HIMSS 2025, the global healthcare conference, has brought together 28,000 attendees this week, with AI taking center stage as it did at the ViVE event two weeks ago. Healthcare CIOs are zeroing in on the following areas to fuel innovation and upgrade their existing solutions. Here’s what’s drawing their focus from the event.
Clinical Decision Making
Microsoft booth had a large attendance following their announcement of the Dragon Copilot. The company finally combines its voice dictation product with the ambient listening solution. Many healthcare provider organizations have both products, and this is an opportunity to consolidate them by having the products operate 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 approximately thirty healthcare partners and are growing in their Copilot Studio platform.
One of the partners, Wolters Kluwer, announced the integration of its UpToDate solution with the healthcare agent service in Microsoft Copilot Studio. Greg Samios, President and CEO of Clinical Effectiveness for Wolters Kluwer Health said “Seconds can make all the difference in clinical decision making, and through our collaborations, we’re focused on speed to the right answer wherever you are in the clinical workflow”.
Google Cloud announced new generative AI capabilities called Visual Q&A that will search tables, charts, and diagrams to process diverse patient data, medical images, and others to help provide a comprehensive view of the patient. Enterprise search within the EMR has improved dramatically with generative AI capabilities, and the EMR companies are partnering with their preferred cloud vendor to incorporate this feature. MEDITECH EMR has developed its AI-powered search within its Expanse product
Oracle announced similar capabilities in Q4 last year with its clinical AI agent that can handle patient queries.
Overall, every healthcare technology vendor is developing a solution incorporating generative AI to improve and speed up clinical decision-making.
Patient Engagement
Ensuring patients are efficiently scheduled and seen by doctors is a top priority for healthcare providers. With high turnover in contact center staff, healthcare operations leaders are turning to automation to improve efficiency. As generative AI accelerates clinical decision-making, it also enhances contact centers by providing agents with instant patient information, leading to better interactions.
Webex has integrated its Contact Center features with Epic’s Cheers module and Hyperdrive interface. With this integration, Webex agents can manage conversations directly within Epic, eliminating the need to switch between windows or systems. This streamlined workflow enhances efficiency and simplifies the contact center/patient interaction.
Similarly, RevSpring announced its virtual healthcare agent to enhance the patient and customer service staff experience. RevSpring president Nicole Rogas said, “By combining AI, data-driven insights, and personalized engagement, we empower patients to better understand their financial obligations, simplify billing and payments, and easily access financial assistance.”
The market is flooded with AI-powered virtual agents, all promising to transform patient interactions through phone, text, and online chat. These solutions tap into dynamic knowledge bases to answer questions, automate tasks, and enhance self-service options. While many will offer similar capabilities, the real differentiator lies in how effectively they reduce staff workload and refocus healthcare teams on patient care.
Cybersecurity Scare
Cybersecurity keeps every healthcare leader on high alert. During the Vegas event, a client I advised faced a potential security scare. I got a call warning of a possible compromise. Fortunately, it turned out to be a false alarm, with no signs of an actual intrusion. The organization had received a letter similar to the one Arctic Wolf posted. Carter Groome, Chief Executive Officer of First Health Advisory, a veteran in the information security space, said, “We’ve seen a significant uptick in phishing, brute force, and social engineering attacks in the last couple of weeks.” This trend will continue, and it will not stop.
Healthcare CIOs continue strengthening their security posture while keeping up with the recent HIPAA updates. It will be interesting if the guidelines from the previous administration on HIPAA will stay. Carter Groome said, “I’m not sure if that will even be considered, but if healthcare entities need the government to guide them on how to protect their business, they have bigger issues.”
HIMSS 2025 had great energy on the show floor, with new product announcements everywhere. Zafar Chaudry, Chief Digital Officer & Chief AI and Information Officer at Seattle Children’s Hospital, summed it up and said, “At HIMSS 2025, AI and efficiency took center stage, fueling the next wave of healthcare transformation.”
The question remains about how many of these products healthcare organizations will adopt and whether they will help them provide quality care at a lower cost.
