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Azra AI and Blackford Announce Strategic Partnership to Close the Gap Between Imaging AI and Enterprise Care Coordination

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Partnership bridges the gap between AI-detected findings and patient navigation, enabling health systems to act on incidental findings at scale

NASHVILLE, Tenn. and EDINBURGH, Scotland, Aug. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Azra AI, the enterprise platform powering oncology navigation and incidental finding management across hundreds of U.S. hospitals, and Blackford, the pioneering enterprise AI platform and solutions provider for medical imaging, today announced a strategic partnership to advance the detection-to-treatment pathway for patients with complex and time-sensitive diagnoses.

The partnership connects Blackford’s enterprise AI platform, which integrates and deploys clinically validated AI capabilities across radiology workflows at scale, with Azra AI’s care coordination and navigation capabilities, enabling health systems to ensure that identified patients are promptly reached, navigated, and managed through the appropriate care pathway.

Closing the Loop Between Detection and Action

Health systems face a persistent challenge: imaging AI can surface critical findings, but without a coordinated follow-up infrastructure, those findings risk falling through the cracks. Together, Azra AI and Blackford address both sides of this equation, combining Blackford’s portfolio of 130+ AI imaging applications with Azra AI’s proven ability to identify, connect, and manage patients across the care continuum.

“A finding that is detected but not followed up on is not a win for the patient. Our mission at Azra AI is to ensure every identified patient gets connected to the right care, at the right time. Partnering with Blackford means we can pursue that mission earlier in the patient journey, from the moment a finding appears on an image to the moment that patient walks through the door for treatment.”

— John Marshall, CEO, Azra AI

“Our platform gives health systems the AI capabilities they need across the imaging workflow. Partnering with Azra AI means those capabilities don’t stop at detection, they carry through into how patients get seen and treated.”

— James Holroyd, Managing Director, Blackford

About Azra AI

Azra AI is a healthcare enterprise platform that operationalizes underutilized data to orchestrate and optimize care delivery, guiding patients from detection to treatment and increasing retention and improving outcomes with return-on-care made visible through real-time reporting. Deployed across hundreds of U.S. hospitals and health systems, Azra AI’s platform supports oncology navigation, incidental finding management, and enterprise care coordination. Learn more at azra-ai.com.

About Blackford

Blackford is a pioneering enterprise AI platform and solutions provider with over a decade of experience working with leading hospitals, radiology groups, imaging centers, and technology providers. Blackford’s platform provides access to 130+ AI applications across 8 clinical and operational service lines, seamlessly integrated into existing imaging workflows. Learn more at blackfordanalysis.com.

Media Contacts

Azra AI
Kaci Hollingsworth
Kaci.hollingsworth@azra-ai.com 

Blackford
Victoria Hopkins
Victoria.hopkins@blackfordanalysis.com

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CollectivIQ Tops Leading Frontier Models With 96.4% GPQA Diamond Accuracy Score According To Independent Benchmark Results; Validates Consensus AI Approach

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BOSTON, Aug. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — CollectivIQ, the world’s first AI consensus platform for business intelligence, today announced benchmark results showing its proprietary reasoning system beats massive frontier model giants for AI accuracy. CollectivIQ uses its proprietary algorithm to query the leading LLMs, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok and up to ten others at a time. The platform then highlights agreements and discrepancies to deliver the most accurate and truthful answer.

CollectivIQ is architected to optimize for cost per intelligence and to be maximally honest, systematically overcoming the sycophancy, overconfidence, and fabrication errors common in singular model architectures.

According to an independent report prepared by Ten Point Data this month, CollectivIQ achieved:

53.3% on Humanity’s Last Exam (text-only): The highest published text-only score identified in the report, outperforming industry-standard frontier models.96.4% on GPQA Diamond: #1 globally among published comparators and 26 percentage points above the human PhD baseline.

Beyond raw accuracy, the evaluation focused on calibration, or the ability to accurately signal uncertainty rather than confidently asserting inaccuracies. For Humanity’s Last Exam, CollectivIQ recorded an Expected Calibration Error (ECE) of 0.41. This represents a 28.1% reduction in calibration error compared to standard major frontier models, which typically trend at a much higher ECE of 0.57. This ensures CollectivIQ remains a reliable partner for high-stakes enterprise decision-making. Notably, these benchmark results were achieved using previous-generation frontier models rather than today’s latest flagship reasoning systems, demonstrating that CollectivIQ’s consensus architecture can outperform cutting-edge single-model approaches without relying on the newest or most computationally expensive LLMs.

“I am incredibly excited to show that the old adage ‘two minds,’ or in our case, ‘many minds, are better than one’ proves out in AI, as it does in the real world,” said John Davie, CEO of CollectivIQ. “By fusing responses from leading AI models through our proprietary consensus engine, CollectivIQ delivers higher-quality intelligence that is significantly more cost-effective and carries a fraction of the fabrication risk found in standard single models.”

Existing data proves that AI hallucinations and fabrications are extremely costly and disruptive. For example, instances where models generate factually incorrect outputs are estimated to cost businesses $67.4 billion globally. Employees are now losing the equivalent of 51 workdays a year to technology friction, up 42% from 2025, with more than four hours a week spent just verifying AI outputs.

CollectivIQ is optimized as an asynchronous expert employee, leveraging the right LLM for the right level of cost and intelligence. Simple questions and tasks route to fast, inexpensive models, and hard, critical tasks route to the latest frontier models with the deepest reasoning. It prioritizes factual integrity over instantaneous chat speeds for every worker. It is designed for enterprise environments where the cost of a wrong answer is high and precision is paramount.

About CollectivIQ
CollectivIQ is the intelligence layer for the AI era, unifying leading LLMs into a single consensus-driven platform that delivers more accurate, secure, and cost-efficient insight. Founded by the leadership team behind Buyers Edge Platform, CollectivIQ was built to bring accountability, governance, and economic alignment to enterprise AI adoption. Learn more at www.collectiviq.ai.

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Yakima Chief Hops Launches New Website Featuring a Shop-By-Lot Experience

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YAKIMA, Wash., Aug. 5, 2026 /CNW/ — Yakima Chief Hops (YCH), a 100% grower-owned global hop supplier, is unveiling a new website with feature upgrades and an improved user experience to create a better way for commercial brewers in the U.S., Europe, and Canada to purchase hops online. As one of the world’s largest hop suppliers, Yakima Chief Hops continues to invest in helping brewers succeed. The company’s redesigned website delivers a faster, more intuitive experience, making it easier to discover products, access technical resources, and connect with the tools brewers need to craft exceptional beer.

The redesigned webstore allows brewers to browse and compare specific hop lots through a new Shop-By-Lot experience.

The redesigned webstore allows brewers to browse and compare specific hop lots through a new Shop-By-Lot experience, make contract purchases, pay invoices online, manage contracts, review orders, and track shipments from a user-friendly account dashboard. Guided by customer research and feedback, the design of the new Yakima Chief Hops site creates smoother ordering paths for established customers and fast guest checkout for new customers.

“Our new site is focused on creating a wonderful digital experience where brewers can become more closely connected with the family farms that passionately grow our hops,” said Ryan Hopkins, CEO of Yakima Chief Hops. “At the heart of that experience is Shop-By-Lot, which gives brewers the ability to explore, compare, and purchase specific hop lots from specific farms online. As a grower-owned company, our new website reflects our focused commitment to creating more connected, transparent, and efficient ways for the world’s finest brewers to source hops from family farms.”

The new digital experience is now live in the U.S., Europe, and Canada, and established customers will receive instructions to activate their accounts on the new platform.

Yakima Chief Hops  

YCH is a 100% grower-owned global hop supplier with a mission to connect the world’s finest brewers with family hop farms. Operating for over 30 years, we have become leaders in innovation, quality, and customer service. We are a resource for brewers, providing industry-leading research and products. We are advocates of sustainability and meaningful social causes, working to support the communities around us. https://www.yakimachief.com/ 

 

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Women’s Leadership Center Celebrates Launch Toward ‘A Future That’s Better Because More Women Helped Shape It’

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Ribbon-cutting ceremony affirms that “tomorrow starts here” at new campus built for innovation in Williams Bay, WI.

WILLIAMS BAY, Wis., Aug. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Women’s Leadership Center at Williams Bay launched its mission of creating a brighter future for everyone by including more women leaders in defining and building that future with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on July 31, 2026, that officially dedicated the Center’s new campus at 333 W. Constance Blvd. in Williams Bay, WI.

“This Center grew out of my life experience, but it’s not about me. It’s about something bigger,” said Center founder Ann M. Drake in addressing a crowd of more than 180 supporters, community leaders, public officials, friends, and project partners. “After you work on a project like this, you realize you’re doing it not for yourself but for the ones who come next. And I intend for it to be about a future that’s better for everyone because we had the wisdom to invest in women’s leadership today.”

The celebration, which took place on the Center’s newly completed campus occupying 8.6 acres of woodland overlooking Geneva Lake, marked the culmination of a five-year effort by Drake to create a destination where accomplished women can convene to generate fresh thinking on complex issues as part of an overarching goal of advancing women’s leadership.

The ribbon-cutting celebration audience also heard remarks by MacArthur Fellow and award-winning architect Jeanne Gang, who designed the Center with her team at architecture and urban design practice Studio Gang; Susan Franzen, a trustee of the Village of Williams Bay; Dr. Chevy Humphrey, President and CEO of the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry; and Dr. Cady Coleman, former NASA astronaut and retired Colonel in the U.S. Air Force. Both Humphrey and Coleman are members of the Center’s Advisory Board.

The Women’s Leadership Center reflects Drake’s longstanding belief that when accomplished women come together in an environment specially designed to encourage collaboration and creative thinking, they can generate transformative solutions to pressing issues. The Center welcomes convenings for organizations led by women particularly in key areas of impact, which include public and private enterprise, engineering and technology, global supply chain, infrastructure and design, and space and astrophysics.

“From the first time we visited this site, we knew it was a very special place,” said Gang in her remarks at the celebration. “We made sure this design gives everyone who comes here the state-of-the-art tools and high-quality spaces needed to spark bold, world-changing ideas.”

“Years from now,” added Village Trustee Franzen, “no one will remember every meeting or every permit. They’ll remember the ideas that were born here, the women leaders who found their voice here, and the lives that were changed because this place exists.”

The Center is comprised of three buildings designed for meetings, large- and small-group discussions, research, reflection, social interaction, and restorative time in nature. Cutting edge technology connects all parts of the campus to each other and to the rest of the world for productive dialogue. The campus is noteworthy for prioritizing sustainability in its design, construction, and operation, which has included an emphasis on using locally sourced materials. All Women’s Leadership Center buildings are targeting LEED Gold certification.

In addition to its architectural significance, the Center is home to an extensive collection of art glass created primarily by, for, and about women. When complete, the quality and quantity of commissioned works will make its collection among the most significant of its kind anywhere.

Chicago-based Pepper Construction led the Center’s building process through two-and-a-half-years of construction, while OLIN Studio of Philadelphia served as landscape architect. OLIN’s landscape plan honors the geologic history and features of the site and is gradually restoring the property to healthy, high-quality woodlands reflective of southeast Wisconsin.

Founded in 1835 by Captain Israel Williams, the village of Williams Bay has a history for nurturing advances in thought leadership as well as science and the arts. In 1897, the University of Chicago selected Williams Bay as the site for Yerkes Observatory, which became known as the birthplace of modern astrophysics. The area is also renowned as the former home of George Williams College, named for the founder of the YMCA.

“With all my heart, I want the Women’s Leadership Center at Williams Bay to be a wonderful addition to Williams Bay,” said Drake. “Because this place is special. We’ve gone on this journey together—we will write the future together.”

The Center is open to the public for tours: womensleadershipcenter.org/tours/

About the Women’s Leadership Center at Williams Bay
The Women’s Leadership Center at Williams Bay convenes accomplished women leaders in an inspiring environment designed to foster creativity, collaboration, and meaningful contribution. Here, women will find a setting conducive to developing fresh thinking and innovative approaches to complex global challenges, so that they can work together to shape a better future for everyone. For more information, visit womensleadershipcenter.org.

Media Contact:
Jennifer Nix
Marketing Communications and Strategy
Women’s Leadership Center at Williams Bay
jen@womensleadershipcenter.org

 

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SOURCE Women’s Leadership Center at Williams Bay NFP

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