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Morning, friends —
Big week in healthcare AI; luckily we got you covered:
What Epic is actually building with AI
Will AI alone beat doctors + AI?
FDA is rethinking how clinical AI gets regulated
28 new tools/partnerships, 9 funding updates, new AI jobs & link-worthy content
Read time: 6 minutes
Our Picks ✨
Highlights if you’ve only got 2 minutes…
1/
What Epic is actually building with AI
Epic’s UGM last week gave a much clearer picture of where its AI roadmap is headed.
At the center is Ergo, Epic’s AI-powered visit workflow. Before the appointment, Art summarizes the chart while Emmie talks with the patient through MyChart. During the visit, clinicians can pull from UpToDate and Epic’s Cosmos database. Afterward, Art can draft notes, orders, and follow-up work. Chart with Art is already live across 70+ specialties, with summaries used at 300+ organizations.
Then there’s Agent Factory, with 120 prebuilt AI capabilities plus tools for health systems to build their own agents, and Curiosity, which uses Cosmos data from 320M patients and 23B encounters to predict things like readmissions, stroke risk, and what may happen next.
In addition, Epic is increasingly competing in categories that companies like Abridge, OpenEvidence, Notable, and others helped create. Epic's size advantage is hard to copy: the chart, MyChart, orders, billing, and a huge proprietary clinical dataset already live inside Epic. It is also partnered with legacy tool UpToDate for clinical decision support and giving customers tools to build agents themselves.
That changes the calculus for startups. A health system may love a standalone product, but if Epic gets to “good enough,” switching to the native option becomes pretty tempting. Epic may not win every AI category but it also doesn’t need to. (link)(linkedin)
2/
Will AI alone beat doctors + AI?
A provocative new JAMA Perspective that went viral last week argues that the default assumption that “doctor + AI” will produce the best care may be wrong.
Ezekiel Emanuel, Neal Khosla, Vinod Khosla, and Abe Baker-Butler reviewed recent studies across five cognitive medical tasks: gathering information, diagnosis, test selection, treatment, and chronic disease management. Their conclusion is that AI already rivals or beats physicians on many of them, and may eventually outperform physician-controlled AI as well. In one study, ChatGPT o3 (an old model by now) ranked the correct diagnosis first in 60% of complex cases vs. 15.9% for physicians. Another found an AI diagnostic system reached the right diagnosis 4x more often while spending 19% less on testing.
The more controversial argument is that once AI becomes better than humans at a task, physician oversight can sometimes make performance worse by introducing human error or overriding the model.
The AMA strongly disagrees with the broader conclusion. Medicine is more than a collection of cognitive tasks, and empathy, judgment, accountability, physical exams, and real-world context still matter. Most of the supporting evidence also comes from simulations rather than autonomous care with real patients.
The JAMA authors think autonomous AI could be ready for some real-world cognitive workflows by 2030.
Our guess is that patients will still want clinicians involved for a long time. But the exact role of the clinician should follow the evidence. The principles matter more than defending today’s workflow: care that is cheaper and better for everyone, a system that serves the patient above all else, and technology that helps the people delivering care rather than burdening them. Wherever that leads, we should be open to follow it. (link)(linkedin)
3/
FDA is rethinking how clinical AI gets regulated
The FDA is starting to sketch out a very different way to regulate generative AI in medicine.
In a new discussion paper, the agency proposes evaluating AI devices more like clinicians: test whether they are competent at the job, then monitor how they perform once deployed. Higher-risk tools, especially those acting more autonomously or where mistakes carry greater consequences, would face a higher bar.
The FDA is also considering allowing more uncertainty before approval if strong postmarket monitoring is in place. For AI that keeps changing, manufacturers could submit a predetermined plan for expected updates so every model improvement does not require a fresh regulatory filing.
A big question is what “competent” should mean. Should an AI have to match the standard of care, a panel of experts, or simply the median practicing clinician?
This is still early and not formal guidance, but the direction is important. Clinical AI changes too quickly for a regulatory model built around static medical devices. (link)(tweet)
Tools & Partnerships 🔧
Latest on business, consumer, and clinical healthcare AI tools and partnerships…
TOOLS
Moderna & Merck’s AI-assisted personalized mRNA cancer vaccine succeeds in Phase 3: The 1,137-patient melanoma trial met its primary endpoint, building on Phase 2 results showing a 49% lower risk of recurrence or death and 59% lower risk of distant metastasis or death. The treatment uses tumor sequencing and AI to select up to 34 patient-specific neoantigens. (link)
Anthropic shows Claude can autonomously accelerate protein design: Claude-designed protein binders worked against 14 of 15 targets, with reported hit rates above typical industry benchmarks. In a separate test, the model analyzed raw chemistry data in 19 minutes compared with four days for the lab report. (link)
Limbic becomes first AI-led mental health company selected for FDA's TEMPO pilot: Its Unpacked service will deliver clinician-supervised CBT to Medicare patients over the phone using an AI voice agent, with the program beginning August 27. (link)
FDA explores new regulatory framework for generative AI medical devices: The agency's device center is seeking input on a risk-based, total product lifecycle approach for GenAI-enabled medical devices as the technology evolves faster than traditional approval models. (link)
Oracle Health expands Clinical AI Agent beyond ambient documentation: The platform can now analyze visit conversations to suggest billing codes, surface relevant clinical history before appointments, and provide real-time physician-controlled dictation. (link)
Neko Health opens its first U.S. preventive health clinic in New York: The company will open in SoHo on September 24, offering a 60-minute scan covering heart, blood, skin, and metabolic health, with more than 25,000 New Yorkers already on the waitlist. (link)
OpenEvidence launches Patient Take-Homes: Physicians can turn OpenEvidence answers into simplified educational materials, including visit summaries and care instructions, then securely share them with patients and families through a companion experience. (link)
Qventus expands Care Gap and Coding Automation Suite: Health systems using its malnutrition automation have reported more than $17M in annualized reimbursement lift, including a 57% increase in code capture and 3.3x annualized ROI at Jackson Health System. (link)
WHOOP opens Advanced Labs to non-members and adds multi-cancer testing: The service combines blood testing, personalized insights, and clinician review without requiring a WHOOP membership, while adding GRAIL's multi-cancer early detection test to its expanding health platform. (link)
Artificial Analysis launches benchmark for AI reasoning over medical records: MLCR-AA tests models on realistic longitudinal case files as long as 64,000 tokens, evaluating whether AI can reason across complex patient histories rather than answer isolated medical questions. Claude Fable 5 currently leads at 64.4%. (link)
Function lets members bring personal health data into ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity: The secure connector allows users to bring more than 160 lab results, longitudinal health data, and clinician-reviewed notes into general-purpose AI platforms for responses grounded in their own health information. (link)
Epic brings real-time prior authorization checks into clinical workflows: Health systems including Ochsner and Summit Health are using Epic integrations to check authorization requirements in real time, automating a process that has traditionally relied on manual payer reviews. (link)
Open-source AI uncovers hidden patterns in breast cancer tumors: Researchers used CenSegNet to analyze hundreds of thousands of cells across 911 tumor samples, identifying distinct centrosome patterns associated with patient outcomes and potentially opening new avenues for diagnosis and personalized treatment. (link)
OpenLoop expands telehealth platform with AI agents and higher-acuity care: The infrastructure provider, which powers more than 300 organizations, is adding AI agents for patient intake, scheduling, and care navigation while expanding its programs into more medically complex care. (link)
Commure ends customer referral payments following scrutiny of the program: The healthcare AI company terminated programs that paid partners for referring its products following a STAT investigation into the practice and the company's growth strategy. (link)
LymeLess Health launches AI companion for Lyme disease patients: Ella helps patients navigate diagnosis, track symptoms and treatments, and identify patterns across their care, with Bay Area Lyme Ventures investing to support the platform's expansion. (link)
WellSky launches digital payments platform for post-acute and specialty care: WellSky Pay, powered by PayGround, helps infusion, specialty pharmacy, and post-acute organizations automate patient payments and reconciliation to reduce manual work and accelerate collections. (link)
PARTNERSHIPS
Innovaccer + Mastek: Innovaccer expanded its partnership with Mastek to deploy its agentic Gravity healthcare AI platform across the U.S., UK, Europe, and Middle East, combining the technology with Mastek’s implementation services. (link)
Century Health + GI Partners of Illinois: Century Health partnered with GI Partners of Illinois to build a real-world data ecosystem using AI to extract clinical insights for IBD and MASH research. (link)
Epic + Ochsner Health: Ochsner Health became the first health system to deploy Epic’s Ergo Visit, which combines ambient listening with chart insights to draft clinical documentation during appointments. (link)
OSF HealthCare + RapidAI: OSF HealthCare expanded RapidAI across all 18 hospitals, using AI to analyze medical imaging and support care coordination across the patient journey. (link)
Ode with Anthropic + PointClickCare: Ode with Anthropic selected PointClickCare as its first senior care platform partner, embedding frontier AI into long-term and post-acute care workflows to reduce administrative burden. (link)
Luma Health + PCC: Luma Health partnered with PCC to bring AI-enabled patient communications to more than 300 independent pediatric practices and 1,400 pediatricians nationwide. (link)
Ketryx + Accenture: Ketryx partnered with Accenture to support medtech companies deploying AI across regulated product development, helping accelerate compliance and validation workflows. (link)
Summa Health + HATCo: Summa Health and General Catalyst’s HATCo unveiled a technology stack spanning eight AI partners and are building a command center to unify the tools across the health system. (link)
Causaly + Syneos Health: Causaly partnered with Syneos Health to bring agentic AI into clinical trial design, with the companies reporting roughly 50% faster insight generation for study strategy. (link)
Bioptimus + Cancer Research Horizons: Bioptimus partnered with Cancer Research Horizons to use data from more than 1,750 colorectal cancer patients to train and evaluate its M-Optimus biological foundation model. (link)
Richmond University Medical Center + WellSky: Richmond University Medical Center deployed WellSky’s prior authorization platform to accelerate authorization turnaround and streamline patient care transitions. (link)
Deal Desk 💰
Spotlight on latest capital raises, M&A, and investments…
FUNDING
Happy Health, an AI-powered platform for continuous home-based care, just raised a $75M Series A. ARCH Venture Partners and OpenLoop led the funding (link)
Hopscotch Primary Care, a tech-enabled provider serving rural communities, raised $53M in Series D funding led by 8VC and Town Hall Ventures to expand beyond North Carolina. (link)
Network Bio, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based developer of AI models using human biological data, raised $50M in funding from Section 32, Thiel Bio, Founders Fund, Breyer Capital, Blue Venture Fund, JSL Health Capital, and others. (link)
Medicare Platform, an AI operations company providing infrastructure for Accountable Care Organizations, secured a $50M revolving credit line facilitated by Nestpoint Group. (link)
Astromech, a Colossal Biosciences spinout that predicts biological outcomes using AI, raised $20M led by Arch Venture Partners at a $3.8B valuation. (link)
M&A
Berry Street + Healthify: Berry Street merged with Healthify to combine its nationwide clinician network and insurance-covered metabolic care with Healthify’s AI nutrition platform and assistant, Ria. (link)
R1 + Humata Health: R1 agreed to acquire the AI-powered prior authorization company, integrating its automation engine into R1's Phare Operating System to accelerate end-to-end revenue cycle automation. (link)
Weave + Francisco Partners: Francisco Partners agreed to acquire Weave and take the agentic AI patient engagement platform private in a deal valued at approximately $650M. (link)
Cityblock + Homeward Health: Cityblock agreed to acquire the AI-powered rural care platform in an all-stock deal, alongside a $116M Series E led by General Catalyst. (link)
as of 8/23/26
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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