Samwise Healthcare IT Newsletter
Thursday, September 10, 2026
FDA TEMPO Pilot Designates Four AI Health Tool Makers for Real-World Testing
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Total Product Life Cycle Advisory Program (TEMPO) has named four AI health technology companies — including Dexcom, Cadence, and Limbic — as inaugural participants in a real-world evidence pilot. TEMPO grants companies an ongoing advisory relationship with FDA reviewers, enabling continuous feedback as products evolve post-clearance rather than requiring separate submissions for each update. The pilot represents a shift from episodic approval toward continuous regulatory oversight of AI tools. Participating companies gain faster guidance in exchange for sharing performance data across defined patient populations, a model the agency aims to scale across more product categories.
Sources: GovInfoSecurity
Forus Health Raises $150 Million Series C at $3 Billion Valuation
Forus Health has closed a $150 million Series C funding round at a $3 billion valuation, positioning the startup as one of the most highly capitalized private healthcare AI companies. The company builds an AI-driven prescription management platform designed to automate medication therapy management for health systems and pharmacy benefit managers, surfacing clinical decision support at the point of prescribing. The round reflects growing investor confidence in AI tools that address medication adherence, prior authorization burdens, and drug interaction risks. Forus plans to deploy the capital toward engineering and to expand its health system client base nationally.
Sources: Fierce Healthcare
Ardent Health Surpasses One Million Patient Visits with Ambient AI Documentation
Ardent Health Services has surpassed one million patient visits documented using ambient artificial intelligence, making it one of the largest documented deployments of ambient AI in U.S. hospital settings. The health system rolled out Ambience Healthcare's ambient documentation platform systemwide across its network of hospitals, clinics, and physician practices. Ambient AI tools listen to physician-patient conversations and automatically draft clinical notes into the electronic health record, reducing documentation time by an average of two to three hours per physician per day. Ardent reports the systemwide deployment has meaningfully improved physician satisfaction scores and reduced after-hours charting burden.
Sources: Becker's Hospital Review
Hospitals Lag in Race to Quantum-Safe Encryption, Analysts Warn
U.S. hospitals are falling behind in the transition to quantum-safe cryptographic standards, leaving patient data and medical devices vulnerable to future adversarial decryption attacks, according to new analysis. While the National Institute of Standards and Technology finalized its first post-quantum cryptography algorithms in 2024, most health systems have yet to begin migration planning. Healthcare cybersecurity experts warn that harvest-now, decrypt-later attacks — in which adversaries collect encrypted data today to unlock it once quantum computers mature — pose a particular threat to long-lived medical records. Analysts recommend health system CISOs initiate cryptographic inventories and begin pilot migration projects in the near term.
Sources: GovInfoSecurity
Health Systems Rethink EHR Upgrade Cadence as AI Acceleration Reshapes Vendor Timelines
Leading health systems including Northwell Health and Sentara Healthcare are reassessing how frequently they upgrade their electronic health record platforms as the pace of AI-powered feature releases accelerates. Historically, major EHR upgrades occurred on multi-year cycles to minimize disruption to clinical workflows. But vendor AI roadmaps — driven by competitive pressure from Epic, Oracle Health, and Meditech — are now pushing significant capability updates quarterly, forcing health system IT leaders to decide how often they can absorb change. CIOs interviewed say they are increasingly favoring selective module upgrades and sandboxed AI pilots over full platform refreshes to reduce downtime and training costs.
Sources: Becker's Hospital Review
Health Systems Strengthen IT Workforces Through Multi-Year Investment Programs
Health systems are committing to multi-year workforce development programs aimed at building sustainable internal healthcare IT talent pipelines, according to recent reporting from Becker's Hospital Review. Facing persistent competition for cybersecurity analysts, data engineers, and AI implementation specialists, hospital IT departments are partnering with regional community colleges, launching apprenticeship tracks, and expanding internal upskilling programs. Several organizations have linked IT investment plans directly to strategic technology roadmaps, ensuring workforce capacity keeps pace with planned AI and EHR expansion. Leaders say addressing the talent gap is now viewed as a capital investment rather than a recurring operational expense.
Sources: Becker's Hospital Review
Teladoc Health Launches Teladoc One AI-Unified Virtual Care Platform
Teladoc Health has launched Teladoc One, an AI-powered unified virtual care platform designed to consolidate the company's primary care, mental health, chronic disease management, and acute care services into a single integrated experience. The platform draws on Teladoc's Pulse intelligence engine, which aggregates more than 100 million clinical visits worth of data spanning health, claims, pharmacy, and device records to inform real-time care guidance. Initial enterprise customers launched in September, with general availability planned for January 2027. Teladoc says the platform represents a shift from siloed telehealth point solutions toward a connected ecosystem where AI orchestrates care across specialties.
Sources: Healthcare IT News
St. Luke’s Partners with Auxira Health to Embed Virtual Teams in Cardiology
St. Luke's University Health Network in Pennsylvania has partnered with Auxira Health to deploy virtual clinical support teams across its cardiology practices, giving 24 cardiologists access to remotely embedded nurse practitioners, medical assistants, and registered nurses. Auxira's model integrates these virtual team members directly into the practice's existing electronic health record workflows, handling administrative tasks, care coordination, and lower-acuity clinical work without requiring new staff hires. The partnership allows cardiologists to focus on complex cases and expand patient volume. St. Luke's plans to extend the program across its full Heart and Vascular network spanning sites in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Sources: Fierce Healthcare
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