Now that CES 2025 is over, certain trends have become clear.

While the exhibition floor was full of wearables, panels featured conversations about sleep devices and vision and home health. These talks often centered on artificial intelligence (AI) and innovative treatments like regenerative medicine and digital therapeutics.

We stopped by several booths to give you a roundup of some of the digital health themes at CES 2025. Here’s what execs told us.

These answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Diogo Rau, chief information and digital officer, Eli Lilly

You can’t spell CES without “consumer,” of course. The biggest tech trend is just around all of the consumer engagement with healthcare.

For us in this industry, we are finally starting to pay attention to consumers directly. We’ve always cared about patients and people taking our medicines, but we have not made an effort to engage with consumers directly. That’s what’s changing, and this is not an experiment. This is a fundamental change, and we’re going to see that across every company in the medicines industry over the next 10 years. And I would even say the ones that don’t do that are probably not going to make it to the next 10 years.

Keep reading here.—CM

New year, new savings…at least for some Medicare beneficiaries.

As of January 1, beneficiaries enrolled in Part D prescription drug plans will have their out-of-pocket spending capped at $2,000 for the year. This new policy was part of President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which included other drug pricing measures such as capping the cost of insulin at $35 per month for seniors.

But only a small share of Medicare enrollees will benefit from the cap, according to an analysis from nonprofit organization AARP’s Public Policy Institute, as most don’t spend more than $2,000 annually on their medications after hitting their deductible (which is up to $590 for standard plans in 2025). Beneficiaries spent an average of $400 to $500 per year as of 2022, the Hill reported, citing data from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

By the numbers. Analysts from AARP reported in August that, based on 2022 prescription drug data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), roughly 3.2 million beneficiaries could save money on their prescriptions in 2025 with the spending cap. There were roughly 56 million Part D beneficiaries that year, so that would mean roughly 5.7% of enrollees would benefit from the cap.

Keep reading here.—MA

Welcome back to AI 411, a monthly roundup of artificial intelligence (AI) announcements from across the healthcare industry.

In December, Healthcare Brew reported on Google’s announcement to open its Health AI Developer Foundation models for chest X-ray, dermatology, and pathology imaging. We also took a look back at several tech advancements in 2024, including new and notable treatments, and asked tech experts what they expect to see in 2025.

Read on for some notable health-related AI headlines from last month.

Abridge. AI scribe maker Abridge announced in a release a new partnership with Johns Hopkins Medicine on December 18. Abridge’s AI, which supports clinical documentation, will be used by 6,700 clinicians, six hospitals, and 40 patient care centers at the Baltimore-based health system.

Agilon Health and Navina. Primary care company for older adults Agilon Health and tech company Navina announced a partnership on December 18 to integrate an AI platform into the Agiolon’s services. Under the partnership, about 2,800 Agilon providers will have access to clinical data to help diagnose and treat patients.

Keep reading here.—CM

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