TTA Celebrates USA 250! Midjourney’s body scanner promises a revolution and Butterfly a future? Hype or reality? And more!

July 2, 2026 | by

2 -6 July 2026

An early close for a very big holiday this weekend–the 250th anniversary of United States Independence, a/k/a The Rebel Colonials Serving It Up Hot To King George III. And the UK and Europe returned this weekend’s 100 degree F temps (38 C) as a present…

Speaking of presents…our one story this week is a very deep dive into Midjourney Medical’s ‘magical’ whole-body scanner and the Butterfly Network ultrasound chips powering it. The Midjourney agreement is a substantial present to a once-promising POCUS company that was almost KO’d by the Devil of Demise after a cracked SPAC. Is it a future that Butterfly can bet on, or just another bridge to cross?

Set off fireworks (safely), drink up like a colonial, and stay cool!

Please feel free to comment on the articles and pass along this Alert. Let me know if this is worth it to you! Also check out my personal page on Substack.

Midjourney Medical audaciously promises a revolution in whole-body scanning, powered by Butterfly Network chips. Can the reality ever match the hype?

Last Week’s Headlines, from Cargo Culture to OpenEvidence   

Chutes & Ladders: Xsolis data breach affects 1.4M records, Five Eyes warns of AI-supercharged hacking; FDA closes Whoop BP warning, Centene adds HR/finance exec to board; $120M raises for Assort Health, $46M for xCures

Vinegary Must Reads This Week: Silicon Valley’s ‘Cargo Culture’; the clinical query tool explosion between OpenEvidence and general AI

Short takes: Bain report on anemic AI ROI, SVB report on women’s health, Ladder Health pedes virtual health raises $7M, an update on the Luigi Mangione trial

Amazon’s One Medical Seniors hacked by ShinyHunters, issues “final warning” on 8.8 TB of patient data

News roundup: Validic bought by ChartSpan; raises for Cadence, Prosper AI, Telepatia; Epic MyChart portal messages doubled in 5 years–study    

Perspectives: The most aggressive AI adoption in healthcare is happening off the books

Catch up with these if you haven’t

Chutes, and chutes: Microsoft’s $3B Oracle cloud leasing deal goes sideways, Defense Health Agency to replace Leidos as system integrator for MHS’ EHR, Centene offering voluntary buyouts to most employees

Tuesday 23 June–UKTelehealthcare webinar/virtual event: Keeping People at Home, Supported by Technology (this is now available on video–check the UKTelehealthcare website and LinkedIn)

Perspectives: Virtual Care, AI, and the Future of Autism Therapy

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Support not only a publication but also a well-informed international community.

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Help Spread the News

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Donna Cusano, Editor In Chief
donna.cusano@telecareaware.com

Telehealth & Telecare Aware – covering news on latest developments in telecare, telehealth and eHealth, worldwide.

TTA’s Here Comes Summer: two data breaches and a warning, six raises, Validic bought, Silicon Valley’s ‘Cargo Culture’, OpenEvidence scored in study, ‘off the books’ AI in healthcare, more!

June 26, 2026 | by

 

Friday 26 June 2026

Summer started and the doldrums lifted. We have not one but two data breaches with a big warning from Five Eyes that AI-powered breaches are coming. Six raises from seed to Series C–including in Brazil–and Validic after many years is bought. But scrutiny is piling on AI and AI clinical tools, from the economics to Silicon Valley ‘Cargo Culture’ to OpenEvidence’s performance to ‘off the books’ AI in healthcare. We also touch on the current status of the Luigi Mangione NY State trial, 18 months after the murder of UHC’s Brian Thompson.

Please feel free to comment on the articles and pass along this Alert. Let me know if this is worth it to you! Also check out my personal page on Substack.

Chutes & Ladders: Xsolis data breach affects 1.4M records, Five Eyes warns of AI-supercharged hacking; FDA closes Whoop BP warning, Centene adds HR/finance exec to board; $120M raises for Assort Health, $46M for xCures

Vinegary Must Reads This Week: Silicon Valley’s ‘Cargo Culture’; the clinical query tool explosion between OpenEvidence and general AI

Short takes: Bain report on anemic AI ROI, SVB report on women’s health, Ladder Health pedes virtual health raises $7M, an update on the Luigi Mangione trial

Amazon’s One Medical Seniors hacked by ShinyHunters, issues “final warning” on 8.8 TB of patient data

News roundup: Validic bought by ChartSpan; raises for Cadence, Prosper AI, Telepatia; Epic MyChart portal messages doubled in 5 years–study    

Perspectives: The most aggressive AI adoption in healthcare is happening off the books

Last Week’s Headlines

Chutes, and chutes: Microsoft’s $3B Oracle cloud leasing deal goes sideways, Defense Health Agency to replace Leidos as system integrator for MHS’ EHR, Centene offering voluntary buyouts to most employees

Tuesday 23 June–UKTelehealthcare webinar/virtual event: Keeping People at Home, Supported by Technology (this is now available on video–check the UKTelehealthcare website and LinkedIn)

Perspectives: Virtual Care, AI, and the Future of Autism Therapy

 * * *
Advertise on Telehealth and Telecare Aware
Support not only a publication but also a well-informed international community.

Contact Editor Donna for more information.

Help Spread the News

Please tell your colleagues about this free news service and, if you have relevant information to share with the rest of the world, please let me know!

Donna Cusano, Editor In Chief
donna.cusano@telecareaware.com

News roundup: Validic bought by ChartSpan; raises for Cadence, Prosper AI, Telepatia; Epic MyChart portal messages doubled in 5 years–study

June 24, 2026 | by

The doldrums of M&A and fundings lightened a bit this week.

Personal health data consolidator Validic acquired by ChartSpan. The care management services company will broaden its portfolio through integrating Validic’s IoT platform into its remote care management and health programs. These include chronic care management, advanced primary care management, remote patient monitoring, and custom programs for health systems, payers, and wellness programs. Acquisition cost was not disclosed. BIP Capital led the financing for ChartSpan, as they did with their $15 million Series A in 2019. Validic’s last raise was $12 million in 2022 led by Kaiser Permanente Ventures. Validic, founded in 2010 and still led by founder Drew Schiller, will be integrated into ChartSpan. No mention of how the workforces will be integrated. Validic is headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, ChartSpan in Greenville, South Carolina. This continues the consolidation of complementary health tech businesses.   ChartSpan blog, Mobihealthnews

Short takes on recent raises:

Cadence Solutions, another clinical intelligence and services company in chronic care management, raised $100 million in a Series C. The round was led by Spark Capital. Other participants were Thrive Capital, General Catalyst, Coatue, B Capital, Corewell Health Ventures, Memorial Hermann, and Duke Health. Cadence’s total funding since 2021 is $241 million. In 2021, they were valued at $1 billion though their current valuation is not public. The fresh funding will be used to expand across new health systems, advance Cadence’s AI agents, and grow value-based care models. Cadence also announced new affiliations with Duke Health and Texas Health Resources, now serving 20 leading health systems including Memorial Hermann in Houston and Hartford HealthCare. The model is a little different than similar remote patient monitoring (RPM) services. These health systems ‘white label’ Cadence’s clinical teams, who follow the health systems’ protocols in monitoring the device information and adjusting care in real time. Cadence now serves more than 100,000 active patients. Cadence release, Mobihealthnews, MedCity News

Prosper AI gained a $30 million Series A. Funding was led by Andreessen Horowitz/a16z, with participation from Base10 and continued support from Emergence Capital, Y Combinator, and Company Ventures. Prosper AI developed a series of voice agents for administrative workflow tasks such as answering patient calls, scheduling appointments directly in the EHR, verifying insurance benefits, automating patient billing, and contacting insurers on the phone when additional information is needed. The breadth of the agentic AI claims to lower administrative costs by +40% and up to 50% of end-to-end patient conversations. The company claims 150,000 healthcare providers and has added more than 40 care organizations as customers since their last funding round in September 2025.  The new funds will be used to expand its engineering and customer-facing teams, deepen integrations across the largest EHR platforms, and accelerate adoption across provider groups and health systems. Prosper release, Mobihealthnews

Brazil’s Telepatia raised a $33 million Series A, mainly from Andreessen Horowitz/a16z. Additional participants were Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar, Rappi founder Simón Borrero, and Nubank founder David Vélez. Telepatia combines AI-powered documentation, clinical decision support, and healthcare assistants to help clinicians improve productivity, reduce medical errors, and increase adherence to clinical protocols. It is targeted to healthcare systems in Latin America that have shortages of physicians and nurses. Telepatia has already been adopted by 25 hospital systems in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, reaching 14 million patients, improving protocol adherence from 84% to 99%, and helping prevent 60,000 medical errors in real time,” according to a16z’s announcement post. Mobihealthnews, The SaaS News

Patients are using portals for messaging and other tasks, but using them along with increased physical visits. A five-year study by NYU Langone Health researchers of the Epic MyChart system, published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found that:

  • 12% of Americans now use patient portals for messaging about appointments, test results, and ongoing treatments
  • Online portal messages more than doubled between 2020 and 2025 (153%)
  • Telephone calls decreased by 6%
  • Americans with an active Epic health record went from 94 million in 2020 to 140 million in 2025.
  • 30% of the 42 million active patients on Epic sent a portal health app message to their clinician during the first three months of 2025.
  • Individual patient messages doubled, moving from an average of 2.2 per year in early 2020 to 5.4 per year in late 2025.
  • In-office visits returned to an average of between two and three per year per patient

The study is the largest review conducted of Epic EHR records: more than 140 million patient records from 2,067 hospitals and 47,100 health clinics in the US. NYU Langone release

Rock Health’s sunnier 2025: up 35% due to AI, but a tale of ‘have and have nots’

February 19, 2026 | by

Rock Health’s 2025 digital health roundup, published in January, was upbeat–as usual, and in no way Hemingwayan. Their calculation of US digital health fundings was up 35% versus 2024, rising to $14.2 billion from 2024’s $10.5 billion. This was a higher number and a stark contrast to Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) tracking of US and EU healthtech investments as a 1) lower number and 2) flat 5%, growing from 2024’s $13.2 billion to $13.9 billion [TTA 14 Jan].

Let’s do some unpacking:

  • The number of digital health deals went down from 509 to 482, a decline of 5.3%.
  • In terms of current dollars, 2025’s funding of $14.2 billion was, as projected, a snap back to 2020’s $14.4 billion, as 2024 was to 2019. In constant/inflation-adjusted dollars, applying a cumulative inflation of 25%, 2025 is well under 2020 but better than 2019; 2020’s $14.4 billion then is equivalent to $18.3 billion today.
  • Where Rock Health and SVB agree is the ‘barbell’ profile of what gets funded.  
    • Mega funds like General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) do mega deals: 26 mega deals and 15 newly-minted unicorns (up from six last year), for a funding average by these two in D+ of $266 million, versus Series A of $24.1 million. 
    • The funding also skews towards “AI-enabled” companies and secondarily, wellness
    • Something that made this Editor go ‘hmmm…’:Rock Health’s usual analysis of letter deals across all funders is, unusually, missing in their 2025 report. The only comparison made is from GC and a16z, two mega funders. Inadvertently, Rock Health has drawn a bright line on the contraction of venture and private equity funders not only in available funds, but in sheer numbers. Discussed here intermittently, especially in the context of SVB’s failure and rescue, but at more length here in this 2023 commentary.
  • What they have picked up that SVB didn’t was the continuing significant number of unlabeled, non-letter financings–35% of deals, but down from 44% in 2023. Before 2021, unlabeled financings were fairly rare and in single digits.
  • The other significant pickup was that over 600 companies they track have not raised anything since 2021-2022. That could be a sign of health–that they are profitable and operating successfully on their cash flow–or barely staggering through and cannot get financing. 
  • M&A revived in 2025 with 195 deals in 2025, up 61% from 2024’s crater. Digital health companies were the majority acquirers (66%) with private equity at 10%. Rock Health attributes this to ‘tapestry weaving’ (creating more continuous solutions to flesh out platforms), legacy acquisitions by AI companies (a/k/a smush togethers, something New Mountain Capital excels at), and ‘acqui-hires’ to get top talent and tech.
    • They note of NMC: “Now, they’re weaving the largest “M&A tapestry” in digital health thus far: Matt Holt, NMC’s former managing director and president of private equity, is reportedly leaving to combine five NMC portfolio companies into a $30B holding company called Thoreau.”, a $30 billion deal broken out in a graphic. The five companies are Datavant, Swoop, Machinify, Smarter Technologies (itself a combine of SmarterDx, Thoughtful.ai, and Access Healthcare in RCM), and OfficeAlly. Whether this pending move (December) will actually work or turn into a petite version of Change Healthcare, we can only surmise.
  • IPOs haven’t really revived in digital health. Rock Health counts five IPOs in 2025, but only two are really digital health, Hinge Health and Omada Health, same as 2024. Both were at relatively flat valuations. The other three are more legitimately classified as biotech–Heartflow, Carlsmed, and Profusa. IPOs may improve in 2026, with Doc.com’s filing for a Nasdaq listing earlier this month and Devoted Health now at a post-F financing.
  • There is zero here about bankruptcies and reorganizations. No reference to the utter implosion of 23andMe and its shocking sale back to founder/CEO Anne Wojcicki.

The impact of ACCESS and ELEVATE. There is also a good graphic analysis of two CMS models that may support digital health more comprehensively than previous value-based care models such as ACO shared savings. The first CMMI model, ACCESS, will be debuting in July and is a 10 year voluntary payment model for Original Medicare outcomes in chronic care management. It reduces barriers for digital health to profitably work with CMS because it offers direct patient enrollment and waiving copays. The other from CMS is ELEVATE, launching in September, which funds up to 30 proposals with $100 million over three years to raise health and prevention for Original Medicare beneficiaries.

Rock Health’s 2025 wrapup

2026 remains Anyone’s Guess. It feels better…but….

Editor’s Note: Our Readers know that this Editor considers Rock Health a bit of a cheerleader for Sand Road. They play both sides of the fence as a venture fund/accelerator. There’s nothing wrong in that. SVB, like other financial institutions, funds a broad swath of healthcare and makes no bones about it. That is why their analysis, which also included EU and a bit of Asia, made its broader and tarter take on 2025 even more interesting.

What’s missing is year-to-year consistency in Rock Health’s analyses, notably what digital health sectors were funded and the Series letter breakdown across all funders.

2024 another ‘down round’ for US digital health funding, with smaller deals and earlier stages: Rock Health

January 24, 2025 | by

US 2024 digital health funding explored some new lows, yet again. Plainly put, despite some perking up at the end of the year, 2024 was not a righting of 2023’s wobbly year when looking at the key metrics. It was more like a stabilization to 2019 levels with the pandemic period standing out in sharp relief as an aberration. Let’s see what this all means….

2024 by the numbers:

  • Year totals were $10.1 billion across 497 deals, versus 2023’s $10.8 billion across 503 deals
  • 63% of 2024’s funding rounds were labeled–up from 2023’s 57%
  • Average deal size shrank to $20.4 million from $21.5 million
  • 86% were seed, Series A, and Series B rounds
  • Series C and D fundings shrank in the wash to median sizes of $50 million and $55 million respectively—well below 2023’s $62 million and $58 million. Mega deals dwindled to 17 or 21% of overall sector funding from 2023’s 32% in 2023 and 38% in 2022.
  • M&A activity hit a 10-year low at 118 deals.

We’re back to 2019 in absolute dollars. Using the pre-pandemic year of 2019 as a benchmark, Rock Health factors in three years of inflation to calculate that 2024’s funding is back at 2019 levels. While 2024 outperformed in current dollars 2019’s $8.2 billion across 425 deals, knocking off $0.18 on each dollar (worth $0.82 in 2019 value) brings 2024’s total to $8.3 billion in 2019 dollar value–essentially flat.

Why is this happening? Rock Health is attributing this to:

  • More attractive Davids versus the Goliaths: earlier-stage startups are not encumbered by the inflated valuations of later-stage funded ventures. The later-stage Goliaths which are not in something resembling profitability are now faced with down or stalled rounds. They, or their key investors, may seek buyouts or ‘shotgun marriages’–or shut down. In Rock Health’s view, this may restart M&A activity. (From this Editor’s perch, it already has–check General Catalyst’s portfolio condensing.)
  • Fewer investors concentrating the available capital. Of the 391 VC funds, 30 raised 75% of all  US committed capital. Nine of those funds accounted for 50%.(Pitchbook) Editor’s note: it’s not clear if this accounts for private equity funders.
  • If you are tired of seeing Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and General Catalyst (GC) in funding announcements, that is because they have between them about 20% of committed LP funding. Their dominance means unusual control over the direction of companies and their technologies. For instance, GC has HATco which as earlier reported, just entered a partnership with AWS to develop AI tools for its portfolio companies like Commure and Aidoc. This standardization means more control over ‘transforming healthcare’–and (as Rock Health doesn’t mention), over their investments in terms of costs, IP, and their business practices.

AI enablement was 2024’s hot button. It accounted for $3.7 billion, or 37% of the year’s sector funding, in 191 deals. There’s a discussion in the article about how foundational AI models for healthcare are gigantic large language models (LLMs) trained on vast data sets, which is why the seemingly low barrier to AI entry is in reality very high and can be dominated by a few Goliath players. The Davids need to work some niches and carefully consider their positioning.

2024’s leading value propositions and clinical indications. Still top in value props is disease treatment; moving up dramatically, disease monitoring. Funding is increasingly concentrated among the six top value propositions, now at 85%, 10 points higher than previously. In clinical indications, mental health takes home the prize as the five-year champ at #1, with cardiovascular and oncology following. Weight management and obesity was the comer, moving in one year from #8 to #4. Expect to see this move up even more in 2025. Clinical indication funding was less concentrated but nearly doubled, with the top six taking 48% of sector funding versus 28% in 2023.

Rock Health 2024 Report. Also Healthcare Dive