Abhas Gupta

It had to be said! 🎯 Epic's stranglehold on healthcare IT has stifled innovation for too long and the writing is on the wall. The consolidation myth needs to die already. We were promised efficiency and lower costs, but what we got was bloated bureaucracies that prioritize profits over patients. The data doesn't lie: smaller, agile providers consistently outperform these healthcare monopolies on both outcomes and patient satisfaction. Time for a major reset in how we think about healthcare delivery.

9

Former Drawbridge Health CEO Launches Manifold Health AI at JPM to Build the First Digital Health Index Twin for Chronic Disease. SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Manifold Health AI today announced its launch at JPM Healthcare Week and the GMT MedTech Symposium, unveiling a first-to-market platform that combines a novel, precision-designed blood test with an AI-driven Digital Health Index Twin to translate biological data into financial risk intelligence for healthcare infrastructure. The announcement was delivered by Manifold's Founder and CEO, Jerome Scelza. This will fundamentally change health risk management, improve health outcomes, and make healthcare affordable again. For the complete press release: https://lnkd.in/e9NsnRiT Message me if you would like to know more!

5

Transforming healthcare with AI requires industry. Industry requires capital investment. Capital investment requires return. Return requires revenue. Revenue requires reimbursement. Medicare (and transitively private insurance) reimbursement policy for clinical AI will define the incentives for the technologies we build and deploy over the next decade. Our existing fee for service codes are what the military would call cost-plus contracting. We pay for every nail, screw, and hour of labor and don't care if that was a good and efficient way to build the tank or not. Our CMS Innovation Center director, Abe Sutton, believes cost-plus is the wrong path for the future of American healthcare. ACCESS and VBC models pay for outcomes. When we have AI that can manage heart failure can we link payment to making people healthier? Doing so would unleash the might of American techno-capitalism on exactly the thing we care about in society, but there are devils in the details.

135

3 Comments

Clinicians want to use AI but don’t have the bandwidth to evaluate all the different models. Meet Health Olymp, an AI tool purpose-built for clinicians. Here’s why this matters 👇 1. Health and life science experts gain instant access to frontier models for free. No procurement hoops or IT bottlenecks. Every clinician gets their own sandbox to explore. 2. Clinicians can compare models side by side and pick the one that works best for their use case. That transparency builds trust and sparks ideas for novel AI applications in care delivery, diagnostics, and research. 3. Most AI benchmarks are too generic or disconnected from clinical reality. Health Olymp brings frontline feedback into the loop, helping the industry identify models that perform reliably in real world clinical environments. Congrats to Ruslan Nazarenko and the Lumos team as they put AI model benchmarking directly into the hands of healthcare professionals. ⬇️ (link in comments)

148

53 Comments

FORCING CHANGE IN SITE OF CARE McKinsey & Company's recent paper on the forces pressuring healthcare, including the possibility of margin compression of up to 13 percentage points for health systems, does a good job of putting numbers around what most operators already feel. Two of the biggest drivers they mention are policy shifts in reimbursement and rising utilization driven by an aging population. The cohort of 70+ year old Americans will grow the fastest over the next 5 years, and it is well established that older patients have more complex needs, more chronic disease, and more touchpoints within the healthcare system. Layer that on top of continued clinical workforce shortages, and the supply-demand gap widens further. From my perspective, optimizing for site of care is the most important lever we have to address this challenge. We can’t quickly reduce how much care older patients need, but we can change where and how services are delivered. Supporting aging patients in lower-cost settings like the home, ambulatory sites, and virtual environments is no longer just a preference or convenience, it’s a necessity. This is where the conversation around site-neutral payments becomes so relevant. CMS is moving quickly in this direction, and hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs) are squarely in the crosshairs. The shift will undoubtedly clamp down further on hospital margins, but it shouldn’t be surprising. We’ve been talking about the demise of HOPD reimbursement for years, and the health systems that will fare best are the ones who are working towards aligning their approach with where patients can be treated safely, efficiently, and at lower cost, rather than relying on legacy reimbursement structures to fill the gap. And just like it doesn’t make sense to try to replicate a hospital or nursing home environment in a patient’s home, we also shouldn’t try to carry the same clinical staffing model into every care setting. Yes, there are non-negotiables when it comes to patient safety and clinical expertise, but there’s also a meaningful opportunity to rethink how teams are built. That means clinicians at every level working at the top of their licenses, thoughtfully involving family members and community resources, and using technology to surround these sites of care with non-clinical operational support. From my health system days, I understand why rising costs, margin pressure, and site-neutral payments feel like threats. While painful, I’m hopeful they can also serve as a positive forcing function, pushing us toward care models that are better aligned with our aging population and the realities of today’s workforce.

23

1 Comment

Nice quote from one of our Partners Andrew Brackin in TechCrunch: “This was one of the biggest use cases of ChatGPT,” Andrew Brackin, a partner at Gradient who invests in health tech, told TechCrunch. “So it makes a lot of sense that they would want to build a more kind of private, secure, optimized version of ChatGPT for these healthcare questions.” https://lnkd.in/gY3TV5VD

27

1 Comment

In our latest newsletter, I go deep into why we believe the next three years of healthcare innovation will be defined by two specific trends: Voice Agents and Hybrid AI Care Models. Here is the quick breakdown: 🎤 Amplifier Health (Voice AI Diagnostics): Amit Mehta, Jeremy Barber, and Peh Keong are doing the impossible. They have built a Large Acoustic Model that can screen for multiple medical conditions from a phone call. By focusing on the physical properties of sound rather than just words, they are creating a screening and diagnostic tool that is accessible to anyone with a phone. 🧠 Meru Health (Hybrid AI-Enhanced Care): Kristian Ranta, Riku Lindholm, and Henri Koponen are solving the "efficacy crisis" in mental health. Their 12-week program treats the mind and body together by combining licensed clinicians with biofeedback technology. With millions of lives covered, they are proving that value-based care is the only way forward. The Bigger Picture: We believe the "Golden Age" of healthtech is moving toward a model where AI handled the routine data and diagnostics while humans focus on high-level clinical decisions. Whether it is a voice agent triaging a patient or an AI-enhanced clinician monitoring recovery, this hybrid approach is how we solve for both access and quality. Read the full breakdown of our investment thesis #HealthTech #VentureCapital #AI https://lnkd.in/dqDGBnJF

25

🌍 Proof of Concept: Standardizing Oncology Care with FHIR. I'm excited to present Oncology Implementation Guide;a proof of concept developed to demonstrate how HL7® FHIR® standards can streamline oncology care. This guide provides a structured framework for capturing, managing, and exchanging oncology data—spanning prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up—enabling interoperability across healthcare systems. Explore the guide here: https://lnkd.in/ggMugMUj #Kenya #OncologyCare #FHIR #DigitalHealth #HealthTech #Interoperability #CancerCare #ProofOfConcept

11

5 Comments

𝗩𝗶𝗩𝗘 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 𝗛𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀: 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗔𝗜 𝗗𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗡𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗪𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗗𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 At ViVE 2026 in Los Angeles, 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗔𝗜 emerged as the dominant theme as startups and healthcare platforms showcased tools designed to automate complex workflows across patient engagement, clinical operations, and care coordination. Major announcements included new AI assistants for patient communication and care navigation from athenahealth and b.well Connected Health, workflow automation tools from Luma Health and TigerConnect, and expanded virtual care platforms from Fabric and Wheel. Across the conference, vendors emphasized embedding AI agents directly into clinical systems, patient apps, and operational platforms to automate scheduling, care navigation, referrals, and clinical decision support. From a product strategy perspective, the direction is becoming clearer: 𝗔𝗜-𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗳𝗹𝗼𝘄𝘀 — 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗱𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀. 𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲, with the greatest value emerging from platforms that integrate deeply with clinical data, EHRs, and care operations.

6