Latest / Becker’s Healthcare Digital Health + Health IT / Northwell backs 'emotionally intelligent' AI voice startup, UnitedHealth investigating data leak from Change hack + more
Transcript
- 0:00- This is Naomi Diaz
- 0:01with the Becker's Digital Health Podcast.
- 0:03Here's your daily industry news briefing
- 0:05for today, April 1st.
- 0:08First, Walgreens Own Village MD plans to exit the state
- 0:12of Nevada where it has six village medical clinics.
- 0:16A spokesperson for a Village MD told Becker's it decided
- 0:20to leave the Las Vegas market after careful consideration
- 0:23and analysis in the email.
- 0:25The spokesperson said, we are committed to helping our teams
- 0:29during this transition
- 0:30and we are working diligently to care for our patients.
- 0:33During this transition, patients can find new providers
- 0:37by contacting, contacting their insurance companies
- 0:40or if they're on Medicare visiting medicare.gov.
- 0:43The spokesperson said patients can also continue
- 0:46to request prescription refills through April 30th
- 0:50and obtain medical records via the Village MD website.
- 0:54Village MD has also exited Florida and Illinois
- 0:57and sold several of its Rhode Island locations in recent
- 1:01months as part of majority owner Walgreens plans
- 1:04to cut $1 billion in cost this year.
- 1:07Walgreens recently posted a $5.8 billion second quarter loss
- 1:12driven by the devaluation of Village md.
- 1:16Second UnitedHealth Group has confirmed
- 1:19that data has been compromised due
- 1:21to the February 21st cyber attack on its
- 1:24subsidiary change Healthcare.
- 1:26In a March 27th update on its website, UnitedHealth stated
- 1:29that it is working with a vendor
- 1:31to begin analyzing the types of data
- 1:33that could have been compromised as a result
- 1:36of the breach on Change Healthcare.
- 1:39The website reads quote, to be clear,
- 1:41we are still determining the content of the data
- 1:43that was taken by the threat actor,
- 1:45including any PI slash ppi.
- 1:48This is taking time
- 1:49because change healthcare's own systems were impacted
- 1:53by the event and difficult to access.
- 1:56UnitedHealth said it has no evidence that any
- 1:59of the compromised data has been published on the web,
- 2:02but that it will be offering to do the notification work
- 2:05for customers where permitted if their data
- 2:07has been compromised.
- 2:09Third, the venture capital arm
- 2:12of Northwell Health is backing a startup
- 2:14that is developing a conversational artificial intelligence
- 2:18platform that mimics human speech.
- 2:20Northwell Holdings participated in a $50 million series B
- 2:24funding round March 27th for Hume ai, which was founded
- 2:28by a formal Google researcher
- 2:30to provide near human level conversation.
- 2:33With ai, Northwell has already invested several million
- 2:37dollars in the emotionally intelligent voice interface.
- 2:40Health systems are increasingly using conversational AI bots
- 2:44to talk on the phone with patients
- 2:45for appointment scheduling
- 2:47and care management,
- 2:48like seeing whether they're taking prescribed medications
- 2:51and the platforms are beginning
- 2:52to sound more like living, breathing people.
- 2:55Human ai, for instance,
- 2:56is trained using a so-called empathetic
- 2:58- Large language model to know when to start
- 3:00and stop speaking and learn from the rhythms
- 3:03of human speech such as ums
- 3:04and AHS to keep becoming more lifelike.
- 3:08If you would like the latest health IT
- 3:09and digital health industry news delivered
- 3:11to your inbox every morning, subscribe to the Becker CIO
- 3:14and Health It Review eNewsletter
- 3:16through our website at ww dot becker's hospital review.com.