There used to be a clean line between two kinds of patients. One had a personal doctor who returned calls, coordinated specialists, and made sure nothing fell through the cracks. The other had a folder of referral slips, a stack of after-visit summaries nobody explained, and a phone number for a billing department that never picked up. The line between those two experiences used to track pretty closely with income. That line is starting to blur.

The System Got More Complicated Faster Than Anyone Could Keep Up

Part of what changed is the system itself. A single chronic diagnosis today can mean a primary care doctor, two or three specialists, a pharmacy, an insurer’s prior authorization department, and a hospital system’s own patient portal, all operating with different records and different assumptions about who talks to whom. Nobody assigned any one person to make sure those pieces actually connect. Patients ended up doing that job themselves, usually while managing an actual health problem at the same time.

That gap is exactly where patient navigation services have started to take hold. Bern Medical, based in Alabama, describes its work as helping people understand their treatment options and their medical journey, and in a state where the distance between what a hospital system offers and what a patient can actually reach tends to run longer than it does in a big coastal city, that kind of coordination carries even more weight. It sounds simple until you’ve actually tried to get three specialists’ offices to agree on a shared plan without anyone doing that coordination for you. It turns out most families never had anyone in that role. They just didn’t have a name for the gap until someone offered to fill it.

Why This Looks Like Concierge Medicine for Everyone Else

Concierge medicine built its entire pitch around access and coordination: a doctor who knows your history, has time for your questions, and manages your case instead of just treating the appointment in front of them. That model worked well for people who could pay a retainer for it. Patient navigation services are effectively unbundling that same coordination function and making it available without requiring a membership fee for a personal physician.

The service isn’t clinical care itself. It’s the connective tissue around clinical care, the part that used to fall on whichever family member had the most free time and the most patience for hold music. Formalizing that role as its own service, rather than leaving it as an unpaid job for whoever in the family volunteered, is the actual shift happening here.

The Apps Were Supposed to Make This Easier

The last decade handed patients a portal for every provider: one login for the hospital system, another for the specialist’s private practice, another for the pharmacy, another for the insurer. Each one arrived with the promise of putting patients in control of their own care. In practice, control turned into inventory. Instead of one confusing phone call, patients now manage four or five separate logins, each with its own password rules, its own notification settings, and its own partial slice of the same medical story.

None of those portals talk to each other. A test result posted in one system doesn’t automatically show up in another, so the job of actually connecting the dots still falls on the patient, just across more screens than it used to. Digital health tools solved the problem of access to information. They did not solve the problem of who is responsible for making sense of it once it’s scattered across five different apps.

That is precisely the gap patient navigators are stepping into now: not replacing the portals, but sitting on top of them, checking each one so the patient doesn’t have to remember that the cardiologist’s results live in a different app than the primary care doctor’s. The technology multiplied the places information could live. It did not reduce the number of things a patient has to keep track of, and in a lot of cases it quietly increased it.

The Paperwork Problem Isn’t Going Away on Its Own

Health systems have talked about interoperability and coordinated care for years without solving the basic experience most patients still have: too many portals, too many phone trees, and no single person accountable for the whole picture. Technology hasn’t closed that gap yet, and there’s no clear sign it will anytime soon.

Until it does, the demand for someone to sit on the patient’s side of that gap, translating jargon, tracking referrals, and making sure nothing gets dropped between appointments, isn’t going away either. What used to be a luxury service for a small number of patients is turning into standard advice for anyone managing a complicated diagnosis: get someone in your corner before the system asks you to manage it alone.

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Samsung has officially announced the Galaxy Watch Ultra2 and Galaxy Watch9, its latest smartwatch pair built around the idea that wearing a watch 24/7 should be easy enough that people actually do it. Both watches run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear Elite platform and ship with the largest batteries and brightest displays Samsung has put in a Galaxy Watch. Pre-orders open July 22, with general availability from August 7.

The timing matters. Wearable health tech has spent the past few years moving from step counters to serious health monitoring, with companies like Apple, Google, and Garmin all pushing deeper into biometrics. Samsung is betting that comfort and AI-powered simplicity are the two things stopping most people from getting real value out of a smartwatch. These watches are its answer to that problem.

The two models take different approaches. The Watch Ultra2 is a rugged, pro-sports device aimed at outdoor athletes and extreme-condition users. The Watch9 is a lighter, everyday health companion for people who want consistent tracking without the bulk. Both share the same AI health platform underneath, but the hardware differences are significant.

Galaxy Watch Ultra2: built for the outdoors

The Ultra2 is Samsung’s most capable watch to date. The 47mm titanium case is rated at 10 ATM, IP69K, and MIL-STD-810H, which means it can handle everything from desert dust to deep water. It also holds the EN13319 diving certification, the same standard used by professional diving instruments.

Samsung has partnered with Mares, one of the top names in diving equipment, to build a dedicated diving app for the Ultra2. It tracks depth, water temperature, dive time, and ascent and descent speeds. The app is expected to launch later this year and will be exclusive to the Ultra2 on Wear OS for two years.

For trail runners, the watch adds a Trail Run mode that tracks elevation, climbing progress, and terrain impact in real time. A new Nutrition Alert feature estimates sweat loss relative to body weight and tells users when and how much to drink, which is a useful addition for long runs in the heat.

On the hardware side:

• 800 mAh battery, 35% larger than the original Ultra
• 5,000-nit display, the brightest on any smartwatch currently on the market
• 12% thinner than the previous Ultra, despite the bigger battery
• Lighter, softer bands to reduce overall weight

The design change is worth noting. Samsung made the watch slimmer even while increasing battery size, which required significant internal re-engineering. That kind of trade-off is exactly what the original Ultra was criticized for getting wrong, so this is a direct response to user feedback.

Galaxy Watch9: the everyday health watch

The Watch9 takes a different path. It comes in 40mm and 44mm sizes, uses an aluminum case with Samsung’s cushion silhouette design, and focuses on all-day comfort over extreme-sport capability. The 40mm model weighs just 31.5 grams.

Samsung fitted the Watch9 with a 3,000-nit display, and the 44mm version gets a 445 mAh battery while the 40mm gets 390 mAh. Both are powered by the same Snapdragon Wear Elite chip as the Ultra2, which should mean noticeably faster response times and smoother health monitoring compared to previous generations.

The goal here is consistency. A health watch only works if people actually wear it, and the Watch9 is designed to be light and comfortable enough to sleep in, which matters because several of the key health features require sleep data to function.

AI health features on both watches

Both watches share Samsung’s AI-powered health platform, which uses the BioActive sensor to collect continuous biometric data and then turns that data into plain-language recommendations. Samsung says these features are backed by clinical research done with universities and medical institutions, though it has not named specific studies in this announcement.

The key features available on both models include:

• Sleep Apnea detection: Updated with new FDA clearance and AI algorithms. It looks for signs of moderate to severe sleep apnea over a two-night period. Not a medical diagnosis, but a personal reference tool.
• Vitals: Monitors your health baseline during sleep and sends alerts if something looks significantly off from your normal range.
• Heart Health Score: Gives cardiovascular wellness a single score and pairs it with lifestyle recommendations.
• Daily Cardio Load: Tracks workout volume and estimates how much recovery time you need.
• Fitness Index: Combines VO2 max and body composition data to give a broader picture of physical fitness.
• Hearing protection: Alerts users when ambient noise hits unsafe levels and generates detailed reports.

The Sleep Apnea feature is the most clinically significant of the group. FDA clearance gives it a level of credibility that most consumer health features lack, though users with known sleep apnea or who are pregnant are advised not to use it.

Band options for both watches

Samsung is shipping both watches with a range of band options designed for different use cases. For the Ultra2, the choices are built around durability and performance:

• Marine Band: Lightweight, breathable silicone for extreme conditions
• PeakForm Band: Hybrid material for a balance of performance and style
• Trail Band: Fabric band built for outdoor breathability and fit

The Watch9 band collection goes broader, with options ranging from workout bands to something you would wear to a meeting:

• Sports Band: Thin, soft silicone for everyday use and workouts
• Misty Band: Premium silicone with a two-tone look and secure fit
• Fabric Band: Lightweight and breathable, including comfortable enough for sleep

Samsung Care+ and subscription bundles

Both watches come with access to Samsung Care+, which covers accidental damage, extended warranty, and remote support. Users can manage their coverage directly from the Warranty and care menu in One UI 9, which also gives quick access to self-diagnostics and repair requests.

Samsung is also bundling two subscription trials with both watches:

• Strava: 60-day free trial, available in most markets. Activate through the Strava app under Settings.
• iFIT: 2-month free trial, available in 23 markets including the UK, US, Australia, France, Germany, and India. Activate through the Samsung Health app.

Pricing, colors, and availability

Samsung has not announced pricing in this release, but both watches are available for pre-order in select markets from July 22, with general sales starting August 7.

Color options are as follows:

• Galaxy Watch Ultra2 (47mm): Titanium Silver, Titanium Gray
• Galaxy Watch9 40mm: Cream, Graphite
• Galaxy Watch9 44mm: Graphite, Silver

Both watches require Android 13 or above and at least 1.5GB of RAM on the paired phone. They run Wear OS 7 with Samsung’s One UI 9 Watch on top. Full specs and regional availability are listed on the Samsung Global Newsroom.

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A French AI radiology company is making its US debut, and it’s starting with one of the hardest problems in cancer care: keeping track of tumors over time. Raidium announced on July 16 that its imaging platform, Raidium Read (R.Read), is now available to US oncology research centers. The company says it has already deployed the tool at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, one of the country’s top cancer research institutions, where it replaced an older radiomics system.

The timing isn’t random. Oncology imaging is under serious pressure. Research shows that catching lesions early can spare most patients from surgery, and the World Health Organization is updating its guidelines around early screening for precancerous lesions. At the same time, radiologists are overwhelmed. A 2025 Philips Future Health Index survey found that 41% of radiologists feel current AI tools don’t actually address their day-to-day needs. The tools exist, but they don’t fit the workflow.

That gap is what Raidium is trying to close. The company built its viewer from scratch as an AI-native product, rather than bolting AI features onto legacy software that hasn’t changed in two decades. R.Read is now available for clinical trial and oncology research use in the US, with full regulatory clearance for routine clinical practice still pending. Raidium is pursuing 510(k) clearance for a subset of features and expects to announce a decision before the end of 2026.

What the platform actually does

Oncology follow-up imaging is one of the most labor-intensive parts of a radiologist’s job. Every follow-up scan means manually finding lesions again, measuring them, comparing them to prior studies, and documenting everything. It’s repetitive, time-consuming, and prone to inconsistency between readers.

R.Read is built specifically to automate that process. Its core capabilities include:

• Whole-body lesion detection across organ types
• AI segmentation models that measure tumors automatically using RECIST criteria, the standard used in oncology trials
• Longitudinal lesion tracking that carries measurements forward across follow-up scans
• Reduced documentation burden while keeping the radiologist in control
• Streamlined reporting for tumor boards and oncologist communication

The company claims its platform can reduce reader-to-reader variability by a factor of three, which matters significantly in clinical trials where measurement consistency directly affects outcomes data.

Why radiology AI hasn’t delivered yet

AI in radiology looks impressive on paper. Industry estimates suggest more than 70% of all FDA-approved AI-enabled medical devices fall into the radiology category. But most of those tools are narrow and siloed. They solve one problem in one part of the workflow, and radiologists end up switching between multiple systems to get through a single case. That adds clicks, adds cognitive load, and often makes the job slower, not faster.

Raidium’s argument is that the underlying software environment needs to change, not just the AI models running inside it. CEO and co-founder Paul Herent, a physician, put it directly: standard PACS viewers have resisted meaningful change for twenty years, and most AI tools were simply too limited to challenge that. His view is that agentic AI, where the system can reason and act across a workflow rather than just flag a single finding, is what finally makes a unified reading environment possible.

Moffitt Cancer Center as the first test case

Moffitt is a meaningful early partner. It’s a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center and one of the US institutions most focused on oncology research. Cesar Lam, a radiologist in Moffitt’s Diagnostic Imaging and Interventional Radiology department, said the platform opened up research projects his team wouldn’t have considered viable before.

That’s a useful signal for other oncology centers evaluating the tool. Clinical research environments are demanding. Data quality, measurement consistency, and auditability all matter in ways that don’t always apply in routine clinical reading. If R.Read holds up in that context, it builds a reasonable case for broader adoption once the 510(k) clearance comes through.

How centers can get access

Raidium says cancer centers can start using R.Read now for clinical trial and research purposes without needing to complete complex integrations first. That’s a deliberate choice to lower the barrier to entry. Full clinical practice use is still pending regulatory clearance.

The company is accepting registrations from qualified oncology centers on an invitation basis. Interested centers can register at raidium.eu/viewer. Raidium operates out of Paris and Silicon Valley, and its foundation model, called Curia, has a peer-reviewed paper forthcoming in the journal Radiology AI.

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Google has started rolling out version 5.04 of its Google Health app for both Android and iOS. The update, announced by Community Manager Stefanie Frederick on the Google Health Community forum, brings a handful of improvements across nutrition logging, sleep tracking, cycle health, and fitness data. The rollout is happening in phases over about a week, with timing varying by carrier and device.

The update is the fourth in a series of incremental releases following versions 5.01, 5.02, and 5.03, suggesting Google is now shipping Google Health updates at a faster pace. That cadence reflects a broader push in the health tech space, where Apple, Samsung, and others are all competing to make their health platforms stickier by adding more granular tracking tools.

Not everyone is celebrating the new features, though. The comments section under the announcement quickly filled with users asking Google to fix existing bugs before shipping new functionality, particularly around Fitbit device syncing issues that have apparently been left unresolved for some time.

What’s new in version 5.04

The headline addition is custom food logging in the nutrition section. Users can now create, edit, and delete their own food entries, search for them later, and re-log them easily. There’s also a new quick-logging option that lets you record calories and macronutrients without having to search for a specific food name first. A bug affecting how macronutrients were calculated as a percentage of total calories has also been fixed.

On the sleep side, naps now count toward your total sleep duration on the Today tab. Sleep tracking in health apps has historically treated naps as separate data, so folding them into the daily total is a practical change for users who rely on nap data for a fuller picture of their rest.

Other fixes and updates in this release include:

• Heart rate charts and maps in exercise summaries were sometimes showing incomplete data, cutting off before the workout ended. That’s now fixed.
• Cycle history can now be viewed grouped by year, making it easier to spot long-term patterns.
• An iOS bug that stopped some users from sending friend requests has been resolved.

Users want Fitbit fixes, not new features

The user response to the update was blunt. Multiple commenters reported that their Fitbit devices, including the Fitbit Aria Air smart scales, still don’t sync properly with Google Health. One user, Les Bell, pointed out the obvious irony: Google acquired Fitbit in 2021 for about $2.1 billion, yet its own hardware still doesn’t reliably talk to its own health app.

Step counting accuracy is another sore point. At least one user reported getting hundreds of phantom steps just from routine morning movements, and said their Apple Watch handled the same situation far better. Others reported that sleep tracking had simply stopped working for several days, with some blaming a previous update.

There are also missing features that users want back. Several people mentioned that the map integration from the old Google Fit app, which showed detailed trail data during workouts, hasn’t made it into Google Health. Google officially retired Google Fit in early 2024, migrating users to the newer Google Health app, but that transition has clearly left some gaps.

Localization gaps are limiting the app’s reach

A few international users flagged that parts of the app still aren’t fully translated. One user in Turkey noted that the lack of Turkish language support makes the Health Coach assistant difficult to use in a meaningful way. Another reported seeing nutrition measurements displayed in a foreign language. For a health app where understanding the data matters, translation gaps aren’t a minor inconvenience.

What’s still missing

Users are also asking for more detailed micronutrient tracking in custom foods. Right now, custom entries support calories and macros, but not fiber, sugar, or vitamins and minerals. Given that fiber deficiency is a widespread issue, the omission stands out. Whether Google plans to expand custom food fields in a future release hasn’t been addressed.

Google says more updates are coming in the weeks ahead. Whether those will tackle the Fitbit integration problems or add more new features first remains to be seen.

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XRHealth has acquired Swing Therapeutics, a company best known for developing the first FDA-authorized digital behavioral therapy for fibromyalgia. The move lets XRHealth extend its platform beyond augmented and virtual reality devices into smartphone apps, smartwatches, and other wearables, all backed by licensed clinicians and an insurance-reimbursable model.

The deal is significant because it brings together two distinct but complementary approaches to digital health. XRHealth has built its business around immersive XR therapy for physical, cognitive, and behavioral conditions. Swing Therapeutics, founded in 2019, took a different path by combining a prescription mobile app with a virtual specialty clinic for people living with chronic pain and fibromyalgia. Together, they form a platform that covers a much wider range of devices and care modalities than either company offered alone.

Chronic pain and fibromyalgia are among the most common and least well-served conditions in the US healthcare system. Fibromyalgia alone affects an estimated 10 million Americans, yet many patients struggle to find consistent, coordinated care. This acquisition puts XRHealth in a stronger position to address that gap at scale.

What Swing Therapeutics brings to the table

The most clinically significant asset in the deal is Stanza, Swing’s FDA De Novo-authorized prescription digital therapeutic. It is the first digital behavioral therapy specifically indicated for fibromyalgia symptoms, and its credentials are solid. A Phase 3 randomized controlled trial published in The Lancet showed meaningful improvements across several key measures:

• Overall fibromyalgia severity
• Pain intensity
• Fatigue
• Sleep quality
• Depression symptoms

Stanza is grounded in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a well-established psychological approach, and is available by prescription through Swing Care, the company’s virtual specialty clinic. That clinic was developed alongside Dr. Andrea Chadwick, a recognized fibromyalgia specialist who serves as medical director. It combines the digital therapeutic with medication management, mental health support, and personalized coaching.

Real-world numbers back the clinical trial data

Swing Therapeutics isn’t just carrying clinical trial results into this deal. The company reports strong outcomes from actual patients treated through Swing Care. At the one-year mark, 88% of patients reported improvement in overall wellbeing, and more than half said they felt “much improved” or better. That kind of real-world performance data matters to insurers and health systems evaluating whether to cover a treatment.

XRHealth’s platform now spans the full device spectrum

XRHealth’s existing platform covers FDA-registered immersive VR and AR devices, evidence-based digital therapeutic programs, and peer community support. It operates across 22 US states and serves patients through Medicare Part B, VA programs, and commercial insurance. Adding Swing Therapeutics means the platform now also reaches patients through:

• Smartphone apps
• Smartwatches
• IoT wearable devices
• Virtual specialty care clinics

The company describes this as a closed-loop system where AI and licensed clinicians work together continuously, not just during scheduled appointments. Outcomes data feeds back into the platform to improve care over time, and new therapies can be added as they demonstrate clinical value and gain insurance coverage.

The bigger picture: technology as the treatment, not just the tool

XRHealth CEO Eran Orr was direct about the company’s ambition. In his view, the healthcare system faces a structural mismatch: not enough clinicians, too many patients, and costs that most people can’t afford. His argument is that technology, properly integrated with clinical oversight and reimbursement infrastructure, is how that problem gets solved.

Mike Rosenbluth, founder and CEO of Swing Therapeutics, framed the acquisition as a way to deliver on the original vision for Swing at a larger scale. “Joining XRHealth means we can deliver on that vision at an expanded scale, with clinicians and technology working together through a single platform where patients can access every dimension of their care,” he said.

Whether XRHealth can execute on that vision across such a wide range of conditions and devices remains to be seen. But the combination of clinical evidence, regulatory authorization, real-world outcomes data, and an existing reimbursement framework gives the merged company a more credible foundation than most digital health startups can claim.

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The digital health sector raised $7.4 billion across 244 deals in the first half of 2026, according to Rock Health’s mid-year funding report. That’s $1 billion more than the same period last year, with roughly the same number of deals. After the sector’s post-pandemic hangover in 2023 and 2024, when annual funding sat around $10.5 to $10.9 billion, this year looks set to continue a steady recovery.

But the headline number only tells part of the story. Funding is concentrating fast. Nineteen companies pulled in 20 deals of $100 million or more in H1 2026, and those mega deals absorbed 45% of all capital deployed. That’s up from 22% in all of 2024. In practical terms, just over 8% of deals captured nearly half the money. The median deal size climbed from $12 million to $14 million, the highest since 2022.

Behind the numbers, something more fundamental is shifting. As AI makes it cheaper and faster to build software, the old rules about competitive advantage are breaking down. A great SaaS product used to be enough of a moat. Now it isn’t. Investors and founders are going back to basics, asking harder questions about what actually holds up when any team with access to a frontier model can ship a working product in weeks.

Mental health and obesity attract the most capital

Mental health claimed the top spot for the seventh year running. Big rounds went to Talkiatry ($210 million) and Grow Therapy ($150 million), but investors are also funding the infrastructure that makes behavioral health more scalable, including provider marketplaces and AI-assisted care delivery. The gap between demand and provider supply remains massive, which makes AI-assisted scale appealing. At the same time, concerns about safety and appropriate clinical oversight are real. That’s why investors are backing purpose-built platforms with dedicated clinician supervision, like Jimini Health ($17 million) and The Path ($14.3 million).

Worth noting: consumer adoption of general-purpose AI chatbots for mental health support is outpacing dedicated mental health apps. Startups in this space also face a shifting policy environment, with the Trump administration showing interest in psychedelic-assisted therapy while tightening scrutiny on psychiatric medication prescribing.

Obesity and weight management came in second, driven almost entirely by the GLP-1 boom. Three $100 million-plus rounds anchored the category: eMed, Nourish, and Midi each expanded existing platforms into GLP-1 care. Signos raised $20 million for its over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor and announced a Dexcom partnership. Pharma companies are also moving closer to patients through direct-to-patient channels and partnerships with digital health companies. The Medicare Bridge program, a pilot offering $50/month GLP-1s, opens an affordable path for Medicare recipients. Investor attention is also spreading to adjacent peptide categories, with companies like Superpower ($30 million), Protocole ($6 million), and Feel Peptides ($3 million) all raising in H1. A scheduled FDA peptide reclassification meeting in late July 2026 could significantly affect how these products are marketed and distributed.

One pattern stands out across both categories: nearly two-thirds (64%) of mental health and weight management startups that raised in H1 sell directly to consumers, compared to 29% of all digital health companies. High unmet demand is pushing founders toward the consumer market rather than waiting for health systems or payers to act.

Four ways startups are building real competitive advantage

Rock Health stopped labeling individual startups as “AI-enabled” last quarter. AI is now table stakes. The harder question is what a company has that AI alone can’t provide. Across this year’s deals and investor conversations, four themes kept surfacing.

Founder expertise. Early-stage investors are placing more weight on domain knowledge than ever. As AI lowers the cost of building, founders with real experience inside the organizations they’re selling to can spot the problems worth solving. Clinical or administrative backgrounds help founders understand care team dynamics and operational friction in ways that are hard to fake. Investors are also talking about “good taste,” shorthand for the judgment to know which problems matter and which solutions will actually stick.

As Sean Doolan, Founder and Investor at Virtue, put it: “None of us know what the world is going to look like two years from now. The primary attribute of any pitch that is most fundamental to diligence is the founder. Founder-market fit matters a lot right now. We’ve seen real advantages with founders who understand not just the business function they’re trying to improve, but also the culture and conditions that shape how their customers operate.”

Owning more of the workflow. Some of digital health’s best-funded companies are competing to control larger pieces of the healthcare operating layer. As agentic AI increases the value of coordinating across tasks, companies that oversee more of the workflow have more context, and more context means better coordination. The risk is overlap: as multiple vendors expand beyond their original focus areas, health system customers may start seeing redundant offerings from companies that used to be complementary.

Hands-on implementation. Buyers increasingly expect vendors to help them get results, not just hand over a product and disappear. AI has made tailored implementations more possible but has also raised the stakes for failed deployments. In response, some startups are investing in forward-deployed engineers who work directly with clients to co-build custom workflows inside the customer’s own environment. Well-capitalized companies like Commure and Qualified Health have made this a core part of how they go to market. Anthropic and OpenAI have built out life sciences teams and are doing the same.

Halle Tecco, Rock Health’s founder, noted: “Health systems are leading in AI transformation right now. To think, when we started Rock Health, very few startups sold into hospitals because the sales cycle was long, and most health systems didn’t have the infrastructure or culture to successfully absorb new innovation. Now, if you look at the big AI companies getting funded, most of them are building for health systems. It’s a sign of just how much has changed.”

Network effects and trusted partnerships. Healthcare buyers have more vendor options than they know what to do with. Companies that partner with organizations buyers already trust can reduce the perceived risk of adopting something new. Clinical AI platform Abridge, for example, recently announced partnerships with Nvidia on clinical foundation models, AHIMA on coding standards, the American Diabetes Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and smart-room integration companies like Artisight. OpenEvidence has pursued partnerships with medical societies and publishers to put trusted evidence directly into existing clinical workflows. Each partnership makes the product more valuable and the next deal easier to close.

The IPO market is stirring, but hasn’t broken open yet

Digital health has yet to see a public offering in 2026, despite a growing list of companies that look ready. The closest thing so far is wearable maker Oura, which filed the sector’s only S-1 of the year. Oura raised $900 million last October at an $11 billion valuation, roughly 11 times reported revenue, and has had a headline-filled few months since. Whoop also secured $575 million at a $10.1 billion valuation as it prepares for its own eventual listing.

Wearables have matured significantly since Fitbit’s exit more than a decade ago. Today’s leading devices come with deeper data, more personalized analytics, more durable recurring revenue, and increasingly, in-app care offerings alongside integrated lab results and medical records. They’ve become genuine consumer health platforms, not just tracking gadgets.

Among companies already public, results are mixed but improving in spots:

• Tempus reported 36% year-over-year revenue growth in Q1, beating analyst expectations
• Hinge Health, which went public last year, has more than doubled its IPO price as of the end of Q2 2026, posting $182 million in Q1 revenue (up 47% year-over-year) and a 23% free cash flow margin
• GoHealth filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and was delisted
• Vicarious Surgical, which went public via SPAC in 2021, was also delisted

M&A is running hot, especially in revenue cycle management

Digital health saw 115 acquisitions in H1 2026, putting the sector on pace to exceed 2025’s full-year total of 199 deals. Q2 was the busiest M&A quarter since Q3 2021, with 71 deals announced. Revenue cycle management was the hottest area:

• IKS Health acquired TruBridge to extend its RCM platform to rural communities
• Med-Metrix completed back-to-back acquisitions of Vitalware and CanAide
• Innovaccer folded CaduceusHealth into its platform
• Thoreau Group signed a $12 billion agreement to take control of RCM company Ensemble Health

Strategic buyers were active too. Roche acquired PathAI to strengthen its diagnostics offering, and Dexcom acquired long-time partner Nutrisense to extend its consumer metabolic health platform. Whether this pace holds through the second half of the year remains to be seen, but the direction is clear: consolidation is accelerating, and both private equity and large incumbents are buying aggressively.

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Samsung is rolling out an AI-powered health chatbot called Health Assistant, now available in beta for eligible users in the United States. The tool is built directly into Samsung Health and works across Galaxy phones, the Galaxy Ring, and Galaxy Watch devices.

The timing is deliberate. Samsung is launching Health Assistant just before its Galaxy Unpacked event on Wednesday, where new smartwatches are widely expected to appear. Getting the software side of its health story in front of people before showing new hardware is a smart move, and it signals how seriously Samsung is taking the health tracking space.

The broader picture here matters. Apple, Google, Fitbit, and Whoop have all been pushing deeper into health monitoring over the past few years. What was once a step counter is now a serious wellness platform. Samsung wants a bigger piece of that market, and Health Assistant is its answer.

What Health Assistant actually does

At its core, the chatbot helps users understand what their health data means in plain language. It pulls information from Samsung Health’s five core areas of wellness:

• Sleep
• Activity
• Nutrition
• Mindfulness
• Vitals

Users can ask the chatbot direct questions about their data and get guidance on lifestyle changes. Samsung says the recommendations have been reviewed by physicians and certified health coaches. Health Assistant can also spot patterns and signals in your data that you might not notice yourself.

It will not, however, diagnose conditions or suggest medical treatments. That boundary is important, both legally and practically, and Samsung is clear about it.

The ecosystem angle is where it gets interesting

What separates Health Assistant from similar tools at Whoop or Fitbit is how deeply it connects to the wider Samsung ecosystem. The chatbot ties into Samsung’s personalized data engine, which means it can pull context from your calendar and even your smart home devices.

A simple example: if you switched off your smart lights at 1am, Health Assistant might flag that as a potential factor affecting your sleep quality. Further down the road, Samsung says the tool will be able to suggest breathing exercises ahead of a work meeting it sees on your calendar.

This kind of cross-device context is something a standalone health app simply cannot replicate. It is a genuine advantage for Samsung, assuming users are comfortable granting that level of access.

New health metrics are coming too

Alongside Health Assistant, Samsung told Bloomberg about several other health features in the pipeline:

• Sleep monitoring that tracks heart rate and blood oxygen, then flags significant shifts overnight (Apple Watch has offered something similar for a couple of years)
• An Energy Score and Heart Health Score to give users an at-a-glance picture of their wellness
• A Fitness Index that factors in activity data, heart rate, and oxygen consumption

Samsung is also looking at clinical integration

One of the more forward-looking pieces of Samsung’s health push involves getting data out of your wrist and into your doctor’s hands. The company is building a platform that would let physicians monitor patient metrics, like blood pressure, between clinic visits.

This follows Samsung’s acquisition of Xealth, a company that connects wearable device data with clinical records. If Samsung can make that bridge work at scale, it moves from being a consumer gadget maker to a genuine player in preventive healthcare. That is a much bigger and more competitive market, but also a far more significant one.

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Around 4.6 billion people worldwide don’t have reliable access to basic health services. Mobile technology and AI could help change that, but the global digital health infrastructure is fragmented, making it hard to build tools that actually work at scale, especially in lower-income regions.

In 2023, Google Research partnered with the World Health Organization to release Open Health Stack, a set of open-source tools designed to help developers build digital health applications. Now Google is taking a significant next step: transferring the entire project to the Linux Foundation, which will house it under a new body called the Open Health Stack Software Foundation (OHS-SF).

The move follows a well-established pattern in open-source software. Companies often seed a project, prove its value, then hand it to a neutral foundation so no single commercial interest controls its direction. The Linux Foundation already oversees major projects like Kubernetes and Node.js. Bringing OHS-SF under that umbrella gives the health tools a credible, long-term institutional home.

Who is backing the new foundation

The OHS-SF has attracted a notable group of early supporters alongside Google:

• The World Health Organization
• Anthropic
• Microsoft
• Endless Health
• PATH
• Regional health networks in Asia and Africa

Google.org is also providing a $3 million grant to support the project’s growth over the long term. The foundation plans to introduce a governance program that lets local startups, small businesses, and individual developers participate in decision-making without financial barriers, which is a deliberate attempt to make sure low-resource communities have a real voice in how the tools evolve.

What the foundation will actually build

The OHS-SF’s work is organized around three areas:

• FHIR foundations: Expands the original Open Health Stack libraries to make it easier to work with FHIR, the modern global standard for exchanging healthcare data.
• Multi-platform toolkit: Reduces the time it takes developers to get health applications into production.
• AI commons: A shared space for collaborating on AI projects focused on safe, effective health applications.

All three areas are built on open international standards for both health data and AI, which matters if tools are going to work across different countries and health systems.

Three years of real-world deployment

Open Health Stack is not a new idea looking for its first users. Over the past three years, a network of technical partners including Argusoft, Ona, IntelliSOFT, IPRD Solutions, KushiBaby, and Living Goods have already deployed OHS-powered solutions across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. The tools cover a range of health use cases, from community health worker apps to patient data management.

That track record gives the foundation something concrete to build on. Transitioning a project with proven deployments is a different challenge than starting from scratch, and it also means the new governance structure inherits a real community of developers and implementers who have a stake in how things go.

Why this matters beyond the announcement

Handing a project to an independent foundation only works if the foundation has enough resources and community buy-in to keep the work moving. The $3 million grant and the early roster of supporters are encouraging signs, but the real test will be whether developers in the regions these tools are meant to serve can meaningfully participate in shaping them.

The inclusion of a barrier-free governance program for local developers is the most interesting part of the structure. If it works, it could set a model for how global health technology projects include the people closest to the problem, not just the large organizations with the budgets to have a seat at the table.

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Withings has spent nearly two decades selling connected health devices. Now it wants to treat patients directly. The company announced Withings Medical on July 9, 2026, a clinical care service that goes beyond tracking health data and into actually managing chronic conditions for Medicare-eligible patients in the United States.

The service launches under CMS’s ACCESS Model (Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions), a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services initiative that went live nationally on July 5, 2026. The model is significant because it pays providers based on patient outcomes in chronic disease management, not the number of appointments they bill. That’s a meaningful shift in how healthcare gets funded, and it creates an opening for tech-enabled care companies like Withings to compete directly with traditional clinical providers.

At launch, Withings Medical focuses on cardiovascular and metabolic conditions, specifically hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. These aren’t niche health concerns. The American Heart Association has described the cluster of cardiovascular, kidney, and metabolic conditions as a public health emergency, and they remain some of the most common drivers of chronic disease in the U.S. Effective treatments already exist, but getting patients on the right medications and keeping them there has proven harder in practice than in clinical guidelines.

What Withings Medical actually does

Withings Medical is built around two approaches that research shows can change the course of chronic disease: guideline-directed medications and sustained lifestyle change. Care is delivered by the Withings Medical Group, a dedicated clinical team that handles the full picture for each patient.

• Building an individualized care plan for each member
• Prescribing and adjusting medications as conditions change over time
• Supporting day-to-day lifestyle changes alongside medical treatment
• Coordinating with the patient’s existing primary care doctor

That last point matters. Withings Medical is not designed to replace a patient’s regular doctor. It’s meant to sit alongside primary care, giving clinicians better visibility into what’s happening between appointments, where chronic conditions often quietly worsen.

Why continuous monitoring changes the clinical equation

One of the core arguments behind Withings Medical is that many proven treatments, including GLP-1 medications for diabetes and obesity, aren’t used as widely as they could be. The company says the missing piece is continuous medical data. Without a reliable stream of readings between visits, prescribing and adjusting these medications safely is difficult.

Withings has been building connected health devices since 2008, including smart scales, blood pressure monitors, and hybrid smartwatches that can take ECG readings. That hardware background gives Withings Medical a data foundation that most telehealth startups don’t have. The clinical team can monitor patients continuously rather than waiting for a quarterly check-in to catch a problem.

Nisha Basu, MD, MPH, clinical advisor for Withings Medical, put it directly: “When engagement, clinical-grade measurement, and rigorous care converge in one experience, we can reach patients continuously rather than episodically.”

A deliberate scope, with bigger ambitions behind it

Withings is being careful about how it describes this launch. The focus on cardiovascular and metabolic health is intentional, not a limitation. Company co-founder and chairman Eric Carreel described it as the expression of a vision the company has held for more than a decade, when connected health monitoring was still a fringe idea.

The ACCESS Model itself is a ten-year program, phased to test whether technology-supported, outcome-aligned care can work at scale for Medicare beneficiaries across the country. Withings Medical’s entry into the program aligns with that long timeline. The company appears to be treating this as the beginning of a broader push into clinical care, not a one-off product launch.

For patients who want to find out whether they qualify for the program, Withings has set up a dedicated page at withings.com/medical.

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The NHS is moving faster on artificial intelligence than at any point in its 78-year history. On 4 July 2026, NHS England set out exactly how it plans to spend £10 billion in technology funding over the next three years, a budget allocated by the government last year. The money covers everything from cybersecurity upgrades to a new virtual hospital service, but the headline items are two AI tools that could change the daily experience of millions of patients and the clinicians treating them.

The timing matters. NHS waiting lists remain one of the biggest political pressure points in Britain, and the government’s 10 Year Health Plan has put digital transformation near the top of its priority list. Officials say the improvements announced today are expected to deliver roughly half of that plan’s commitments and generate £41 billion in total benefits over the next decade. Those are large numbers, and they will face scrutiny. But the early trial results behind several of these tools are concrete enough to take seriously.

This is not a single announcement about one product. It is a coordinated push across triage, clinical administration, patient records, and staff productivity tools, all moving at the same time. Here is what is actually being rolled out and why it matters.

An AI triage tool that stops patients from calling the wrong number

The most visible change for everyday patients will be a new AI triage tool built into the NHS App. The tool asks patients about their symptoms, adapts its questions based on their answers, and then directs them to the most appropriate service, whether that is a GP appointment, a pharmacist, A&E, a community service, or self-care advice at home. It also gives clinicians a summary they can use to prioritise who needs to be seen first.

The tool has already been tested. A trial at Wealden Ridge Medical Partnership in Sussex, a rural practice serving 23,000 patients across four sites, found a 29% reduction in phone queue volumes. That means fewer people stuck in the infamous 8am rush to call their GP, without any drop in patient satisfaction.

Dr Ragu Rajan from the Sussex practice put it plainly: “Integrating AI triage directly into the NHS App means our patients can tell us what they need, when they need it, and be directed to the right care first time. It hasn’t replaced our judgement. It’s given us back the time to use it.”

The rollout plan is straightforward:

• The tool will reach more than 200,000 patients within the next 12 months
• It will be available to all NHS App users by April 2028
• Patients can still call their GP practice the traditional way if they prefer

AI notetaking is already saving clinicians nearly an hour per shift

The second major push is for what the NHS calls ambient voice technology. These are AI tools that listen to conversations between clinicians and patients, then automatically generate transcriptions and clinical summaries in real time. The idea is simple: if a doctor does not have to type up notes during or after a consultation, they can spend that time with patients instead.

A major NHS study published last year, led by Great Ormond Street Hospital, found that these tools free up clinicians to spend nearly a quarter more time with patients. Scaled to the roughly 11,000 A&E clinicians in England, the researchers calculated that could create space for more than 9,000 extra A&E consultations every single day.

The numbers from individual hospitals are just as striking. A pilot in the emergency department at St George’s Hospital in Tooting found that the technology saved clinicians an average of 47 minutes per shift, enough time for each staff member to see one additional patient every shift.

The national rollout is now picking up speed:

• Tens of thousands of NHS staff across south-west London are getting access through four trusts: St George’s, Epsom and St Helier, Croydon, and Kingston and Richmond
• Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust are expanding their programmes to more than 3,000 clinicians each after successful pilots
• The initial focus will be on outpatient appointments, where the benefits are already well-documented

Dr Ahmed Mahdi, a Consultant in Emergency Medicine at St George’s, said the technology lets staff focus on patients rather than paperwork. “When you’re caring for patients in a fast-paced environment, every second really does count,” he said. “It means we can see more patients every shift, while reducing pressure on staff in an incredibly busy environment.”

Microsoft Copilot for half a million NHS staff

Beyond patient-facing tools, more than 500,000 NHS staff are getting access to Microsoft Copilot following a trial in which workers cut the time they spent on admin by an average of two days every month. Copilot helps staff draft documents, summarise information, and analyse data more quickly. At scale, that is a significant amount of time redirected toward patient care rather than administrative tasks.

A broader overhaul of how the NHS handles data and records

The £10 billion investment also covers several infrastructure projects that are less visible but equally important to how the health service functions day to day:

• A Single Patient Record will give specialists across the NHS a complete view of a patient’s medical history, reducing the problem of clinicians working from incomplete information
• NHS App users will be able to join video appointments through a new virtual hospital service called NHS Online and request follow-up appointments directly through the app
• NHS-approved digital tools will help patients manage rehabilitation and exercise programmes for common lung and heart conditions
• New digital tools will help staff manage both urgent and planned patient care more effectively
• Cybersecurity improvements will protect patient data and NHS systems

What the NHS is betting on

Sir Jim Mackey, Chief Executive of NHS England, said the investment is about getting the most important improvements deployed as fast as possible. “We’re prioritising the improvements that will make the biggest difference and supporting local leaders to adopt them to drive change in their services,” he said.

Health Secretary James Murray framed it as a question of return on investment. “I’ve made sure we’re backing the right innovations, which will have the biggest positive impact on patients and clinicians and give us the biggest bang for our buck,” he said.

Mark Cubbon, Chief Executive of Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, added a note of caution that is worth taking seriously. “What matters most is introducing the tools responsibly, with the right safeguards in place, and with clinicians and teams closely involved in how they are used,” he said. That is a reasonable bar to hold these rollouts to as the NHS moves from pilots to nationwide deployment.

The real test will come over the next two to three years, when tools that performed well in controlled trials meet the full complexity of the health service at scale. The funding is committed. The plans are public. Now comes the hard part.

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