Editor's note: This story will be updated.
Meet "Tom", Lumeris' AI-powered team member for primary care
Value-based care company Lumeris rolled out new AI technology for primary care doctors that produces personalized, next-best actions at both the patient and population levels.
Dubbed "Tom," and described as a Primary Care as a Service solution embedded in clinical workflows and is designed to extend the primary care team’s reach across patient management areas including prevention and wellness, care coordination, social determinants of health, population health and chronic disease management.
Tom reduces burnout by automating time-consuming tasks, according to the company, and the tech can support physicians to help health systems manage larger patient panels without sacrificing care quality.
Unlike traditional analytics-based systems, Lumeris' AI tool executes next-best actions, including scheduling screenings and appointments, monitoring medication adherence, conducting post-discharge outreach, and sharing patient education, according to the company.
The tech can intiate an interactive, patient-specific outbound call or text based on best next action such as following up post discharge, answer questions about medications and identify and reach out to close preventive gaps in care. The tech also will summarize patient text and voice interactions into relevant notes and actions into the practice’s workflow.
“We are addressing the 2-billion-hour primary care shortage head-on,” said Mike Long, chairman and CEO of Lumeris in a statement. “The urgency and magnitude of the problems mean no one company can solve it alone. We are grateful for the strong support Tom is receiving from leading provider, academic, technology, and services organizations from across the country.” — Heather Landi
DoseSpot rolls out drug price transparency product for patients
Electronic prescribing solution company DoseSpot launched Connect, a suite of tools that gives patients quick access to pharmacies offering the lowest price for their prescribed medication.
After a clinician prescribes a medication, DoseSpot sends the patient a text message with a link to pharmacies with pricing options including insurance, copay assistance and cash-pay alternatives, according to the company. The text messaging also gives patients access to copay coupons and discount codes for affordable prescriptions. By using Connect, providers can pass the ability to select a pharmacy to the patient. Patients have visibility into available pharmacies with pricing information, allowing them to select the location of their choice.
Connect integrates to nationwide electronic prescription routing networks.
“We see a world where the patient has a modern consumer experience throughout the entire process of getting their medication. This means mobile interfaces and clear pricing options. It means ending pharmacy counter sticker shock, abandoned prescriptions and doom-loop callbacks to provider offices,” said Josh Weiner, CEO of DoseSpot in a statement. “DoseSpot’s new release puts patients at the center of the ePrescribing workflow. Providers will have an all-in-one user experience aimed at reducing burnout and patients will have control over where their prescriptions are filled based on price and convenience." — Heather Landi
ViVE beefs up security for attendees
Conferences in the early part of 2025 have rolled out enhanced security measures for the comfort of attendees, and ViVE followed that trend this week.
At the convention center in Nashville, conferencegoers will be asked to pass through metal detectors on their way into the building, and bags will be checked by security. Conference badges now feature photographs of attendees to verify their identity, and each person wears a separate wrist-band to indicate to security personnel that they have been identified by the ViVE team.
A noticeably larger presence of security guards is also on scene in Nashville.
The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, held in January, took similar steps and beefed up its security presence. The shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in early December forced the industry to take a closer look at executive protection and has been the driver behind the enhanced conference security in the early parts of 2025.
HIMSS 2025, which opens on March 3, is the next major industry conference. — Paige Minemyer
Memorial Sloan Kettering partners with AWS for cancer research
Memorial Sloan Kettering is partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to boost its data infrastructure and propel forward cancer research and treatment at the organization.
With AWS, MSK will tap into its trove of data collected through patient interactions at the cancer hospital as well as de-identified genomic data and imaging data. The AWS tools will also facilitate AI drug discovery and a host of initiatives at MSK.
In collaboration with AWS, MSK will create an AI-focused gap fund to back its researchers’ AI discoveries. It also plans to start a new entrepreneurship and startup incubator. AWS has also pledged to scale MSK’s Innovation Hub (iHub) and pilot programs, with a focus on improving and validating applications in cancer.
“Our scientists are trying to come up with new discoveries for cancer diagnosis and treatment and more and more these types of technologies are reliant on AI, on Gen AI, and we hope, by providing us with access to AWS platform, their expertise, their capital, we can really enhance the ability to create these innovations and get them to patients,” Vice President of Technology Management and Commercialization at MSK, Yashodhara Dash, said in an interview.
A press release by MSK says that the technology will allow clinicians to track a patient’s cancer using computable disease trajectories and advanced tumor and clinical response predictions. The tech will drive precision medicine and improve care for cancer patients, the release says. -- Emma Beavins
CAQH finds $20B in cost savings opportunity
The Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare (CAQH) released its annual Index report that evaluates the prevalence of electronic transactions and identifies opportunities for the healthcare industry to save money and improve care by moving away from manual administrative tasks.
CAQH collects electronic transaction information from health plans and providers and collaborates with over 600 organizations to produce the report. The organization estimates that the data in the report represent 63% of insured people in the U.S.
In its newly-released 2024 report, CAQH identified $222 billion saved by the healthcare industry through the automation of administrative tasks like prior authorization and insurance verification. It also identified $20 billion in additional savings the industry can generate if it transitions to fully electronic administrative workflows.
Additionally, CAQH found that medical staff save up to 70 minutes on average per patient visit by transition to fully electronic workflows. — Emma Beavins
IKS Health launches Gen AI scribe product
IKS Health has released a generative AI ambient scribe product that rounds out its suite of supported clinical documentation tools and offers health systems a sliding scale of options to jump in on the ambient scribe revolution.
The company, which provides administrative, clinical, operational and revenue tech solutions, used its in-house clinical expertise and its years of work supporting clinicians in medical transcription to inform the development of Scribble Now, a fully gen AI backed product.
“For a long time, we've offered, traditionally at the company, a number of services that fit more in the traditional model of medical transcription or various versions of human scribing, asynchronous or live,” Andrew Dickmeyer, VP of Product at IKS Health, said in an interview. “We're excited and proud to announce that we launched our own in house pure Gen AI clinical documentation solution."
Scribble Now adds to IKS Health’s Scribble suite, which now includes five products. The products range in the amount of support they offer clinicians in clinical documentation. Scribble Swift uses generative AI to create a clinical note that is then sent to a human reviewer and is turned around in one hour for the clinician.
At the top of the range, Scribble Pro offers full clinical workflow support and includes includes a review of the note by a clinician-scribe with E&M coding to optimize billing. — Emma Beavins
symplr reveals new Operations Platform
Software company symplr unveiled its Operations Platform, or SOP, at ViVE on Monday.
The technology is built on Amazon Web Services' cloud infrastructure, and is designed to make it easier for CIOs and other healthcare tech leaders to align disparate systems into one. It also allows teams to build mores standardized processes that they can more readily measure over time.
The company said a survey it conducted last year found 80% of healthcare IT leaders see that they could combine operations, but many hurdles remain in doing so, which leaves them grappling with a complex series of interconnected platforms.
“Healthcare IT is at an inflection point where standardization and simplification are key to real operational improvements," symplr CEO BJ Schaknowski said in a press release. "Healthcare leaders deserve a partner who can deliver an interoperative solution that solves previously unsolvable problems including physician offboarding."
"Our platform becomes the single source of truth as providers move from recruiting and onboarding to credentialing and scheduling," Schaknowski said. "It cuts through the chaos, giving CIOs and their teams the simplicity and support they need to focus on what really drives impact—innovating and empowering care teams to provide top-notch quality care."
The team said the Operations Platform combines 28 interconnected applications in one place "to reduce operational complexity, unlock value, and transition from multi-vendor environments," the company said. — Paige Minemyer