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Digital tools may ease inequities in maternal healthcare, report finds

It’ll all boil down to equity-centered design, according to the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.

Ransomware 101: The need-to-knows for healthcare execs

The Change Healthcare cyberattack may be just the beginning.

Amanda Eisenberg

HCA Healthcare pilots Google AI to aid handoff documentation

The large language model processes a 12-hour shift and condenses the highlights into a report that helps the next nurse pick up where the previous left off.

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Tech

Cassie McGrath

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

October was a big month for health tech and it was the star of the show at the 2025 HLTH conference in Las Vegas, which not only had a designated AI area but also many conversations about emerging technologies.

Here’s your breakdown of October health-related AI updates from across the industry.

AI governance and risk management company Alignmt AI announced Oct. 1 a collaboration with the MSK Innovation Hub at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, a cancer institution in New York, to help enhance its oncology AI governance.

, a new initiative meant to incorporate doctors into “shaping, guiding, and implementing technologies transforming medicine,” according to a press release. It covers how AI impacts everything from policy to clinical workflow to education.

Autonomize AI announced Oct. 16 the Autonomize AI Studio, a new workspace for providers to design operational and clinical workflows. The company also announced an agent marketplace that allows business, clinical, and IT teams to create customizable AI agents to organize their workflows.

 Remote care monitoring company Brook.ai announced a $28 million Series B fundraising round Oct. 16, led by Massachusetts-based health system UMass Memorial Health and venture capital firm Morningside.

Canary Speech, which uses AI to power vocal biomarker technology to screen for mental health and neurological disorders, launched Canary Ambient Continuous Monitoring on Oct. 15. It provides continuous and real-time aggression detection and ambient voice analysis for providers, aiming to reduce 

Health tech company Heidi Health, which created an AI care partner to automate administrative work like documentation, announced a $65 million Series B fundraising round on Oct. 5. Funding was led by investment firm Point72 Private Investments and brings its total funding to about $100 million.

Digital physical therapy clinic Hinge Health launched two AI tools on Oct. 21. The first is a movement analysis tool that uses computer vision to track and provide musculoskeletal care. The second, called Robin, is an AI-based assistant that supports patients through their pain flare-ups.

Health tech Penguin Ai, which seeks to build more efficiency into care management, announced on Oct. 16 a partnership with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Enterprises to design new AI tools for the healthcare industry.

AI digital twin company Twin Health shared news on Oct. 14 of a partnership with exercise company Peloton, allowing Twin Health’s members to add workouts into their AI 

Viz.ai, which develops AI for disease detection and care coordination, launched Viz Assist on Oct. 20. The platform has 

 that provide care teams with patient data so clinicians can create more efficient treatment plans and help improve patient outcomes.

On Oct. 8, health tech company WellSky announced WellSky Scribe, an ambient listening and note-taking tool for its 

Healthcare Brew monthly series on AI Startups

AI 411: October 2025 

Your monthly roundup of AI announcements is here.

HCBR-Health data privacy-audio embed

When it comes to healthcare data protection, most people probably think of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). But with the rise of technology, like 

, there’s more patient data out there than ever before.

With a lack of movement in Congress (but 

 including Washington and New York have begun taking data privacy, or personal control of patient information, into their own hands.

“HIPAA was written for a pre-digital age and doesn’t extend far enough to safeguard patient data in today’s environment,” Rachel Schilling, engagement manager at healthcare strategy group Rock Health Advisory, told us via email.

And this doesn’t just impact companies on an individual level: State data privacy regulations have a significant effect on the healthcare industry overall, as they’re “rewriting the rules of engagement for healthcare companies,” Pat McGloin, managing director of health and life sciences at advertising company Merge, told Healthcare Brew.

“For [healthcare] companies, that means rearchitecting data strategies, rethinking consent management, patient communications, and vendor contracts,” he said. “The challenge is that instead of one national standard, we’re looking at a patchwork of rules, which adds operational complexity and legal risk.”

This leaves healthcare companies that operate in several states to confront “constantly evolving policies” and regulatory challenges, McGloin said, adding it also means companies need to invest in stronger data governance through auditing practices and vendor oversight.

“It’s not just about ‘checking the box’ for compliance requirements—it’s about redesigning the way data is collected, stored, and shared at every level,” he said.

 the first state to comprehensively regulate data collecting and selling back in 2018 with its Consumer Privacy Act, following a scandal involving data firm Cambridge Analytica, which the FTC investigated for using “deceptive practices” to collect data from millions of Facebook users. Five years later in 2023, Washington signed the My Health My Data Act into law.

While both laws are designed to give patients more knowledge of and say over how their data is used, Washington 

 by narrowing in on all businesses that use health data, no matter the size (California regulates companies based on a few distinctions, including if they have $25+ million in annual gross revenue, for comparison). The Washington law also allows people to prevent their data from being sold.

New York followed Washington’s lead in January when the state Assembly passed the Health Information Privacy Act, a proposed law that would create greater protections for New York residents’ health data. Though the bill still needs to be signed into law by the governor, state Sen. Liz Krueger wants the Empire State to stake its claim in protecting its citizens’ data.

“Realistically, we should all be quite concerned about private information being accessed and used in ways we never even imagined,” she told us.

While the states are on opposite sides of the country, senators who spoke with Healthcare Brew had similar reasoning for initiating deeper data privacy laws for health information: reproductive rights.

 to different states to receive reproductive health care. But states with abortion restrictions may be able to track these patients, like 

, where there are “bounty” laws against those seeking care.

 to see if patients are going to get abortions in states where the care is outlawed, for example. And while it hasn’t happened yet, 

 apps tracking menstrual cycles could also sell patient data or have it subpoenaed to be used against people seeking the procedure, Krueger said.

But it doesn’t stop with reproductive health. In 2023, the 

 virtual therapy company BetterHelp of selling patients’ mental health data to companies including Facebook and Snapchat for advertising purposes, resulting in a $7.8 million settlement. These data privacy laws are trying to prevent these events from happening in the future.

“[Your health is] nobody’s business but yours, but now it’s big money for companies,” Krueger said.

Washington’s law requires all companies to let users opt in to having their health data collected. It does not apply to companies that only store data in the state and don’t share or sell it. That differs from most states, where health data can otherwise be collected without a user’s knowledge or consent.

It’s similar in New York, where users have to opt in, and if they don’t within 60 days, their data is automatically deleted.

“You have to give people the chance to opt in, particularly when it’s the most private and personal data that we have,” Washington state Sen. Vandana Slatter said.

These laws protect users in the specific states where they’re passed. That means even if the company isn’t based in Washington or New York, they have to abide by each state’s rules if they’re collecting data nationwide.

The New York and Washington laws differ, however, in that Washington residents have the right to sue companies if they can prove harm, whereas New York gives authority to investigate to the state attorney general.

 was filed in Washington against Amazon for allegedly violating the law.

Can these laws protect against cybersecurity issues?

 of cyberattacks, raising a question around whether data privacy can enhance data security. (See: Family ancestry company 23andMe’s 

Schilling said privacy and cybersecurity are “related but distinct.” While privacy laws focus on how data is collected, used, and shared, cybersecurity surrounds the safeguards that can prevent and stop issues.

Still, stricter privacy laws can reduce risk of cybersecurity incidents because they require companies to limit the data they collect and agree to security obligations, she said.

“What’s happening in Washington and New York is a signal of where the entire country is headed,” McGloin said. “Over time, these laws will push the industry toward a de facto national standard, one that goes further than HIPAA.”

A stethoscope with a padlock in the place of the heartbeat sensor

How state laws are are beefing up health data privacy protections 

Washington and New York seek to provide more protections for how health data is collected and sold. 

How state laws are beefing up health data privacy protections 

Patrick Kulp

One of the biggest players in healthcare education is teaming up with Google to teach both healthcare students and practicing professionals how to better use AI.

Adtalem Global Education rolled out a new credentials program in partnership with Google Cloud to familiarize doctors and nurses with the ins and outs of the generative AI technology that’s been 

The program will debut next year across all of Adtalem’s for-profit universities, which collectively reach 91,000 students. Coursework will cover “AI applications in clinical practice, ethical considerations, patient safety protocols, and hands-on experience with healthcare-specific AI tools commonly used across hospital systems and clinical practices,” per the announcement. Google’s Gemini model and Vertex agent builder will also be integrated into the curriculum.

 The program aims to fill a gap, according to Michael Betz, chief digital officer at Adtalem and president of Adtalem-owned Walden University. In the past six to nine months, in particular, Adtalem’s hundreds of healthcare partners have been pushing for talent that’s savvy about the various AI tools now in use in clinical practice, Betz told us. There’s been interest from students too, who don’t want to be left behind, he said.

“A big part of our strategy here at Adtalem is to make sure that our graduates are able to not just be fluent with AI, but help in an effective and ethical way to lead that change in healthcare systems,” Betz said.

 from Menlo Ventures found that over a quarter of healthcare systems have now adopted domain-specific AI tools in an effort to cut administrative burdens and ease labor shortages.

That’s created new demand for AI-fluent doctors and nurses, and Adtalem isn’t the only educator looking to fill it. Many major universities and other educational institutions offer similar certifications and credentialing programs around AI and healthcare.

Betz said what sets Adtalem’s program apart is the integration with its existing healthcare degree programs. The backing of Google, which has rolled out many of its own healthcare-focused AI tools, also differentiates the program, according to Betz.

“What we’re able to do is to combine all the great skills and education [students] are going to get as part of those degree [programs] with these specialized certificates in AI that we think is quite unique in higher ed,” Betz said. “We’ve heard from a lot of our industry partners that higher ed in general has been slow to recognize the impact of AI.”

Adtalem considered a number of tech partners for the program, according to Betz. The company decided on Google because of its vast resources and its pushes into both healthcare- and education-specific AI. For instance, Betz mentioned Google’s Guided Learning tool, which aims to talk students through lessons without simply providing answers, as a selling point.

Adtalem also sees this partnership with Google as a foundation for a much bigger push into AI and health education. Betz said the goal is to tap Google’s Guided Learning expertise to scale AI tools the company already offers faculty and students. And Adtalem also wants to eventually offer AI certificates across specific disciplines, like mental health.

“We see this, really, as the first step,” Betz said. “We think this step that we took with Google really puts us in a great position to be out front in a way that is valuable to our healthcare providers, but also valuable to our students.”

Artificial intelligence figure using pointer toward (copy space).

Health education giant teams with Google on a new AI credential

Adtalem said the program caters to AI fluency demand from providers.

illustrated headshot of caroline catherman, healthcare brew reporter

Caroline Catherman

About 44% of global healthcare and life sciences companies that use generative AI have added 

 to the mix, according to a survey released Oct. 16.

The survey, conducted by Google Cloud and global insights and strategy firm National Research Group, polled 605 leaders of global healthcare and life sciences companies from April to June to see how they use AI—in particular, AI agents—and what return on investment (ROI) they’re seeing. 

Healthcare most commonly uses AI agents for tech support (53%), followed by security operations and cybersecurity (49%), then productivity and research (46%), the poll found.Agents represent a new frontier because, as opposed to traditional large language models that take commands, they can autonomously work together to complete a task, Aashima Gupta, Google Cloud’s global director of healthcare strategy and solutions, said during a virtual roundtable on Oct. 14.

“This multi-agent framework is the evolution [of AI],” Gupta said.

About 1 in 3 surveyed organizations have deployed not just one but 10+ AI agents.

Mayank Pant, EVP of product management at care enablement company IKS Health, said during the roundtable his organization uses agents to automate the journey from an appointment to a prior authorization request.

 agent takes notes on an appointment. Then, an autonomous coding agent checks the notes for accuracy and assigns medical codes. If prior authorization is needed, a prior authorization agent steps in. The agents lastly bring a human into the loop to sign off on their work.

“What we are seeing on the ground is that this clinically connected…system is delivering better experiences for patients, for clinicians, their staff,” Pant said.

The push toward AI agents is accompanied by an increase in spending, as 74% of leaders said they’ve upped the amount they spend on generative AI and 48% said they’re reallocating money from other areas toward their AI investment.

The good news: It seems to be working. The majority (73%) of healthcare and life sciences executives said they’re seeing ROI in generative AI, compared to 74% in 2024.

Among 221 executives reporting ROI from AI, 83% estimated generative AI directly increased their company’s annual revenue by 6% or more.

When it comes to AI agents, however, the numbers get a bit more complicated.

Healthcare executives pointed to a few specific categories where they felt this newer technology was already making up for its 

Among 161 health execs whose company used AI agents, 34% said they saw ROI within patient experience and tech support. This was closely followed by software development at 33%.

Sameer Sethi, SVP and chief AI officer for New Jersey-based Hackensack Meridian Health, said during the roundtable it’s difficult to precisely link patient outcomes to AI.

Hackensack Meridian Health uses AI agents to call patients post-discharge to ensure they’re adhering to instructions. While Sethi said this was followed by a reduction in the number of readmissions within 30 days, there are other factors, like a patient’s support system, that also contribute.

“Attribution is going to be very difficult,” Sethi said. “What matters is that we’re doing the right thing for the patient and making sure that they’re healthier, and AI and other capabilities are helping with that.”

Correction 10/17/2025: This story has been updated to reflect that Mayank Pant, EVP of product management, was the speaker for IKS Health, not Sri Madabushi, EVP of health system partnerships.

Business hand handing money over to AI hand representing venture capital funding to AI startups.

Healthcare, life sciences companies are betting big on AI agents

From scribes to coders to prior auth, AI agents are starting to work in teams and deliver ROI.

When you call up a company’s customer service line and are greeted by an off-kilter automated voice, how does that usually go? Personally, the call often ends with us yelling “Connect me to a person!” at a robot that just keeps asking the same questions over and over again.

If you relate, we have good news: That might soon be an interaction of the past.

 promise to flip that script by offering live assistants that remember and build off past queries to personalize and improve service. These agents can be online or even take on human-sounding voices to provide guidance over calls—and unlike chatbots, they can act autonomously without being prompted.

The even bigger news is organizations are already rolling these agents out in one of the domains where it’s most important to get things right: healthcare.

“I envision AI agents becoming the invisible infrastructure that handles background work…so clinicians can spend their time connecting with patients,” Max Solano, hospitalist and clinical informatics advisor at Jacksonville, Florida-based Ascension St. Vincent’s, told Healthcare Brew.

AI agents offer a “natural experience” and “open-ended conversation” compared to the sometimes frustrating 

 systems consumers have battled for decades, Israel Krush, co-founder and CEO of agentic AI company Hyro, told Healthcare Brew.

Patient scheduling company Zocdoc and financial platform Cedar are two healthcare companies that 

 agents earlier this year to assist with scheduling appointments and answering patients’ billing questions, respectively.

Sutter Health, a 27-hospital not-for-profit health system in California, is 

 health organizations to hop on the agent train, announcing Sept. 17 it will use Hyro’s tech to offer HIPAA-compliant AI agent-powered patient communications.

So how do you introduce an AI agent? Very slowly, Jennifer Bollinger, Sutter Health’s SVP and chief consumer and brand officer, told us.

It took about a year to choose a vendor and a bit over a month to integrate Hyro with Sutter’s 

, Epic, she said. Sutter is currently testing the agents for specific tasks, and Bollinger expects the first use case to become available to patients in about 60 to 90 days.

For now, she said the system will focus on using voice agents for basic tasks like authenticating identities, confirming appointments, and giving directions. Patients will be told they’ll be speaking with an AI agent and given the option to opt out, and more complex cases will be reserved for human staff.

Sutter eventually plans to bring Hyro’s agents online and have them take on duties like scheduling and rescheduling appointments, Bollinger added.

“Anything that we have standardized, that’s repeatable at scale across the organization, will be great use cases for the agentic AI,” she said.

To evaluate the tech’s success, Sutter will measure variables like time savings and whether the AI increases first-call resolution, Bollinger said.

These agents aren’t all good news, however.

Experts have warned AI agents could open up a health system to 

Agents are trained to serve, and hackers may try to order the programs to reveal private patient information, for instance, Healthcare Brew previously reported.

Krush said he understands those concerns and that the company kept this in mind when designing its agents, which he describes as “AI on a leash.”

“When you have guardrails in place, the AI agent basically knows what they’re allowed to do and what they’re not allowed to do,” he said.

Headphone of customer service. Support call, live advice, phone bot, chat headphone, service center, helpdesk advisor, virtual contact, care operator, microphone online, expert helpline 3d concept.

Healthcare’s new AI receptionist has arrived

California’s Sutter Health is one of the latest to adopt this new technology for patient communications.

Back in 2008, Claire Guest started training dogs to detect the odor of bladder cancer… from her dining room.

As an animal behaviorist, she had read about the science and heard enough stories to believe dogs’ snouts, which have hundreds of millions of olfactory receptors (humans typically have just a few million), could 

. So she took samples from volunteers and people she knew to run tests.

“Even though it was a small-scale study, it was obvious the dogs could do it very reliably,” Gemma Butlin, head of communications and people engagement at Guest’s UK-based research organization and charity Medical Detection Dogs, told Healthcare Brew.

 in 2010, and has since been built out under the organization to study how dogs can detect bowel cancer, bacterial infections, Covid-19, pseudomonas, urinary tract infections, Parkinson’s disease, malaria, and prostate cancer. It collects samples from organizations like Hull University Teaching Hospital National Health Service Trust and Milton Keynes University Hospital in the UK and Johns Hopkins in the US.

With prostate cancer, for example, the novel detection method was 71% sensitive and 70%–76% specific at identifying high-grade Gleason 9 prostate cancer in the samples, according to 

“The science is very legitimate,” Bruce Trock, professor in the departments of urology, epidemiology, and oncology and director of the division of epidemiology in the Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins, told us.

Their long-term goal is to build an e-nose that can do all the sniffing itself and “inform technology,” Butlin added. That’s because the charity is “never going to be able” to have enough dogs to send one into “every waiting room and tell everybody who thinks they might have cancer” that they should get tested, she said.

Dogs ideally begin training with Medical Detection Dogs at eight weeks old, Butlin said, with one year of socialization with volunteers. Then they kick off their “scent work.”

To start, dogs may be asked to find a tennis ball and are rewarded when finding it. Then training scales up to more difficult hiding places and smaller balls before there’s just a residue and they learn to search for the odor of the ball, Butlin said. Afterward, the dogs learn the scent of a disease the organization is studying.

At this stage, Butlin said, dogs are not meant to replace more traditional testing but instead be a first line of screening to help patients realize they may need to see a doctor.

“All of our work is geared toward early diagnosis,” Butlin said. “The earlier you can get checked out for these things, the better your survival rate is.”

With breast cancer, for example, the five-year survival rate is 99% when the disease is detected early in the localized stage, according to the 

. Butlin told us Guest’s own dog, Daisy, helped her detect her own breast cancer.

Dogs are ultimately sensing a difference between noncancerous cells and cancer cells, which use oxygen differently and consume more energy and nutrients while also emitting “different signals to other cells in their environment,” Trock said.

 In some cases, dogs will be sent into settings to sniff patients passively, but over the long term, researchers plan on developing the e-nose.

The charity has worked with tech company RealNose.ai for 10 years to develop technology that can do it without the snout.

“In the same way that your phone can scan you and tell you whether your blood pressure is high or you’ve had enough sleep…it might be able to tell a gentleman that his [prostate-specific antigen] levels are high and he’s at risk of prostate cancer,” Butlin said.

While Butlin doesn’t have an exact timeline for finishing the technology, she said she hopes it’s ready within 10 years.

“It’s fair to say [dogs] are the best biosensors on the planet at the moment. They are ahead of technology,” she said.

Back in the US, researchers are also working on understanding how dogs can detect disease.

 and the California-based nonprofit InSitu Foundation are all developing research and tools on the subject.

at the nonprofit American Kennel Club Canine Health Foundation, said the group is working in collaboration with researchers at the Penn Vet Working Dog Center to see if dogs can detect cancer in other dogs as well.

“Even though our mission is to advance the health of all dogs, a lot of times there’s benefit to humans,” she said.

, “have the potential to help in disease detection,” Trock said, as they remove potential human error from the testing process and are noninvasive. Though, he added, there’s still the potential for nonmorbid positives and requires a controlled environment.

“It’s likely that, just as with many other biomarkers currently in use or being investigated, e-noses will initially be used in conjunction with current standard of care methods, rather than as a replacement,” he said.

Cutout of a dog partially breaking out of the frame of a shape, with diamond-shaped icons on each side.

This UK charity is building an e-nose based on dogs that can smell cancer 

It started with one researcher in her dining room. Now the dogs are detecting several cancers and diseases. 

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.