Healthcare Brew covers pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and how it impacts hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed.

Healthcare Brew

Will Peischel

Healthcare Brew delivers the latest news and trends in healthcare.

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Arrows going up and down in front of accounting spreadsheets.

VC funding in women’s health ‘on the uprise’ in 2023

You can’t say the same for healthcare investments on the whole.

Maia Anderson

A 2D animation of a hospital with a bunch of pharma pills and dollar bill signs coming out of the top of it

Private equity is scooping up hospitals, leading to concerns over care quality 

Experts, including government officials, expressed concerns that the private equity business model is not compatible with quality healthcare. 

Private equity firms are increasingly buying up hospitals, report finds 

Volume speaker sign with increasing stacks of money coming out of it.

Investors ‘optimistic’ about healthcare deal activity in 2024 

Private equity firms have a record amount of money, and they’re ready to invest it. 

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Startups

Cassie McGrath

Occasionally, we schedule our rounds with Healthcare Brew readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition?

Breast cancer screening has long been skewed toward older patients who are 

 to be diagnosed with the disease. But in recent years, rates have jumped among younger women.

 among women over 50 each year from 2012 to 2022, rates also rose 1.4% in women under 50, according to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. In fact, breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among US women ages 20 to 49, the nonprofit also reported.

That’s why Bailey Renger created BeSound. The startup officially launched on Sept. 30 with $6.8 million in seed funding, co-led by Overwater Ventures, Kindred Ventures, and Muse Capital, according to a press release. BeSound aims to detect and prevent breast cancer in young women by providing imaging and results within 24–48 hours for an up-front cost of $350. The process can typically take a few days, the National Breast Cancer Foundation wrote on its site.

Renger previously worked as a physicist, quantum computing research fellow at Harvard University, and NASA researcher.

Renger created BeSound due to her own frustrations during a cancer scare. “I 

. I didn’t get an imaging order that I wanted and had to fight for it,” she said.

Once she got the scan, her medical team found a solid mass but couldn’t tell her if it was malignant.

“That’s at the center of BeSound: making imaging more accessible to women with better imaging technology,” she said.

Renger, a young woman herself at 26, spoke with Healthcare Brew about her plans for the company.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Women book ultrasound scans on our website and then find nearby partner locations. Initially, we’ll just have one [in Los Angeles, opening this fall] but as we scale, there’ll be multiple to choose from. A clinician will review eligibility for that scan. It’s a 20-minute scan. It’s radiation free, no pain.

The results are reviewed by a board-certified breast radiologist and displayed in the BeSound platform to women within 24–48 hours of the scan. If there is no finding, that’s the final step. If there is a finding, and if eligible, then there’s an order placed by the clinician for an ultrasound plus near-infrared light, a diagnostic imaging test, and helping to characterize what was found. Is it a cyst? Is it benign? Is it fibroadenoma? Or is it concerning? That second scan helps to reduce unnecessary biopsies and to really just give women peace of mind and empower them with data on what’s actually happening in their body.

What differentiates the company from other breast cancer care?

Today, it’s really difficult for women under 40 to get screening, yet we know they’re getting breast cancer. That’s for a few reasons. Mammography is not reimbursed and is also not recommended for women under 40, unless you’re very high risk. Younger women have more dense tissue, and that decreases the accuracy of mammograms.

We brought on the co-founder of Equinox [Lavinia Errico], and she’s helping with designing the experience, both in person and digitally. We think that’s going to be really important as well because a lot of women today, even if they qualify for a mammogram, they don’t get it because they’re scared or it’s painful or they don’t want exposure to radiation. We think offering a better experience is more conducive to women actually wanting to get screened.

The most expensive part of the scan is the radiologist and their interpretation. If we can help make their jobs easier and help them read more quickly, then we can help to drive down the cost of the scans. There’s really rigorous FDA review, requirements, and clearance that’s involved, so we are not using any AI yet, but that’s on the road map.

Where do you hope the company will be in the next five to 10 years?

I hope that breast cancer screening for younger women is more accessible and that we help to remove the stigma around both screening and just having dense breasts in general. Our larger vision is really to end late-stage breast cancer because that’s how we save women’s lives. I would love to have BeSound available to women across the country, and with the AI that we’re building, that’s actually how we hope to improve accessibility even more. [This includes] driving down the costs—our goal is eventually $150.

We [also] want to expand into ovarian cancer and pelvic ultrasound imaging, all women’s ultrasound-based imaging.

A portrait of founder and CEO of BeSound, Bailey Renger.

Startup BeSound seeks to reduce breast cancer in young women 

Meet Bailey Renger, the 26-year-old founder of BeSound. 

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

This month, agentic AI voice agents that can answer calls and facilitate back-office tasks, were all over the news. Here’s your September breakdown of health-related AI updates from around the industry.

On Sept. 2, Connecticut’s Hartford HealthCare selected 

Abridge’s ambient clinical intelligence platform

 for the health system after running a pilot program of the technology. The health system plans to use the company’s clinical documentation program to reduce administrative burden on clinicians.

Agentic AI company Assort Health announced Sept. 30 a $76 million Series B funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with support from investment companies Felicis, First Round Capital, Chemistry, A*, Liquid2, and Quiet Capital. The company has raised $102 million so far.

Health software company Athenahealth released the “next generation” of its electronic health record (

) platform, athenaClinicals, on Sept. 9. As part of the company’s push to release new AI tools across its portfolio, the EHR will implement personalized diagnosis information for patients and ambient note-taking for clinicians.

Venture firm Bain Capital announced Sept. 4 the completion of a merger between software companies HealthEdge and UST HealthProof. Bain purchased Boston’s HealthEdge for $2.6 billion plus debts in 2024 and has now purchased UST (financial information 

), joining the two companies under the HealthEdge name. Now, the company will establish a “single, end-to-end platform” for claims, payments, and care utilization management using AI, according to a Sept. 4 HealthEdge release.

Agentic AI company Hyro announced a new partnership with California health system Sutter Health Sept. 17. Under the partnership, Hyro’s technology will answer calls and messages to discuss scheduling, prescription management, and billing.

Agentic AI company Infinitus announced a partnership with IBM Consulting on Sept. 18. Together, the two tech companies hope to bring more agentic AI to speciality pharmacies for benefits verification and prior authorization.

On Sept. 4, AI voice company SoundHound AI announced a partnership with Ohio-based Primary Health Solutions. Under the agreement, SoundHound’s tool “Denise” will answer calls about appointment scheduling.

Agentic AI company Unity AI announced Sept. 23 an advanced version of its platform for ambulatory settings like radiology, dental, physical therapy, and behavioral health. Similar to other voice agents, its platform supports patient scheduling and patient intake.

AI mental health company Wysa acquired physical therapy company Kins on Sept. 30. While the financial information was not disclosed, Wysa will integrate its AI platform into Kins to help make care more accessible.

Healthcare Brew monthly series on AI Startups

AI 411: September 2025 

Your monthly roundup of AI announcements is here.

 (EHR), you likely think of Epic, as the healthcare software company has records for 325 million patients and is the largest in the US.

And when you think of the modernization of the EHR, you may think of AI scribes like 

, the note-taking assistants designed to speed up clinical documentation.

Scribes can save physicians 15,000+ hours in work per year, 

 published in the journal NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery reported, and between $200 billion to $360 billion in annual healthcare spending, 

But this month, the inevitable happened: 

 it was developing its own AI tools, including Art, an AI scribe that will, like other apps, share medical information with clinicians in real time. It’s part of Epic’s “native AI charting” developed in partnership with Microsoft, and is expected to launch for “limited use” early next year, a spokesperson from the company told Healthcare Brew and other outlets.

So what will happen to the scribe startups when the EHR giant releases its own AI tools?

Experts told Healthcare Brew they expect some market shift, but think their technologies provide strong value to providers.

“I wouldn’t be a very good founder if I didn’t think this was already going to happen,” Tom Kelly, co-founder and CEO at AI scribe developer Heidi Health, said.

You may have noticed, but Epic isn’t only releasing an AI scribe. It’s looking to build a suite of AI tools to help everywhere from the patient room to the back office, according to the company.

This highlights a bit of a trend in the health tech industry: Execs don’t want to just make scribes; they’re instead hoping to automate the entire healthcare workflow.

In fact, Ambience Healthcare—one of the leading AI scribe developers in the US, with at least 40 clients like the Cleveland Clinic and the Houston-based Memorial Hermann Health System—made its own expansion announcement, entering a $243 million Series C fundraising round on July 29.

Then on Aug. 19, Ambience released an AI copilot tool, Chart Chat, which works within Epic to provide real-time health information to clinicians, like lab results and prior treatments.

“We still feel like we’re 5% of the way through everything we possibly want to build,” Nikhil Buduma, Ambience’s co-founder and chief scientist, told us.

AI healthcare company leaders are also confident in their technologies.

The two co-founders said they think Epic will provide an accessible—and possibly cheaper—internal solution, which may be better suited for an outpatient facility. But Buduma said academic medical centers may want something more high tech since they tend to care for more patients and handle more complex cases that require added clinical integration.

It’s also important to differentiate between competitors.

For example, Kelly said Heidi Health is focused on building a tool that can be used in Epic but isn’t necessarily 

 to be. This means it can also complete tasks, like helping with forms outside of the medical record, in addition to its note-taking capabilities, Kelly said.

AI scribe companies also have existing contracts with providers. Ambience and Cleveland Clinic signed an agreement for five years back in February, for instance.

Just because Epic has its own scribe now doesn’t mean these partnerships will disintegrate, the two co-founders said. Buduma said Ambience plans to work with the Cleveland Clinic while further developing its products.

Still, Kelly said he “would never want to let an agreement be the thing that keeps [Heidi’s] customers” adding it’s the health tech company’s responsibility to build an integrated product “that makes it really hard to swap” for another tool.

Where he could see companies running into problems, though, is when their value proposition is their integration with Epic. If Epic is cheaper, doesn’t require additional authentication, and there’s no data-sharing risk, “then it probably will be actually quite easy for [health systems] to swap,” Kelly said.

When contract renewals come around, he expects to see some lower prices because of this. There could also be more 

With this competitive market and increasingly high-tech products, Epic’s announcement "definitely will heat up the market,” Kelly said.

Robot typing text on a typewriter. Artificial intelligence generated text and future of journalism concept. Vector illustration.

How the AI scribe market may—or may not—shift following Epic’s AI tool launch 

AI scribe experts tell us they’re not too worried about Epic launching new AI tools. 

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

 its new suite of AI tools, including integrating an ambient scribe into the electronic health record (EHR) giant’s platform. (We spoke with other AI note-taking platform startups to see how they’re feeling about the news.)

Here’s the rundown of health-related AI updates from around the industry in August.

 Smart hospital company Artisight announced Aug. 28 it can now autonomously document operating room activity into EHRs. The tool could 

 on clinicians and also prompt staff to do things like scrub up when a patient enters the room. Similar tools from the company are already used in patient rooms at health systems like York, Pennsylvania-based WellSpan and Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine.

, or CHAI, a nonprofit dedicated to responsible AI use, and the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), which represents community health centers (CHCs) serving nearly 34 million patients, announced a new partnership Aug. 14. Through policy, education, research, and integration support, the pair said in a release they hope to ensure CHCs and patients “are prioritized and positioned to benefit” from AI in healthcare.

On Aug. 20, EliseAI, which automates healthcare and housing systems like multistep scheduling and prior authorizations, announced a $250 million fundraiser. The Series E round was led by venture capitalist (VC) firm Andreessen Horowitz and had participation from other VCs, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures, and Navitas Capital. Funds will be used to hire more staff, according to a release. The company’s valuation has doubled to $2.2 billion since last August, 

Mental health company Grow Therapy announced a new AI feature on Aug. 19. Called “between-session reflections,” it provides a space for clients to write about their thoughts and feelings between appointments. The reflections are organized into themes they can access privately, and they can choose what they'd like to share with their provider.

Infrastructure software company Medallion, which uses AI to automate the back office of healthcare, announced $43 million in new funding on Aug. 18, bringing its total funding to $130 million. The round was led by VC Acrew Capital, and had participation from other firms, such as Washington Harbour Partners, Sequoia Capital, GV, Spark Capital, and NFDG. Among other things, the company is using the funding to launch CredAlliance, a tool designed to speed up and reduce administrative burden around the credentialing process for health insurance companies, according to a release.

On Aug. 13, EHR provider Oracle Health announced a “next-generation” platform, which includes implementing an AI agent to be an “intelligent clinical assistant” in the software, according to the company’s website. The tool automatically drafts clinical documentation, enables voice search, and provides patient summaries to help clinicians prepare their workflows.

assortment of various medical devices around a teal healthcare symbol

AI 411: August 2025

It’s been more than five years since the arrival of Covid-19, which has led to the deaths of 1.2 million in the US and 7+ million around the world, according to the 

Readers may also remember another crisis that emerged alongside the pandemic: pediatric mental health.

From March to October 2020, emergency department mental health visits rose about 24% among children ages 5–11 and around 31% among ages 12–17 from the year prior, 

. Suicide attempts also rose nearly 51% among teenage girls in 2021 compared to 2019, the 

At that time, there weren’t enough providers to meet the increased need, an issue the industry has reckoned with 

 leading up to the pandemic. As a result, many young patients ended up 

 in the ER to be admitted to inpatient care.

To help address this need for care, several new behavioral health startups popped up during the pandemic. While not all of them made it—like 

—others, like InStride Health and Brightline, are still going strong.

“It was very clear that what was in existence at the time was not sufficient to meet the needs of kids and families,” InStride Health co-founder and Chief Medical Officer Mona Potter told Healthcare Brew.

Christine Crawford, associate medical director at the National Alliance on Mental Illness, told us there was a youth mental health crisis before 2020, but the pandemic made it worse.

“The system was already quite fragile—and fragmented—prior to the pandemic,” she said. But due to social distancing practices and a loss of social activities, there was a “worsening of mental health symptoms.”

Naomi Allen co-founded California-based Brightline, which provides in-person and online appointments, in 2019. She already had 10 years of experience in executive leadership for new digital health companies, including Castlight Health and Livongo, helping adults with care navigation and chronic disease management.

But Allen pivoted to pediatric mental health when one of her children was in need.

“We just really struggled as a family to navigate the healthcare system,” she said. “We paid cash for everything. Most of our clinicians were out of network…and we sat on a waitlist for nine months.”

The idea was to establish physical clinics for in-person appointments with therapists and psychiatrists, supplemented with a digital platform for caregivers to help them do everything from scheduling appointments to following along to see how the child was progressing.

Brightline was getting ready to open its first clinic in Q1 2020 when the pandemic hit, so it shifted to online only. 

Across the country, another startup—InStride Health—emerged in 2021 for similar reasons. It was built out of McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Massachusetts associated with Mass General Brigham.

Potter originally thought she would only work in academic medicine for her whole career, where she was developing “cutting-edge” treatments, like the McLean Anxiety Mastery Program (MAMP). This specialized treatment program launched in 2014 to treat kids with severe anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder using cognitive behavior therapy and group meetings.

Yet lingering were inquiries from families who needed help for their children but faced a four- to six-month wait list “at all times” due to limited participant capacities in academic medicine.

So Potter took MAMP out of academia and built the fully virtual InStride Health, which allowed her team to negotiate directly with insurance companies and design a technology platform.

That shift to telehealth was one of the pandemic’s long-standing impacts on healthcare. It forced providers to move from in-person to virtual care “in one day,” Potter said, creating a “natural experiment” for her team to collect data and evaluate its effectiveness.

From March to June 2019, only 0.3% of all medical treatments for working-age individuals were conducted via telehealth, but in the first three months of the pandemic in 2020, that portion shot up to 23.6%—a 766% increase, according to a 

In October 2020, Brightline also launched a Covid-19 behavioral health indicator, a 30-question survey, to help parents understand the impact of the pandemic on their child’s mental health, Allen said.

“We felt this immense need for moving with speed because we knew we were out in front and that families had a tremendous amount of need,” she said.

Brightline now has 550 employer customers across six states. It also launched in-person care, with one clinic in Brooklyn and two more under development in Manhattan and Long Island. By next year, Allen said she expects to have eight to 10 additional sites, but did not specify where.

InStride is fully active in 10 states, and Potter said the goal is to expand it to all 50. In 2025, the company enrolled 2,500 new patients.

Both companies also addressed out-of-pocket payment challenges patients previously faced, making sure their services are covered under some commercial plans.

Speaking of challenges, upcoming Trump administration 

 for LGBTQ+ youth are presenting additional hurdles to care, Allen said, as the 

Still, Allen said greater awareness in schools and among the public has made a difference. In 2022, KFF 

 of US residents think there is a mental health crisis in the country.

“If there is any silver lining coming out of Covid, it’s that the child and youth mental health crisis that existed already is certainly much more the national dialogue,” she said.

Close up of African-American psychologist taking notes on clipboard in therapy session for children

Pediatric mental health startups launched during Covid. Here’s where they stand now 

Brightline and InStride offered a new kind of care for kids. 

First we had smartphones, then smartwatches. Now, we’re entering the age of smart hospitals.

Nvidia-backed health tech Artisight announced in July it had secured an additional $40 million on top of its previous $51.3 million in funding to accelerate the adoption of its AI-based smart hospital platform across the country.

Founded in 2015, Artisight’s platform puts its Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU)-powered devices into patient rooms to monitor care, prevent safety issues, and enable remote collaboration across facilities.

CEO and co-founder Andrew Gostine told us the company plans to expand to about 1,000 more hospitals in the next 18 months. It’s currently in use at 417 hospitals, he said, including facilities in York, Pennsylvania-based WellSpan and Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine health systems.

Terri Couts, EVP and chief digital officer at New York and Pennsylvania provider the Guthrie Clinic, was originally drawn to

Artisight to cut down on patient falls. Adverse events in US hospitals cost $17 billion each year, and falls are the largest category of reported adverse events, according to 

Before Artisight, the health system’s staff would identify which patients were high risk and then send workers to sit in the room with them, Couts said. Now, Artisight’s device is placed in patient rooms and uses a camera to alert clinicians if an at-risk patient gets out of bed.

Guthrie has reduced falls with injury by 40% YoY after implementing Artisight at the beginning of 2021, Couts said, and has saved money by reallocating staff to other tasks—an average of $6,480 per day for every 16 patients at higher risk of falling.

“The ROI is around the [staff]. Those hands that used to be in the room can now be doing other care-related activity,” she said.

Beyond falls, Gostine said the camera can monitor and see if a patient needs to be rotated in bed, whether patients have accidentally removed endotracheal tubes, and if staff washed their hands before entering the room.

The device has a communication element as well, which allows clinicians to video call patient rooms to give a care update or conduct remote nursing. For patients, it connects to their TVs to show them which clinicians are caring for them and offers translation services.

With this range of uses, Couts said Artisight’s platform has helped with staff retention. Guthrie has a lot of new grad nurses in specialty care, and Artisight’s technology supports staff by connecting them with other clinicians so they can ask questions in real time.

This retention has helped the system save $7 million on traveling nurses, Couts said, and has cut additional spending on sign-on bonuses.

But having a camera in a hospital room is certainly new for many patients and staff.

“Our staff was a little more concerned about privacy than the patients were,” Couts said.

Gostine confirmed the cameras don’t record anything. Because the system is connected to Nvidia’s GPU, it can process information in real time without having to store it on a cloud and risk exposing patient information to potential 

The system also enhances staff safety, he said. For one, Artisight is connected to a clinician’s badge and has a button they can hit to alert security in 

 It also detects a code word the clinician can say when they need help.

Violence in hospitals costs an estimated $18.3 billion in 2023, the 

 reported. The association also reported that 16,990 hospital workers experienced nonfatal injuries or illness related to workplace violence, and an additional 8,740 hospital staffers had work activity affected or changed jobs due to workplace violence in 2022.

“A remote observer alerted nursing staff that a patient entered with a weapon,” Gostine said, noting one example of when the system caught a safety issue.

With this latest investment, Artisight is implementing a video language model that no longer requires someone to watch the camera feed. Using AI, the camera can take notes on what’s happening in a patient’s room.

“Instead of paying humans to watch the camera, we essentially pay algorithms,” Gostine said.

Health care illustration concept shows a doctor showing the medical results to the patient woman on the blue background.

Artisight acquires $40 million investment to build AI into smart hospital platform 

The system is already in use at 417 hospitals, the company’s CEO told us. 

, we wrote about the release of Elsa, an FDA AI tool designed to summarize events and assist with safety profile assessments, label comparisons, and code for nonclinical databases. This month, news emerged that Elsa is already hallucinating studies that were never conducted, and FDA employees 

But wait, there’s more. Here’s your roundup of health-related AI updates from around the industry.

Abridge, known for its AI scribe, announced on July 24 a new collaboration with New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery, named 

 for orthopedics in 2025–2026 by US News & World Report. Abridge’s AI platform will be used on approximately 200,000 patients yearly at the hospital to take notes for clinicians.

 On July 23, health tech Aidoc announced a $150 million investment that will fund development of Care, its AI model that supports clinical decision-making. Investment was led by venture capitalists (VCs) General Catalyst and Square Peg, with additional participation from Nvidia’s VC arm, NVentures, and health systems including Connecticut’s Hartford HealthCare, Chicago’s Mercy, Sacramento’s Sutter Health, and WellSpan Health in York, Pennsylvania. The company said its total funding has hit $370 million.

 Another company with AI documentation technology, Ambience, shared July 29 it raised $243 million in Series C funding to improve its platform, which is already in use at Cleveland Clinic, UCSF Health, Houston Methodist, and more. Funding was co-led by VCs Oak HC/FT and Andreessen Horowitz. The company’s valuation is now $1.3 billion, 

On July 24, Doximity launched a free AI scribe tool for all “verified US physicians, NPs, PAs, and medical students” to allow for wider access to clinical documentation technology.

Evidently, which has an AI-driven clinical data intelligence platform, announced on July 8 a partnership with Minnesota-based health system Allina Health. Evidently’s platform will process patient encounters using AI summarization and documentation tools to lighten clinicians’ workloads.

Rochester, Minnesota-based health system Mayo Clinic deployed Nvidia Blackwell on July 28, establishing an “advanced computing infrastructure” that can drive model development for pathomics, drug discovery, and precision medicine to improve patient care quality.

 Pittsburgh-based biotech Pelxision shared on July 24 it has gained a $365,000 investment from the nonprofit Richard King Mellon Foundation to accelerate AI and machine learning capabilities into its cell-based blood tests. The company’s goal is to improve predictive accuracy for transplant outcomes.

Startup Ryght AI, which automates clinical trials 

, announced a partnership with Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute on July 11, meaning the institute will use the company’s tools in its research.

On July 17, Wellsheet, which uses AI to bolster clinical workflows and operations, launched an AI copilot embedded into existing electronic health records systems and designed to assist with chart summarization, discharges, and documentation.