Doximity acquires Pathway for its clinical AI

On Thursday, Doximity announced the $63 million acquisition of AI clinical decision support company Pathway — reflecting the rapidly evolving landscape of tools that physicians turn to when they need help puzzling through a medical question. Doximity said it was integrating Pathway into its free Doximity GPT tool.

Along with competitors like OpenEvidence (which is suing both Pathway and Doximity for allegedly stealing trade secrets), these LLM-based tools are often spoken of as the next generation of UpToDate, whose database of evidence-based medical guidelines is curated by expert physicians. Joshua Landy, an intensivist and education innovation lead at Scarborough Health Network in Toronto who was an early investor in Pathway, says his hospital still pays for UpToDate, but he hasn't used it in about two years.

"When you have a crashing patient, being able to say, 'How do I dilute this drug so I can give it now?' to an LLM is great," said Landy. He's learned how to prompt Pathway with direct questions that help him shortcut around the reading and navigating he'd have to do to find an answer on an UpToDate page.

Other physicians, though, have the opposite experience. Because chatbots' responses are inherently variable, it can be hard to get them to return an answer in the right format — a problem that leaves some physicians still gravitating toward UpToDate's consistency when they need an answer in a pinch. Most doctors I've spoken to still use a mix of resources, testing out different LLM tools while keeping their static references around.

And either way, physicians are aware that liability for their mistakes still falls squarely on their shoulders. "You're the doctor signing those orders and those notes. As long as you feel comfortable that that's the correct answer, go ahead," said Landy. "I don't expect any of the liability to be shared with my tools."

reproductive care

How telehealth has changed the abortion care landscape

Telehealth to prescribe medication abortion has grown significantly in the last two years. By the end of 2024, a quarter of the country's abortions were provided via telehealth, up from 4% before the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade. That's a result, in part, of states passing shield laws that intend to protect abortion care providers who treat patients in areas with bans.

Who's using those services the most? In a new study out in JAMA on Monday, researchers broke down some of the details in an analysis of more than 118,000 online prescriptions from one of the largest telemedicine abortion providers, Aid Access. In a 15-month period, 84% of prescriptions went to patients in states with near-total abortion bans or bans specifically on telemedicine abortion.

The growth of telehealth in these areas reflects their limited access to reproductive care even before Dobbs, said Boston University law professor Nicole Huberfeld, who co-authored a related editorial on the legal challenges facing providers in this time. "Our laws are not yet a match for telehealth and its promises and perils," she said.

ai scribes

Abridge and Highmark building for instant insurance approvals

Last week, Politico reported anonymous sources confirming Epic's long-rumored clinical note transcription tool. If that announcement comes this month, the ambient scribe market is about to see a significant upset — and the add-ons pitched by these companies will become even more important as basic scribing becomes more commoditized.

Epic-partnered Abridge today announced one of those next moves, a tool developed with Highmark Health to automate parts of the prior authorization process. At first, it'll nudge clinicians to check all the information necessary to get insurance approval for something like a knee surgery, but the ultimate hope is get authorizations tied up by the end of a visit, said Highmark health chief analytics officer Richard Clarke.

Omada's first earnings call

Omada, the second of the year's digital health IPOs, held its first earnings call on Thursday last week. The company is still losing money, as Mario discussed with CEO Sean Duffy just after the listing in June. But the digital chronic disease management company performed ahead of expectations, reporting $61.4 million in quarterly revenue — representing 49% growth, with quarterly losses falling from $10.7 million to $5.3 million year over year.

As Omada's membership grows — now with over 750,000 active members, up more than 50% over last year — president Wei-Li Shao told STAT how the company is trying to stay focused on its core mission while the world churns around it.

A while back, Omada aimed its core cardiometabolic support product at payers trying to maximize outcomes and manage costs of expensive GLP-1 weight loss and diabetes drugs. "While it is a huge part of our growth, it is not the largest part," said Shao, reiterating that the company has no plans to get into the GLP-1 prescription game.

in the news

Raises and departures

As Mario previously reported, Friday was Sonja Fulmer's last day at the Food and Drug Administration directing the Digital Health Center of Excellence. Jessica Paulsen will step in as acting director.

Heartflow, which uses AI to analyze plaque in cardiovascular imaging, went public on Friday, raising $317 million. United Healthcare recently decided it would start covering it and similar tools.
As scribe companies like Abridge build out their revenue cycle management skills, a reminder of the competition: Arintra raised a $21 million Series A to support its AI-based autonomous medical coding tools.
SetPoint Medical raised $140 million to support commercialization of its vagus nerve stimulation implant (it's an inch long, and gets surgically placed in the neck), which was approved by the FDA to treat rheumatoid arthritis at the end of July.