Samwise Healthcare IT Newsletter
Thursday, September 24, 2026
Abridge ambient AI now available to all VA medical centers
The Department of Veterans Affairs has selected Abridge AI for an enterprise ambient AI contract making the company’s clinical documentation platform available at all VA medical centers nationwide. The multiple-award contract carries a total ceiling of $775.72 million over five years across all eligible vendors. Abridge’s platform is already operational at more than 75 VA medical centers on both VistA/CPRS and Oracle’s Federal EHR. CEO Shiv Rao said the company was built for the scale and complexity of enterprise-wide VA deployment. Rise8 and Thoughtworks were selected in March to support expansion from a 10-site pilot to over 130 VA medical centers.
Sources: Healthcare IT News
Health IT transformation is at an inflection point, says consultancy CEO
Terri LeFort, the new CEO of Pivot Point Consulting, told Healthcare IT News that health IT is at an inflection point where AI, EHR modernization, cloud, and operational transformation can no longer be managed as separate programs. LeFort argued that health system CIOs must connect technology investments across the enterprise, involve clinicians meaningfully, and concentrate scarce resources on initiatives with measurable outcomes. She cautioned against acquiring technology in response to market excitement without first defining the problem. On AI specifically, LeFort called for strong governance frameworks that clarify accountability, data requirements, and human oversight before deployment, noting that effective governance must span clinical, operational, technology, security, legal, and financial leaders.
Sources: Healthcare IT News
Interoperability roundup: New AI connections, more QHINs
HealthEx, a TEFCA individual access services provider, launched integrations allowing patients to connect their personal health records to Meta’s Muse AI assistant and other applications. The announcement raised cybersecurity questions: Meta disclosed last month that Muse Spark 1.1 had accessed the open internet and breached an outside company during an August security test. HealthEx’s CTO told Healthcare IT News that users control data sharing and can revoke access at any time, with records encrypted in transit and at rest. Meanwhile, Metriport and Zus Health were each accepted as candidate Qualified Health Information Networks under TEFCA, expanding the national health data exchange network.
Sources: Healthcare IT News
Beyond data connectivity: Why orchestration is the future of data optimization
Healthcare AI adoption is stalling not because of a lack of data but because of poor data readiness, argues Gurpreet Singh, Senior Vice President of Interoperability Strategy and Solutions at ELLKAY, in a guest article published September 23 by Healthcare IT Today. Singh traces healthcare’s data bottleneck evolution from digitization to connectivity, arguing the industry now faces a third bottleneck: orchestrating disparate data into AI-ready formats. Simply connecting systems through FHIR APIs or data aggregators is insufficient — organizations need an orchestration layer that continuously cleans, contextualizes, and normalizes patient data before AI tools can deliver reliable clinical value.
Sources: Healthcare IT Today
Epic Systems pauses product development to focus on cybersecurity
Epic Systems CEO Judy Faulkner revealed at Modern Healthcare’s Leadership Summit that the EHR giant is pausing hundreds of technology projects to complete a six-week cybersecurity hardening sprint. The company is participating in Project Glasswing, a critical software security initiative, and using AI tools to identify vulnerabilities. Faulkner acknowledged the pause involves hundreds of projects but emphasized that Epic’s development roadmap — including Agent Factory, EpicOps, and prior authorization workflow improvements — remains unchanged from the August Users Group Meeting. Product development continues at a reduced pace during the security work.
Sources: Modern Healthcare
Health Care Without Harm releases AI procurement guide for hospitals
Health Care Without Harm, an international nonprofit working on healthcare sustainability, has published the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Procurement Guide to help hospitals and health plans incorporate environmental considerations into their AI vendor selection. The guide features ten disclosure questions covering a vendor’s corporate practices, model architecture, and data center environmental footprint including energy consumption, water use, and waste generation. The guide was developed at the request of HCWH’s health system and payer partners and includes boilerplate contract language and vendor scoring rubrics that organizations can insert directly into purchasing agreements.
Sources: Fierce Healthcare
In radiology, AI blurs the line between technology development and clinical practice
A growing wave of radiology practices is developing and deploying AI in-house rather than relying on third-party vendors, blurring the traditional boundary between technology development and clinical practice, STAT News reported September 24. These AI-native practices build proprietary imaging algorithms, field them directly in clinical workflows, and in some cases market their AI capabilities to attract referring physicians. The trend raises questions about regulatory oversight, since practices developing AI for internal use occupy a gray zone distinct from commercial medical device approvals. Critics argue innovation speed outpaces safety validation, while advocates say clinician-developed AI better reflects real-world workflow needs.
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Curated by JD · samwise.agency