Author: Healthcare Propulsion Staff

Santa Barbara, CA and Clearwater, FL — July 14, 2026 – Cottage Health and hellocare.ai today announced an expanded partnership to deploy the hellocare.ai platform across inpatient environments throughout Cottage Health following the successful completion of a pilot program that demonstrated improvements in patient safety, clinical workflows, and patient engagement.As part of the enterprise deployment, Cottage Health will implement hellocare.ai’s Virtual Care and Patient Engagement platforms, along with advanced AI capabilities for fall prevention, fall detection, and pressure injury prevention. The initiative supports Cottage Health’s commitment to delivering innovative, patient-centered care while empowering clinical teams with intelligent technologies that improve…

Scientists at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology have discovered a key connection between high levels of iron in the brain and increased cell damage in people who have both Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease. In the study, researchers found that the brains of people diagnosed with Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease (DSAD) had twice as much iron and more signs of oxidative damage in cell membranes compared to the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease alone or those with neither diagnosis. The results point to a specific cellular death process that is mediated by iron, and the findings…

A new study from Yale School of Medicine (YSM) suggests that the eye processes visual information in a far more connected way than scientists had believed. The findings challenge a long standing view of how visual signals travel through the retina and may help explain how we detect faint objects or see in low light. Our visual system rapidly analyzes many different features of a scene, including color, contrast, motion, and shape. This process, known as parallel visual processing, allows the brain to interpret complex images almost instantly by sending different types of information along separate pathways. Researchers have long…

HCA Healthcare sent out a pre-earnings shockwave Tuesday morning with preliminary second-quarter results suggesting that coverage disruptions from the end of enhanced Affordable Care Act exchange subsidies are hitting harder than executives expected at the top of the year.  The major for-profit health system, in a release, said it “experienced a payer mix shift driven by an increase in uninsured volume, primarily due to patients who lost coverage on the health insurance exchanges.”  The shift brought a roughly $400 million pre-tax hit in Q2, which includes an approximately $75 million increase over its previous estimates tied to exchange impact during…

Researchers at MIT and the Scripps Research Institute have shown that they can generate a strong immune response to HIV with just one vaccine dose, by adding two powerful adjuvants — materials that help stimulate the immune system. In a study of mice, the researchers showed that this approach produced a much wider diversity of antibodies against an HIV antigen, compared to the vaccine given on its own or with just one of the adjuvants. The dual-adjuvant vaccine accumulated in the lymph nodes and remained there for up to a month, allowing the immune system to build up a much…

Available for over a yearSickle cell is a genetic blood condition that can cause severe pain, extreme tiredness and serious health complications. It mainly affects people of African and Caribbean heritage, and for many, it’s something they’ve had to live with their whole lives. But that could be changing. We meet Daniel Cressy, a young man from Louisiana whose dream is to become a pilot. After years of living with sickle cell, he received a ground-breaking treatment that has effectively cured him. He shares what life was like before and what it’s like now to be sickle cell free. We’ll…

Figures from across the health sector have cautiously welcomed the news that NHS England is accelerating the rollout of AI tools across the health service as part of a £10bn investment over the next three years. A new AI triage tool in the NHS App to help direct patients to the most appropriate NHS service, alongside wider access to integrated ambient voice technology (AVT) for NHS staff, are among the digital technologies being rolled out across England. Here’s what some voices from within the sector had to say: Hassan Chaudhury, chair, National Council of the Data Observatory CIC: “It’s always…

Researchers at the University of Michigan have uncovered a previously unknown biological pathway that explains how certain touch-sensitive hairs trigger the sensation of itch. The findings, made in mouse models, reveal a dedicated sensory system that may eventually help scientists develop better treatments for chronic itching disorders. “Itch is one of the major symptoms in most chronic skin inflammation patients,” said Bo Duan, associate professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. “What we’ve discovered is a pathway that we believe plays a very important role for both acute and chronic itch sensation.” The researchers identified a previously…

Hospital dealmaking remained hot during the second quarter of 2026, extending a merger and acquisition rebound that has lately seen more mid-to-large independent systems in pursuit of financial security and growth, according to a new report.  Healthcare advisory firm Kaufman Hall, in its latest quarterly M&A report, tallied 18 new hospital transaction announcements from April through June. That’s well ahead of the eight logged in the same window last year and comfortably above the average posted by the sector across the 2020s.  Total transacted revenue was $7.7 billion for the most recent quarter, which the firm noted was a major…

The growing popularity of GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus has largely been driven by their ability to help people lose weight, improve blood sugar control, and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Now, researchers have uncovered another possible benefit. A new clinical trial suggests that semaglutide, the active ingredient in those medications, may also help slow some of the biological processes associated with aging. Published in Nature Communications, the study provides the first randomized, placebo-controlled evidence in humans that semaglutide may slow the buildup of DNA markers linked to biological aging in adults living with HIV. Semaglutide…