SAN FRANCISCO—The third day of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference has begun, marking the last full slate of conference sessions and presentations.
The wheeling and dealing bonanza continues through tomorrow morning with the final block of presenters. On tap for today is a range of panels on investment, employer costs, women's health and the role of OpenAI in the healthcare system, alongside further company presentations.
California-based Medicare Advantage insurer Alignment Healthcare will break the conference's payer drought with its presentation this morning, and digital health companies like Talkiatry and Virta Health are on the docket for the private company track for Wednesday.
Stick with this tracker and the site for the latest out of day 3 of JPM. For a recap of the trends to watch this week, check out our preview here. You can also catch up on Monday's headlines with our Day 1 story, and yesterday's news with our Day 2 tracker. Keep up with news from biopharma thanks to the Fierce Pharma team in their daily tracker as well as Fierce Biotech's daily roundup.
Follow along with all of our JPM coverage here.
UPDATED: 5:00 p.m. PT
To keep pace with AI innovation, some organizations "go big"
Many AI projects can get stuck in the pilot phase and never reach scale. Some healthcare and life sciences organizations are taking a new approach to testing out AI innovation given the lightening-fast pace of tech innovation.
Rather than focus on many small pilots that may not scale, some organizations are prioritizing big initiatives that can be “turned on” across the enterprise.
At UCSF Health, technology leaders deployed an inpatient summarization tool through an “enterprise pilot,” noted Sara Murray, Vice President and Chief Health AI Officer at the University of California, San Francisco.
“We just turned it on for everyone as the pilot and started collecting as much data as we could with the idea that if it was causing harm or other issues across the system, we would just turn it off for everyone,” she said during a panel discussion focused on AI Wednesday morning during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. “Setting up the way you test technology is also really important, rather than going clinic by clinic, which was the historical way things are done in healthcare, and can take two years to get to everyone.”
Key to this work is having a foundational governance structure in place to support AI at scale, Murray noted.
“One of the things we've done through that structure is actually change what a pilot looks like,” she said. “We really invest at UCSF in building robust governance structures to support that. We really want to make sure that the adoption that we're seeing is at scale, because the history of AI adoption in the pre-generative era was largely pilots. I think we're really moving to that transformational moment now where we can change how we're delivering healthcare, really for the better.”
UCSF has about 90 AI tools in the queue, Murray noted, and is deploying ChatGPT Enterprise across the organization.
At biotech company Amgen, leaders also prioritize big initiatives, noted David Reese, the company’s chief technology officer.
“When we created this organization, one of the pieces of strategy that I put into place was this notion that we would focus on, at most, a couple handful of very big initiatives or projects that would move the needle for our patients and the company, and in some cases, if we were successful, for the field, as opposed to 200 pilot projects, and 199 of which never scale and lead to adoption,” he said.
“I view a large part of my job as keeping us focused on those major initiatives, whether they're in basic biology, molecular engineering or other aspects of the enterprise. Another example would be manufacturing, an unsung area where this technology, I think, is going to utterly transform the industry and transform the economics of the industry if we get it right. So, of course, we're experimenting all the time. We have a technology innovation lab that's very quickly sorting through things, but the bulk of the organization is actually focused on delivering these big initiatives,” Reese said.
Both organizations also are focused on upskilling staff and increasing AI literacy to ensure success with AI projects. “We are really invested in upskilling our current workforce. We’re working very hard to create pathways by which we can support people who want to work in this space,” Murray said.
When AI initiatives are evaluated at Amgen, company leaders look at the technology itself and the processes it will change as well as the impact to staff, Reese said.
“What are folks going to need to know? How will they have to be upskilled? What is the change management required to effect adoption throughout the organization or the groups that will be using this tool? Nine times out of 10 that is the point of failure,” he noted.
The use of AI is changing the skills and qualities leadership teams look for in senior leaders. “Having innate curiosity and a willingness to try and fail and experiment are absolutely critical when I'm hiring senior leaders,” Reese said.
“It has completely opened the aperture on the type of individuals that we are going to recruit. One of the mantras that I've tried to put into place with my leadership team is capabilities, not credentials. This industry has been highly credential-driven for a long time. I told the board of directors, look, I'm hiring some senior folks, unlike those that we've seen in 45 years at Amgen and a few months later, I show up with folks from Nike and Spotify,” Reese said.
While AI models continue to improve, health systems continue to face challenges with electronic health record (EHR) integration with AI solutions as well as technology readiness.
“I think people underestimate how good things have to be. It has to be much more than a party trick to really be implemented at scale in healthcare. There have been very few solutions that we've brought in at UCSF where we haven't had to do some co-development work with the companies to really get it to the place where it's ready. Most of these things aren't things we just go out and buy and implement right now. We do a fair amount of work to get them ready,” Murray said.
Healthcare and life sciences organizations have been working with AI for years including machine learning and risk prediction algorithms. But there have been several innovations in the past few years that have driven a transformational shift in healthcare AI, Reese and Murray said.
AI scribes have been a game-changing tool to reduce physicians’ cognitive burden, increase doctors’ satisfaction with their jobs and improve interactions with patients in the exam room, according to Murray.
For life sciences companies, the introduction of AlphaFold, an AI program developed by DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet, was a pivotal milestone in AI’s evolution, Reese said.
“We're solving some protein structures that we've been working on with the best protein chemists and engineers in the world for a couple of years, in some cases. And then finally, of course, the release of ChatGPT. It was a moment where we said, ‘Okay, now this is something for every employee. This is something that will address the entire enterprise’,” Reese said.
Like many health systems, UCSF Health is focused on “high impact, lower risk” use cases like back-office tasks, prior authorization, notes drafting and documentation summarization. But the industry is moving quickly toward direct-to-patient agentic functions, Murray noted. “I see us getting there in the near future,” she said.
Amgen is taking a thoughtful approach to using AI when directly interfacing with patients, Reese noted.
“That being said, we don't see areas where the technology will not play a role, but the tempo of that is very different from basic biologic discovery, for example, or molecular engineering,” he said. — Heather Landi
UPDATED: 3:45 p.m. PT
What health system executives left unsaid
Across a day and a half of presentations, operating margin turnarounds and financial resiliency were common refrains from nonprofit health system CEOs and CFOs.
The topics were a tacit acknowledgement of the looming threat to many nonprofits' bottom lines—nearly a trillion dollars Medicaid funding reductions set to kick off in 2028, and millions of newly uninsured patients due to steeper eligibility requirements starting at the end of this year.
The issues may have been on the menu during events headlined by administration officials, but were often only addressed at a topline level in the nonprofits' presentations, or lumped in with broader references to "headwinds" requiring strong margin bulwarks.
Eduardo Conrado, the newly minted President and CEO of Ascension, agreed that his own presentation as well as those of his peers largely steered away from a detailed discussion of the topics.
"I think a lot of people didn't present [on] it because, I think, a lot of people are still kind of noodling on, like, what do I do," he said in an interview.
At this year's conference and next, he said nonprofit systems are largely focused on letting investor attendees know they can "check all the boxes on the operating model." Starting next year, he expects systems will come back ready to discuss how they've been exploring the issues and share what they've learned.
"We’re [only] into it for a year now, so I think when we come back next year, that’s going to be one of the big topics that we have," he said.
As for Ascension, Conrado said the system is currently estimating that tighter Medicaid qualifications will add anywhere between 80,000 to 100,000 more uninsured between its 10 markets, which already have about 340,000 people without coverage (not to mention another 80,000 that could become uninsured with no extension to ACA credits).
The working "blueprint" for Ascension to handle this influx, he said, is a combination of community partnerships to extend primary care access and thereby decrease visits to the system's EDs, stronger care navigation support, transportation arrangements and expanding the capabilities and reach of Dispensary of Hope, its nonprofit charity arm that distributes or coordinates medications for the uninsured. — Dave Muoio
UPDATED: 8 a.m. PT
Omada offers first look at Q4 financials ahead of JPM presentation
Earlier this week, Omada Health released the preliminary results from its fourth quarter earnings report in anticipation of a session today at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.
The virtual care company expects between $72 million and $74 million in unaudited revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025, up by between 50% and 54% compared to Q4 2024.
Its preliminary revenue for all of 2025 has also increased by between 51% and 52% from 2024, according to the announcement, estimated to land between $256 million and $258 million.
Omada added that it had 886,000 members as of Dec. 31, making for 55% year-over-year growth.
“Our preliminary 2025 results underscore the growing relevance of our between-visit care model as both buyers and members seek new solutions,” said Sean Duffy, Omada co-founder and CEO, in the announcement. “During the year, we enhanced our GLP-1 care offerings and advanced the use of AI across our platform with an aim to drive sustainable member outcomes and support customers navigating evolving cost and care dynamics.”
Omada is set to hold its Q4 earnings and report the audited results on March 5. The company will present at 9 a.m. PT at JPM. — Paige Minemyer
UPDATED: 12:42 p.m. PT
Employers' drug costs reach 'breaking point'
Therapies covered under the medical benefit represent a growing cost challenge for employers, and addressing it requires new thinking around the incentives at play, experts said during a panel Wednesday at JPM.
Cell and gene therapies can be curative for patients, but often come with a high price tag. Will Shrank, M.D., co-founder and CEO of Aradigm, said that part of the challenge is how much needs to be invested up front by all stakeholders to make these treatments available.
Manufacturers spent millions researching and developing these novel therapies, he said, and providers need to build out the capabilities to offer them to patients. Health plans will also need to look beyond the traditional utilization management approaches while maintaining access, especially as public distrust of those strategies grows, he said.
For example, insurers may put the financial squeeze on providers around these therapies after the drugs have already been administered, which creates unnecessary friction, Shrank said.
"Carriers don't have a lot of tools," he said, "and the tools that they use tend to be the ones that we all think are the wrong ones."
Historically, these drugs have been prime targets for value-based contracting or outcomes-based pricing, but that can become tricky for several reasons. For one, while gene therapies are often curative, patients often switch plans year-to-year, which can put plans on edge about the cost, said Dan Knecht, M.D., chief medical officer for insurer Emblem Health.
In addition, there aren't necessarily questions that still remain about the efficacy of these drugs that would be mitigated by value-based contracts, the panelists said.
"There's a lot of complexity and delays," Knecht said, "and frankly there's a lot of waste in the system for such a vulnerable population."
Shrank, an insurance industry veteran, said the challenges here are part of what led him to found Aradigm, which launched out of stealth in December. The company provides a benefits platform to employers that seeks to ease the financial sting associated with these therapies.
He said part of why they saw opportunity in founding the company is that there is no magic solution to address this cost challenge.
"This problem has reached a breaking point when it comes to cell and gene therapy and the very fragmented way we deliver and pay for care in the U.S." Shrank said. — Paige Minemyer