A key shift is emerging in physician practice strategy: independence is no longer about staying small—it’s about getting big enough to survive. Rising administrative complexity, staffing costs, and payer pressure are pushing smaller practices toward a structural disadvantage. The reality is stark—groups below ~40–50 providers often lack the infrastructure (leadership, contracting leverage, data systems) needed to operate sustainably, forcing them to consider mergers, partnerships, or external capital. At the same time, many physicians misunderstand what their practice is actually worth. Valuation isn’t based on total income—it’s based on “replaceable cash flow,” typically ~30% of physician earnings, meaning selling a practice…
Author: Abhay Panchal
GLP-1’s drugs continue to expand horizons in gastroenterology, bariatrics, diabetes and chronic disease care — but the scale of the drugs’ adoption could be creating new areas of risk management for physicians, according to a report published Risk & Insurance April 29.The first wave of concern relates to the proliferation of compounded medications and counterfeit products, according to the report. The FDA has raised concerns about unauthorized and improperly compounded GLP-1 formulations that may contain incorrect dosages or ingreidnets.
A study published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology highlights findings from the first-ever in-human trial using a special real-time artificial intelligence system to diagnose cancer in the digestive system. Led by Neil Marya, MD, assistant professor of medicine, director of the Program in Digital Medicine, and director of the Digital Medicine Fellowship at UMass Chan Medical School, the SMART-AI trial showed that using AI was better at diagnosing cholangiocarcinoma, or bile duct cancer, than a biopsy.
An investigational procedure—duodenal mucosal resurfacing (DMR)—is emerging as a potential solution to one of the biggest challenges in obesity care: what happens after GLP-1s are stopped. In a randomized, sham-controlled trial, patients who discontinued GLP-1 therapy typically regained weight—but those who underwent DMR maintained the majority of their weight loss, with significantly less rebound at six months. The procedure works by ablating the duodenal mucosa, targeting a region increasingly recognized as central to metabolic regulation. This directly addresses a growing real-world problem: while GLP-1 drugs are highly effective, 60–70% of patients discontinue them within a year due to cost, side…
Virgo Surgical Video Solutions’s collaboration with the Rajpurkar Lab marks a significant shift in how AI will be built for gastroenterology—not as isolated algorithms, but as foundation models trained on massive, multimodal datasets. At the core of this effort is scale: Virgo is contributing over one million endoscopy videos (within a dataset of millions of procedures), enabling the development of models that go beyond narrow tasks like polyp detection. The goal is to create systems capable of disease detection, risk scoring, treatment prediction, and outcome forecasting—all from routine endoscopic procedures. What’s particularly important is the move from frame-based AI to…
A large population-based study shows a stark reality: colorectal cancer (CRC) risk isn’t just about screening—it’s about completion of the screening pathway. Among individuals with a positive stool test (FOBT), those who did not undergo follow-up colonoscopy had ~4x higher CRC incidence, while those who completed colonoscopy—especially with negative findings—had lower-than-average cancer risk. This flips the usual narrative: the initial test is only as valuable as the system that ensures follow-through. What’s particularly notable is the role of quality and system design. In this Swedish program, high colonoscopy completion rates (~87%) and strict quality standards for endoscopists contributed to better…
mbiomics’s €30M Series A marks a key transition point for the microbiome space—from promising biology to clinical and manufacturing execution. The company is building Live Biotherapeutic Products (LBPs)—oral therapies made from defined combinations of live bacteria—designed to restore microbiome function in a controlled, pharmaceutical-grade format. This directly addresses one of the field’s biggest bottlenecks: while approaches like fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) have shown efficacy, they remain variable, non-standardized, and difficult to scale.What differentiates mbiomics is its full-stack platform approach—combining AI-driven design of microbial consortia, proprietary analytics, co-cultivation, and manufacturing capabilities. This allows them to move beyond trial-and-error biology toward engineered,…
One GI®, the leading network of independent gastroenterology practices, today announced a strategic partnership with Oshi Health, the nation’s only nationwide virtual multidisciplinary GI clinic, through Oshi’s Access+ program. With Oshi, One GI practices can quickly and easily expand clinical offerings and reduce administrative burden, improving their overall financial health and achieving better patient outcomes. As part of the agreement, One GI practices can access GI-trained Oshi Health Advanced Practice Providers (APPs) as dedicated, full-time virtual staff to extend clinical capacity. Practices’ front desk teams can manage these APPs’ schedules, with physicians maintaining oversight of every patient interaction. With Oshi,…
At the Cleveland Clinic, the newly formed Endorobotics Collaborative signals a shift in how innovation in gastroenterology is being built—not as isolated device development, but as a fully integrated ecosystem spanning clinicians, engineers, and industry partners. The core problem is clear: as endoscopic procedures become more complex—approaching surgical-level interventions—current endoscopes lack stability, triangulation, and ergonomics, making advanced procedures technically demanding, time-intensive, and limited to a small group of highly skilled operators. This creates a bottleneck in access, despite clear clinical benefits of minimally invasive approaches. The Collaborative is designed to solve that gap by acting as a “bench-to-bedside” development engine—supporting…
Researchers led by Animesh Acharjee at the University of Birmingham have identified overlapping microbial and metabolite patterns in stool samples that can predict multiple gastrointestinal diseases—not just one. Across large datasets, signals linked to gastric cancer, colorectal cancer, and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) were not isolated. Instead, patterns from one condition often helped predict another. The strongest crossover was seen from gastric cancer signals pointing toward IBD, while colorectal cancer signals more often mapped back to gastric cancer—suggesting non-random biological connections across GI diseases. What makes this meaningful is not just detection—but shared biology. The predictive power didn’t come from…