Aerial shot of Las Vegas, Nevada at night. This is why the authorization was obtained from the FAA …(+)
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The Global Healthcare Conference, HIMSS 2025, attracted 28,000 participants this week. The AI took to center stage, like at the Vive event two weeks ago. Healthcare CIOs are now zero in the following areas to drive innovation and upgrade existing solutions: Here's what draws their focus from the event:
Clinical decision making
Microsoft Booth was a huge attendee following the announcement of Dragon Copilot. The company ultimately combines voice dictation products with ambienting solutions. Many healthcare provider organizations have both products. This is an opportunity to integrate products by running on a single platform. The Dragon Copilot announcement is another stickiness to the Microsoft ecosystem of Microsoft Fabric, Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry. In my discussion with Microsoft, they have around 30 healthcare partners, growing on the Copilot Studio platform.
One of our partners, Wolters Kluwer, has announced the integration of uptort dart solutions with Microsoft Copilot Studio's Healthcare Agent Service. “Seconds can make all the difference in clinical decision-making, and through collaboration we focus on the right answers wherever we are in our clinical workflow,” said Greg Samios, president and CEO of clinical effectiveness at Wolters Kluwer Health.
Google Cloud has announced a new generation AI feature called Visual Q&A that searches tables, charts and diagrams to process diverse patient data, medical images and more to provide a comprehensive view of patients. Enterprise search within EMR has been dramatically improved with the generation AI feature, and EMR companies have partnered with priority cloud vendors to incorporate this feature. Meditech EMR has developed AI-powered search within its vast product
Oracle announced similar features in the fourth quarter of last year, using a clinical AI agent that can handle patient questions.
Overall, all healthcare technology vendors are developing solutions that incorporate generator AI to improve and accelerate clinical decision-making.
Patient involvement
Ensuring patients are efficiently scheduled and doctors are watching is a top priority for healthcare providers. With high sales of contact centre staff, healthcare operations leaders are turning to automation to improve efficiency. Generated AI enhances contact centers by providing agents with instant patient information to accelerate clinical decision-making, leading to better interactions.
WebEx integrates contact center functionality with Epic's Cheers module and HyperDrive interface. This integration allows WebEx agents to manage conversations directly within Epic, eliminating the need to switch between Windows or systems. This streamlined workflow increases efficiency and simplifies contact center/patient interactions.
Similarly, Revspring has announced a virtual medical agent to enhance the experience of patients and customer service staff. “Combining AI, data-driven insights and personalized engagement will help patients better understand their financial obligations, simplify billing and payments, and provide easy access to financial support,” said Nicole Rogas, president of Revspring.
The market is flooded with virtual agents powered by AI, all committed to transforming patient interactions via phone, text and online chat. These solutions leverage a dynamic knowledge base to answer questions, automate tasks, and enhance self-service options. While many people offer similar capabilities, the real differentiators will effectively reduce staff workloads and focus on healthcare teams on patient care.
The fear of cybersecurity
Cybersecurity keeps all healthcare leaders at high alert. During the Las Vegas event, the client I advised faced a potential security horror. A warning has been raised about possible compromises. Fortunately, there were no signs of actual intrusions and turned out to be false reporting. The organization received a letter similar to one Arctic Wolf that was posted. “We've seen a significant increase in phishing, brute force and social engineering attacks over the past few weeks,” said Carter Groome, chief executive of First Health Advisory, a veteran in the information security field. This trend continues and does not halt.
Healthcare CIOs continue to strengthen their security stance while responding to recent HIPAA updates. That would be interesting if the previous administration guidelines on HIPAA remained. Carter Groom said, “I don't know if that will be considered, but if healthcare agencies need government to guide them on how to protect their businesses, they have a bigger problem.”
HIMSS 2025 had a lot of energy on the show floor, and new product announcements were everywhere. Zafar Chaudry, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Officer and Chief Information Officer at Seattle Children's Hospital, summarizing it: “At HIMSS 2025, AI and efficiency were central to fuel the next wave of healthcare transformation.”
The question remains as to how many of these products the healthcare organization will employ and whether it will help provide quality care at a low cost.
