Q2 2026 athenahealth Marketplace State of the State

All quarter long I tracked the partners on the athenahealth marketplace via weekly snapshots. Below is a collection of graphs and charts that tell the story of the last quarter. This is a nice companion to pieces that track VC and PE investments in health tech companies, because this is downstream of those investments. This data shows what innovations are being adopted by the outpatient medical group market and the problems innovators are focused on.

The marketplace is healthy. More than twice as many partners joined as left in Q2 and the partners on the marketplace added just under a thousand new connections to practices.

Patient engagement apps were a marquee category when the marketplace first started and their dominance remains today, even with all of the features athena has released to engage patients. AI clinical documentation stands out as a newer category that has already captured considerable market share.

It’s notable that Data Migration & Archiving has a relatively small number of partners for the number of connections.

Patient Engagement continues to be the best selling category from the marketplace to practices running athena.

Medical devices and diagnostics had a moment this quarter adding the most new connections. This category represents medical device integrations, such as cardiac monitors. It also includes inventory management, which is more common with buy and bill arrangements and more procedures being completed in outpatient settings.

Care management continued to grow, however we’ll see if that sustains with CMS’s proposal to limit care management activities so that they are not billable if performed by non-practice employees.

AI clinical documentation has been a hot topic this year and it continued to be a large source of growth in the athena marketplace.

The negative net number for Practice Operations jumps out here and it was driven by a single partner that steadily lost connections all quarter. If you removed this one partner from the mix, the category of Practice Operations would net a +65 for the quarter. 

Telehealth’s growth is interesting considering athena has had a solution in market for the last 5-6 years. It is the smallest category, which helps the percentage number get big quickly, but it is still a signal worth watching.

Workflow Automation is unsurprising as AI tools go deeper than voice solutions.

The increase in CDS solutions comes after athena released CDS webhooks. Will be interesting to watch this space in Q3.

AI Voice agents are hot right now and they take the top spot for new entrants in Q2.

I was surprised to see RPM growing as it has been around for a while. New technology improvements will continue to impress patients and providers, driving category growth. We’ll see if HHS’s proposed rules change shifts the narrative for the segment.

The departure numbers are smaller than new entrant numbers across the board. Patient engagement is a category where lots of people entering healthcare for the first time will play. Their most common medical experience is as a patient or helping a family member who was a patient, so those are the problem areas where they build solutions. On the other hand, Patient Engagement added the most new connections in Q2, so it is still a hot space.

I’m not surprised to see AI clinical documentation in the mix as the scribe market is very crowded.

For those who have been following my Monthly Marketplace Movers posts, this list won't be surprising to you. Develop Health with their free for practices prior auth tool is the only company to make it on both the volume and percentage growth charts. Prior auths are a real pain point for clinics and Develop Health has found product market fit and then some.

Back in May of 2025 I analyzed the long tail distribution of partner size and found that 53% of marketplace partners have fewer than 10 customers. Now that number is at 55% and jumps to 73.6% when you increase the connection count to sub-30.

For companies that are thinking of joining the marketplace, or looking to add a new offering in a different category, it is useful to see which areas have a greater percentage of their connections running through a small number of vendors. Scheduling & Access and Data Migration and Archiving are pretty locked up. AI Clinical Documentation and Med Devices grew quickly in Q2, but their overall connections are spread out over a larger number of vendors. 

Most partners did not get a rating or review from any of their customers in Q2 2026. athena’s rating system uses a Bayesian average, which is cool to people with advanced technical degrees, but makes the rating more difficult to discern for most end users. New listings get pulled toward the marketplace average until enough reviews accumulate, which is why a 5-star product with three reviews shows 4.6. Good reviews still help and it is a signal that these companies are engaged.