The HLTH 2024 conference kicked off Sunday, Oct. 20, in Las Vegas at the Venetian Expo Center, where all sorts of innovative companies from the healthcare industry will connect to share strategies, network and discuss their thoughts on the future. Speakers and presenters this year include leaders from Kaiser Permanente, Nvidia, Oracle, Walgreens and many more plus special appearances by Dr. Jill Biden, Halle Berry and Lenny Kravitz.
Follow here for updates throughout the day on the latest happenings from the conference.
Missed a day of the conference? Catch up here:
8:00 p.m. CT: Walgreens is moving on from VillageMD
VillageMD is not a key part of Walgreens’ healthcare strategy moving forward, Mary Langowski, president of U.S. healthcare at Walgreens, said Monday at the HLTH conference.
Walgreens has invested more than $6 billion into VillageMD and took a majority stake in the startup primary care provider in 2021. Up until recently, Walgreens had mapped out an aggressive expansion for VillageMD.
However, those plans soured as Walgreens battled headwinds in pharmacy and retail. VillageMD closed 160 of its primary care clinics in the first few months of this year, and Walgreens said in June it plans to reduce its stake in VillageMD.
Langowski, who began her role in March, did not provide any updates on Walgreens’ VillageMD investment on Monday. But she said the company is working with VillageMD to determine the best growth path.
VillageMD expanded into multispecialty and urgent care in early 2023 with an $8.9 billion deal to acquire Summit Health-CityMD.
Walgreens doesn’t need one brick-and-mortar healthcare partner, Langowski said. It wants to go bigger.
“We see ourselves as an entry point to healthcare, as a midpoint to healthcare, as the endpoint to the healthcare system,” she said. “That means we’re focused on, how do we interface with the consumer in a very scaled way?”
Walgreens is looking to refocus on its core pharmacy business and build relationships with multiple payers and pharmacy benefit managers. The company supports provider status for its pharmacists and wants them to be able to do more and be paid for it, Langowski said.
— Caroline Hudson
5:45 p.m. CT: How Google stands out among big tech competitors in healthcare
Big tech has made its presence known at HTLH as the healthcare AI arms race heats up.
Google, Microsoft and Amazon have all carved out space on the exhibit floor and all three are highlighting how their cloud-based software products will enable providers, payers and startups to use artificial intelligence tools. Both Google and Microsoft recently announced new healthcare-specific AI capabilities ahead of HLTH.
Google Cloud, the cloud-based arm of the tech company, made its Vertex AI Search for Healthcare product available to all customers last Thursday. Vertex AI Search for Healthcare allows clinicians to search and pull specific medical data within an electronic health record system.
Google has leaned on its legacy health system customers in developing AI for the industry. It is working with health systems such as Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare and Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic.
“We do it with them, not for them," said Google Cloud’s director of global healthcare solutions Aashima Gupta in an interview at HLTH. “They understand their workflows better. "They understand the nuances of use cases [and] where they're spending the most time.”
Without mentioning Google’s competitors by name, Gupta said the company has a more open platform than the other big tech companies in healthcare. Through open platform, she said Google isn’t forcing health system customers to use its full vertically built solution. She said AI in healthcare is in its early stages, which means health systems need to adopt at their own pace.
“Being open means letting them have their choice,” Gupta said. “It’s the best of breed versus best of suite technology. I think that's where we differ completely. We hear that from our customers that they don’t want to commit too much.”
4:50 p.m. CT: Amazon One Medical, Cleveland Clinic partner on primary care
Technology giant Amazon is partnering with a high-profile provider to expand its primary care offerings.
Amazon One Medical will collaborate with Cleveland Clinic to open a primary care office in 2025, with plans for additional locations over the next few years, the organizations said Monday.
“We’re starting small with a couple of locations, … then we’ll see where it takes us,” said. Dr. Tomislav Mihaljevic, CEO and president at Cleveland Clinic, said during an interview at HLTH. “We’re continuously evaluating potential partnerships, and this is the one that just rose to the top of what we think is the right thing for our patients.”
— Brock E.W. Turner and Caroline Hudson
4:00 p.m. CT: Blue Shield of California, Salesforce look to streamline prior authorization
Blue Shield of California and Salesforce are saying goodbye to the fax machine.
The two companies are partnering to create a prior authorization solution on the Salesforce Health Cloud platform that helps streamline more than 20 different data systems into one process — ultimately making prior authorization faster. Testing is expected to begin in early 2025, with a limited rollout scheduled later in the year. Salesforce specializes in customer relationship management software and applications.
The platform can search electronic health records for relevant clinical information and compile it into a pre-populated form, allowing physicians to submit requests on the spot, Blue Shield said in an announcement on Monday.
“If [prior authorization] is not the most painful process in healthcare, it’s pretty darn close,” Paul Markovich, president and CEO of Blue Shield of California, said during a presentation at the HLTH conference.
Other healthcare companies want these types of solutions, but they shy away from the heavy lifting required to build the infrastructure, Markovich said in an interview.
Monday’s announcement builds on previous investments by Blue Shield.
In June, the insurer launched a new member health record that combines health data from a patient’s medical history and allows them to view it at one place. In early 2023, the company also launched Care Connect, a care management platform that consolidates member data from 13 data systems to help clinicians better coordinate care.
For Salesforce, the partnership is a way to build up its healthcare offerings, which include 15 industry solutions. Salesforce likes to partner with its clients to develop products that can be used on a larger, industrywide scale, Jeff Amann, general manager of industries, said in an interview.
“We don’t grow by just doing little things. We grow by making big differences,” Amann said. “But to make a big difference, you have to make big investments.”
— Caroline Hudson
2:50 p.m. CT: Nvidia partnerships driving health AI growth
Nvidia’s fingerprints are all over the healthcare industry through multiple partnerships.
Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare, said the chipmaker’s computational architecture is allowing various health technology partners to create generative AI models across a variety of use cases. At one point, Powell shared a graphic of nearly 40 healthcare-centric partnerships the company has formed.
She highlighted a few of those partnerships during her keynote address at the HLTH conference.
Powell announced that Nvidia is working with consulting firm Deloitte to create digital AI agents for health systems. The agents are virtual representations of a human that can connect directly with patients.
In the case of Ottawa Hospital in Ontario, Canada, which worked with both companies to develop the technology, the AI agents are used to help assist patients with consultations for surgeries.
Deloitte and Nvidia plan to develop and market the technology to other health systems for different use cases, she said.
“We can take this capability of customizing digital agents of all kinds to create new experiences and reduce administrative burden and provide connectivity to all humans with the right digital information," Powell said. "[We can] provide that to hospitals around the country and many more around the world."
Along with Deloitte, Powell talked at the conference about the chipmaker’s partnership with clinical AI company Aidoc. On Monday, the companies announced they were developing a blueprint that would allow health systems to adopt clinical AI. She also mentioned the company’s partnership with ConcertAI to build an AI application that can simulate clinical trials.
Nvidia, which has a market cap of nearly $3.5 trillion, has made waves in healthcare and signed agreements to power the AI models of digital health companies GE HealthCare, Nuance, Abridge and Hippocratic AI, along with working on drug discovery and development for a host of pharmaceutical companies, including Amgen.
— Gabriel Perna
1:45 p.m. CT: Highmark Health, Spring Health to expand mental health partnership
Highmark Health is doubling down on its partnership with behavioral health company Spring Health.
The program, announced at the HLTH 2023 conference, launched in January with 2.3 million eligible health plan members, providing access to mental health services. Patients can request an appointment with a Spring Health provider through Highmark’s app and secure an appointment in five days or less, according to a Highmark study released Monday.
The study results also showed patients using the program who have moderate to severe depression or anxiety on average achieved remission in 33 and 42 days, respectively, compared with a national average of three to six months.
“One of the main reasons [mental health] is a crisis is because there’s no access,” said Dr. Tony Farah, chief medical and clinical transformation officer at Highmark Health. “When we improve health, the total cost of care comes down. It’s kind of a good vicious cycle.”
Highmark is adding an employee assistance program to the platform early next year. The service will also become available to enrollees in Pennsylvania ‘s Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Farah said Highmark’s strategy with Spring Health could be a template for other organizations across the country.
— Caroline Hudson
