OpenAI announces integration of ChatGPT for Healthcare with Epic’s EHR

OpenAI is expanding the capabilities of ChatGPT for Healthcare, an AI product the company introduced in January, by adding an integration with Epic’s electronic health record and a healthcare public data plugin.

ChatGPT for Healthcare offers organizations a centralized workspace that can automate workflows. Earlier this month, OpenAI announced the integration with Epic’s EHR.

As a result, authorized patient information from a supported EHR can now be brought into ChatGPT for clinicians to use when reviewing patient histories, identifying changes, and preparing appointments. Or, in supported deployments, ChatGPT can be integrated directly into the EHR layout, enabling AI-assisted workflows without leaving the patient chart, OpenAI noted.

The plugin connects ChatGPT to nine official public healthcare sources, including ClinicalTrials.gov, CMS Coverage, DailyMed, PubMed, and RxNorm. OpenAI said this makes it easier to compare and verify information such as trial eligibility criteria, medication identifiers, coverage policy versions, and provider records.  

San Francisco-based UCSF Health is among the pilot partners working with OpenAI to evaluate the Epic EHR integration.

“[W]e’re exploring how the new EHR integration with ChatGPT for Healthcare can help clinical teams understand what has changed and what matters most across a complex patient record,” said Suresh Gunasekaran, UCSF Health’s CEO, in the announcement.

“By bringing relevant information together more quickly and comprehensively, the technology has the potential to reduce time spent synthesizing data and give clinicians more time with patients. We’re also engaging frontline teams to validate these capabilities in practice and help shape where they can add the most value,” Gunasekaran added.  

In separate news, OpenEvidence is partnering with a “nationally leading cancer center” to integrate a precision oncology knowledge base directly into its specialized oncology AI sub-agent, Fierce Healthcare reported early this month.

OpenEvidence told Fierce Healthcare in an exclusive preview that users would gain access to expert-curated interpretations of cancer genomic alterations alongside patient-specific context and peer-reviewed evidence, the news outlet said.

Founder Daniel Nadler said OpenEvidence would be announcing partnerships with several nationally leading cancer centers in the weeks ahead. He also said the company would be rolling out specialist agents in genetics, cardiology, and neurology in the near future.

In addition, OpenEvidence released a new family of medical AI models. The company referred to the lead model, called OpenEvidence Darwin, as its most advanced medical AI model.

Darwin is currently in research preview and is available by application only to institutional partners, research collaborators, and accredited AI researchers, according to Fierce Healthcare.

Three new production models, called Osler, Sackett, and Snow, are available to all OpenEvidence users and are free to verified clinicians.

“As Darwin’s safeguards are validated with [the research preview] partners, its capabilities will flow, model by model, into Osler, Sackett, and Snow — the frontier arriving at the point of care as fast as it can arrive safely,” OpenEvidence told Fierce Healthcare.

Health Care Rounds Mailbag: Virtual Nursing, Bundled Payments, Single-Payer

On this week's mailbag, John tackles three reader questions: How are health systems using AI to address the nursing shortage, and do these solutions solve the underlying problem? Are bundled payments becoming the norm for value-based payment models, and what does CMS's shift toward mandatory models like TEAM and CJR-X mean for providers and suppliers? And will the U.S. ever become a Canadian-style, single-payer system? If you have a question or comment, please send it to healthcarerounds@darwinresearch.com. The episode is available here or wherever you get your podcasts.

What else you need to know

Several leading drugmakers entered into billion-dollar deals recently, the largest of which was Eli Lilly’s agreement to acquire Merida Biosciences for $2.9 billion. The Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech develops biologics engineered to selectively degrade pathogenic autoantibodies that cause a range of immune-mediated illnesses, according to the news release. Merida’s most advanced candidate, MER511, is in Phase I development as a treatment for Graves’ disease and thyroid eye disease.

Lilly will pay up to $2.875 billion in cash for Merida; the companies did not provide a breakdown of how much would be paid up front and in milestone payments. The acquisition is expected to close by year-end if customary closing conditions, including the receipt of regulatory approvals, are satisfied.

Roche, meanwhile, made two licensing deals. In one, the Swiss drugmaker agreed to pay China’s Simcere Zaiming up to $1.53 billion ($75 million up front) for global rights to develop, manufacture, and commercialize SIM0660, a trispecific antibody with the potential to treat various B-cell-mediated diseases. Simcere developed SIM0660 using proprietary T-cell engager (TCE) poly-specific antibody technology, according to the announcement.

In the other Roche deal, subsidiary Genentech will pay Shanghai-based DualityBio $45 million up front and potentially more than $1 billion in milestone payments for rights to develop next-generation antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) built on DualityBio’s proprietary DUPAC platform. The platform is designed to retain antitumor activity in tumors that are less responsive to topoisomerase inhibitor-based ADCs, DualityBio said in the press release.

GSK also entered into an oncology-related rights agreement and will pay Hong Kong-based Hutchmed $110 million up front for worldwide rights (with certain exclusions) to develop and commercialize HMPL-A830. With milestone payments, the deal could be worth up to $1.295 billion, the press release noted. HMPL-A830 is a first-in-class antibody-targeted therapy conjugate consisting of a KRAS inhibitor payload conjugated to an EGFR antibody. Initially, clinical development will focus on colorectal, pancreatic, and lung cancers.

And Novartis agreed to pay Alteogen, a South Korean biopharma company, up to $3.223 billion for rights to develop and commercialize subcutaneous formulations for multiple Novartis products using Alteogen’s ALT-B4 (berahyaluronidase alfa). ALT-B4, a recombinant human hyaluronidase developed using Alteogen’s Hybrozyme platform technology, can be used to convert biologics that are typically administered via IV infusion into subcutaneous formulations, according to the news release. The companies did not provide a breakdown of agreement’s fee structure.

Sanford Health and North Memorial Health finalized their partnership and are now operating as a single nonprofit health system. As part of 10-year oversight agreement with the Minnesota attorney general’s office, Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health said it would invest more than $600 million in North Memorial Health, with approximately $100 million to be spent strengthening and modernizing Robbinsdale Hospital (which will maintain core services for the duration of the oversight agreement to preserve the hospital’s status as a Level I trauma center and safety-net hospital) and approximately $500 million to be invested in expanding Maple Grove Hospital.

Led by CEO Trevor Sawallish, the former North Memorial Health system now anchors “a new Twin Cities care delivery region” for Sanford Health and will have its own local board of directors, according to the announcement. Sanford Health CEO Bill Gassen is CEO of the combined system, which now operates 60 hospitals across the upper Midwest.

The Williamson County Board of Commissioners approved a letter of intent with Ascension Saint Thomas, giving Franklin, Tenn.-based Williamson Health the green light to proceed with a plan proposed in July to sell to St. Louis-based Ascension for $700 million.

Williamson Health and Ascension Saint Thomas will conduct due diligence as they negotiate toward a definitive agreement. That agreement would need to be approved by Williamson Health’s board of trustees and the county commission before the sale could be completed.

West Virginia University Health System and Pennsylvania’s attorney general reached a settlement that will allow the Morgantown, W.V.-based health system to expand its footprint in Pennsylvania through the acquisition of Greensburg, Pa.-based Independence Health System, which consists of Excela Health and Butler Health System. As a term of the settlement, WVU Health agreed to keep Independence Health’s five hospitals and other facilities open for a minimum of five years and to notify the AG’s office if any significant changes in services are planned.

When the proposed acquisition was announced last November, WVU Health agreed to invest $800 million to expand Independence Health System’s services and modernize its facilities. If the acquisition is finalized, WVU Health will have 30 hospitals.‍

The FDA approved AstraZeneca’s Etcamah (camizestrant) for patients with a certain type of breast cancer. The drug received accelerated approval to be used in combination with a CDK4/6 inhibitor for patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative, locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer upon the detection of ESR1 mutation during treatment with an aromatase inhibitor and a CDK 4/6 inhibitor.

This is the first FDA approval “of a cancer therapy guided by the detection of a resistance mutation in circulating tumor DNA before imaging tests show that the disease is progressing,” Dr. Angelo de Claro, director of the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence said in the agency’s press release. Dr. Keven Kalinsky, division director of medical oncology at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University and a trial investigator, said in AstraZeneca’s announcement: “This combination provides an important new option for the one in three patients with this form of advanced breast cancer whose tumors develop ESR1 mutations before clinical or radiographic disease progression.”

Misinformation is interfering with physician-patient relationships and patient care, with nearly all of the 1,000-plus physicians who participated in a national survey saying they had encountered patients influenced by misinformation in the past year. Among the key findings, a third of the survey respondents reported they had often or very often experienced a breakdown of trust with patients as the result of patient misinformation. Almost as many respondents said they had often or very often experienced increased conflict with patients during visits because of misinformation.

Seven in 10 respondents said they encountered patients influenced by misinformation a moderate amount or a great deal of the time. A higher percentage of rural physicians (versus those in urban or suburban settings) reported higher frequencies of encountering patients influenced by misinformation when seeking care.

Leading sources of misinformation include social media, word of mouth, and influencers. Misinformation is causing patients to be nonadherent to medications and treatment, increasing anxiety, contributing to unnecessary tests and procedures, and contributing to ER and urgent care overuse, according to the survey results. Disinformation is also negatively affecting patient behavior and care.

GoodRx expanded its subscription offering with the launch of a family plan for medications and services. The Companion Family Plan covers a primary member and up to four dependents, including pets. It costs $24.99 per month (or $16.99 per month when paying annually) and gives members access to more than 250 eligible generic drugs free of charge, as well as hundreds of other drugs for less than $10 at pharmacies nationwide, GoodRx said in a news release. The plan also offers savings on dental, vision, laboratory, and imaging services.

D.C. developments

The Trump administration reached most-favored-nation drug pricing agreements with nine more pharmaceutical manufacturers. The latest companies to sign the pricing agreements are midsize biotechs, whereas those targeted in the first wave of MFN deals were multinational Big Pharma manufacturers. The newest round includes Alcon, Astellas Pharma, BeOne Medicines, BridgeBio Pharma, CSL, Kyowa Kirin, Sun Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and UCB.

Collectively, the nine biotechs agreed to invest at least $19.6 billion in U.S. manufacturing, according to a fact sheet released by the White House. Some also agreed to donate active pharmaceutical ingredients to the federal government’s strategic reserve. In all, 26 drug manufacturers have now signed MFN pricing agreements. The deals give state Medicaid programs access to MFN drug prices on certain products the companies manufacture, but the agreements do not apply to commercial insurance plans or Medicare.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced that two acting directors of agencies within the FDA had been selected as permanent directors. Dr. Michael Davis was named director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), and Karim Mikhail was named director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), which is responsible for regulating biological products, including vaccines. Dr. Davis had served as the acting director of CDER since Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg’s departure in May. Mikhail had served as acting director of CBER since Dr. Vinay Prasad left for the second time in March.

What we’re reading

The Next Challenge For Medicare Part D: Sustaining Affordability After The IRA. Health Affairs, 9.9.26

Agentic AI’s Advantage for Health Insurers: Faster Decisions, Lower Costs, Better Care. BCG Perspectives, 9.4.26

Toward Multiyear Enrollment in Medicare Advantage. JAMA Health Forum, 8.21.26

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