Healthcare

Healthcare

Fewer choices may be on the menu again as Medicare patients shop for prescription coverage this fall. The number of available, stand-alone drug plans has fallen for a few years, and that trend will continue for 2026. Most markets will still have several choices, but some options are becoming particularly sparse for shoppers with low-income subsidies. And help may be harder to find because some insurers no longer pay brokers commissions for new business.

Romi Gubes knew her idea sounded outlandish: a small audio-only device that could sit in a senior's home and detect everything from falls to early signs of cognitive decline. "It was like science fiction," she told Business Insider. "When we came up with this idea, everyone thought we were crazy." But what seemed far-fetched in 2019 is now a multimillion-dollar reality. Gubes's startup Sensi.AI just raised $45 million in Series C funding, BI learned exclusively.

After a provider writes a prescription, patients can choose to have it sent to Amazon Pharmacy for in-office kiosk pickup. Patients then use their phone to check out in the Amazon app, after which medications are typically "ready in minutes," Amazon says. The kiosks have a range of commonly prescribed medications, including antibiotics, inhalers, and blood pressure medications.

AI startup Zingage has raised $12.5 million in seed funding to help bring healthcare inside the home - a shift it says will occur over the next decade. The two-year-old startup is developing an AI-powered scheduling and operations product for home healthcare agencies, which send caregivers into people's homes for aid - as opposed to a hospital or long-term facility.

"We don't want to go on strike, but we feel like we have to,"

We are developing a novel digital health venture in the radiology space. The platform addresses a critical gap: enabling patients with implants to safely access MRI scans. By providing a structured, software-enabled workflow that integrates with radiology information systems (RIS) and electronic health records (EHR), the solution supports clinical teams with referral management, approvals, scheduling, and post-scan documentation. Our team is now at a point where we're preparing our launch in 2026, and need someone to join our software development team.

The government have been urged to target young adults to volunteer for the NHS in a bid to tackle NHS waiting lists. A high-profile volunteer recruitment drive targeting young people could have a transformative impact on hospital efficiency, a charity has said, as it pushed the government to invest in the biggest hiring campaign since the pandemic. It comes as a YouGov poll found a third of 18 to 24-year-olds would consider giving up their time to volunteer in the NHS.

Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) shares are finally starting to attract attention after gaining close to 7% in a single trading session on news that it's reached a pricing deal with the Trump administration. Indeed, this is the biggest up day for shares of PFE in recent memory. And while investors are upbeat on the pricing plan, I do think that income investors should focus on the longer-term opportunity at hand.

Maimonides Health celebrated the opening of the Maimonides Doctors Clinton Hill Pavilion. The modern, new healthcare destination brings together nearly 40 doctors across 14 specialties under one roof and represents a significant investment in the health and well-being of the central Brooklyn community. Located at the corner of Vanderbilt and Atlantic Avenues, the Maimonides Doctors Clinton Hill Pavilion consolidates three Maimonides practices-Maimonides Doctors Sunrise Medical Group, Maimonides Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN) Women's Health, and Maimonides Multispecialty Care-into one modern facility designed for convenience, comfort, and coordinated health care.

Life sciences leaders are increasingly adopting AI and AI agents to address growing industry disruption. This shift is occurring as the sector confronts new regulatory demands that strain compliance teams, increasingly complex clinical trials, and rising expectations from healthcare professionals. A recent Salesforce study revealed that life sciences leaders see AI as a powerful tool for navigating these challenges, with 94% expecting AI agents to be critical for scaling organizational capacity and strengthening operations.

As we move towards the opening of the National Children's Hospital Ireland, we need to plan for integrated paediatric healthcare and the policy direction for Children's Health Ireland. The National Children's Hospital Ireland will be the central hub in the network of paediatric care with links to regional paediatric units, operated overwhelmingly by the HSE. Accordingly, I have decided to integrate CHI into the HSE structure.

Obamacare premiums are poised to jump next year, driven by expiring federal subsidies and the highest proposed rate hikes since 2018, setting up a pocketbook shock for millions of marketplace enrollees, unless Congress intervenes. The core driver is the scheduled sunset of enhanced premium tax credits at year-end, which could lift out-of-pocket bills by roughly 75%, on average, for subsidized customers on top of insurers' underlying rate increases for 2026, according to analyses cited by both The New York Times and Fortune.

AI agents - autonomous, task-specific systems designed to perform functions with little or no human intervention - are gaining traction in the healthcare world. The industry is under massive pressure to lower costs without compromising care quality, and health tech experts believe agentic AI could be a scalable solution that can help with this arduous goal. However, this AI category comes with greater risk than that of its AI predecessors, according to one cybersecurity and data privacy attorney.

Speaking at GovCIO's Health IT Summit, Dr. Neil Evans - acting program executive director of VA's Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office - said the focus of the modernization project still remains on usability and operational effectiveness of the system, although he added that achieving those goals will also set the stage for the potential embrace of other tech solutions moving forward.

We're working very closely with our physicians, nurses and community (to make it happen),

A new face is lighting up hospitals and nursing homes across the country. It's an animated, cartoonish persona displayed on a digital screen roughly the size of an iPad, mounted on top of a robotic torso shaped like an elongated traffic cone. It slowly rolls around from place to place, cracking jokes with patients, making silly faces, and playing small games.

Steven Sharp, 55, says on the first morning of a six-week stay at Diablo Valley Post Acute rehabilitation center, he was mistakenly given about five to six ounces of a solution containing bleach with about 12 pills. Per Bay Area News Group, he immediately told staff he'd been given bleach and was feeling burning in his esophagus and stomach. According to the lawsuit, after 45 minutes of Sharp asking staff to call 911, an employee came in and apologized for what happened.

Located in Lone Pine, a town at the base of Mt. Whitney with just 1,300 residents, Southern Inyo Healthcare District is the only hospital within a nearly 60-mile radius. It's the closest stop for injured hikers and dehydrated tourists visiting Whitney or nearby Death Valley, which regularly receives over 1 million visitors per year. Without it there would be a 136-mile stretch between the next closest hospitals in the eastern Sierra Nevada.

On his first morning, a staff member handed him a clear plastic cup holding five or six ounces of clear liquid to go with about a dozen pills, and he drank it down with the medications, the lawsuit filed last week alleged. Sharp felt immediate burning in his mouth and throat, the lawsuit said. He alerted the staff that they had given him bleach' to drink, and that his mouth and esophagus were burning, the lawsuit claimed.

Regulatory frameworks such as HIPAA, GxP, GDPR and 21 CFR Part 11 are not optional; they are the guardrails that protect sensitive health data, ensure scientific integrity and maintain public trust in healthcare systems. Yet, I repeatedly observed that while these frameworks provided critical safeguards, they often slowed the momentum of digital transformation initiatives, particularly those involving artificial intelligence. Early AI projects faltered not because the models lacked accuracy or relevance, but because the underlying data architectures were not designed to satisfy regulators from the outset.

Healthcare groups are reacting to CMS' proposed 2026 Physician Fee Schedule mainly with concern, arguing that it needs significant revisions in order to avoid destabilizing providers and undermining value-based care momentum. The proposal, issued in July, seeks to establish two new conversion factors - one for physicians in advanced alternative payment models (APMs) and another for those who aren't. CMS plans to increase the APM rate by 3.83% in 2026, while the non-APM rate would go up by 3.62%.

Healthcare is a long-term industry. It's about long-term health. It's about maintaining people's health over decades. Private equity's business model just inherently is short-term based. They are looking to get a company, profit off of it, exit the company in whatever way that is, whether it be bankruptcy or IPO or selling it off to another private equity firm," said Matt Parr, communications director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a nonprofit that has been tracking private equity moves.

Waiting lists for home care for older people and people with a disability are highest in the west and north-west counties - with 1,334 in a queue for the service in this region as figures show an ongoing postcode lottery.

Centene's recent stock drop is closely linked to a combination of higher-than-expected medical costs amid challenging trends in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) market and anticipation of the scheduled end to enhanced ACA subsidies at the end of 2025. While shares jumped earlier this week after Centene affirmed its guidance, which was higher than analysts' estimates, it faces an uncertain road ahead.

Retirement remains a far-off - and in some cases, unattainable - goal for many Americans. About one in four adults over age 50 said they expect to never retire, according to an AARP survey. That's perhaps not surprising given that Americans believe they'll need $1.26 million to retire comfortably, per Northwestern Mutual. Related: Are You on Track for Your Age? Here's When You Should Save for Retirement, Make 6 Figures and Buy a Home, According to a New Survey.

NHS England said many more patients were coming forward for treatment and a doctors' strike in July left 50,000 appointments cancelled. The Royal College of Surgeons said the system was coming under severe strain and called for more money for new operating theatres in the autumn budget. "Crumbling hospital buildings are leading surgeons to have to compete for space, directly contributing to delays and leaving patients waiting for the care they need," said the organisation's vice president Prof Frank Smith.

Richard Brodsky, the founder of software company Sandata and founder and chairman of Mobile Health, saw a problem when it came to hiring more home care aides. It took time to clear them medically and get approvals from their doctors. So in true entrepreneurial spirit, he rolled out mobile and then fixed clinics to test prospective aides, getting results within two days while developing CareConnect, a company to train aides, so those who qualify could get to work.

include avatars and [non-player characters] for things like peer support, for things like in-vivo exposure therapy.

In May, 11-year-old Nathan Jachimiek's son Ian broke out in a rash. "He's never had anything like this before so this was new for us as parents," said Jachimiek. The couple gave him Benadryl and brought him to the Good Samaritan Emergency Room in San Jose out of an abundance of caution. Jachimiek says a doctor never evaluated his son, they just sort of waited, and while they did, Ian seemed to be getting better. Enough so, that the family tried to leave the ER.

This recently acquired knowledge is due to the fact that Williams was announced as the new "celebrity patient ambassador" for direct-to-consumer telehealth company Ro on Aug. 21. The goal of this multiyear campaign is to "destigmatize weight loss medication," Saman Rahmanian, co-founder and chief product officer at Ro, told Healthcare Brew. Williams was a patient first and then wanted to share her story with others, he added.