“I will not have you, in the course of a single evening, besmirching [our] name by behaving like a babbling, bumbling band of baboons!” No, this is not what one pundit said to the others during President Trump’s State of the Union speech. At least, not while the microphone was on. This is what the fabulous Dame Maggie Smith (RIP!) says to a group of students in her role as Professor McGonagall in one of the Harry Potter movies. Paramount is on the verge of purchasing famous lines like that one, as it just nudged out Netflix in its bid to buy Warner Bros. — which owns the Harry Potter movies. In the One Thoughtful Paragraph below, I explain why watching the Harry Potter movie that features the Triwizard Tournament is a good way to prepare for the health policy news this week.
More activity from people who would never behave like a babbling, bumbling band of baboons:
- CMS announced its Medicare App Library as part of the CMS Health Tech Ecosystem, which will feature apps that meet one of three use cases in the ecosystem: kill the clipboard, conversational AI assistants, or diabetes and obesity prevention and management. ACCESS Model participants will also be featured in the app library with a special designation. To be listed in the library, apps must complete several steps including partnering with ID.me or CLEAR to implement secure identity verification services and be evaluated by DiMe or the CARIN Alliance.
- CMS also issued a request for information to understand how AI/ML tools can help Medicare beneficiaries with their selection of Medicare Advantage health plans. Responses are due March 31, 2026.
- HHS received more than 7,000 comments (with over 400 publicly available) to its request for information about how to accelerate the adoption and use of AI in clinical care in time for the February 23rd Commenters explained the many barriers to integrating AI into existing systems, including the unreliability of data quality, lack of education and training, an inability to fully reimburse the costs associated with AI, unresolved challenges related to liability, and inconsistent regulatory guidance. (See sample of comments from the American Hospital Association, The Consumer Technology Association, the U.S. Small Business Administration, and Paragon Health Institute.)
“Your mission, should you choose to accept it…” Paramount already owns the rights to this iconic line from the Mission Impossible movies, but they did not perform as well at the box office as the Harry Potter movies. Maybe that’s why Paramount decided Warner Bros. was worth the $110 billion price tag. Our friends at ASTP/ONC don’t have Harry Potter-level money either, so they used the Mission Impossible line for a new project. ASTP/ONC’s EHIgnite Challenge website tries to entice tech companies by saying “Your Mission” is the impossible: to make patient’s health information “useable” and “readable” and “easier” and “understandable.” The agency, with its non-Harry Potter-level budget of $490,000, is asking health IT vendors to participate in the health IT version of the TriWizard Tournament: a race through a maze of clinical notes, payment data, imaging scans, etc. (“raw exports” in wizard speak) and magically integrate them into medical record (and other) systems. At the end of the race, they will hand off their EHI translator invention so that providers and patients can actually make sense of the information they have in their records. So, if you’re a tech wizard who wants to make a little money, you can find out more on March 11 at 2 pm ET, when ASTP/ONC will explain how to apply to the EHIgnite Challenge by May 13, 2026. We expect the ASTP/ONC staff will quote Headmaster Dumbledore, who advises the TriWizard would-be contestants in the Harry Potter film: “Anyone wishing to submit themselves to the tournament need only write their name upon a piece of parchment and throw it in the flame … Do not do so lightly! If chosen, there’s no turning back.”
