Hey y’all,
It’s Friday, spring is here in Atlanta, and our dog Emma is living her best life in the dog pools at Fetch Park.
The eprescribing space had a busy week. A few deals landed that are all pointing at the same thing: chipping away at Surescripts and getting real drug pricing in front of clinicians before the patient ever leaves the office. Love to see it.
I also caught yesterday’s congressional hearing with Tom Keane from ONC/ASTP, which turned out to be one of the better on-ramps to healthtech policy I've seen in a while. Worth a watch, especially if you’re newer to this space
Let’s go.
ONE BIG THING
Prescription transparency is getting practical
Photo by Christina Victoria Craft on Unsplash
For most of the past two decades, if providers wanted to know what a drug would cost a patient before they prescribed it, the answer was essentially: good luck, call around, maybe the pharmacist knows. The eprescribing network that handles most of this traffic, Surescripts, wasn’t particularly incentivized to fix that. It had the coverage, the contracts, and the inertia. Classic infrastructure monopoly behavior.
This week had a couple of deals worth noting. DoseSpot and Arrive Health merged into Interra Health, combining eprescribing rails with real-time price transparency. FDB Vela and Photon made a similar connection, routing cost information to clinicians at the moment of prescribing rather than after the patient has already driven to the pharmacy and turned around in the parking lot.
Meanwhile, in a different corner of the same problem, Bluesight announced a partnership with GraphiteRx, dropping Cost Plus Drug pricing directly into ShortageCheck, the tool hospital pharmacy teams already live in. No new platform, no training session, no change management. The data just shows up next to the wholesaler options they were already comparing.
Why the network plays are harder → Continue reading
ONE MORE BIG THING
Virtual GI care finally got a report card
Photo by Aakash Dhage on Unsplash
The Peterson Health Technology Institute (PHTI) released its virtual GI solutions assessment this week — the first rigorous, independent evaluation the category has seen. Five companies were reviewed: Cylinder Health, Digbi Health, Ayble Health, Oshi Health, and Salvo Health.
The care model is what separates them.
Wraparound solutions add nutrition counseling, behavioral health, and coaching alongside a patient's existing care. Clinician-led solutions embed a gastroenterologist in the platform, prescribing and managing care directly.
For IBS, wraparound solutions deliver. The gut-brain behavioral work and nutrition interventions have real evidence behind them, and the savings follow — about $1,900 per engaged commercial member per year. For a condition affecting one in six adults, that math works.
IBD is a trickier problem. Structural inflammation, biologics, flares that can spiral fast. Wraparound solutions showed no meaningful clinical benefit for IBD patients in the evidence reviewed. Clinician-led platforms covering both populations reached up to $2,900 in savings per user, with the strongest returns in moderate-to-severe IBD, where a small group of patients drives most of the spending.
The access picture is worth sitting with. Two-thirds of U.S. counties have no gastroenterologist. The specialty has the third-longest wait times in the country. These solutions are covering for a system that was already stretched thin before anyone coined the phrase "virtual-first."
WEEKLY ROUNDUP
Here’s what else we’re reading
Policy & Regulation
Epic and Oracle both asked HHS for lighter AI regulation and clearer guidance on when clinical decision support escapes FDA oversight. Epic noted it already has 175+ generative AI use cases live.
HHS banned Claude AI after Anthropic refused Pentagon demands to drop safeguards against mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, erasing 18 months of FDA work on AI-powered drug reviews.
ER acetaminophen orders for pregnant patients dropped 10% after health officials linked Tylenol to autism (despite decades of research showing otherwise).
Platforms & Infrastructure
CVS launched Health100, a Google Cloud platform designed to work across any pharmacy or insurance plan, using AI and pharmacist-led care management to reduce patient fragmentation.
Salesforce rolled out six AI agents for healthcare with data partnerships baked in: HealthEx for patient records, Verily for wearables, Viz.ai for imaging.
Optum is expanding its Real platform with Microsoft to add provider tools, building on the AI system that lets payers and providers swap claims data in real time to catch denials before they happen.
M&A
Health Recovery Solutions acquired Rimidi to merge post-acute monitoring with ambulatory chronic disease management, bringing continuous glucose monitor (CGM) integration and diabetes care into one longitudinal platform.
WEEKLY ROUNDUP
Here’s what we’re listening to
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on Why Should I Trust You?
With Dr. Jay Bhattacharya now leading both NIH and CDC (at least temporarily), there’s been a lot of speculation about where federal health leadership is headed. In this conversation, he talks about rebuilding trust in science, shifting research funding toward what he calls “big ideas,” and why he believes public health lost credibility during the pandemic.
Whether you agree with him or not, hearing directly from the person currently shaping federal research priorities is important. It’s a conversation that will likely get you fired up, and a reminder that rebuilding trust in health and science will require open debate and, ideally, moving forward together.
What did you think of this week's Pulse Check?
Closing Thoughts
If something in this issue sparked a thought, we want to hear it. And if you're working on something worth sharing with this community, let's talk. Featuring our members is one of my favorite things to do.
Love, Nadine
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