Peter Morris

Three incredible days at #JPM2026. Same conversation with 10+ health system execs: "We're building our AI strategy. Evaluating vendors. Need to pick the right partners." This sounds familiar. 2009-2012: The EHR decision. After the HITECH Act, health systems spent 18-24 months evaluating Epic vs. Cerner. Consultants. Committees. RFPs. Multi-year implementations. The logic made sense: EHRs were monolithic platforms with huge switching costs. You had to get it right. 2025: The AI decision. I'm watching health systems do the same thing. "AI steering committees." "Strategic AI partner" RFPs. Trying to pick winners. But there's a critical difference: EHRs were a single, massive platform decision. AI in healthcare is dozens of different problems that need dozens of different solutions. Here's what health systems are missing: They're looking for "the AI vendor" when they should be building "an AI portfolio." There's no single AI platform that solves:   → Documentation burden (ambient notes) → Radiology throughput (workflow optimization) → Clinical trials matching → Revenue cycle optimization (across specialties) → Clinical decision support These are different problems. Different technologies. Different vendors. Different timelines. Some need FDA clearance and 24-month validations. Some can pilot in 90 days. Some integrate with Epic. Some replace parts of Epic. You can't solve all of these with one "strategic AI partnership”....no matter that Anthropic is saying right now. <ducks> The AI landscape is evolving too fast for monogamous vendor relationships. 6 months ago: GPT-4 for clinical documentation. Today: Ambient listening, agentic workflows, multimodal imaging analysis. 6 months from now: Something else entirely. That's why you need exposure across the whole landscape—not a bet on one vendor. The mistake I see health systems making: Approach 1: "Strategic Partner" Strategy Pick one AI vendor → Enterprise deal → 3-year commitment → Hope they solve everything Result: You're locked in. Technology moves on. You're stuck in vendor negotiations while competitors move faster. Approach 2: "Portfolio Strategy" Deploy capital across multiple companies → Take equity → Co-develop solutions → Maintain optionality Result: You capture upside. You shape products. You're first to new capabilities. You have relationships across the ecosystem. After 20 years building innovation platforms at JPMorgan, Mousse Partners, Blueprint Health, Junto Health, Atlantic Health: In fast-moving markets, portfolio strategies beat single-vendor bets. Healthcare AI is moving fast. The question isn't "Which AI vendor should we pick?" The question is: "How do we build an AI portfolio that gives us the most optionality" If you're thinking about this, let's talk. 📩 douglas.m.hayes@gmail.com ☎️ 215-620-2032 #healthcareAI #digitalhealth #venturecapital #innovation

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Institutions don’t fail all at once. They fail when design can’t keep up with change. In Davos this week, I’ll be joining the inaugural gathering of the Institutional Research Network, a new initiative convened by The Digital Economist. The focus is not another set of conversations but the patient work of connecting research, markets, and governance so ideas can take institutional form and hold under real-world pressure. Some initiatives are about visibility. This one is about durability. #Davos2026 #InstitutionalDesign #IRN #TheDigitalEconomist

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Former Drawbridge Health CEO Launches Manifold Health AI at JPM to Build the First Digital Health Index Twin for Chronic Disease. SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Manifold Health AI today announced its launch at JPM Healthcare Week and the GMT MedTech Symposium, unveiling a first-to-market platform that combines a novel, precision-designed blood test with an AI-driven Digital Health Index Twin to translate biological data into financial risk intelligence for healthcare infrastructure. The announcement was delivered by Manifold's Founder and CEO, Jerome Scelza. This will fundamentally change health risk management, improve health outcomes, and make healthcare affordable again. For the complete press release: https://lnkd.in/e9NsnRiT Message me if you would like to know more!

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Federal leaders at HHS and CMS are explicitly pro healthcare AI. And if you don't know, now you know. In the past 3 months they have already implemented pro AI policies across multiple agencies: ARPA-H's ADVOCATE program, FDA's TEMPO, and CMS's ACCESS model - brought to you by Innovation Center Director Abe Sutton who is speaking with me here. And I never thought the AMA would be issuing statements in support of health AI, but somehow this is the world we are living in. The truth is, clinical AI is a win for virtually every stakeholder in the healthcare system if we get policy right. Who still needs to be convinced? Plenty of people on the margins of our industry. But I'll call attention in particular to the American public where there are still significant fears about job loss, privacy, etc. Waymo is probably >30% market share in SF and it got there in ~18 months by putting an excellent product in people's hands. We'll win the public by getting them something of tangible value that clearly makes their lives better.

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FORCING CHANGE IN SITE OF CARE McKinsey & Company's recent paper on the forces pressuring healthcare, including the possibility of margin compression of up to 13 percentage points for health systems, does a good job of putting numbers around what most operators already feel. Two of the biggest drivers they mention are policy shifts in reimbursement and rising utilization driven by an aging population. The cohort of 70+ year old Americans will grow the fastest over the next 5 years, and it is well established that older patients have more complex needs, more chronic disease, and more touchpoints within the healthcare system. Layer that on top of continued clinical workforce shortages, and the supply-demand gap widens further. From my perspective, optimizing for site of care is the most important lever we have to address this challenge. We can’t quickly reduce how much care older patients need, but we can change where and how services are delivered. Supporting aging patients in lower-cost settings like the home, ambulatory sites, and virtual environments is no longer just a preference or convenience, it’s a necessity. This is where the conversation around site-neutral payments becomes so relevant. CMS is moving quickly in this direction, and hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs) are squarely in the crosshairs. The shift will undoubtedly clamp down further on hospital margins, but it shouldn’t be surprising. We’ve been talking about the demise of HOPD reimbursement for years, and the health systems that will fare best are the ones who are working towards aligning their approach with where patients can be treated safely, efficiently, and at lower cost, rather than relying on legacy reimbursement structures to fill the gap. And just like it doesn’t make sense to try to replicate a hospital or nursing home environment in a patient’s home, we also shouldn’t try to carry the same clinical staffing model into every care setting. Yes, there are non-negotiables when it comes to patient safety and clinical expertise, but there’s also a meaningful opportunity to rethink how teams are built. That means clinicians at every level working at the top of their licenses, thoughtfully involving family members and community resources, and using technology to surround these sites of care with non-clinical operational support. From my health system days, I understand why rising costs, margin pressure, and site-neutral payments feel like threats. While painful, I’m hopeful they can also serve as a positive forcing function, pushing us toward care models that are better aligned with our aging population and the realities of today’s workforce.

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