Bonus Features – September 27, 2026 – Only 32% of senior care teams say tech supports their work, 70% of health workers say AI makes care feel less human for patients, plus 29 more stories

Welcome to the weekly edition of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features. This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT that we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job.

Stats

• A Brenau University survey found that 69% of healthcare workers say empathy is the top human skill AI cannot replicate, while 70% say AI is making care feel less human for patients.
• Data from Sage indicated that 63% of senior care teams are open to AI supporting their work – but only 32% say their current technology generally helps.
• A Wolters Kluwer Health survey found that 26% of patients sought medical care sooner after using AI to research a potential symptom or condition.

Partnerships

• Ericsson subsidiary Vonage is delivering Branded Calling technology to Epic Hello World, the company’s communication platform.
• RCM vendor ACU-Serve is partnering with Tennr, a patient orchestration platform for specialty care.
• Knowtion Health and Ghamut are partnering to bring advanced AI to RCM.
• Provider and patient engagement technology from OptimizeRx is now integrated with OpenPath, The Trade Desk’s supply path optimization platform.
• ScriptSave and epocrates, are partnering to bring dynamic prescription drug pricing and savings information to the point of care.
• MDM Cloud from Verato is now available as part of Tech Mahindra’s healthcare transformation engagements.

Products

• Alibaba DAMO Academy developed RADAR, an open-source model for reading abdominal CT scans and identifying nearly 150 conditions.
• athenahealth announced AI-native capabilities in athenaOne to help healthcare organizations support value-based care.
• Personal health companion August AI introduced August Care, a $39-a-month healthcare membership.
• Cyber incident response management BreachRx launched AI Tabletops on Demand, with a limited number of free facilitated AI tabletop exercises available to U.S.-based hospitals or healthcare companies.
• CentralReach announced ReportDraftAI to help draft and review applied behavior analysis (ABA) reports.
• Cotiviti announced two additions to its Payment Accuracy suite for health plans: Itemized Bill Review and Inpatient Coding Validation.
• Deciphex introduced CipherX, an AI engine for pathology and clinical diagnostics.
• MRO launched Prodigy, an AI engine for managing and abstracting clinical registries for health systems.
• Payerset launched Research Assistant to help health systems see how negotiated rates have shifted over time.
• Relatient expanded its self-scheduling and call center scheduling tools to serve the needs of behavioral health providers.
• RCM vendor Revecore launched its Legal Appeals service, which includes support for ERISA claims.
• Analytics vendor Trilliant Health launched the premium version of Oria, an AI agent built on proprietary healthcare datasets.
• WellSky announced two new additions to its WellSky Long-Term Care solution: The WellSky Navigator dashboard and the WellSky RevenueQueue tool.

Implementations

• Brooklyn’s University Hospital at Downstate implemented Altera Digital Health‘s Sunrise Thread AI ambient scribe.
• The National Labor Alliance of Health Care Coalitions selected Conifer Health to support population health management.
• Mayo Clinic subsidiary Precure selected Helix as its lab and AI partner for generating comprehensive molecular data.
• Adventist Health Bakersfield implemented Noah Medical‘s Galaxy System to support the earlier diagnosis of lung cancer.
• UnityPoint Health selected Omega Healthcare as its partner for improving financial performance.
• Tennessee-based Quorum Health standardized on Oracle Health for EHR, patient engagement, analytics, and accounting. In addition, San Juan Regional Medical Center expanded its Oracle Health implementation.
• Three medical groups and service providers selected Rainfall Health to help support CMS TEAM compliance and reimbursement.

Company News

• DirectTrust posted new versions of program criteria for its 23 accreditation programs; the public review and comment period closes on November 17.
• Qualcomm and Connected Health Alliance launched the Personal AI Health Alliance; members include Optum, Scripps and Merck.

If you have news that you’d like us to consider for a future edition of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features, please submit them on this page. Please include any relevant links and let us know if news is under embargo. Note that submissions received after the close of business on Thursday may not be included in Bonus Features until the following week.