Modernizing Federally Qualified Health Centers Presented by RingCentral

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Featured Story   Talkiatry Rakes In $210M The moolah Virtual psychiatry group Talkiatry closed a $210 million Series D funding round led by Perceptive Advisors, bringing the startup's overall fundraising total to more than $400 million. Other investors that participated in the round include Andreessen Horowitz, blisce/, Sofina and Left Lane Capital. The platform The company employs more than 800 psychiatrists and 300 therapists and has delivered 3 million patient visits to date. It is in-network with more than 100 payers nationwide. Patients who use Talkiatry's platform begin with a brief intake survey and are then matched with a clinician based on their needs and availability, with virtual visits following. CEO Robert Krayn said that the startup built the process to reduce friction for patients, including options like "insurance discovery" so they don't have to hunt for an insurance card to move forward. Improving outcomes The startup's user data demonstrates that its model can boost patient outcomes, with 87% of its anxiety patients and 86% of its depression patients reporting symptom improvement after just two visits — and 67% and 62%, respectively, report no longer having clinically significant symptoms after two visits, Krayn shared. No rush to go public With a Series D round of this size, questions naturally emerge surrounding a potential market exit, but Krayn declared that Talkiatry has no imminent plans for an IPO. Instead, he and his team are focused on "doing the work needed to responsibly run a large scale enterprise." — By Katie Adams Sponsored   Modernizing Federally Qualified Health Centers Presented by RingCentral Legacy systems are the silent barrier to scaling patient care. Featuring insights from Sun River Health, this report details how to transform FQHC operations through cloud integration. Unified Access: One platform for all locations. Enhanced CX: Optimized contact centers and lower wait times. Total Security: HIPAA and HITRUST-certified compliance. Efficiency: Lower costs with increased staff mobility. Get Your Copy! Top Stories   Mayo Clinic Executive's Take on De-Identified Data De-identified data can be identified easily Maneesh Goyal, chief operating officer of Mayo Clinic Platform, doesn't think that the HIPAA Safe Harbor method is particularly good at truly protecting patient privacy. Especially as computing power accelerates, just removing patient identifiers such as name, address, and social security information is not enough. People can easily "figure it out." De-identified data also removes something of value The moment you de-identify per the conventional protocol, you lose allt he clinical notes that the physician has created over time. That is crucial to understand the clinician's decision-making, which Goyal believes is truly valuable to those who want to mine the data for insight. Instead, what Mayo Clinic does is alter the clinical record such that if Goyal's medical record was being altered, it would create a fictitious name and then shift the date of the entire medical record. These are just some of the ways data is de-identified, thus securing privacy while maintaining the integrity of the underlying data. Mayo Clinic Platform has 28 petabytes of de-identified – both structured and unstructured data. A potential gold mine for pharma R&D Mayo Clinic is now making this data and the data of its Mayo Clinic Platform Connect partner health systems available through the Orchestrate program to pharma partners who can query the data, train AI models, and validate clinical trials, among other things. The program launched in October, and on Wednesday, the Rochester, Minnesota-based health system announced that the Orchestrate platform will now enable researchers to access standardized, real-world cancer data from Mayo Clinic and participating Mayo Clinic Platform Connect partners. Pharmaceutica lcompanies will pay a subscription to access the program. Soundbite Let's say a pharma company wants to do a trial on inflammatory bowel disease "So they identify a set of patients. We can do this in our de-identified data. We attach an IBD specialist from Mayo Clinic, we develop a cohort of patients, then we do an IRB, and rapidly recruit them to do additional tissue sample collection," Goyal said. "The power of this is now take that tissue sample within our own infrastructure, do all the profiling, so genetic, proteomic, epigenetic, pathology profiling of that against the longitudinal patient data to put it back in the clinical record in a de-identified way, and then to hand it to our pharma partners and say, it's your playground to now invent and identify the targets that are going to matter for your condition." — By Arundhati Parmar A New Drug for Dwarfism BridgeBio's positive Phase 3 readout There's only one approved treatments for achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism. A BridgeBio Pharma drug could soon bring patients a new option. The company reported Phase 3 results showing its drug, infrigratinib, led to statistically significant improvement in growth rate and body composition measured at one year. BridgeBio now plans to file applications later this year seeking regulatory approvals in the U.S. and Europe. Leerink Partners projects infigratinib could achieve $1.5 billion in peak sales. The drug Achondroplasia is caused by a genetic mutation that leads to excessive activity of FGFR3, a protein that downregulates bone growth. BridgeBio's infigratinib is a small molecule designed to inhibit FGFR3. It's formulated as a once-daily pill. Why this matters to patients The only FDA-approved achondroplasia therapy is Voxzogo, a BioMarin Pharmaceutical peptide drug that's administered as a once-daily injection. Ascendis Pharma's achondroplasia drug candidate, navepegritide, was developed as a once-weekly injection. This drug is under FDA review and could be approved by the end of the month. Injections of any frequency can be challenging for some patients, particularly young children. BridgeBio's drug would give them a less burdensome dosing option. But Leerink analyst Joseph Schwartz noted that some children may not be able to swallow pills, which means injectables will still have a place in the market. Soundbite "While the overall picture of these infigratinib data are compelling we still think it remains to be seen how the dynamic between oral and injectable therapies plays out in achondroplasia as we have heard highly varying feedback from our [key opinion leader] discussions about patient/physician/parent preference for differing routes of administration," Schwartz said in a research note. —By Frank Vinluan What AI Really Changes in Health Insurance, and What It Doesn't The hype Health insurance has long been typecast as the industry that says "no," mails confusing letters, and cleans up the administrative mess after care happens. Even inside payer organizations, we've historically organized around hindsight: adjudicate the claim, reconcile the bill, resolve the appeal, run the retroactive audit. That posture, reactive administration, is not a moral failure so much as a product of the tools and data pipelines available. AI can change that posture. Not because it replaces the people who safeguard clinical appropriateness, member fairness, and financial integrity, but because it can make payer operations fast enough, and insight-rich enough, to shift from after-the-fact processing to real-time partnership. Reality AI can help health plans reduce friction, speed revenue-cycle throughput, and improve member experience — but only when it is deployed with strong data discipline, modern integration patterns, and a governance model that treats AI as "augmented intelligence," meaning powerful, assistive, and accountable. AI can also help create personalized pathways: proactive reminders, benefits navigation, guidance to the appropriate care setting, and support during transitions like new diagnoses, discharges, and medication changes. Predictive analytics can also help identify members who may benefit from proactive outreach, such as individuals at higher risk for readmission or care gaps, so interventions happen earlier rather than later. But personalization is a double-edged sword. The moment outreach feels 'creepy' or intrusive, members disengage and trust erodes. The future AI's benefits in healthcare are real, and so are the risks: privacy exposure, biased outcomes, opaque decision-making, and regulatory uncertainty. The path forward is not to slow innovation, but to operationalize it rigorously so the technology earns trust rather than spending it.Health plans that get this right will look less like reactive administrators and more like efficient partners in care: accelerating what should be fast, elevating what requires judgment, and making the healthcare journey more navigable for everyone. — By MedCity Influencer Chris House Video   Video: OpenEvidence's Eye-Popping Valutaion Explained Samir Batra, co-host of our Debunked YouTube show, explains more about OpenEvidence's remarkable user growth and valuation.

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Podcast   Debunked Episode 23: Companies Vie for Healthcare AI Dominance The conversation between MedCity News Editor-in-Chief Arundhati Parmar and Samir Batra, managing partner of Health Innovation Pitch, highlighted news from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, particularly how technology and biopharma companies are shaping AI in healthcare. View Now

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