change control plans despite streamlined update pathways. (link)
Mount Sinai projects $50M AI impact: The health system expects a $50M bottom-line benefit from its AI portfolio this year, driven by measurable gains across clinical and operational workflows. (link)
Penn warns of hidden AI costs: Researchers found that AI tools can add training, oversight, and workflow burdens for nurses, underscoring the need for stronger governance and validation. (link)
SpotitEarly scales AI cancer detection: LUCID 2.0 combines AI with trained cancer-sniffing dogs to process up to 1.7 million screening tests annually. (link)
Wolters Kluwer launches AI validation framework: The new framework is designed to help healthcare organizations evaluate the safety and performance of clinical AI tools used at the point of care. (link)
Children’s Nebraska embraces vibe coding: The health system aims for all clinicians to be able to build applications using AI-assisted development tools by 2027. (link)
OpenEvidence adds ASCO guidelines: Oncology answers now incorporate ASCO guidelines alongside peer-reviewed evidence and source citations. (link)
Epic expands AI test result summaries: Patients can now receive AI-generated explanations of imaging results directly in MyChart, with Emory Healthcare serving as the first deployment site. (link)
BioStack launches healthcare AI training platform: The startup launched and provides simulation environments built on real clinical data to train and evaluate healthcare AI models. (link)
PARTNERSHIPS
Penn Medicine + K Health: Penn Medicine partnered with K Health to deploy AI clinical agents across virtual, primary, and specialty care workflows, beginning with virtual urgent care. (link)
Signos + Dexcom: Signos partnered with Dexcom to offer AI-powered glucose insights and metabolic health guidance through Dexcom’s direct-to-consumer platform. (link)
CVS Health + Salesforce: CVS Health expanded its partnership with Salesforce to deploy Agentforce Health for unified member data access and real-time call center support. (link)
Boston Children’s Hospital + OpenAI: Boston Children’s deployed ChatGPT across clinical and operational workflows, helping diagnose rare conditions and automate administrative processes. (link)
Cleveland Clinic + Aspira Women’s Health: Cleveland Clinic and Aspira Women’s Health expanded their partnership to develop AI-powered, noninvasive diagnostics for women’s health through biomarker discovery and advanced analytical models. (link)
Moffitt Cancer Center + Reimagine Care: Moffitt Cancer Center expanded its partnership with Reimagine Care to provide AI-enabled virtual oncology support and symptom monitoring. (link)
Wheel + b.well: Wheel partnered with b.well to connect consumer health data and AI-driven insights with virtual care delivery. (link)
Deal Desk 💰
Spotlight on latest capital raises, M&A, and investments…
FUNDING
Garner Health, a care navigation platform, raised $100M in Series E funding at a $2.74B post-money valuation. Index Ventures led, joined by Kleiner Perkins, Redpoint, Thrive, Sequoia, Founders Fund, and Kaiser Permanente Ventures. (link)
H1, an NYC-based doctor connections platform, raised $40M led by CVS Health Ventures. (link)
Triomics, an SF provider of workflow software for oncologic clinical trials, raised $22M in Series B funding. Battery Ventures led, joined by Nexus Venture Partners, Lightspeed, and YC. (link)
Solstice, an NYC-based AI-native marketing agency for pharma brands, raised $21M in Series A funding. Transformation Capital led the round and was joined by Twelve Below, Virtue Ventures, and others. (link)
Lucis, a French preventative health platform, raised $20M in Series A funding. Singular led, joined by General Catalyst and YC. (link)
Perceptic, an AI operating system for drug development, raised $12M in seed funding from Accel, Air Street Capital and Elder Gull. (link)
Kubera Health, a contract-to-payment system of record for healthcare, raised $6.5M in seed funding. The round was led by Upfront Ventures. (link)
Cypher AI, a Cambridge, Mass.-based life science digital infrastructure developer, raised $2M in seed funding. MaC Venture Capital led. (link)
M&A
Swoop + Nimble: Swoop acquired Nimble to add prescription fulfillment and pharmacy connectivity to its AI-powered healthcare engagement platform, expanding support for independent pharmacies and medication adherence. (link)
as of 5/31/26
Other Relevant News 🔍
News, podcasts, blogs, tweets, resources, etc…
AI Job Opportunities 💼
Explore our AI Job Board or contact us to feature roles in our newsletter…
Visuals of the Week 📸
Funny memes, cool pics, and interesting data from around the web…
That’s it for this week friends! Back to reading — I’ll see you next week.
Stay classy,
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