A quickie news roundup: ChatGPT for Clinicians unveiled, UHG to invest $1.5B in AI, Aidoc raises $150M, TriFetch raises $1.9M pre-seed, Boehringer Ingelheim & Eko Health partner on canine heart murmur detection

April 30, 2026 | by | No Comments

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ChatGPT moves from healthcare enterprises to the clinician level. This new version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, ChatGPT for Clinicians, is designed to support clinical tasks like clinical search, documentation workflows, and deep medical research. It will be free for any verified physician, NP, PA, or pharmacist in the US, and is available now via their information page here. With its release, ChatGPT is also introducing HealthBench Professional, described as “an open benchmark for real clinician chat tasks across three use cases: care consult, writing and documentation, and medical research.” Release

ChatGPT for Healthcare was announced in January, but available to only a limited group of healthcare organizations.

UnitedHealth Group is having some better days. Last week on their earnings call, they announced that all units exceeded Q1 expectations. Their Q1 adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $7.23 was well ahead of expectations, with total revenues of $111.7 billion, up 2% versus Q1 2025. Q1 membership fell slightly to 49.1 million from 49.8 million at the end of 2025. Their medical cost ratio (MCR) decreased to 83.9% from 84.8%, nearly a full point.

UHG is ‘on track’ to invest $1.5 billion in AI this year, especially at Optum with self-service digital scheduling that includes AI-enabled tools guiding patients “to the right appointment in the right setting at the right time”, plus increased digital access for members and providers with AI-enabled tools at UnitedHealth Care. 

UHG has been heavily criticized for its treatment of rural healthcare providers and hospitals. Timothy Noel, CEO of UnitedHealthcare Business, said that “We will accelerate payments in all lines of business by 50% for rural hospitals and exempt rural healthcare providers for most medical prior authorization requirements. And we are building network partnerships between rural providers and leading regional health systems.”  Let’s see if the good news stretches into Q2. Healthcare Finance News

Aidoc’s $150 million Series E brings their total funding to over $500 million. The AI-assisted clinical imaging system for radiology, cardiology, vascular and neurovascular healthcare teams is designed to help them find and triage injuries and other health conditions. It also integrates coordination software for stroke and cardiovascular care. The round for the NYC-based company was led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, with participation from General Catalyst, SoftBank Investment Advisors and NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm). The fresh funds will be used to grow global presence and expand into other clinical areas. FDA clearance for its AI triage tool was gained in January. Mobihealthnews, Release 

TriFetch has a healthy pre-seed round. A $1.9 million pre-seed these days is rather unusual but TriFetch, an AI automation platform built for independent specialty clinics just emerging from stealth, nabbed it from Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from angels with backgrounds at Google, Hippocratic, Mercor, and MIT. TriFetch’s platform automates three workflows that dominate clinic operating costs (the “tri”): patient calls and scheduling, referral processing, and prior authorizations. It’s led by UCLA graduate computer science PhDs  and researchers Varuni Sarwal and Rosemary He. So far results seem impressive, with their pilots at California ophthalmology, cardiology, and gastroenterology clinics in California saving time and money. In one GI practice, on processing up to 100 referrals per day, TriFetch in handling that workflow end to end frees roughly 16 hours of staff time daily, saving the clinic $200,000 per year.  Pulse 2.0/release

And for those who fetch for us, a diagnostic for heart murmurs. Boehringer Ingelheim, which has a specialty in animal health, and Eko Health, a ‘reimagined’ stethoscope for heart and lung disease, partnered to develop a device and app to detect, visualize, and grade heart murmurs in dogs. This combines BI’s CANINEBEAT AI diagnostic algorithm, the Eko Vet+ app, and the Eko CORE Digital Attachment that connects to most single-tube stethoscopes.  Canine heart murmurs and cardiac disease are difficult to detect in early stages, where diagnosis and treatment can be most helpful. Availability of the combined technology through both BI and Eko has started in the US and UK, with Germany up next month. Additional markets will be phased in during 2026 and 2027.  Release 

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

Short takes: UK’s Cera raises $150M, $105M for Qventus, Solera Health’s $40M; General Catalyst’s AWS deal, Virta Health hits $100M in revenue, powered by GLP-1 maintenance; VirtuAlly’s JC telehealth accreditation

January 16, 2025 | by

A ‘this-n-that’ roundup, with a flurry of fundings and more.

Larger fundings are really swinging it this month, making it feel a little bit like old times:

Cera raises $150 million for UK/NHS expansion, platform AI development, and upscaling. The $150 million funding is split between equity and debt, via lead investors BDT & MSD Partners and Schroders Capitals, plus Earlymarket, Guinness Ventures, DigitalHealth, and Robin Klein, a private UK investors. Cera has raised a total of $407 million, with their last raise of $302 million in 2022. 

Cera supports a spectrum of in-home health through its proprietary AI-assisted carer platform. Their nurses and other staff carers use the app on phones (primarily) to direct care and monitor patients. AI and ML assists enable caregivers to view and react to changes in condition. Families can also view reporting on the app. The company claims results of daily savings of £1 million for the UK healthcare system, hospitalization reductions of up to 70%, a 20% reduction in patient falls, and hospital discharges that are up to five times faster. It supports an estimated 60,000 daily in-person healthcare visits across UK homes, partners with over 150 local governments, and two-thirds of NHS Integrated Care Systems. They also claim to be EBITDA positive (as of 2022) and free-cash-flow positive from last year. TechFundingNews, TechCrunch

Qventus raises $105 million in a Series D. The investment in the care operations and automation platform for over 115 health systems was led by KKR’s Next Generation Technology III Fund with Bessemer Venture Partners plus new strategic investors Northwestern Medicine, HonorHealth, and Allina Health. Qventus claims to be ‘AI-first’ for automating routine care and record tasks, increasing team productivity up to 50%. The new funding will be used to accelerate the development and commercialization of solutions powered by its AI Operational Assistants into new care settings beyond its Surgical Growth and Inpatient Capacity solutions. Total funding to date is $203 million over 10 rounds. Release, MedCityNews

A $40 million round for Solera Health gets them to a Series E. The insider round was co-led by payer group Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC). It also includes investors Adams Street, Cobalt Ventures, and Horizon Mutual Holdings, Inc. Funding to date totals $112 million. Solera’s HALO platform provides access to hundreds of digital health applications for payers and employers, including apps for virtual specialty care in areas such as hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes prevention, and weight management, to drive down the cost of care. Also announced was the confirmation of interim CEO John Santelli to the position. He joined Solera after nearly 30 years with UnitedHealth Group, departing as CIO. Release, MedCityNews

When giants meet…new AI models follow, with General Catalyst allying with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop AI tools for its portfolio companies. The focus will be on cloud services and generative AI using Amazon Bedrock, the ML application for building generative AI on AWS. This will be used for improving predictive analytics around patient treatment outcomes and insights into factors such as disease progression. Also mentioned are tools based on Anthropic and Mistral AI, along with securely trained health care-specific models. 

First up are the expanding Commure and Aidoc. Their specialized technology solutions like Copilot Suite and aiOS will be integrated with AWS’s AI and data capabilities. General Catalyst, besides investing in many healthcare and digital health companies, will be using this for their separate HATco, The Health Assurance Transformation Corporation. HATco was founded in October 2023 to develop an interoperability model for technology solutions, targeting health systems and payers. Mobihealthnews, Yahoo Finance/Global Data, FierceHealthcare

In the hot nexus of diabetes management and weight loss, Virta Health passed the $100 million in revenue threshold and growth of 60%. It’s remarkable given that Virta specializes in reversing Type 2 diabetes and obesity via nutrition modification and lifestyle changes. They’ve tweaked their approach into what happens after GLP-1 patients go off the drug, though they now manage GLP-1 prescribing for health plans, employers, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Their off-ramp is modeled after their Sustainable Weight Loss solution, Responsible Prescribing is designed as an alternative to GLP-1 drugs or as an off-ramp for patients moving off them to maintain their weight loss. Release

Virtual nursing provider VirtuAlly has received accreditation from The Joint Commission (JC). This relatively rare status for telehealth is based on continuous compliance with performance standards and commitment to providing safe and quality patient care. VirtuAlly provides 24/7 turnkey virtual nurse-patient monitoring, temporary virtual support, and consulting services. They also have added a new term to our lexicon, “tele-sitting”. Release