This is Naomi Diaz with the Becker's Digital
Health Podcast.
Here's your daily industry news briefing for today,
September 23rd.
First,
a start up has filed an antitrust
lawsuit against Epic Systems
alleging that the company is leveraging its position
in the EHR market
to stifle competition in the payer platform sector.
Particle Health, an intelligent data platform that aggregates
and delivers actionable patient data and insights to
health care companies,
filed the lawsuit September 23rd in the US
District Court for the Southern District of New
York.
The lawsuit alleges that Epic is stopping Particle
from entering the emerging payer platform market.
Jason Pasadero,
CEO of Particle, said in a news release
shared with Becker's quote,
Epic system controls the medical information of nearly
every American,
meaning one private company has unchecked power over
our health care.
Now Epic is using that power to Thor,
an emerging industry intended to bring payers and
providers into closer collaboration for better patient care,
end quote.
The lawsuit claims that Epic has broken the
Sherman Act, a law in the US that
prevents unfair competition.
Particle is asking for financial damages and a
court order to make Epic stop its practices.
Becker's reached out to Epic for comment and
will update the story if more information becomes
available.
This lawsuit follows Epic's actions in April when
the company accused Particle Health of using patient
data in an unauthorized and unethical
way that was unrelated to medical treatment.
As a result, Epic restricted Particle Health's access
to its data. However, Particle asserted that Epic
had not completely terminated access to its data
for Particle Health and its customers at that
time and Particle disputed Epic's allegations.
2nd,
UnitedHealth Group subsidiary, Change Healthcare, had to start
over with its computer systems following a ransomware
attack in February,
Cyberscoop reported September 19th.
Stephen Martin, UnitedHealth Group's chief information security officer,
said at the Mandiant Worldwide Information Security Exchange
event, quote,
when I say start over, I really truly
meant start over.
The only thing that we kept from the
old environment into the new environment was the
cables. New routers, new switches, new compute infrastructure,
deployed everything from a safe environment truly started
over.
I felt like that was the only way
that we could really ensure that we ended
up with something that we could stand behind
for the health care space because it's what
it deserved, end quote.
Mister Martin mentioned that his team has been
working on repairs since February, and some of
the efforts are still ongoing.
He said, quote, we're almost complete with the
restoration process, but we worked for months, particularly
in those early days, incredibly long hours to
restore those services, end quote.
The February 21st cyber attack on changed health
care crippled financial operations for hospitals, insurers, pharmacies,
and medical groups nationwide.
In July, the organization began sending out breach
notification letters to individuals affected by the attack.
3rd,
AI powered chatbots and avatars are set to
lead IT innovation,
emerging as the top trend expected to shape
the landscape in 2025,
according to a September 17th survey from Infotech
Research Group.
The survey conducted
conducted between March July 2024
collected insights from 1,000 IT decision makers worldwide.
Respondents represented regions, including the US, Canada, the
Asia Pacific region, and Europe, spanning 17 industries
such as financial services, health care, government, and
manufacturing.
Here's what they identified as the 6 key
tech trends for 2025.
1st is AI
avatars and chat bots.
2nd is deep fake defenses.
3rd is quantum advantage.
4 is post quantum
chirotography.
5 is expert models.
6 is AI sovereignty.
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