The Fierce Healthcare team is on the ground at HLTH 2025. Stick with this news tracker to catch all the highlights from the show floor, and click here for additional coverage from the conference.
Tuesday, Oct. 21
An expert clinical advisory panel convened by mental health company Spring Health has released what it calls the first open source evaluation for validating AI in mental health.
The benchmark is aimed at chatbots – both those created by consumer companies and healthcare companies.
Nearly 50% of adults use chatbots for emotional support, according to Spring Health’s announcement. April Koh, CEO and co-founder of the company, says she thinks the number is likely higher.
The benchmark is called VERA-MH, and it stands for Validation of Ethical and Responsible AI in Mental Health. The expert panel of technologists, ethicists, payers, employers, academics, scientists and clinicians released its draft framework for assessing safety of the chatbots on Monday. The draft is open for community feedback for 60 days.
"Despite the widespread adoption of these tools for emotional and mental health support, there has been virtually zero oversight over the ethics or the safety or the efficacy of these tools for mental health specifically,” Koh said.
The benchmark is a series of large language models that assess how a chatbot responds to concerning responses from users. One LLM will simulate a patient-provider conversation that the chatbot can engage with, while another LLM will judge the responses of the bot.
The models will assess the entirety of a conversation between a chatbot and a user, rather than one response by the chatbot, as many chatbot evaluations do.
“Therapeutic interactions are dynamic and, therefore, meaning and context evolve over multiple turns,” the rubric says. “These nuances pose a significant challenge to static, pre-scripted evaluations. As a result, evaluating mental health LLMs based on static datasets and single-turn conversations can lead to an incomplete or even misleading assessment of capabilities and safety in a clinical context.”
Spring Health hopes the benchmark and panel takes on an authority of its own, separate from Spring Health. It hopes to be an independent third-party trusted to evaluate other companies’ solutions for the benefit of Americans’ mental health.
The evaluation techniques the group comes up with, though, will also benefit Spring Health’s development of AI for mental health.
“In 2022 we were looking for benchmarks that would make sure that our approach was safe and ethical and effective, but we couldn't find anything,” Koh said. “We couldn't find benchmarks. We couldn't find standards. There were no third parties really validating the ethics of any of these tools.”
So far, the council has done preliminary evaluations of GPT5, Claude Opus and Claude Sonnet, a press release by the company said. It will continue to iterate on the VERA-MH rubric, do further clinical validation and refine actionable scoring.
DocGo acquires SteadyMD to expand telehealth services
DocGo, a provider of mobile health and medical transportation services, bought virtual care platform SteadyMD, which operates a 50-state telehealth platform.
SteadyMD works with consumer, healthcare and digital wellness brands, including multiple Fortune 10 customers, to power their virtual care offerings, according to the company. The company offers a 50-state virtual clinician workforce, clinical operations and technology that powers real-time matching between patient needs and clinical expertise. The company is expected to service over 3 million patients in 2025, and maintains a roster of over 600 clinicians.
Through the acquisition, DocGo will pair its mobile health clinicians in the field with SteadyMD’s clinical network.
The company expects to fund the transaction through existing cash on its balance sheet.
In 2025, SteadyMD is expected to generate approximately $25 million
"By combining SteadyMD's nationwide virtual care platform with our mobile health services and infrastructure, we can provide our enviable roster of customers with an even more comprehensive platform of last mile care, and help realize our goal of providing patients with healthcare at any address.
Hinge Health offers new AI-powered movement analysis feature for MSK care
Hinge Health rolled out new AI-powered features to better track musculoskeletal care outcomes and to provide members with 24/7 support.
The company, which went public back in May, developed an AI-based movement analysis tool that uses computer vision technology to guide members through targeted movements, capturing joint angles, symmetry, and endurance.
While there are many measurement tools to track outcomes in MSK care, almost all rely on subjective questions and are therefore self-report only, executive said. Hinge Health’s new AI tool can pair those objective measurements with targeted questions to create a “Hinge Score” for joint health. This enables members to monitor their own progress and their relative performance compared to others. Clinicians also gain a composite view to make faster, more impactful, and personalized treatment decisions, according to the company.
“Our movement analysis allows the member with pain to have a more objective score of how they're doing, as well as empower the care team, our physical therapists, to better understand how their health is evolving so they get adjustments to the care plan if needed,” Hinge Health CEO Dan Perez told Fierce Healthcare.
The company also rolled out an AI care assistant, named Robin, that provides 24/7 support to help quickly triage patients who have pain flare-ups. The AI assistant can collect more details, shares resources and summarizes the situation for the member’s physical therapist to help accelerate care. Hinge Health is building out Robin’s capabilities so the AI assistant can answer common questions and proactively check in with members.
Hinge Health also published its AI care principles, which guide the development of AI across its platform.
Tuesday, Oct. 21
Oura looking to hypertension prevention, unveils new app launch
On the heels of its massive $900 million funding round, Oura, the company behind the personal health tracker the Oura Ring, is exploring the potential for its device can detect early signs of hypertension.
The company unveiled a new blood pressure profile study on Monday to develop a future feature in support of the company’s broader focus on cardiovascular health. The study will explore how ŌURA can identify early signs of hypertension by passively tracking key signals in the background.
ŌURA is engaged with the FDA and developing new blood pressure features. The company said it received approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for a study to validate and define the feature in Oura Labs.
"We have a couple hundred thousand people in Oura Labs, which is like our beta part of Oura, and we're going to be looking at that data collection across a couple hundred thousand people to inform our algorithms for predicting hypertension," Oura CEO Tom Hale said during an on-stage interview at HLTH on Monday.
"The thing is, that way, I think we will be able to cover every age group, every gender, ethnicity, race, health conditions, social determinants of health, an incredibly broad audience of people, so that when we're making assessments about hypertension risk, it's not just the fat middle of the bell curve. It's those ends as well," Hale said.
Building out those vital sign monitoring capabilities also plays into the wearables company's broader goals of getting health insurance coverage for its devices, Hale noted.
I think our hope and aim is, yes, today we have few of the vitals. We have your temperature, we have your respiration. We have your heart rate. We have your blood oxygenation. We don't have blood pressure. And I think if you add that to get that vital sign and you have it continuously tracked, I think it would help," he said.
Last year, the company inked a partnership with insurer Essence Healthcare to enable certain Medicare Advantage plan members to get an Oura Ring and membership.
"What they have done is they subsidize an Oura ring for all of their beneficiaries. This started in January and it has gone incredibly well. Without saying too much, I think it's really attracted the attention of payers," Hale said. "They are all like, wait, we're watching this very closely because of course, for them, if they can bend the curve. If they can bend the curve on behavior and healthy intervention and prediction, they'll see the benefit within 10 years of signing up. That's a financial benefit and a small improvement on that cost. Some fewer hospital admissions, fewer heart surgeries, all those things they can make some improvement."
Risant Health offers a look at early results from its value-based platform
Nearly two years ago, Kaiser Permanent completed its acquisition of Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Health and unveiled the new joint organization Risant Health.
On the stage at HLTH on Tuesday morning, Risant CEO Jaewon Ryu said the work in front of the organization centers on moving "upstream" in the process. Healthcare traditionally has been very focused on hospitals and emergency departments, but shifting that effort upstream makes it easier to identify diseases in advance.
Risant Health is doing this through its value-based care platform, which Ryu described as ultimately a collection of evidence-based best practices designed to rethink the traditional paradigms, while also leaning on technological innovation.
Ryu said the solutions land in three buckets. For one, it's critical to implement evidence-based care across the board, which reduces variance in how care is provided and engenders greater consistency.
Next, the team is aiming to simplify the clinician experience. It's not a secret, he said, that providers encounter many pain points and frustrations with the way workflows work today. And finally, the team is looking at "right place, right time" — ensuring the patient receives the care they need when they need it.
Early results of the platform's rollout at Geisinger facilities suggest that the tools are saving clinicians about an hour each day, with physicians reporting that it feels as though they're saving 2.5 hours of charting time per day. Self-reported burnout rates are down by 40%, according to Kaiser Permanente.
A specific example of this at work is with Risant's Intelligent Triage tool. Twenty-one percent of individuals who used that tool avoided and unnecessary visit to the emergency department and were instead treated at a more appropriate site of care. Geisinger has also seen its ED boarding times cut in half and a reduced length of stay for inpatient admissions.
Ryu said the team is optimistic about the trajectory as it puts those key solutions in place, especially as Risant Health continues to identify health systems to acquire and bring into the fold.
"I'm optimistic, because all the leading indicators, which you've heard about today, we're seeing all of those head in the right direction," he said.
Former CDC head embracing life in the private sector
Susan Monarez told the crowd at HLTH on Tuesday that she's planning to lean on her two decades of experience in public agencies now to drive innovation in the private sector.
She said during a fireside chat at the conference that her time in the federal government has given her "20 years' worth of understanding" that she can now leverage through investments and helping innovators take their work to scale.
"I'm excited now to contribute that knowledge directly into the private sector," she said.
Monarez was fired from her role as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in late August, a little over a month after she was confirmed to the position by the Senate. She said during a congressional hearing in September that she clashed with Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. over his plans to significantly overhaul regulations around vaccines.
She told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that she was ousted for "holding the line on scientific integrity" as Kennedy sought to move forward with significant changes without evidence.
The HLTH session didn't address her surprising ouster directly, but Monarez did allude to the flap in discussing one of her new ventures: a Substack newsletter called "The Road Best Traveled." She described it as "very much a personal passion project."
The subject? Monarez said she's looking to highlight people who have overcome adversity, particularly those in healthcare who have been working to build a new technology or develop a new product in the face of those challenges. She said these conversations will delve into how these leaders stayed the course even when that seemed like potentially the wrong decision.
"The Substack is really going to be an ode to individuals who have persevered through headwinds," she said. "I think there's a lot of inspiration to be had in just hearing from so many people that have remained optimistic. It's easy to be cynical."
Sunday, Oct. 19
Mark Cuban says healthcare leaders 'complicit' in broken system
The HLTH conference kicked off Sunday with investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban taking center stage to blast pharmacy benefit managers, drug manufacturers and wholesalers for driving up prices for pharmaceutical drugs.
Characteristically blunt, Cuban also called out business leaders for being "complicit" in the broken system.
"If you're a CEO of a company, you're the one signing the contract with the PBM that allows this to happen. If you're in a state, you're the one that's approving the insurance plan that signs the deal with the PBM. If you're watching over the wholesalers and responsible for them, you're the ones allowing this to happen. They're doing what you expect them to do. They're trying to maximize their earnings. We're the ones that are the schmucks that are allowing it to happen," Cuban said during an on-stage interview Sunday.
The billionaire celebrity disrupted the prescription drug industry when he launched Cost Plus Drugs Company, a digital pharmaceutical marketplace, in 2022. Cuban's approach is focused on eliminating middlemen, markups and bureaucracy that drive up costs.
Cuban criticized the current system where manufacturers sell to wholesalers at list prices, leading to high costs for pharmacies and patients.
He emphasized the need for transparency and market competition to improve healthcare affordability.
"We started Cost Plus Drugs from the perspective that we wanted people to be able to go to a website, put in the name of the drug that they had a prescription for, not only see what we were selling it for, but see what our actual cost and markup was so that they would trust us," he said. "There's a formula I use all the time for my companies, and it's about how do you define trust. Trust equals transparency divided by self-interest. By showing all of our costs, all of our pricing, that's the transparency."
He added, "By showing that we only had a markup of 15%, that's the self-interest. That led people to trust us, and that's why we've been able to grow," he said.
Cost Plus Drugs works directly with drug manufacturers to bypass middlemen and lower prices. For consumers, the price of each drug includes a 15% markup. Cost Plus also transparently displays what it pays for its medicines.
The online pharmacy launched in January 2022 now carries over 2,300 prescription products. The company mostly offers generic drugs.
"We don't work with the biggest PBMs. We're on the outside of the healthcare system. So I don't need anything from them. I'm lucky where I am in my life. If I was 25, 35, 45, it might have been a different story. But my next dollar is not going to change my life. But, f**king up healthcare would make me very happy," Cuban joked.
The entrepreneur also joked that President Donald Trump's TrumpRx was "the biggest, best, most amazing, brilliant, phenomenal thing I've ever heard in the history of pharmacy."
The Trump administration announced in late September that it was rolling out a direct-to-consumer website where individuals can buy prescription medications at discounted prices rather than through insurance.
"We're going to be participating in it. TrumpRx, it's more a referral site," he said. "We saw really interesting deals from Pfizer and Amgen and others. And they'll put a link to their sites. So cash-paying patients could get the lower price from them."
Also on Sunday, Rob Lowe interviewed Eli Lilly's Jacob Van Naarden about innovation in clinical trials.
There was a noticeable absence of federal health officials on the final agenda this year, thanks to the ongoing government shutdown. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, M.D., was initially slated to speak, as was Jim O'Neill, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. They pulled out of the conference, along with CMS' Chris Klomp.
Amy Gleason, acting administrator of the U.S. DOGE Service and strategic advisor to CMS, is still scheduled to speak Tuesday morning about improving the patient experience.
The eighth annual HLTH conference plans to draw in 12,000 attendees to the Venetian Expo Center with an event that features more than 400 speakers tackling topics ranging from breakthrough therapies to weight management and the ongoing buzz around GLP-1s to longevity, women's health, healthcare policy and, of course, artificial intelligence.
Pharma companies have a big presence at this year's HLTH conference with executives from Novo Nordisk, Bristol Myers Squibb, Regeneron, GSK, Merck, Amgen and Novartis slated to speak, along with leaders from a handful of biotech companies such as Flagship Pioneering and Mammoth Biosciences.
Advances in AI, particularly generative AI and agentic AI, will likely dominate conversations at HLTH as AI adoption grows. Many attendees said they are keeping an eye out for new AI innovations and want to hear about how other organizations are using the technology.
“The hot topic is without question the role AI has played, and will continue to play in mental health care. I’m pro-AI, and feel 2026 is going to bring an exciting array of new solutions and the evolution of existing ones. However, everything in the AI and mental health space must be built with the utmost care given to oversight, clinical rigor and privacy. The industry can’t just release chatbots or care apps that aren’t underpinned by serious clinician oversight and governed ethically," Mark Frank, CEO of SonderMind, told Fierce Healthcare.
But healthcare executives are also interested in advances in other sectors of healthcare including primary care, employer health benefits, tech-enabled preventive health, food-as-medicine and digital solutions for mental health.
“I’m genuinely excited that we’re at a point where we can realize the outcomes from Advanced Primary Care that we’ve been talking about for so long. The challenge in healthcare has never been the ideas. This concept of Advanced Primary Care has been around for years. The issue has been in figuring out how to pay for it, how to deliver it at scale, and how to engage patients in using it. All of these pieces are starting to come together now, and it’s incredibly exciting," said Ami Parekh, Included Health's chief health officer, said.