Beyond Wearables: Apple Wants Healthcare Products that Empower
At HIMSS26, Apple Health vice‑president Dr. Sumbul Ahmad Desai outlined the company’s next phase beyond wearables, emphasizing tighter integration with clinical workflows. Apple is expanding partnerships such as the Emory Hillandale Hospital rollout, where Macs, iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches are embedded in the Epic EMR. The firm also unveiled a Studio Display with DICOM presets for radiology and highlighted AI‑driven analytics aimed at minimizing false positives. These moves signal Apple’s push toward proactive, data‑rich preventive care across the health system.
Workshop Uses Astronaut Medical Emergencies to Rethink Value-Based Care
At HIMSS 2026, a workshop asked participants to redesign value‑based care using astronaut medical emergencies as a test case. Three teams examined vision loss, mental‑health crisis, and a blood‑clot scenario, scoring outcomes on mission success, compromise, strain, or failure. The...
Health IT Leaders Must Stay on Top of AI that Delves Into Clinical Workflows
At HIMSS 2026, Medicomp Systems CEO David Lareau warned that health systems are rapidly embedding generative AI into clinical documentation, coding and decision‑support workflows. While large language models promise efficiency, their probabilistic nature can introduce inaccuracies into patient records, jeopardizing...
The Circuitous Route of Prescriptions Requires Special Attention
At HIMSS 2026, Buzz Health president Joseph Kleiman highlighted a fundamental shift in the prescription journey, moving from a linear claim flow to a complex, real‑time routing model that incorporates multiple pricing checks and benefit options. Advances in API‑based integrations...
Alignment with Data Exchange Standards Is a Must for Digital Transformation
At HIMSS26, Sequoia Project’s Didi Davis unveiled the second USCDI v3 data‑usability guide, expanding coverage to all data classes and emphasizing provenance, traceability, and persistent identifiers. The 60‑page guide outlines use cases across provider‑to‑provider, provider‑to‑public‑health, and provider‑to‑consumer exchanges, aiming to curb...
Digital Summary Integrated in Healthdirect Australia’s Video Calls Nationwide
Healthdirect Australia has launched a Patient Consult Summary (PCS) application within its video‑call platform, which handles more than 150,000 virtual consultations each month. The tool lets clinicians create and share concise, plain‑English summaries instantly via typing, speech‑to‑text, or copy‑paste, and...
Hong Kong, Canada to Create Testbed for Agetech
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the University of Toronto have signed a memorandum of understanding to launch a Joint Research Centre on Healthy Ageing and AgeTech. The centre will conduct cross‑border pilots in hospitals, long‑term care homes and community...
Oracle Health Embedding AI to Improve Care and Increase Efficiency
Oracle Health will showcase a suite of AI‑driven solutions at HIMSS26, including its Clinical AI Agent that has been adopted by more than 300 organizations and has saved doctors over 200,000 hours of documentation time. The company is also unveiling...
New York State Does the Work on Behavioral Health Interoperability
New York State’s Office of Mental Health launched a hybrid semantic‑interoperability framework that leverages HL7 FHIR, SNOMED CT, ICD‑10 and the Gravity Project to unify data across 22 critical‑time‑intervention (CTI) teams. The solution reconciled six to seven disparate EMR sources, converting...
AI-Enabled MRI Scanner Gives South Shore Health New Approach to Imaging
South Shore Health has installed an AI‑enabled MRI scanner that accelerates scan times and delivers higher‑resolution images for physicians. The system leverages machine‑learning reconstruction to cut patient throughput by up to 30 percent while enhancing diagnostic confidence. CIO Dr. Sam...
Google Cloud to Showcase How Gemini-Powered AI Agents Are Transforming Healthcare at HIMSS26
Google Cloud announced a suite of Gemini‑powered AI agents at HIMSS26, partnering with major health players including Humana, CVS Health, Highmark, Waystar and Quest Diagnostics. The agents target patient engagement, workflow automation, revenue‑cycle management and lab‑result interpretation, leveraging the Vertex...
Best in KLAS 2026: Executive Insights for Strategic Healthcare Technology Investment
Best in KLAS 2026 delivers a data‑driven analysis of healthcare technology solutions, ranking platforms by performance ratings, measurable outcomes, and innovation trajectories. It aggregates validated customer feedback and market performance data to help executives de‑risk technology investments. The report highlights...
Scale Ambient AI with Strategic Partnerships
Healthcare technology firms are increasingly embedding Ambient Clinical Intelligence (ACI) into EHR, telehealth, and care‑management platforms to cut administrative load and speed revenue cycles. Building ACI models internally demands extensive engineering resources, prompting many vendors to seek external expertise. Suki’s...
Report: 5 AI Agent Trends to Watch in Healthcare & Life Sciences
Google Cloud’s 2026 report spotlights five AI‑agent trends reshaping healthcare and life sciences, from automating clinical paperwork to accelerating drug discovery. The analysis stresses that unlocking AI value requires leaders to discard legacy mindsets and foster a culture that embraces...
Harvard AI Doc on Why LLMs Can Be 'Uncomfortable' For Physicians and IT Leaders
Harvard researcher Dr. Adam Rodman warns that more than one‑third of U.S. adults are already turning to large language models like ChatGPT for medical advice, despite widespread gaps in digital health literacy. Many patients struggle to download their own records...
How Healthcare Organizations Can Build Ransomware Resilience
Scott Doerr, virtual CISO at Fortified Health Security, will present a session on ransomware resilience at HIMSS 2026. He outlines a phased approach that moves ransomware from a reactive crisis to a managed operational risk, emphasizing assessment, planning, simulation, execution,...
With Quantum Transformation Looming, No Time to Waste in Maturing Cryptography Management
Quantum computers can break RSA and ECC encryption in seconds, prompting urgent action for healthcare data security. At HIMSS26, DigiCert’s Mike Nelson and other experts will outline practical steps for post‑quantum cryptography (PQC) migration, emphasizing crypto agility and automated management....
Medicare's Continued Support for Telemedicine Signals Stability, Legitimacy
Medicare has extended its telehealth reimbursement flexibilities through 2027, preserving payment for a broad array of virtual services. Behavioral health telehealth restrictions were made permanent in 2021, removing geographic and originating‑site limits. The DEA also prolonged its telemedicine prescribing allowances...
Heidi to Integrate HealthPathways and More Briefs
Heidi AI has partnered with Streamliners to embed HealthPathways into its AI‑driven clinical documentation platform, giving clinicians instant access to trusted care pathways. The Australian Digital Health Agency rolled out a digital‑health teaching toolkit for universities, addressing a gap where...
Accelerating Digital Maturity in Residential Aged Care
Whiddon, a leading residential aged‑care provider in NSW and southeast Queensland, has deployed Telstra Health’s centralised care‑planning platform across its 24 homes. The system enables real‑time, point‑of‑care documentation, family portals and mobile workflows, replacing legacy paper‑based processes. By achieving data...
Avoiding the 'Tech Talk Trap' In Healthcare, AI and Health IT Communications
Terry Rubin, co‑founder of The Professional Communicators, will address the “Tech Talk Trap” at HIMSS 2026, highlighting how jargon, information overload, and rapid delivery can alienate healthcare audiences. He explains that experts often lose message control when they prioritize technical...
Voice AI in Hearing Care: Improving Access Without Losing the Human Touch
A HIMSS fireside chat highlighted how voice AI is transitioning from pilot projects to production in hearing‑care clinics. PolyAI’s Alex Brown and Audibel’s Brianna Warner discussed using conversational agents to expand patient access while preserving trust and empathy. The session...
The Agentic AI Shift in Healthcare
The HIMSS‑hosted session introduced agentic AI as a transformative operating system for healthcare, capable of ingesting the 99% of hospital data that remains invisible to traditional predictive models. Speakers from Philips, AWS, MIT, and Mass General explained how continuous AI...
How to Enhance Mental Healthcare Access for Rural Children
A University‑run telepsychiatry program in North Carolina screened 44,000 rural children, diagnosing 1,000 with anxiety or depression and connecting 300 to child psychiatrists. The initiative slashed typical six‑month referral waits to under a month by embedding master‑level clinicians in primary‑care...
At HIMSS26, eClinicalWorks Will Introduce New AI API Tool for EHRs
At HIMSS26, eClinicalWorks will launch the AI API Workbench, a platform that lets developers create custom autonomous AI agents for electronic health records. The company is positioning AI as an active participant in daily operations, with tools like healow Genie...
Why Red Teaming Is Vital for Health Systems, and Not Just for Cybersecurity
Red‑team exercises simulate real cyber‑attacks to test how healthcare organizations respond under pressure. Pieter Ceelen of Fortra explains that these engagements uncover hidden vulnerabilities such as credential sharing, unpatched legacy medical IoT, and unclear emergency procedures like shutting down internet...
Space Medicine Framework Can Redefine Value-Based Care Strategy
Shannon Kennedy will present a HIMSS 2026 workshop that applies space‑medicine constraints to redesign value‑based care. She introduces the "Orbital Quintuple Aim" framework, which evaluates five interdependent dimensions of health delivery under extreme resource limits. Participants act as spacecraft medical...
One Physician's Committed Effort to Bring Virtual Kidney Care to Rural Georgia
Georgia faces a silent kidney disease crisis, with 1.2 million adults affected and only 147,000 aware of their condition. Dr. Sharica Brookins launched Remote Renal Care in 2018, the state’s first fully virtual nephrology practice, to bridge the specialist gap in...
Weill Cornell Intros New System-Wide AI Education Effort
Weill Cornell Medicine has launched the AI to Advance Medicine initiative, an enterprise‑wide program that centralizes artificial‑intelligence projects across clinical care, research and education. The effort includes a bimonthly Dean’s Lecture Series and a seed‑grant program to fund AI tools,...
CDC Enterprise Architect to Detail Digital Transformation at HIMSS26
At HIMSS26, CDC Acting Chief Enterprise Architect Ryan M. Harrison will unveil the agency’s Technical Reference Architecture (TRA), a unified framework that codifies IT standards across CDC. The presentation targets both IT leaders and developers, illustrating how the TRA integrates...
HIMSS26 to Host Native American & Indigenous Health Symposium
The HIMSS26 conference will host the fourth Native American & Indigenous Health Symposium, bringing together tribal and Indigenous health leaders from the U.S., Canada, Australia and Alaska. Since its 2022 launch, the HIMSS Indigenous Community has expanded its network and...
Alliance of Companies Will Help Accelerate $50 Billion in Rural Health Programs
Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) has launched the Alliance for Advancing Rural Healthcare (AARH), uniting seven partners—including Arcadia, Castlight Health, Covista, Mission Mobile Medical, Telemedicine.com, TruBridge and Walgreens—to execute the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation program. The alliance will bolster the...
Health Systems Must Connect with Patients in More Meaningful Ways
Health systems are accelerating digital transformation post‑COVID, with HIMSS research showing that hospitals possessing advanced digital maturity are 3.25 times more likely to earn higher safety grades and experience lower infection and adverse event rates. The pandemic also shifted patients from...
How One Health System Attained a Patient Safety Milestone: Zero CAUTI Infections
North Country Healthcare, an alliance of three critical‑access hospitals in New Hampshire, launched the staff‑driven "Lines and Drains" project using its Meditech Expanse EHR to standardize catheter documentation and create real‑time performance dashboards. By redesigning workflows, linking orders to worklists,...
Leveraging AI to Predict Patient Deterioration
Dr. Michael Spaeder will present at HIMSS26 on using AI‑enabled analysis of continuous bedside cardiorespiratory monitoring to detect patient deterioration earlier than traditional electronic health record methods. He will contrast predictive insights from live physiologic data with retrospective EHR analytics,...
HIMSS26: AdventHealth CEO to Give Keynote Address at the Executive Summit
AdventHealth President and CEO David Banks will deliver the opening keynote at HIMSS26’s Executive Summit in Las Vegas, titled “Leading Through Healthcare’s Perfect Storm.” He will frame the current systemic headwinds as an opportunity to shift from episodic, diagnosis‑centric care to...
HIMSSCast: 2026 Could Be the Most Challenging Year yet for Medicare Advantage Payers
Medicare Advantage insurers are confronting a perfect storm of rising medical costs and a flat payment increase of less than 1% announced by CMS for 2026. The new risk‑adjustment formula and stagnant reimbursement fall below the medical‑cost trend, compressing margins...
Prime Healthcare Pits Two Virtual Sitter Vendors Against One Another – Who Won?
Prime Healthcare conducted a nine‑month, 13‑hospital trial of two virtual sitter models—an integrated turnkey vendor and a split‑component approach—to enhance patient safety in Phase 2 of its virtual care strategy. The integrated model, which supplies hardware, software, and remote observers, outperformed...
AI Agents for Patient Engagement: A Conversation with Sutter Health and Sierra
Interoperability and AI: Industry Perspectives and Best Practices
On February 17, 2026, HIMSS will host a 30‑minute panel featuring IBM Consulting’s Cathy Reese and Snowflake’s Jesse Cugliotta to explore the intersection of interoperability and artificial intelligence in healthcare. The discussion will assess current AI maturity, outline best practices for constructing...
Akron Children's Uses Epic and Real-Time Analytics to Reduce Waste Anesthesia Gases
Akron Children’s Hospital leveraged its Epic EHR and real‑time analytics to dramatically cut waste anesthesia gases, a source of 5‑10% of its greenhouse‑gas emissions. By introducing low‑flow reminders in Epic and on anesthesia machines, the team achieved an initial 5%...
