“What, you thought you needed another challenge or something?” It would be understandable if Dr. Oz said this to President Trump when he decided to announce the “Great Healthcare Plan” this week amid what is happening in Venezuela and Minnesota. But actually it was the actress Sandra Bullock who asked a young Keanu Reeves whether he needed another challenge in the movie Speed. The title is an appropriate theme for this week, given the pace of activity in health policy. If you are unfamiliar with the 1994 film, I will wait for you to watch the trailer here, but then come back. There are things to discuss in the One Thoughtful Paragraph that are important to you.
It is difficult to keep up with the pace of digital health policy news, so you’d better speed-read these highlights:
- The FDA released principles for AI in drug and biologic development in collaboration with the European Medicines Agency, offering broad guidance for AI practices across all phases of a medicine.
- The Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued a request for information (RFI) seeking input on how to improve the secure development and deployment of AI agent systems. Comments are due on March 9, 2026.
- ASTP/ONC released the agenda for its annual meeting on February 11-12, 2026. Keynote sessions will focus on health technology for transparency and affordability, the future of tech-enabled health care, data liquidity, and accelerating the use of AI in clinical care. Register here.
“Alright, pop quiz. Airport, gunman with a hostage. He’s using her for cover. He’s almost to a plane. You’re one hundred feet away. What do you think? [Keanu Reeves playing a cop responds]: Shoot the hostage. If you watched the trailer of the Speed movie as I suggested above, you already knew those lines. The point is, if you are in an impossible situation but you’ve got to solve the problem, you’ve got to get creative. That’s how a lot of us are feeling with the rush of health care news lately. Between the three health policy announcements at CES last week and this week’s outpouring from JP Morgan’s annual health care conference, I feel like I am on a speeding bus. To save our clients from a wreck, we are tracking and advising on new product announcements by Anthropic, Waystar, and Tempus; coverage from STAT News (here, here, here) and Fierce Healthcare (here, here, here) at the J.P. Morgan Health Care Conference; and the upcoming January 26, 2026 deadline for responses to CMS’s Request for Information on modernizing Medicare Advantage. Oh, and the large Catholic health system, CommonSpirit, launched an “AI Workforce Readiness Academy.” It is like a news explosion in health care. So I can relate to this dialogue explaining how they don’t quite solve the bomb-on-the-bus problem in the Speed movie. The boss asks: Did you have any luck with the bomb? And Keanu Reeves replies: Yeah, it didn’t go off.
Register here for our free webinar on January 21, 2026 at 1PM ET where Julie and guest speaker Brendan Keeler will get you up to speed on all this news and more.
An honorable mention to our guest speaker for a movie-reference-to-explain-health-IT-policy:
“Anytime I go to a conference, Epic is embroiled in another lawsuit” is the modern day health tech equivalent to “any time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.“
While we appreciate Brendan for his “It’s a Wonderful Life” references, we appreciate him even more for his expertise on all things Epic and health IT.
