TTA’s Royal Visit Week: OpenEvidence goes dark in UK & EU, UK Biobank and Medtronic hacked, RapidSOS’s well-done docu-video, ‘fetching’ fundings, more!

May 1, 2026 | by | No Comments

 

Friday, 1 May 2026

This week saw King Charles III and Queen Camilla on our shores, from Washington to NYC to Virginia, before flying off to (hopefully) warmer Bermuda. Perhaps the pomp made for a quieter healthcare week. Perhaps the three most important stories were almost lost in the circumstance. “IT” clinical info app OpenEvidence stumbled over compliance with the EU AI Act–and chose to go dark in UK and EU. 500K UK Biobank records were hacked–by trusted Chinese researchers. Medtronic had what they depicted as a not-terribly-consequential breach of their corporate IT systems–we’ll see. A well-done docu-video on what happens when you call 911–and emergency services. Some fundings that ‘fetch’. And more!

Please feel free to comment on the articles and pass along this Alert. Let me know if this is worth it to you!

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

Breaking: OpenEvidence app access terminated in the UK and EU

(Updated) Medtronic reports corporate IT systems cyberattacked. 500K UK Biobank records breached in inside job. Are med device and research organizations the new hacker happy hunting ground?

‘Behind the Emergency’–a well-done presentation about and approach to a specialized healthcare market

Last Week

Weekend Must Read: The 10 point pattern of failure of healthcare tech companies

News roundup: (breaking) IKS Health finalizes TruBridge buy, Hims shares rise on independent Rx fills, Cala Health scores $50M, Joyful Health $22M, Tava Health $40M, actor Jeremy Renner partners with RapidSOS

Even famous doctors have their identity stolen: Dr. Eric Topol “authors” an apparently fake, AI-generated paper (This Editor’s investigation)

Teleprescriber Zealthy–and CEO Kyle Robertson–accused of asset fraud; DOJ moves to freeze assets and put company in receivership

Chutes & Ladders: Vendor protest filed against VA-OIT, Teladoc stock touted as ‘best buy’, Treehub ‘founder residency’ launches, AcuityMD raises $80M to near-$1B valuation

29th ISfTeH International Conference announced for 11-13 November in Germany–submit your proposal now!

Perspectives: What Healthcare Can Learn from Formula One About AI

 * * *
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

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

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

Editor’s Note: Our thrice-weekly Alerts bring TTA stories to your mailbox. Generally Friday, Saturday (for weekenders) and Monday. Subscribe here if you’re not getting it! No spam, promotions, or list selling. And written 100% by a human–ask my fingers!)

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 with results that save time and money. In one GI practice, with staff processing up to 100 referrals per day, TriFetch handled that workflow end to end, freeing 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, the German pharmaceutical company with 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 

TTA’s Spring Fever: VA resumes Oracle EHR rollout, Click clicks on $50M, 27% layoff, IKS Health may buy TruBridge, and TELCOR’s tuck-in of Sample.

April 16, 2026 | by

 

17 April 2026

The last couple of weeks must have exhausted everyone, because this week is downright sleepy. As scheduled, VA finally resumed its Oracle Health EHR rollout with four health systems in Michigan–the first since 2022. Nine more to come if these go well. For companies, spring fever deals were absent. Digital schizophrenia adjunct treatment Click Therapeutics raised both $50 million to move to commercialization, then pink slipped 27% of current staff. TELCOR tucked in Sample to bolster AI  in the RCM area. Pending in RCM, IKS Health may be making a $600 million offer for TruBridge–but that hasn’t been finalized. Yet.

Please feel free to comment on the articles and pass along this Alert. Let me know if this is worth it to you!

Chutes & Ladders: Click Therapeutics raises $50M, lays off 27%; India’s IKS Health in talks to buy TruBridge for over $600M; TELCOR buys Sample for RCM expansion

VA’s Oracle EHR resumes go-lives at four Michigan systems–finally

Last week, though, was fairly stupendous, including an indictment…

Two weekend ‘must reads’: the New Yorker’s Sam Altman/OpenAI exposé–and comments; a further deep dive into Carbon Health’s implosion

Perspectives: Exploring the Telehealth Extension: Building Infrastructures for Better Access

Funding/deal roundup: WHOOP’s $575M Giant raise, Anthropic buys med AI startup for $400M, early stage fundings for Jimini, Insight Health; Noom buys compounder; Mount Sinai NY to embed OpenEvidence

NY Times’ highly questionable but glowing–and viral–portrait of AI-created GLP-1 e-prescriber and marketer Medvi

Former VA EHRM executive director Federally charged with accepting vendor cash and gifts, making false statements

 * * *
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

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

Chutes & Ladders: Click Therapeutics raises $50M, lays off 27%; India’s IKS Health in talks to buy TruBridge for over $600M; TELCOR buys Sample for RCM expansion

April 15, 2026 | by

So far, not a lot of ups and downs this week….

What’s both a Ladder and a Chute?

Click Therapeutics put together a healthy Series D of $50 million to commercialize its digital therapeutic for the treatment of the experiential negative symptoms of schizophrenia. That’s a cheerful earful, except for the reported 27% of their employees who just got chuted with a pink slip. In the reported range of 100-250 employees, that means 27 to 67 employees being told ‘no work for you’ after bringing the company to the commercialization point. That is a deep cut.

Boehringer Ingelheim and Click jointly developed the digital technology, which received Breakthrough Device Designation by the FDA in 2024 as an investigational technology. It provides an an adjunct to standard antipsychotic therapy through interactive psychosocial intervention techniques.

With the $50 million funding, Boehringer turned over commercialization to Click. What is odd here is that companies with investigational tech and large partners usually keep the staff lean. Commercialization and funding then means that hires change from researchers to marketers, sales, and compliance, for a net gain. The next question is…when?

Austin Speier, chief strategy officer, commented to Behavioral Health Business: “While we are incredibly excited about the potential of CT-155, that shift means making hard changes to our team to match our new commercial mission. These were not decisions we made lightly, and we are deeply grateful to everyone who helped us reach this stage.” CT-155, as it is formally known, does not yet have FDA clearance. It has a Phase III study, CONVOKE (NCT05838625), a Phase III, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, 16-week study evaluating the efficacy and safety of CT-155 versus a digital control app. Neither the BHB and FierceBiotech articles nor Click’s release reveal a timeline for FDA clearance and marketing. Which means that final FDA approval may be more distant than the funding and turnover make it appear.

Indian RCM provider IKS Health seeks to add TruBridge’s RCM for $675 million. Talks are reportedly in an advanced stage with an all-cash offer funded by a $675 million debt facility from banks like Citi, Deutsche Bank, and JP Morgan. It covers both purchase price and refinances TruBridge’s existing debt. No formal offer has been tendered to TruBridge’s board or shareholders. Surprisingly, this has gained little notice in the US healthcare press.

TruBridge provides HIT, an EHR, and RCM for health systems and practices. It is both established from the late 1990s, when RCM was new, and fairly large–it serves 1,500 healthcare organizations and employs 3,500 people with revenue of $347 million. It IPO’d in 2002 as CPSI on Nasdaq, converting to TruBridge in 2024. IKS Health is HQ’d in Mumbai but has a US HQ in Texas. It has 13,350 employees and a global base of 600 clients. It’s public on the National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE) and BSE Limited (BSE). In addition to RCM, it offers care coordination, risk and optimization, and utilization management tools for value-based care. Digital Health News (India)

Also in RCM, TELCOR is buying Sample Healthcare. Amount and transitions are undisclosed. Like TruBridge, TELCOR started in the late 1990s. It serves both hospital and independent labs’ RCM for billing plus point-of-care and laboratory data. It has a 57% market share in the US for point-of-care solutions and serves over 2,700 hospitals and laboratories. Sample will add an AI-driven workflow engine that will be marketed as a separate product. It received seed funding out of Y Combinator in 2024. It’s easy to determine that Sample is a tuck-in acquisition for TELCOR.  TELCOR release.