A new law firm focused on supporting health tech and digital health companies has launched.
Elevare Law will work with founders, executives and in-house legal teams in the artificial intelligence, extended reality, care management and data analytics spaces. It plans to advise companies on formation and fundraising, regulatory strategy, strategic partnerships, building and deploying AI, reimbursement models, intellectual property and M&A.
The firm was founded by Rebecca Gwilt and Kaitlyn O’Connor, who have more than 25 years of combined experience in an evolving healthcare landscape. Elevare, which comes from the idea of elevating healthcare, is the third law firm Gwilt has helped found. In the early 2010s, she worked in the Obama administration helping implement the Affordable Care Act. That’s a project many may not realize is among the largest-ever tech implementations the federal government has undertaken, according to Gwilt. That is when her interest in the intersection of health law, policy and tech began to grow.
Gwilt is a self-described tech geek. “I love this stuff; it’s interesting to me,” she told Fierce Healthcare. She was an early adopter of Zoom, well before the COVID-19 pandemic, and is well acquainted with different large language model tools.
(Elevare Law)
The new firm is also robustly tech-driven. Elevare uses a number of third-party tools such as ambient AI in client meetings. Clients always have the option to opt out, and some do. Elevare also uses AI to help draft contract language and power legal research. Where other lawyers might use pens and paper, Elevare visualizes clients’ business models in a shared environment online. The system is easily searchable and tracks details that are key for compliance.
“This is just where the legal profession is going: You can’t not use these tools, because you will be working inefficiently,” Gwilt told Fierce Healthcare. “We want to make sure that the work that we do is creating maximum value.”
In addition to providing legal counsel, Elevare plans to connect clients with other experts in securing reimbursement codes, negotiating contracts with employers or filing taxes. “I’ve built really good relationships with people who are good at those things,” Gwilt explained. “My idea was to really formalize a network of those people who do things that I don’t do, but that are core to [companies] running their businesses.”
Part of why Gwilt is so enmeshed in tech is that the people around her are using it, from mentees to staff to clients. When a client sends a very polished contract, Gwilt needs to be able to recognize that it was machine-generated to properly scrutinize it, she said. “It’s easy to look at something and say, ‘This is really well thought out, this person is smart,’” Gwilt said. “Really, you can get tricked by that kind of thing, and you lose the opportunity to ask questions.”
The benefit of being a small firm is being nimble: if a tool doesn’t work, Elevare can easily switch to a new one, Gwilt said. “There’s no way my competitors will beat me … no matter how much money they have,” she added. Though Gwilt’s team always reviews the privacy policy of any tool it uses, it currently prefers ones specifically built for legal work, as they have stronger privacy controls.
Gwilt’s clients span across the healthcare sector, and how they are currently thinking about the regulatory landscape differs depending on their core business.
“There is grave concern among companies who are working in the Medicaid space about what’s going to happen, given the new priorities of the Trump administration,” Gwilt said. In February, Trump endorsed a House budget proposal that is likely to lead to substantial cuts across Medicaid.
Similarly, companies relying on academic medical centers to participate in research and clinical trials are getting hit hard, Gwilt said. Funding cuts to research grants have reportedly caused health systems to reduce lab head counts, pause hiring or stop projects altogether. “Academic medical centers are likely getting it from all angles,” Gwilt said.
On the other hand, health tech founders are cautiously optimistic about their business opportunity under Trump. The loss of many federal workers included those who work on regulating healthcare innovations, Gwilt pointed out. “Fewer resources means less enforcement,” she said. Put another way, the risk associated with operating in regulatory gray areas has effectively decreased.
In two memos published last week, the White House laid out a framework for how federal agencies should govern and engage with AI responsibly. In a blog post reacting to the memos, Gwilt wrote, “Even though these memos are directed at federal agencies, they’re likely to become a regular baseline—a set of expectations other agencies (and eventually private sector regulators) will refer to.”
Unlike President Joe Biden’s 2023 executive order on AI, which stressed that AI must advance equity and civil rights, one of Trump’s memos encourages “a forward-leaning and pro-innovation approach” in the name of government efficiency. The other Trump memo similarly emphasizes “ensuring the government and the public benefit from a competitive American AI marketplace.”
“Even in the language that’s coming out of the administration, the language itself is more savvy,” Gwilt said. The memos signal a desire for cautious but expedient tech adoption, she noted.
“They’re not going to operate from a place of fear about what AI can do.”
This article was originally published on fiercehealthcare