TTA’s wintry roundup: UHG’s stock crash, buys/funding Sword Health, OpenEvidence, more; AI studies indicate caution, dodgy eMed, SVB’s 2025 healthcare investment roundup, Done Global convictions, more!

January 29, 2026 | by | No Comments

29 January 2026   Happy New Year!

 

Editor Donna is (mostly) back and here’s a roundup of our articles over the past couple of weeks. News, including the Big Crash of UnitedHealth Group. Some big buys kicking off 2026. A couple of major analyses of AI studies and 2025 healthtech investment. Must Reads too!

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

Chutes & Ladders: UnitedHealth’s disastrous day and industry portents; Sword Health buys Kaia for $285M and gains German entry, $250M Series D for OpenEvidence, Pomelo’s $92M Series C, NOCD buys Rebound Health

One-two punch: AI moves hard into clinical healthcare and consumer medical with OpenAI/ChatGPT and Claude for Healthcare debuts

AI failing–at present–to lower costs, grow revenue, improve efficiencies. Yet it’s full speed ahead: Deloitte, PwC surveys

Short takes: Owlet’s baby sleep survey, MediBioSense’s Infinity Watch, telehealth extensions move to Senate, EBG’s telemental laws app ’26 update, Done Global indicted with principals convicted

This week’s Must Read: a deep dive on football’s Tom Brady’s involvement with GLP-1 e-Rx eMed

2025 healthcare investment off 12% versus 2024, with AI nearly half: Silicon Valley Bank roundup (updated for Scheffel interview))

From our last Alert: Congratulations to James Batchelor MBE (Well Deserved!)

And a read with even more relevance now: Should free-falling UnitedHealth Group be broken up? Or break itself up to survive, before it becomes another GE? (updated) (See Chutes & Ladders above)

And on a personal note, the 40th anniversary of the Challenger explosion was yesterday. A short and personal remembrance on where I was and what I was doing that day is published here. 

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

 

AI failing–at present–to lower costs, grow revenue, improve efficiencies. Yet it’s full speed ahead: Deloitte, PwC surveys

January 27, 2026 | by

When the business process outsourcing (BPO) leaders pour lukewarm water over AI, one hears the air leaking from a bubble. BPOs have been a key part of the hype around AI as a business solution. The McKinseys, Genpacts, Deloittes, and PwCs for years have touted AI and as a result, made large consultancy fees. AI now proliferates for every business problem. Whether it’s generative, (still kicking around) machine learning, NLP, LLMs, agentic, robotic process, and now sovereign AI (domestically developed and powered)–it’s been positioned as the solution for simplifying processes and reducing administrative burden. Of course, a fair chunk of this involves getting rid of those pesky human factors in overseeing whether these new systems and software actually work, or reducing them to the lowest cost possible, to pay for all the AI spend.

Unfortunately for the BPOs, their customers are telling them that AI Is Not Quite All That. In fact, for the money they have spent, it hasn’t performed. Yet. But they remain optimistic, a neat bit of cognitive dissonance or perhaps justification.

The Deloitte global survey of 3,235 business and IT leaders confirms the gloomy news to date–yet it’s full speed ahead. Only 20% have experienced revenue growth as a result of AI. Transformation is coming along slowly; 25% of those surveyed believe that AI is transforming their organizations, which corresponds to 84% not redesigning jobs or work around AI capabilities. In this area, there’s a lot of resistance. While 55% of workers are reportedly open to AI technology, only 13% of workers are highly enthusiastic about AI, 21 percent would prefer to avoid it, and 4% actively distrust it. There’s also a lot of pilot-itis. Only 25% report shifting 40% or more of their AI experiments into live use, though optimistically they project that will increase to 54% in three to six months.

Yet they’re justifying AI. Totally. 66% reported that it improves productivity and efficiency, which contradicts the low revenue growth. 58% of companies are already using it to some extent, with adoption to hit 80% within two years. 74% of companies plan to deploy agentic AI within two years, even though only 23% are using it now and 21% have a model for governance of autonomous agents–a high risk level. 42% believe their strategy is ‘highly prepared’ for AI adoption. Another part of AI adoption has surfaced–sovereign AI, to reduce dependency on foreign sourcing, vendors, and infrastructure. 83% reported that this was at least moderately important to them. The Register 21 Jan, Deloitte’s State of AI in the Enterprise report (PDF, January 2026) 

PwC’s larger survey of 4,454 business leaders in their 29th Annual Global CEO Survey contains gloomier and more detailed feedback for AI advocates. “Most CEOs say their companies aren’t yet seeing a financial return from investments in AI.” Only 30% reported increased revenue and 26% saw lowered costs. More than half–56%–did not see either lower costs and higher revenue. 22% reported an increase in costs due to AI.

Another finding is that isolated AI projects aren’t delivering value. Companies lack a clear strategy in building AI foundations such as clearly defined road maps and sufficient levels of investment​​.

A relatively small proportion of their surveyed CEOs say they’re applying AI to a large or very large extent to areas such as demand generation (22%); support services (20%); the company’s products, services, and experiences (19%); direction setting (15%); or demand fulfilment (13%). In a previous survey, only a tiny minority of workers–14%–are using generative AI daily. PwC’s report goes on to identify many other factors reshaping global business and influencing growth, in context confirming that depending on AI as a quick fix is not paying off.  The Register 20 January, PwC 29th Annual Global CEO Survey (January 2026).

Reality tends to bite. Many of last year’s corporate layoffs were attributed to heavy AI investments that weren’t paying off, but books needed to balance by year’s end and it was taken out of human capital. Layoffs are projected to continue across all industries in 2026. Books balance another way, though. The AI bubble is deflating from Inflated Expectations into the early stages of the Trough of Disillusionment. How long it will take to move to the Slope of Enlightenment is anyone’s guess–two years, five, a decade? The useful tool of the Gartner hype cycle strikes again–as it did with telehealth and health tech. Separately, we’ll be looking at OpenAI’s ChatGPT for Healthcare and Anthropic’s Claude for Healthcare.

Common Services Agency awards feasibility study for over-75s telecare (Scotland)

January 6, 2017 | by

Our Reader Susanne Woodman, who keeps an eye on UK award opportunities, has forwarded information for an Award of Telecare for over 75s Feasibility Study. This ‘mini tender’ was awarded by The Common Services Agency (NHS National Services Scotland) to Deloitte in Edinburgh. Value is £120,190. For more information, see the full notice text tab in Public Contracts Scotland. Note to companies–keep an eye on these sites!

‘eVisits’ save $5 billion globally this year–but are they more effective care?

August 14, 2014 | by

Deloitte and Towers Watson obviously disagree on the savings from eVisits (Deloitte) and telemedicine (Towers Watson). Deloitte’s study of eVisits projects a global savings of $5 billion in 2014. Towers Watson is estimating $6 billion in 2015 from US employers alone if there is full employee utilization of telemedicine. Deloitte is also more transparent in its estimating, for example on the $50-60 billion total addressable market for eVisits in ‘developed countries’. This Editor doesn’t see a major difference in definitions between the two; Deloitte defines eVisits as video consults plus the forms, questionnaires and photos that have become part of telehealth, but not the vital signs monitoring part.. Perhaps our readers, looking at both more closely, can discern, or confirm that Towers Watson has too rosy a picture? Deloitte‘s ’21st Century Housecall’ study (short paper) is also worth a read for presenting facts/figures on the global addressable market and for a surprising conclusion–that the ‘greater good (in developing countries) may come from saving tens of millions of lives’. Hat tip to reader Mike Clark. Clinical Innovation + Technology summary.

‘Virtual care is much more effective than brick-and-mortar care.” (Editor’s emphasis) A bold statement that Microsoft and the writer from Intel fail to back up with facts. The focus of this ‘In Health’ article is preventing readmissions. There are the usual Panglossian pointers  (more…)

mHealth: a salmagundi of items

June 8, 2014 | by

Overloaded with Horizon2020 proposal adjudication and conference management (including the first DHACA members’ day on 11th July), this editor has been unable to do much Telehealth & Telecare Aware blogging. However the interesting items have continued to attract my attention and Prof Mike short (especially), Alex Wyke and Nicholas Robinson have continued to add further to the pile (huge thanks to all). So much seems worth highlighting: where to start? Perhaps with the 18 factors to make telemedicine a success, enumerated by the EU-funded Momentum project. Telecare Aware readers will be unsurprised by all 18, which look pretty basic. However many will notice obvious absences, such as the need to adduce evidence of the success of the intervention. Gluttons for punishment will find much more (more…)