Tech companies and healthcare providers flocked to Las Vegas this week to talk about the latest innovative tools and strategies. But amid shifting definitions of value, uncertain signals from Washington and increasing pressure to reduce costs and improve outcomes, are healthcare leaders struggling to just stay the course?
The almost frantic pace at HIMSS 25 this week hints at an industry struggling to keep up with the times.
The exhibit hall at the Venetian teemed with people rushing from one event or meeting to the next, making deals or looking to make deals. Technology vendors announced new partnerships, programs and product upgrades at a rate almost bordering on desperation.
Fueled by the advances of AI – in the consumer world as well as healthcare – and digital health, health system and hospital executives are dealing with a rapidly evolving industry. They're being forced to embrace change at a faster rate than they're used to, and in some cases struggling to connect the dots on innovation and ROI. Everybody knows that AI is a transformational tool, and no one wants to be left out.
But healthcare organizations are struggling on several fronts. Everyone is feeling the workforce shortage and looking for ways to keep who they have, attract whoever is out there, or use technology to supplement the workforce. Money is tight, so there's little to spend on new ideas or technology and a strong push to reduce costs and inefficiency.
For Susan Gutjahr, HIT Director for Sparta Community Hospital, the urgency is there to find technology that can help the 25-bed critical access hospital in Sparta, Illinois stay open. The hospital epitomizes the small, rural facility in farming and mining country struggling to keep up with the big boys in Chicago, several hours to the northeast, and St. Louis, 50 miles to the northwest.
"It's hard to find [technology] for us," she says, noting the hospital has had the same EMR since 1997. "We really need to get our foot in the door."
Gutjahr says hospital leadership is eager to find tools to improve patient engagement, an important strategy for small, rural hospitals that are often the linchpin of the community. She says they received federal funding during the pandemic, which they used to boost their virtual platform and reward stressed out staff, but that money is gone now and there's no indication that they'll be getting anything from Washington.
"We need to ask some hard questions about what this [technology] could really bring us," she says.
At the other end of the spectrum is the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, a well-known health system looking to expand its innovation strategy. Lavonia Thomas, BSN, DNP, MSN, RN, the health system's Chief Nursing Informatics Officer, led a team of nine nurses to HIMSS with the goal of finding the right technology that nurses will actually value and use.
"What are the problems that nurses at MD Anderson have that [can be addressed] here?" she asks. "We want to know what the nurses think. We know that the nurses using [this technology] will determine its return on investment for us."
And that may be the key to HIMSS' sustainability, which took a hit during COVID-19 but seems to be rebounding quite well. The healthcare C-Suite may not be in Las Vegas in big numbers this week, but many have sent executives and, just as importantly, clinicians in their place to get a good look at what's available.
Thomas points out that nurses require different things from new technology than doctors, so they need to check out the tools themselves. An ambient AI tool that's winning rave reviews from doctors for capturing the patient encounter won't address nursing needs.
So while the pressure is on providers to find the technology that works best for them, there's also an increasing amount of pressure on the technology industry to give health system and hospital executives the tools they need.
Srinivas (Sri) Velamoor, President and Chief Operating Officer of NextGen Healthcare, sees an industry in a certain amount of turmoil, looking to keep up with a technology that's being embraced by consumers just as quickly as other industries. The rush to create AI tools that meet the demands of providers is daunting, as are the needs to validate data, monitor on a continual basis, and even share risk with providers.
There's no doubt that AI will transform healthcare, he points out, and some of the larger, more established players in the healthcare technology ecosystem may have to tear themselves down and completely rebuild to meet new demands. Others are changing how they sell their products, especially to not-for-profits, rural hospitals and clinics that have limited resources but need that technology to survive.
So amid all the popcorn, puppies, happy hours and magic tricks on the HIMSS25 show floor this year, there's also a certain amount of desperation. Jump on the bandwagon now or risk being left in the dust. Try out a new tool, forge a new partnership, make a new deal, and look for those KPIs and benchmarks quickly. The clock is ticking.
Announced at HIMSS25, the partnership between the New York health system and Amazon enables patients to confirm their identity in seconds.
NYU Langone Health is launching a new biometric technology platform that’s designed to enable patient registrations through a palm scan.
Announced during the first day of the HIMSS25 conference and exhibition in Las Vegas, the New York health system is partnering with Amazon to launch the Amazon One tool through the Epic EHR platform. The technology enables patients to confirm their identity through a palm scan, which is reportedly more than 99% accurate, less intrusive than other forms of identity verification, and takes place in seconds.
"One of NYU Langone’s goals is to leverage cutting-edge technology to enhance the patient experience,” Nader Mherabi, EVP, Vice Dean and Chief Digital and Information Officer at NYU Langone, said in a press release. “We make all decisions with our patients in mind first and foremost, and we’re always looking for ways to improve their experience through technology. As with all new initiatives and technology of this scale, we will optimize over time and meet the needs of our patients.”
As HIMSS kicks into gear this week, announcements like this are indicative of an industry striving to use innovative technology to improve the patient experience. Health systems and hospitals are under pressure to not only improve clinical outcomes and cut costs, but also make the patient’s care journey more intuitive.
The registration process is a key pain point in healthcare, and health system leaders are looking for ways to reduce the questionnaires and paperwork that make the process longer and more cumbersome, thereby reducing the time a patient can actually spend with their care team.
The partnership takes advantage of a technology now being used in airports, sports stadiums, convenience stores and fitness centers, and marks Amazon One’s largest third-party healthcare deployment to date. It’s also an example of the healthcare industry looking to other industries for innovative ways to solve nagging problems.
According to executives, the Amazon One platform accesses the EHR only to confirm the patient’s identity, and does not access or store any other patient data. Patients are asked to create an Amazon One profile ahead of their visit and link that profile to NYU Langone.
NYU Langone expects to roll out the technology to all locations within the year.
Healthcare leaders may still be looking for ROI and sustainability, but they know AI is here to stay, and they want to make sure they’re on the right path.
Healthcare execs say the hype around AI is justified, but amid all the grand proclamations and catchy metaphors, they’re still trying to figure out where the technology will fit into the clinical workflow.
“We’ve seen the hype but not a lot of substance,” said Nasim Eftekhari, Executive Director of Applied AI & Data Science at City of Hope, who attended the recent ViVE 2025 event and took part in a panel on AI innovation.
Indeed, one of the bigger takeaways from ViVE was that AI is still all the rage, but for all the pilot programs and early use cases, value is still hard to find in clinical care. While rev cycle and financial departments are seeing wins in reduced administrative tasks and better number crunching, clinical leaders are still trying to figure out how to integrate AI into care pathways.
And for every health system and hospital finding success in ambient AI for doctors or in-basket messaging, someone else isn’t seeing the value. If you’ve seen one successful use case, the old saying goes, you’ve seen one successful use case.
Yet with HIMSS 2025 opening this week, healthcare leaders are once again eager to talk about AI. And they’re pretty much agreed that this technology will affect the industry in serious and substantial ways.
“There’s a lot of AI in everything,” said Simon Nazarian, City of Hope’s System EVP and Chief Digital and Technology Officer, who also spoke at ViVE. “But a lot of it is just good old-fashioned automation.”
So where is that next step? And do we really need an a-ha moment to push things forward?
Technology and clinical care have a complicated history, as veterans of the EMR era and “meaningful use” will attest. With those memories to draw from, executives are tentative in fully embracing AI and really want to see what it can do before making a commitment.
That’s nothing new, and it isn’t scaring execs away from using AI. The agenda for this week’s HIMSS 25 conference and exhibition in sunny (hopefully) Las Vegas is filled with discussions about AI and examples of health systems putting the technology to the test.
For many, the catchword now is governance. It’s understood that AI, particularly the generative and predictive models, evolves as it gathers more data. That means healthcare leaders have to monitor not only how they gather and feed data into the machine, but keep an eye on what comes out the other end.
For John Halamka, MD, MS, president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, AI “will be in everything we do.” Speaking at ViVE, he said Mayo is testing several generative AI models, all designed to augment clinical care rather than replace the clinician.
Halamka said health systems and hospitals can launch all the AI tools they want, but they’d better understand the consequences.
“You can move fast and break things as long as you understand the risks of breaking things,” he noted.
That said, Halamka knows AI is transformational. The best endoscopist on the planet will still miss 15% of small polyps, he pointed out, while an AI tool developed at Mayo only misses 3%. And there will come a time, he added, when AI is part of the standard of care, and hospitals could be sued for malpractice for not using it.
It’s just that getting from here to there will take time. And mistakes will be made.
At City of Hope, Eftekhari said AI will save lives. Predictive tools will help clinicians spot health concerns earlier and help them identify the best care pathway.
“With responsible use of AI, we will have the ability to move upstream,” added Nazarian, noting the potential for AI in research to eventually identify and even prevent cancer. “We want to be able to go from bench to bed as quickly as possible.”
So amid all the conversations at HIMSS this week about how AI is being tested or used, executives should understand that whatever they see and hear about won’t necessarily work for them. The stories they hear from one conference to the next will likely be the same. They need to mold the technology to their particular goals.
Halamka says the industry also needs to see both the victories and the failures, and to learn from each. He expects progress to be slow and steady, and the hype to continue until the use cases are proven out.
In HealthLeaders' latest Winning Edge webinar, Stephen Hunter of Allegheny Health and David Higginson of Phoenix Children's Hospital detailed their strategies for developing a virtual care platform that can hold its value.
Virtual care may be an integral part of the so-called "hospital of the future," but that doesn't mean health systems and hospitals can just throw together any old tech platform and see it work. If you build it, they won't necessarily come.
Like any new idea or technology, virtual care needs a sound business plan.
During Tuesday's Winning Edge webinar, two healthcare innovation executives from two very different health systems explained in detail how they've made virtual care work for them and their patients.
For David Higginson, EVP and Chief Innovation Officer at Phoenix Children's Hospital, the challenge lay in creating a sustainable telehealth platform that would meet the needs of their pediatric patients and families, improving clinical outcomes and long-term care concerns. For Stephen Hunter, VP of Digital Strategy and Innovation at the Allegheny Health Network, part of Highmark Health, a virtual care platform had to address immediate care needs for patients while creating a sound business model for the both the health system's population and community health plans and the affiliated health plan's members.
In describing their strategies and challenges, Higginson and Hunter outlined four considerations that every healthcare leader should address when developing a business plan for virtual care that is both sustainable and scalable.
Don't Fall for the Shiny New Thing. While the COVID-19 pandemic proved the value of virtual care, an even more important lesson learned for many health systems was that the biggest, flashiest technology solution isn't always the best. Many providers were setting up simple, easy-to-use telehealth platforms on their own, using the most basic technology, and making them work.
Higginson noted that Phoenix Children's set up a platform using a Zoom API in about three weeks, at a cost of about $12,000. And while that won't likely work for most health systems eyeing a long-term program, it proves that the "flavor of the month" isn't right for everyone. Healthcare leaders need to test out all the technology they can find, keeping an open mind and looking for what works for them.
Selecting the right technology also means looking at the long term. A tool or platform might be good for now, but will it still provide ROI in five years or be rendered obsolete by newer, better technologies? Will a health system become mired in chasing the next big thing or investing in upgrades that dilute or even destroy ROI?
The important strategy here is to be adaptable and flexible. Explore all the options, and understand that sometimes the simplest technology is the best. Plan on upgrades, but don't think that every new thing has to be added to the platform.
Begin With the Patient, and End With the Provider. A virtual care platform might have a great business plan, work like a charm for doctors and nurses and bring a smile to the CFO, but if it doesn't meet the patient's needs, it's toast. That's why it's crucial to begin with the patient's perspective.
Both Higginson and Hunter say a tech platform has to begin with a clear understanding of the problem that needs to be solved, and that means understanding what virtual care means to the patient. The technology has to be easy and intuitive for patients, allowing them to access care and services from their homes. If a provider needs to spend a long time explaining to patients how the technology works, chances of adoption are low.
It's also important to make sure everyone involved in the new program, from doctors and nurses on to pharmacists and HIT staff, knows about all the features and capabilities. Sometimes a great new tool, such as online scheduling of medication refills, is wasted because staff don't realize it's there and they don't tell patients that it's available.
Finally, Hunter noted that patients usually want to be connected to their doctor, not just any doctor on the platform. It's important to set up the platform so that doctors are working with their patients on a continuous care journey (a key component of the business plan is that this relationship captures downstream care opportunities). Don't just connect any patient to any doctor and expect everyone to be happy.
Part of that process is messaging. Providers need to set up a routine that allows patients to send messages to their doctors and create a strategy to triage incoming messages so that doctors and/or nurses answer what needs to be answered.
It should not go unsaid that a platform needs to be seamless and stress-free for the provider as well as the patient. If your adding new tasks or steps to an already-stressed-out doctor or nurse, you might have a hard time getting them to buy in.
Balance Clinical and Financial ROI. Sustainability is a tricky mixture of hard and soft ROI. A great virtual care platform that addresses clinical needs won't survive if it costs a lot of money. At Allegheny Health, Hunter noted that a virtual care platform can address the health system's business needs to expand its patient base and pull in downstream services, like follow-ups and health and wellness services, all of which attract the attention of the health system's associated health plan.
Higginson pointed out that gathering patient stories and anecdotes can be beneficial in more ways than one. They reinforce the health system's mission, prove that virtual care is improving access to care and helping patients and their families, and can be used to prod payers and politicians to support the program. A few good stories could convince a senator or representative to take a closer look at how the state is legislating virtual care or reimbursement, two key barriers to telehealth adoption.
The biggest point to be made here is that ROI is a multi-faceted strategy. Immediate cost and value need to be balanced against long-term costs and benefits. The money spent on technology and staffing may very well be made back in long-term clinical benefits, such as reduced ER visits and hospitalizations, happier patients and less-stressed doctors and nurses. At the same time, a telehealth program that requires continuing tech upgrades so that it won't become obsolete in five years is a bad investment.
Expect to Be Surprised. Few programs work out the way they were planned, and virtual care is certainly no exception. It's OK, even imperative, to have a comprehensive strategy that maps out everything that could happen, right or wrong. Prepare for any eventuality, and then be prepared to be surprised.
For example, Hunter said Allegheny Health had expected that its virtual care platform would see success in addressing access issues in rural areas, but found that urban residents were using the platform much more frequently to access care that they had a hard time finding. Higginson, meanwhile, said Phoenix Children's didn't think much about adding a button to its portal to allow patients to request refills, then saw how much that button meant to patients and their families.
The upshot is that things sometimes work whether we plan that way or not, and it's crucial for healthcare leaders to be prepared for that flexibility. That may mean shelving one virtual care platform and trying out another, or accepting failure and moving on quickly. It may also mean ditching assumptions or preconceived ideas about a technology or strategy and letting something play out a little bit to find its way.
Leaders need to develop a sound business case for virtual care. How can health systems make these platforms both scalable and sustainable?
During these uncertain times, health systems won’t embrace new technology unless there’s a firm understanding of ROI attached. Healthcare leaders need a good, sound business plan to move forward.
This is especially true with virtual care, which was the sweetheart of the rodeo during the pandemic, when providers needed to reduce pressure on hospitals and patients wanted to access care from home. Federal and state regulators even reduced telehealth restrictions to allow more access, and payers like CMS relaxed their rules to reimburse for more virtual care services.
But now that the pandemic has passed, the pendulum has swung back. Many COVID-era waivers have expired, patients are expressing a desire to see their doctors in person, and healthcare executives are tasked with revising or even redefining how virtual care services can be sustained and scaled.
So how do health systems and hospitals define the ROI of a telehealth platform or digital health tool in this day and age? Clinical outcomes, provider workflows and workforce shortages are all part of the recipe, but there also has to be a financial benefit. Can all of these interests co-exist in a business plan?
A recent study of 6 FQHCs in New York found that state Medicaid reimbursement policies are exacerbating workforce shortages and creating a divide between them and hospitals. And that’s doing real harm to their patients.
Federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) are often the only access point for underserved populations needing healthcare services, and telehealth can be a critical tool for improving that access.
But a new study out of Columbia University finds that several FQHCs in New York City are struggling due to inadequate Medicaid reimbursements for telehealth, which exacerbate workforce shortages and create disparities between those safety net clinics and nearby health systems and hospitals.
“Telehealth has many advantages for patients and providers, but only if it’s supported by equitable and sustainable funding policies,” Thalia Porteny, PhD, an assistant professor of health policy and management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and first author of the study, said in a press release. “Our findings underscore the urgent need for Medicaid reimbursement reforms to address workforce shortages and ensure vulnerable populations can access the care they need.”
Telehealth is often viewed as a crucial element in helping people access care, and was a resounding success during the pandemic in helping hospitals connect with patients, but providers often won’t embrace the technology unless they’re reimbursed for switching away from billable in-person care. That’s especially true of FQHCs and other clinics, who need that support to buy the technology and train staff.
In the study, Porteny and her colleagues interviewed executives and staff from six FQHCs across New York City, and found that inadequate state Medicaid subsidies had caused them to lose about 40% of their mental health staff. Alongside the inadequate payments, restrictive policies around working at home, which were eased during the pandemic, are prompting many mental health workers to leave.
“One participant explained how making mental health practitioners come to the FQHC not only hindered workforce flexibility but did not add clinical value: ‘Every therapist…and psychiatrist [is] making financial sacrifices to work for folks like us, [and now] they have to come to the health center to get on the phone basically, and talk to their patients. And there is zero clinical value to that,’” the study noted.
This, in turn, is contributing to disparities in accessing care.
“One FQHC informed us that they had 700 patients on a waiting list for behavioral health services, because their health center lost half its behavioral health practitioners when they began to require that their practitioners work in the office, rather than remotely,” the study reported.
The study also noted that Medicaid reimbursement policies are designed to support larger health systems and hospitals while hindering small, resource-thin clinics like FQHCs.
“As one noted, ‘When a lot of the rules are made, or when a lot of the emergency fundings for [telehealth] programs come out, they’re all geared through the hospital, and then they expect the hospitals to work with everybody else, where we all know nine times out of 10, that doesn’t happen.... The decision makers at the top who pull the purse strings…are leaning towards hospitals.’” Porteny and her colleagues reported.
The upshot of the study is that FQHCs and other small providers are struggling to embrace telehealth at a time when they should be using the technology to improve access to care. The concern is heightened that those reimbursements may be even further reduced by potential Medicare and Medicaid cuts.
“In the face of potential Medicaid cuts and broader austerity measures, our study’s findings suggest that it would be detrimental to implement cost-cutting measures in telehealth reimbursements in community health centers in New York and more broadly,” Sorcha A. Brophy, PhD, an assistant professor of health policy and management at Columbia’s Mailman School and co-author of the study, said in the press release. “Such budget cuts could exacerbate provider shortages, increase barriers to care for vulnerable populations, and ultimately lead to worse health outcomes. Consequently, this could further destabilize community health centers—a healthcare program that has long enjoyed bipartisan support.”
The study supports improving Medicaid policies toward telehealth, through both better reimbursement and support for work at home plans, digital literacy and training, and other services.
“Participants held a common belief that if telehealth reimbursement policies were well aligned with practitioners’ compensation expectations, as was the case during the COVID-19 PHE response, access and compliance issues would greatly improve in FQHCs because there would be more opportunities and flexibility to see practitioners,” the study concluded.
“As one participant described, ‘Behavioral health compliance went up dramatically [during COVID-19]. Behavioral health was always an area where patients used to cancel or no show. Well, once you had a telemedicine platform for behavioral health, suddenly we had 100% compliance rate.’ Another explained, ‘We used to have a 30% no show, but because of [telehealth during COVID-19] our no-show rates were reduced to like 16%, you know, so it got cut in half.’
AI is everywhere (that’s nothing new) at this year’s event, while RPM is getting some good attention. But what about the weather?
As ViVE 2025 races toward its snowy conclusion and attendees figure out whether they have to revise their travel plans, here are a few observations from the first two days of this very entertaining conference.
AI is Everywhere. That’s no surprise, really. During a CHIME panel on Monday, Aaron Miri, Baptist Health Jacksonville’s EVP and Chief Digital & Information Officer, said technology is a differentiator in attracting new clinical talent, a key pain point at a time when nearly all health systems are struggling with workforce shortages. Dangling an ambient AI tool in front of a potential hire seems to be doing the trick.
During a separate panel, Michael Pfeffer, Chief Information and Digital Officer at Stanford Health Care, noted that ambient AI is more popular than any other technology they’re used. If management introduces a new tool and then discontinues it, no one will complain, he said. But if they shut down the AI tool, he’ll be flooded with angry e-mails.
“That doesn’t happen with technology,” he said.
And it’s not just doctors and nurses that are affected by AI. Theresa Meadows, SVP and CIO of the Cook Children’s Health Care System, said during the CHIME panel that they’re investing in new community-based training programs to address the workforce shortage throughout the system. With new AI programs comes a need for IT and Rev Cycle staff that know how to use the technology.
And at a time when budgets are tight, Andy Crowder, CHCIO, CDH-E, Advocate Health’s Enterprise Chief Digital Officer and SVP and CIO for the health system’s southeast region, said they’re spend as much on technology this year as they’ve spent over the past five years.
The message is clear. AI is affecting the industry at all levels, and health systems and hospitals need to have an enterprise-wide strategy in place to make sure they’re doing all they can to make that transition easier. That doesn’t necessarily mean setting up a specific AI governance committee or policy, but understanding that tech now has a set at the strategy table.
AI is helping to redefine the CIO’s role as well. Crowder said he’s both an advisor and an educator, while Miri said CIOs are now called upon to be CFOs and CMOs to facilitate AI adoption.
Medicare may need a reboot. That’s the opinion of Sachin Jain, MD, MBA, President & CEO of the SCAN Group and Health Plan. Jain said he’s cautiously optimistic that the Trump administration—in particular, potential CMS chief Mehmet Oz—will take a good look at Medicare and lean toward Medicare Advantage.
Traditional Medicare “has gotten a free ride,” he said, but hasn’t evolved with the rest of the country. It “doesn’t provide the benefits that people really need,” and that MA plans are embracing, like dental and vision coverage, and services like virtual care that address social drivers of health.
It’s safe to say Medicare and Medicaid are on everyone’s minds, because many health systems and hospitals rely on CMS to support coverage for those populations. Several executives attending ViVE said they were hopeful that CMS waivers for telehealth and Hospital at Home would be renewed before they expire at the end of this month, but resigned to the fact that those waivers might soon end. The pressure is on the industry to prove the value of virtual care.
During the CHIME panel, Meadows pointed out that pediatric hospitals like Cook Children’s are especially sensitive to the Medicare/Medicaid discussion because so many of their patients are on those programs. Any changes to those programs will seriously affect a hospital’s bottom line.
RPM is gaining steam. Remote patient monitoring, long the potential game-changer for home-based care, is building a nice following. During a panel on the future of wearables, Sarah Pletcher, MD, MHCDS, Chief Digital Health Officer and SVP and Executive Medical Director of Strategic Innovation at Houston Methodist, said continuous patient monitoring programs using wearables in the ICU and in-patient units have done so well that they’re looking at using the technology to support patients outside the hospital.
“The sky’s the limit on what we can do with that,” she said.
At the same time, she and Esther Kim, ScD, RD, LDN, Head of Emerging Technologies and Solutions at Mass General Brigham, said there are still gaps between the consumer-facing wearables that the public traditionally uses, like smartwatches and activity trackers, and the clinical grade technology favored by doctors and nurses. Clinicians don’t want to see a patient’s daily step counts or event their heart rate.
“It is important to consider how you’re going to curate all that data,” Pletcher said.
Both noted that clinicians want to see data from wearables that’s meaningful to them, and that can be used to identify and act on health concerns. Two months of heart rate or blood sugar data will be overwhelming, but a program that can sift through the data and give clinicians insight into deviations, irregularities or trends will be valuable. And that’s where AI will likely come into play.
RPM programs will also require some commitment on the part of the patient.
“It’s not just about the vitals,” Kim said. These types of programs need to be developed to address a patient’s lifestyle, and to effect changes that improve health and wellness.
“It isn’t the tech or the regulatory [concerns],” added Pletcher. “It’s getting people to change their behaviors.”
The evolution of pharmacy services. Another area of innovation is medication monitoring. Health systems and hospitals are investing in their pharmacy services to improve the nation’s dismal medication adherence rate and, in doing so, boost clinical outcomes.
There are several reasons for this. As evidenced by the plight of Walgreens, CVS and Rite-Aid, community pharmacies are struggling, and many are closing. Disruptors, meanwhile, are leaning heavily into online and mail-order services. Health systems and hospitals are countering this by beefing up their own pharmacies and co-locating pharmacy services with primary care clinics.
In addition, with the advent of RPM and virtual care, hospital leaders are rethinking the role of the pharmacist. They’re including the pharmacist or pharmacy tech in care teams, and giving them the opportunity to collaborate with patients on medication management and adherence. This also takes the pressure of doctors and nurses.
And finally, will the healthcare industry start recognizing the folly of scheduling major events during the winter? So many conversations this week have started with, ‘How was your trip?’ The wintry weather disrupted many travel plans, with attendees and even some speakers delayed or even forced to cancel their plans. And with a few inches of snow expected in Nashville tonight and tomorrow morning, more than a few people are more concerned now with how they’ll get home than what they’ll see here today.
Still, this is ViVE, and the vibe has been good. Healthcare executives do relish the opportunity to get out of the office and meet in person to talk about innovation and transformation.
As ViVE 2025 kicks off in Nashville, health system and hospital leaders are faced with a challenging path toward innovation. Can they agree on what works and what doesn’t?
Amid the uncertainty of the Trump administration and the hazards of winter travel, ViVE 2025 kicked off this week in Nashville with a focus on digital transformation and innovation. The four-day event is expected to draw about 8,000 attendees.
Co-produced by HLTH and CHIME (the College of Health Information Management Executives), ViVE boasts a busy agenda—and a refreshing number of panels that feature health system and hospital executives, who are making up roughly one-quarter of the attendees this year.
And despite the goings-on in Washington and the wintry weather, the focus of this week’s conversations will fall squarely on figuring out how to make transformation work.
At a time when the healthcare industry is struggling, healthcare leaders have to find a way to make things better. And while new ideas like AI might seem like the solution to much of what ails the industry, many are finding they can’t just plug in technology and watch it make everything better. The industry as a whole is reluctant to change, shrugging off disruptors with the admonishment that “healthcare is hard” and stubbornly clinging to a status quo that isn’t working.
In fact, it’s almost as if “innovation” is becoming a dirty word. Execs are wondering if the idea is just a lofty concept, suitable for high-minded discussion but not implementation. Where are the concrete examples of healthcare innovation that are pushing the industry forward, demonstrating both sustainability and scalability?
We’re going to find out this week.
The answer may lie in how the industry identifies value. Hospital leaders often approach a new program with two different goals, playing financial ROI against clinical improvements. But one doesn’t have to counteract the other. Sometimes the measurements just need to be redefined.
During a Sunday afternoon panel on care collaboration, Bonnie Clipper, DNP, MA, MBA, RN, CENP, FAAN, a nurse futurist and founder and CEO of the Virtual Nursing Academy, pointed out that healthcare is changing whether we like it or not.
“Just consider the visual of a robot inserting your catheter or a robot doing your surgery,” she said.
Transformation, she explained, is inevitable. And it’s up to the healthcare industry to set the goalposts and define the ROI. Instead of being told how innovation will happen, healthcare leaders, from the C-suite on down to doctors and nurses, need to embrace those changes and mold these new technologies and ideas to fit their needs.
This week, healthcare leaders from a wide swath of organizations across the country will discuss what innovation and transformation mean to them, and how AI, virtual care, digital health and other technologies and ideas will work for them. They will be defining the value.
They might not even agree on that value, but if something works for them, that’s moving the needle forward. Best practices and common goals might sound nice, but transformation doesn’t have to mean everybody’s following the same blueprint.
Perhaps some are shooting for goals that are too high. Allen Taylor, MD, FACC, regional chair of cardiology for MedStar Health’s Washington DC region, pointed out that doctors and nurses may have a different perception of innovation than the C-suite.
“Yoga mats don’t solve [physician burnout and] wellness,” he said, referencing one of the key pain points in healthcare. Clinicians, he said, want to have tools that will improve their ability to care for their patients, whether it be an AI algorithm that reduces their time on the computer or a device that enables them to gain better insight into their patient’s health condition.
And while many might be looking for that splashy program that saves millions of dollars and countless lives, Taylor added, doctors and nurses just want something that moves the needle a little bit forward. They don’t necessarily want to be faster, just better.
“Small things will work for us,” he said. “Solve a problem for us and we will redeploy the assets elsewhere.”
Mass General Brigham and the Huntsman Cancer Institute are joining a federally funded program to create an all-purpose mobile vehicle to deliver hospital-level care in rural and remote regions of the country.
PARADIGM "aims to address the current challenges in rural health by creating a scalable vehicle platform that can provide advanced medical services outside of a hospital setting," the project’s website states. "Building on recent developments in fields ranging from satellite communication to medical device miniaturization, this mobile care platform will allow health providers to meet rural patients where they are."
"If successful, PARADIGM hopes to develop a mobile platform capable of delivering many different types of cutting-edge services – including multi-cancer screenings, hemodialysis, perinatal care, and much more," the website continues. "With medical technology no longer tied to a specific place – but instead available on a platform that can travel to even the most remote locations – rural patients will thus be able to access the care that they need within their own communities."
The five-year project is split into five areas:
Designing distributed hospital-level care;
Producing an integrated care delivery platform;
Harmonizing diverse medical device data within a single system;
Building a miniaturized, ruggedized CT scanner; and
Creating intelligent task guidance software to help health workers perform activities beyond their usual training.
David Levine, MD, MPH, MA, clinical director of Research & Development at Mass General Brigham Healthcare at Home and director of Ariadne Labs’ Home Hospital Program, will lead a team developing the DEMOCRATIZE mobile clinical platform for rural care delivery, designed to operate independent of the physical location of rural home hospital programs.
Julian Goldman, MD, FASA, an anesthesiologist, director of the Medical Device Interoperability & Cybersecurity Program at Mass General Hospital and medical director of Mass General Brigham Biomedical Engineering, will lead a team tasked with creating a scalable platform, called PARADIGM-ICE, that will integrate data from medical devices and EHR systems into a secure, standardized ecosystem.
Rajiv Gupta, MD, PhD, vice chair of Clinical Operations in the Department of Radiology, an associate radiologist in the Divisions of Neuroradiology and Cardiovascular Imaging, and director of the Advanced X-Ray Imaging Sciences (AXIS) Center at Mass General Hospital, will lead a team developing a compact, lightweight, rugged and self-shielded CT scanner for use in resource-restrained environments.
The Huntsman Cancer Institute, meanwhile, will be modifying its Huntsman at Home program, a Hospital at Home care model for rural patients in cancer treatment programs, to operate through a mobile medical vehicle that includes advanced imaging, testing and treatment capabilities.
The other organizations participating in the PARADIGM program are:
The University of Michigan, which will use its VIGIL platform to equip care providers with AI-guided task support for specialized services;
The Mission Mobile Medical Group of Greensboro, North Carolina, which will integrate its care delivery platform, a pod-based modular health service that can be dropped into remote locations like cargo containers on a train to deliver remote care services;
Homeward Health of Kentwood, Michigan, which will develop a mobile care model using community engagement, human-centered design and partnerships;
10XBeta, of Brooklyn, New York, which will develop an interchangeable modular care infrastructure to support multiple uses cases;
Planned Systems International (PSI), of Columbia, Maryland, which will leverage a multi-purpose vehicle platform and unique "arm and rack" design to facilitate rural clinical workflows;
SRI International, of Menlo Park, California, which will use both its POET medical interoperability platform, designed to integrate diverse medical devices in resource-constrained environments, and its Multi-Tags system, which uses machine-learning and large language models to support clinicians across multiple tasks; and
Micro-X, of SeaTac, Washington, which will use its lightweight, carbon nanotube-based CT scanner, designed for mobile imaging care in underserved communities and radiology deserts.
Mouneer Odeh, the health system's inaugural Chief Data and AI Officer, says it's important to understand how data works before putting AI to use.
AI may be all the rage these days, but Cedars-Sinai's new Vice President and Chief Data and AI Officer says there's a reason "data" precedes "AI" in his title.
"The fuel for AI is the data," says Mouneer Odeh, MA, who was appointed to the new role ithis past December. He points out that for AI to work as intended, it has to be based on good data, and so healthcare leaders need to understand all about data management and analysis before they dig into the potential.
Ai is all about "leveraging the power of data through its full spectrum," he says. And at its heart is the "continuum of data-driven intelligence."
Odeh comes to Cedars-Sinai—and the West Coast—from Virginia's Inova Health System, where he served as vice president of analytics for four years. Prior to that, he was the vice president of enterprise analytics and chief data science at Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health and, before that, a director at Quest Diagnostics.
Odeh's role is pivotal, as the healthcare industry moves to both embrace and govern the fast-moving AI landscape. Health systems and hospitals are piloting AI tools and services at a pace not seen before.
"There is a recognition that in the future, computational biomedicine will become increasingly important for both research as well as clinical care," he says. "It's almost like a new technology of clinical care that's being layered on top of all the other things that we've done over the last 100 years."
Mouneer Odeh, MA, VP and Chief Data and AI Officer at Cedars-Sinai. Photo courtesy Cedars-Sinai.
"It's also so incredibly important for streamlining operations [and] for improving the experience of our caregivers, nurses and doctors, as well as for our patients."
Getting a handle on AI means addressing many moving parts, a challenge that some health systems have assigned to a committee and others to an executive. In the press release announcing Odeh's appointment, Cedars-Sinai officials praised him as a "change agent" with a grasp of data analytics, data science and health information, and noted that he—as the health system's first-ever data science and AI executive—"will lead enterprise-wide efforts to harness data analytics and AI to drive innovation across care delivery and administrative functions."
The health system sees Odeh as a facilitator, overseeing "a diverse team of professionals spanning advanced analytics, research, infrastructure, governance, data science and business intelligence" and collaborating with departments throughout the enterprise to forge a comprehensive AI policy.
Odeh says that collaboration will be important. He wants to see a health system that encourages its clinicians to use AI, but to also be comfortable and competent when they use it. That means carving out some time for them to sit back and learn.
"Our goal is to empower" clinicians to use AI responsibly, he says. "Channel that positive energy and give them a way to do it in a productive way that actually is appropriately governed, and with safeguards in place."
That also means making sure everyone is on the same page about what AI can do and where it is going.
"We are looking to make sure we have a cohesive ecosystem so that we're not doing one-off little AI solutions here and there," he adds. "We're really trying to build it in a scalable way that will allow us to deploy dozens and hundreds of use cases."
Odeh acknowledges the hype surrounding AI, and says he understands how that can affect a health system's efforts to maintain and monitor the technology. But he also notes that AI is different than past innovations, like the electronic medical record, because it's being embraced and used by consumers at home and elsewhere. It's more like the internet or the smartphone, two ideas that took time to develop and expand.
The real challenge, he says, is not in the technology—advanced data and predictive analytics tools have been around for a long time—but in how it can be used. The pressure is on the industry to improve outcomes, reduce costs and stabilize a stressed-out workforce, and that pressure will intensify as workforce issues continue and the growing population of seniors demands better care options.
"You have the capability to do something amazing, but you also have the pressure and the urgency," he says.
"AI is just one of those where we think the world has changed, you know, within a year or two," Odeh says. "And then we realize it's a lot harder and it takes a lot longer, but we probably don't even realize just how transformative this truly will be."
"People tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the short run and underestimate the impact in the long run," he adds, citing Amara's Law. "But I think over the next 10 years what we will achieve in the healthcare space will be truly amazing. It will be probably 10 times what we've been able to do with data and analytics in the last decade."
