Samwise Healthcare IT Newsletter
Sunday, July 12, 2026
Top Epic Leaders to Take On New Duties as President Preps Departure
Epic Systems is redistributing leadership responsibilities as company president Sumit Rana prepares to depart, with his last day set for August 14. CEO Judy Faulkner announced in a July 7 email that four senior leaders will take on Rana’s duties: Seth Howard, Mark Lipsky, Erv Walter, and Garrett Adams. The four executives will collectively absorb the responsibilities previously held by Rana. The transition comes as Epic evaluates its leadership structure following the departure of a longtime senior executive, and suggests the company will continue under a distributed leadership model rather than naming a single presidential successor.
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Nurses Are Fearing AI Less — and Using It More
Nurses are increasingly embracing artificial intelligence even as job security worries persist. A 2026 survey of 2,240 nurses by Incredible Health found AI usage tripled from 15% to 44% over the past year. Despite those gains, 37% of nurses still fear AI will take their jobs. Eighty-three percent say AI output requires human checking, and only 8% report their employer has a clear AI strategy. The annual State of Nursing report also found 28% of nurses use Epic’s built-in AI features, and 59% use AI tools when job searching — a sign that AI is reshaping how nurses manage their careers.
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Could ‘Dr. AI’ Soon Practice Medicine?
Healthcare leaders hold widely divergent views on whether AI will ever independently practice medicine, but converge on one key point: accountability and governance matter more than raw technical capability. Experts from Altera Digital Health, Penguin AI, and Medicomp Systems agree that while limited autonomous AI already exists — FDA-authorized retinopathy screening systems have operated without a physician in the loop since 2018 — replacing the general physician remains more than a decade away. Dr. Jay Anders of Medicomp warns the industry is ‘rushing to let AI take over healthcare with little oversight,’ arguing that accountability structures must precede any expansion of AI clinical autonomy.
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Viz.ai, Cortechs.ai Partner on AI Imaging Workflow for MS Care
Viz.ai and Cortechs.ai have partnered to integrate quantitative MRI analysis into Viz.ai’s AI-powered care coordination platform, starting with multiple sclerosis. The collaboration brings Cortechs.ai’s NeuroQuant MS software — which measures and tracks lesion burden and count — into the Viz.ai workflow used by more than 2,000 hospitals and health systems. With nearly one million Americans living with MS, early and accurate MRI analysis is critical for diagnosis and monitoring. Viz.ai Chief Medical Officer Dr. Tim Showalter said the partnership extends the company’s proven care coordination infrastructure from neurovascular care into neurodegenerative disease, with plans to expand to additional conditions over time.
Sources: MobiHealthNews Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Handspring Health Raises $19M to Expand Virtual Pediatric Mental Healthcare
Handspring Health has closed a $19 million Series B financing round, bringing its total funding to $37 million, to expand its virtual mental health platform for children, adolescents, and families. RPS Ventures led the round, with Angelini Ventures and returning backers including Cobalt Ventures and NextView Ventures also participating. The company operates across nine states and treats anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, and trauma. Handspring reports treating more than 4,000 families and growing revenue tenfold in two years. Funds will support clinician hiring, value-based care partnerships, and the company’s Complex Care program for high-risk youth who might otherwise be referred to emergency departments.
Sources: MobiHealthNews Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
AI Note-Taking Helps Clinicians Reclaim Patient Time
A behavioral health clinician at Prevention Research Institute is saving roughly three hours per week using AI-powered ambient documentation. Aaron Weiner, a board-certified addiction psychologist, adopted SimplePractice’s Note Taker to cut documentation burden across a daily schedule of six to eight patients. The tool listens to clinical sessions and generates draft notes that Weiner reviews and finalizes — taking about three minutes per note versus six previously. For a therapist seeing 25 patients weekly, that adds up to roughly 90 minutes saved. Weiner emphasized that the AI functions as a drafting assistant while the clinician retains full responsibility for every finalized note, preserving clinical oversight.
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Linux Foundation to Launch Open Health Stack for Open-Source Digital Health
The Linux Foundation is launching the Open Health Stack Software Foundation (OHS-SF), a vendor-neutral, community-governed platform designed to address fragmentation in global digital health infrastructure. Built around HL7 FHIR foundations, a multiplatform deployment toolkit, and an AI Commons co-developed with the World Health Organization, OHS-SF counts Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, Medtronic Labs, and the WHO among its founding supporters. Google contributed a $3 million grant and transferred its Open Health Stack project, originally launched in 2023, to the new foundation. An implementer program aims to bring developers from low- and middle-income countries into governance without financial barriers.
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OpenEvidence Expands Clinical AI Tools Across NYC Medical Centers
OpenEvidence is expanding its AI-powered clinical decision support platform to NewYork-Presbyterian, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Weill Cornell Medicine. The deployment gives clinical staff across all NYP hospitals and hundreds of care sites in New York City and Westchester County the ability to ask complex medical questions in conversational language and receive evidence-grounded responses. NYP Chief Information Officer Chif Umejei said the tool allows clinicians to access and analyze medical research in real time. The expansion follows OpenEvidence raising $250 million in January at a $12 billion valuation, bringing its total funding to nearly $700 million.
Sources: MobiHealthNews Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Curated by JD · samwise.agency