4 Takeaways from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

As health care executives continue to reimagine and reshape their organizations to achieve financial sustainability, many are forging partnerships to achieve their goals. At the same time, some organizations are rewiring their strategies as they integrate with other health systems to serve their communities more efficiently and effectively.

These trends were developing in real time during last week’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, with artificial intelligence (AI) applications underpinning many of the new and expanding alliances.

4 Takeaways from the Conference

1 | Enterprise AI applications will grow.

A multiyear agreement announced between Amazon Web Services (AWS) and venture capital firm General Catalyst is expected to help speed AI products to market that are enterprise-grade rather than point solutions. Under the partnership, General Catalyst portfolio companies will use AWS’ cloud and other services to build and deliver health care AI tools more quickly.

General Catalyst portfolio companies Aidoc, which applies AI to medical imaging, and Commure, which automates health care workflows, will be the first two companies to participate. The two startups were chosen because they have gained significant traction in the market, Dan Sheeran, general manager for health and life services at AWS, told CNBC.

Sheeran notes that the partnership between General Catalyst and AWS will stretch over several years, with new tools from Aidoc and Commure coming this year. He said Aidoc is exploring how it can use the cloud to tap data modalities across pathology, cardiology, genomics and other molecular information.

After spending considerable time evaluating how health care organizations can transform themselves, General Catalyst recognized that AI products need to evolve from point solutions from hundreds or thousands of companies to applications that serve the entire enterprise, said Chris Bischoff, head of global health care investing at General Catalyst.

2 | AI-powered digital pathology will fuel more personalized care.

Developing models to detect pathology is essential to diagnosing and determining treatments for many types of cancer and other complex conditions, but historically it has been a slow and manual process. A new partnership between AI-powered software giant Nvidia and Mayo Clinic is designed to speed the development of pathology foundation models.

Mayo Clinic’s digital pathology platform houses 20 million whole-slide images and 10 million associated patient records. To accelerate foundation model development on the platform, the health system will deploy Nvidia’s DGX Blackwell AI systems and Monai, the company’s health care imaging platform.

Mayo Clinic and Nvidia say their work will serve as a cornerstone for future AI applications in drug discovery, personalized diagnostics and treatments. The companies will continue to expand this collaboration with Mayo’s clinical and AI expertise and Nvidia Cosmos Nemotron vision language models and NIM microservices to provide more personalized health care experiences, along with predictive and efficient treatment strategies.

3 | Transformation done well can deliver huge improvements.

Take the case of Renton, Washington-based Providence. The health system shared that its Recover and Renew plan begun three years ago has netted about $1 billion in operational improvements.

The restructuring and cost-cutting initiatives include reducing the health system’s use of contract workers and patients’ length of stay, organizational restructuring, increasing partnerships with other providers and growing value-based care platforms.

Providence recently expanded its partnership efforts by forming a joint venture with home care provider Compassus and participating in the Truveta genome project, which will use AI to help accelerate drug discovery and value-based care. The collaboration boasts the largest and most diverse database of genomic and phenotypic information.

The health system also launched Longitude Health in October in collaboration with Baylor Scott & White Health, Memorial Hermann Health System and Novant Health. The initiative is designed to help providers improve care for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries and other patients covered by outcome-based reimbursement models.

4 | Strategic planning may require rewiring your organization.

That’s the direction Advocate Health has taken with its new Rewire 2030 strategic framework. The initiative is aimed at rewiring operations within the huge health system after Advocate Aurora Health and Atrium Health merged in 2022.

After bringing together what amounted to four legacy organizations, Advocate Health is now focused on its path forward, built on the “Advocate Way,” CEO Eugene Woods, said at the conference.

Advocate Health will focus on six strategic priorities to differentiate itself, a Fierce Healthcare report noted:

• Pioneer national service lines.
• Build the country’s leading model for access.
• Unite health care with wellness programs and home health.
• Develop the preeminent model for academics.
• Establish an ecosystem for innovative partnerships.
• Curate a “system of systems.”

As part of its academic plan, Advocate Health will open the first medical school campus in Charlotte, North Carolina, with Wake Forest University. The team plans to build an innovation district around the medical center. “The Pearl,” as it will be named, will serve as a mixed-use space for community residents, and multiple scientific companies have said they will take up residence in the building to enhance the student experience.