News You Can Use – January 2026

This month’s episode of “News You Can Use” on Healthcare NOW Radio features news from the month of January 2026.

The show that gives you a quick insight into the latest news, twists, turns, and debacles going on in healthcare with my friend and co-host Craig Joseph, MD (@CraigJoseph) Chief Medical Officer at Nordic Consulting Partners and myself, where every diagnosis comes with a side of humor. We hope you stay curious, stay engaged, and keep seeking the truth in healthcare in a world that thrives on information.

Buckle up as we dive into the ER of excitement, the ICU of irrationality, and the waiting room of wacky wisdom in this month’s show that features a review of:

• Apple Watch’s Hypertension Study
• Cardiovascular Risk Scores
• Lawsuits in EMR World
• Health Insurance Challenges
• AI Tools in Healthcare

Trust, Verify, and Panic

This week, we dove headfirst into the AI chaos, noting that the physician-only tool called Open Evidence, which is trained on medical literature, just raised a $250M Series D at a $12B valuation, reinforcing its position as one of the most valuable and widely used AI platforms in clinical care. With many others entering the space, including Amazon and OpenAI’s new Healthcare option which neither of us have seen, we discuss the challenges and risks, including outdated guidelines like yesterday’s cafeteria mystery meat. It’s a stellar tool if you use it like a suspicious doctor, trust nothing, verify everything, and always double-check that critical lab value. These chatbots are brilliant interns that still need supervision to stop them from making mistakes.

We talk about the Apple Watch’s latest efforts as a cardiologist and while getting Hypertensions warnings is cool, we are reminded of the original time it came along as an AI detection alert.

We’re all for innovation, but flooding already-drowning doctors’ offices with a tsunami of false positives, especially for the worried well? Not the win we need. We discuss some of the cardiac calculators available, including the MESA Score risk calculator. Useful, perhaps, but not a full toolbox. You and your actual doctor have way more data, and since we are not a statistical average but we are all unique, these scores, like AI need to be used cautiously and preferably with the help of additional guidance from experts

We talked about the latest in a line of EMR-related lawsuits, including the Epic suit against Health Gorilla, which, while we are only seeing one side, reads like a soap opera, with alleged abuse of medical record access to hunt for lawsuit plaintiffs instead of patients.

And we finished our discussion on the health insurance market? It’s a masterpiece of systemic failure where families now pay mortgage-level premiums for coverage that’s basically a “Good Luck!” parachute. This unsustainable mess just floods our overwhelmed ERs and burns out the staff.

We hope you enjoy our take on the latest news and developments in healthcare and want to help you keep untangling the web of information, dodging the sensational pitfalls, and emerging victorious, albeit a little dizzy, on the other side. In the end, the stories we uncover, and the discussions we ignite, all shape the narrative of our shared future.

We want to hear from you, especially if you have topics covered or questions you’d like answered. You can reach out directly via the contact form on my website, or send a message on LinkedIn to Craig or me.

Until next time keep solving healthcare’s mysteries before they become your emergencies and stay healthy, stay skeptical, and for heaven’s sake, check who’s listed as your emergency contact.

This article was originally published on the Dr. Nick – The Incrementalist blog and is republished here with permission.

News You Can Use gives you a quick insight into the latest news, twists, turns and debacles going on in healthcare with Dr. Nick and Dr. Craig and where every diagnosis comes with a side of side-splitting humor. Your hosts are Dr Nick a long-time host, innovator and healthcare wizard who can prescribe a digital dose of innovation to cure even the most ailing operational inefficiencies. And Dr. Craig Joseph is the healthcare guru who can diagnose both patient and software glitches with equal precision, making sure hospitals run smoother than a well-oiled robot doc.

So buckle up, because we’re diving into the ER of excitement, the ICU of irrationality, and the waiting room of wacky wisdom.

Stay curious, stay engaged, and keep seeking the truth in a world that thrives on information. Because in the end, the stories we uncover, and the discussions we ignite, they all shape the narrative of our shared future.

And keep laughing at the absurdity, keep rolling your eyes at the headlines, and keep spreading the news like your favorite gossip. Who knows, maybe someday you’ll be the breaking news story we’re all talking about!

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