Digital health round-up: 17 May 2026

EHRs and ambient AI

Epic launched AI Charting in February, a native ambient scribe embedded in the EHR that drafts notes and orders during the visit. Unlike third-party scribes, it can draw on the patient's longitudinal record while listening. (Healthcare IT Today, STAT)
The ambient-scribe market is being squeezed. Hospitals can now choose between Epic's bundled tool and specialist third-party products such as Abridge or Microsoft DAX. athenahealth has made athenaAmbient free with EHR subscriptions from February, which lowers the cost floor across ambulatory care. (MedCity News)
Oracle Health (Cerner) continues to trail Epic in acute-care market share (KLAS: 22.9% vs 42.3%). Its new AI-powered EHR has demonstrated documentation time savings but is still ambulatory-only as of early 2026. (IntuitionLabs comparison)

FDA has eased oversight of AI-enabled clinical decision support and a wider class of consumer wearables. The 6 January 2026 guidance grants enforcement discretion where AI (including some generative features) gives a single clinically appropriate recommendation and clinicians can verify the underlying logic. Critics regard this as ill-timed regulatory deference; supporters say it removes obstacles to low-risk innovation. (STAT, Orrick analysis)
Trump administration broadens the deregulation push. A KFF Health News investigation reports the White House and HHS Secretary Kennedy are advancing additional rollbacks of safeguards around AI tools embedded in EHRs, including ambient scribes, following the FDA changes above. (KFF Health News, US News)
NHS England has moved source code to private by default (effective 11 May), citing the risk of large-scale AI ingestion of public NHS code, configuration, and architectural decisions. Existing public repos are being audited. (Digital Health)

$4B raised across digital health in Q1, the strongest first quarter since the pandemic peak. Average deal size hit $36.7M, the highest since Q4 2021, because capital is concentrating in a handful of mega-rounds rather than spreading. Nearly 60% of the quarter's investment came from ~12 deals above $100M. (Rock Health Q1 overview, MedTech Dive)
Notable M&A: OpenAI bought health data startup Torch; Headway acquired Tezi's autonomous AI recruiting agent. Both are characterised as "acquihires"; the targets were strong teams, not businesses. (MedCity News)
New Mountain's $32B "Thoreau" platform fell apart in March over debt-structure and governance disputes. The plan had been to roll five portfolio companies into a single AI-focused health-tech entity. (MedCity News)

HIMSS on the persistent gaps in digital health transformation: progress on data, governance, and adoption has not kept pace with enthusiasm for AI. (HIMSS)
National Health Executive reviews UK priorities for 2026 (AI, EHRs, and data interoperability) and notes that "evidence of benefits realisation" remains the most difficult part. (National Health Executive)