Congress just wrote a $25M check for lung imaging AI. Read that again. 🫁 I sat with that number for a while. Not a research grant. Not a pilot buried in an omnibus. A direct, line-item appropriation for a defined category of FDA-cleared imaging software. The consensus right now is that radiology AI has a reimbursement problem. The standard playbook says: get FDA cleared, then fight for a CMS payment code, then wait for utilization to catch up. That fight takes years. Most companies run out of runway before the code lands. Here is my read: H.R. 9666 just opened a third door. And almost no one is talking about it. 📋 What the bill actually does On July 14, ...

CMO, can you defend a guideline that would have missed 65% of lung cancer patients? 🔬 Because that is exactly what a new study in JAMA Network Open just showed. Researchers looked at 89,900 patients diagnosed with lung cancer in South Korea from 2013 to 2018. Then they asked one simple question: how many of these people would have qualified for screening under current international guidelines, including those from the USPSTF, ACS, and NCCN? The answer should stop every screening program leader in their tracks. 📊 Here is what the data actually showed: - 65% of lung cancer patients would NOT have been eligible for screening under international guidelines - 44% had no smoking history at all - Eligibility by ...

The AI doctor debate is asking the wrong question entirely. July 12, 2026. Marc Andreessen posts on X that AI is already a better doctor than 99.99% of human doctors. A Silicon Valley benchmark goes viral. Everyone picks a side. Then Mark Cuban replies. And his reply cuts straight to the thing nobody wants to talk about. 🎯 Cuban's point was not that AI cannot read an MRI or catch a diagnosis a tired physician missed at 2 a.m. Nobody serious is arguing that. His point was about what happens after the AI gives its answer. Here is the reality he described, and every word of it is accurate: - Insurers are already using AI to find ways to manipulate ...

The US healthcare system profits from sickness. Someone just raised $700M to bet against it. 🏥 Everyone assumes the incumbents will lead the prevention revolution. They won't. They can't. The incentive structure won't let them. Neko Health just closed a $700 million Series C, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and co-led by O.G. Venture Partners, at a valuation of nearly $7 billion. That is up roughly 4x from early 2025. The company was co-founded by Daniel Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne, and it builds AI-powered, non-invasive preventive health scans combining proprietary sensors, blood analysis, and clinician consultations to detect health risks early. This is not a software play. Neko owns the full stack: hardware, software, and the clinic itself. Here is ...

78% of Nurse Practitioners want to start their own businesses. 🔥 Almost none of them ever did, because the system made it nearly impossible. That is the problem Corner Health was built to solve. Co-founders Lava Sunder and Anne Gifford spent years talking to NPs. What they found was consistent: NPs are wildly entrepreneurial, deeply capable, and completely constrained by the administrative weight of running a practice. Billing. Insurance. Scheduling. Lab orders. Referrals. Patient communication. Without a team behind them, none of it was manageable alone. Corner Health eliminates that constraint. The company is not a consumer brand. It is an operating layer, one that lets NPs function as solo practitioners without hiring a single support staff member. Corner's AI ...

61 percent of America's most financially vulnerable hospitals are in cities. 🏙️ That number stopped me cold when I read it. Everyone in this space has been told the same story for the past year. The cuts hurt rural hospitals. Rural communities. Rural patients. And yes, that is true and it is devastating. But new research cited by The American Prospect is cracking that narrative open. National Nurses United identified 602 financially vulnerable hospitals across 47 states. Together, they are running an aggregated deficit of about $10.2 billion right now. When the full impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act hits, researchers project that deficit will balloon to between $15.4 billion and $17.9 billion. ⚠️ And 366 of those ...

Everyone is calling this an FDA approval. It is not. And the difference should shape every radiology AI decision you make in the next 12 months. Aidoc just received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for First Read, its AI tool that analyzes chest radiographs and generates preliminary radiology report text. The story is everywhere this week. And almost everyone is getting the headline wrong. Breakthrough Device Designation is not clearance. It is not approval. According to DIEurope, Aidoc itself confirmed that First Read remains an investigational device and has not been cleared or approved by the FDA. What it actually means: - The FDA has determined that First Read addresses an unmet clinical need - It qualifies for expedited review, meaning ...

Are you still billing fee-for-service in 2026? 🏥 If you are, CMS just told you exactly what they think of that. On July 14, CMS dropped the proposed Physician Fee Schedule for Calendar Year 2027. And buried inside a dense regulatory document is a message that every physician practice, FQHC CEO, and health system CFO needs to hear right now. The gap between those inside value-based care and those outside it just got wider. Here is what the proposed rule actually says, according to the CMS fact sheet: - Qualifying APM participants (QPs) get a +0.75% conversion factor update for CY 2027 - Non-QPs get only a +0.25% update - The proposed QP conversion factor drops to $33.17, a decrease ...

The world has a third-largest Ebola outbreak. Right now. And most people in healthcare have barely looked up from their inboxes. According to The Analyst Desk, the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, caused by the Bundibugyo strain, just became the third-largest Ebola outbreak on record. Cases climbed from roughly 1,460 cases and 452 deaths in early July to 1,947 cases and 704 deaths by July 9. That is the death count rising by roughly 50 in 100 in about ten days. 🌍 Let that number sink in for a second. ⚠️ Here is what the data actually shows: - Case-fatality rate stands near 34 in 100, meaning close to 1 in 3 confirmed patients has died - ...