PULSE

The Eucalyptus Exit, an AI Hackathon Cardiologist, and Why Good Tech Still Fails

PULSE

Show Notes

This week on Pulse: Hot Topics, Louise and George break down…

One of the biggest exits in Australian digital health history sees Sydney-founded telehealth company Eucalyptus acquired by U.S. platform Hims & Hers in a deal worth up to $1.6 billion, raising questions about the rise of global consumer health infrastructure and what it means for the future of care delivery.

A cardiologist in Brussels places third in Anthropic’s global Claude AI hackathon after building a patient follow-up tool in just seven days, highlighting how domain expertise combined with generative AI tools could dramatically accelerate healthcare innovation.

A massive NHS trial of an AI-enabled “tricorder-style” stethoscope shows the technology can dramatically improve detection of heart failure and atrial fibrillation — but poor workflow integration meant many clinicians simply stopped using it.

Finally, a curious new study finds emojis appearing in electronic health records, prompting a light-hearted but serious discussion about clinical documentation standards, data quality and what happens when modern communication habits collide with medical records.

We are on tour! Charlotte Blease of #DrBot book fame and Louise are hitting the road together. The Sydney event was fantastic, it’s not too late to catch the Melbourne book launch. Melbourne: Tuesday 10th March 6.30pm, Mary Martin Bookshop, Southbank. Get tickets here

Visit Pulse+IT.news to subscribe to breaking digital news, weekly newsletters and a rich treasure trove of archival material. People in the know, get their news from Pulse+IT – Your leading voice in digital health news.

Follow us on LinkedIn Louise | George | Pulse+IT Follow us on BlueSky Louise | George | Pulse+IT Send us your questions [email protected] Production by Octopod Productions | Ivan Juric

More from PULSE

Oct 22, 2026

This week on Pulse: Hot Topics, Louise and George ask

Oct 15, 2026

Is artificial intelligence an existential threat to humanity? Or is the greater danger what humans choose to do with it?

Oct 8, 2026

This week on Pulse: Hot Topics, Louise and George ask who gets to deliver healthcare, as AI agents, a dating app, Apple and online platforms all push into territory that once belonged to clinicians and health services.

Oct 1, 2026

This week on Pulse: Hot Topics, Louise and George break down: OpenAI's Agent Breaches a Medicare Portal – An OpenAI agent that "didn't accept no for an answer" pulled non-public files from a legacy Medicare statistics portal, turning a benign research task into a wake-up call for healthcare's ageing legacy systems. AI Scribes Meet the Law – A Washington State court ruled a patient had no right to the ambient AI recording of her own consult, while an Australian legal analysis warns scribes may concentrate liability on the doctor who signs the note. The Medicare Pipeline Nobody Designed – An Auditor-General's report shows software increasingly marketed to optimise Medicare billing with AI, while the Health Department switched off its own AI fraud-detection model because staff couldn't keep up with what it flagged. The US Prepares to Pay AI Doctors – A New York Times investigation finds US health officials fast-tracking AI that diagnoses, prescribes and treats, including reported discussions about paying AI doctors 60 to 80 per cent of what human doctors earn.

Sep 24, 2026

Healthcare faces a global workforce crisis - but what if we’re asking the wrong question about AI?

See all episodes →