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Thursday, 10 September 2026

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AI agents for heart failure

ARPA-H, a federal agency that funds breakthrough health technologies, just kicked off a new program called ADVOCATE that provides millions of dollars to health tech companies to build AI agents that can help treat heart failure.

It’s another way the US government is encouraging the use of generative AI in healthcare — and it could be one of the most impactful. That's because it seeks to build the blueprint for how to regulate, pay for and govern clinical AI.

“This is a kind of thing that only in hindsight will we fully appreciate how historic this can be for the system,” Sharif Vakili, CEO of UpDoc, one of three companies picked by ARPA-H to build a patient-facing AI agent, told me. (The FDA recently cleared another UpDoc tool that adjusts diabetes patients’ insulin doses between doctors' appointments.)

I reported last month on TEMPO, an FDA pilot that allows digital health companies to distribute existing devices to Medicare patients with various chronic diseases. The companies in TEMPO don't have to get premarket authorization, relying instead on real-world data to know if the devices work.

ADVOCATE is different. It funds the creation of new, more ambitious, medical devices with the goal that companies would study and submit them to the FDA for authorization within 24 months. The AI agents are supposed to perform certain tasks autonomously, like providing potential diagnoses and treatment plans and managing the many prescriptions heart failure patients take.

Perhaps most importantly, the program will try to answer questions that have swirled around clinical AI: What should oversight and reimbursement look like? That's a big undertaking.

“You can’t just make the software and hope it works. You need to update the entire chassis of a health system,” Vakili said.

Vakili hopes that by bringing together lots of different regulatory bodies and players across the healthcare system, the ADVOCATE program can help make clinical AI a reality on a large scale. For heart failure patients in particular, he said, allowing AI (prescribed by a doctor) to automatically adjust medication doses at home, without having to wait for an appointment, could prevent hospitalizations and death.

“This done right and effectively has enormous promise for tackling head on the access and outcomes and quality challenges our health system struggles with,” he said.

- Shelby

Here’s what’s new

ARPA-H selects companies to build AI tools for heart disease

UpDoc, Tempus AI and Atman Health will participate in a new program that aims to build FDA-authorized agentic AI tools to care for people with heart disease, the federal government announced Wednesday.

What Oura's IPO filing reveals about its healthcare ambitions

As it gears up to go public, Oura described in its S-1, released on Sept. 3, a future beyond wellness tracking that taps into a wider healthcare market.

Virtual care for kidney disease falls short

A chart shows a ranking of clinical effectiveness and economic impact of virtual chronic kidney disease solutions.

On Wednesday, Peterson Health Technology Institute released a report about virtual chronic kidney disease management companies including Strive Health, Somatus, Evergreen Health and Monogram Health. PHTI concluded that while there was some benefit to getting more people on planned dialysis rather than waiting for an emergency, the programs didn’t reduce healthcare spending and overall didn’t support more adoption.

This week in health Тech

Is Apple coming for WHOOP and Oura? Apple on Wednesday added a readiness score to the new Apple Watch Series 12, powered in part by beefed-up sensors that provide what it says is “the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable.” Health app users will also be able to order labs from Quest Diagnostics directly through the app. Both of those offerings sound familiar — WHOOP and Oura are on notice.

Forus raised $150 million at a $3 billion valuation for its AI agents to take care of the administrative steps after a doctor prescribes a medication. Bain Capital Ventures led the Series C.

ICHRA, the alternative health plan option for businesses, has been rebranded to the CHOICE Arrangement, an acronym that stands for the Custom Health Option and Individual Care Expense Arrangement. Nothing has changed about the benefit itself, except that it’ll now be easier to pronounce. (We might keep saying ICHRA for a while, though).

Artem Petakov, co-founder of weight loss company Noom, launched a new startup, Axios reports. EZ Health raised $26 million in seed funding to provide seniors with care navigation that’s covered by Medicare. It's backed by investors including Primary Ventures and Construct Capital.

GenHealth.ai, which builds AI agents to automate administrative tasks, raised $16.5 million. Flare Capital Ventures led the Series A.

Nvidia invested in Verily to speed up its work in precision health, building on an earlier partnership. Verily declined to disclose the investment amount.

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