“Freedom is a funny thing, isn’t it? When you have it, you don’t appreciate it, and when you miss it, it’s gone.” This could be what ICE agents are saying to people they pick up in Chicago, but it is actually what Leonardo DiCaprio says in the new movie One Battle After Another. The title seems apropos for our times, but if you put Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Benicio del Toro in a movie, I’m going to go, appropriate or not. Bonus: it is a drama-action-comedy, just like our lives right now, so I’m all in. And it may help us understand some things in health policy, so I explore that in the One Thoughtful Paragraph below.
News this week is less comedic and more in the drama-action category:
- Dramatic money news: Qualtrics will acquire health market research company, Press Ganey, for $6.75 billion, strengthening its presence in health technology and patient experience solutions, and health care payment software provider Waystar acquired Iodine Software for $1.25 billion, creating a single, AI-powered platform that combines Iodine’s clinical dataset with Waystar’s revenue cycle management platform.
- States are introducing AI laws at a rapid pace: The Future of Privacy Forum released its state AI legislative report, which tracked 210 AI bills so far in 2025, including the ones related to mental health chatbots.
- Action-oriented instructions about health AI tools: The Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) released The Playbook: Implementing AI in Healthcare, and the Duke Institute for Health Innovation’s Health AI Partnership (HAIP) released an open source AI Vendor Disclosure Framework.
“Guess this is the end of the line,” says Leonardo DiCaprio as the cops are chasing his car at high speeds in the movie One Battle After Another. But Benicio del Toro replies “not for you – you know what freedom is? No fear. Just like Tom Cruise.” Then DiCaprio does a Tom-Cruise-like stunt and shoots out of the moving car in a perfect dive-roll. Now stick with me, but I am trying to help us visualize how buyers are once again showing little fear when it comes to digital health investments. Healthcare organizations are doubling-down on investments in AI solutions that improve profit margins, according to a new Bain and KLAS study. Rock Health similarly issued a report that showed startups raised $9.9 billion in 2025, largely because providers are focusing on revenue cycle management solutions and payers are investing in care coordination and utilization management solutions. All of these investments reflect a health industry in trouble, turning to automation and software for a little help. We’ll see if these digital health tools help healthcare stakeholders have “no fear” to also do Tom-Cruise-like stunts and embrace the transformation of the healthcare system. Action movie heroes and investors of digital health tools will not solve all of our problems, however, as demonstrated by Leonardo DiCaprio in his new movie. When his character is scrambling to find a safe house, he runs into the same thing we all face with our digital health tools: “You know, I don’t remember that part. Let’s not nitpick over passwords.”
