💸💸 There’s a $150 billion inefficiency tax baked into U.S. healthcare. 💸💸
We're spending 150b every year on revenue cycle management—the administrative tug-of-war where providers try to get paid and payers try not to.
Armies of humans submit, deny, and rework claims. It adds no clinical value—yet determines whether care gets reimbursed. A consulting firms dream. and entire companies like R1 RCM are built around these problems.
Now AI is coming for it. Not in 5 years. Now.
Startups like Tennr, SuperDial, SmarterDx, Charta Health, and Anomaly are attacking everything from documentation to denial management.
But that's only one area where AI is making an impact on Healthcare.
In this week’s Second Opinion, I dug into 5 AI use cases actually getting traction:
🧪 Drug discovery – AI is helping map biology at scale. Companies like Recursion, Insilico Medicine, and Generate:Biomedicines are already in clinical trials. “TechBio is now its own category,” says ex-Novartis exec Shwen Gwee
🏥 AI-native clinics – Leaner, faster, less overhead. Companies like Sword Health Sword, and LunaJoy Health are rethinking ops from the ground up. As Stephen Smith puts it: “AI will cut fixed costs—and unlock reinvestment into care.”
🖥️ Radiology – Real-time imaging support is live in practices today. New Lantern, and Subtle Medical are leading—but success hinges on regulatory clarity and physician trust.
📄 Clinical notetaking – Still the most magical use case. Tools from Abridge, SukiAI and Ambience Healthcare are shaving hours off workflows. But as Zocdoc CEO Oliver Kharraz, MD warns: distribution + product depth will separate winners from commodities.
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