By Beth Friedman, Sr. Partner, FINN Partners
LinkedIn: Beth Friedman
LinkedIn: FINN Partners
After attending more HIMSS Conferences than I can count, I can confidently say HIMSS’25 was the most dynamic yet. The energy was undeniable—packed sessions, buzzing exhibit halls, and a crowd that showed up ready to tackle healthcare’s biggest challenges. Despite ongoing industry disruption, the focus remained clear: finding smarter ways to cut costs, boost efficiency, and enhance patient engagement through innovative health technology.
I kicked off my week at HIMSS’25 with the AI in Healthcare Forum—my go-to pre-conference event for the latest on digital transformation. As always, it delivered sharp insights and real progress on AI’s role in healthcare.
Dennis Chornenky, SM, MPA, MBA, and CEO of Domelabs AI delivered the opening keynote address for the Forum. Here are my six key AI takeaways:
- National AI Action Plan: Public comments are encouraged before the March 15th deadline. The plan will be delivered within 180 days.
- AI governance and legislation: Most health systems have already established oversight programs, and many states are building frameworks for responsible AI adoption.
- Strategy for CIOs: A multi-year plan is essential, with timelines from six months to two years, based on organizational needs.
- Clinician usability: AI must enhance care delivery, not complicate it. Paul Helmuth, MD, stresses ease of use for equitable care.
- Change management: AI can reduce administrative burdens but may create new ones. Clinician buy-in is crucial.
- Data quality and use case cards: High-quality patient data is a prerequisite for AI implementations and vendors should provide AI use case cards for each application.
The Forum included multiple success stories and best practices for AI in action. The most common use cases today include automating back-office tasks and streamlining clinical documentation. Irene Louh, MD, PhD, explained how clinicians at Baptist Health use AI to draft responses, summaries and notes. She advises early clinician involvement and a consistent focus on the “people” aspects of change.
Tanay Tandon, CEO of Commure, reported a boom in ambient voice tech, going from zero to 10M+ AI-scribed patient visits in 2025. He suggests hospitals build in-house solutions and predicts these tools will soon be commoditized.
The success stories shared at the Forum underscored the importance of building an AI strategy—a common theme echoed by attendees during HIMSS’25. As Chris Miller, Senior Vice President at Tegria, highlighted, organizations seeing the most success with AI put planning, governance, and integration upfront—asking how AI will fit into their existing workflows, whether it has access to the right data, and how to measure its impact.
Most important for healthcare CIOs, national groups like CHAI and Microsoft’s TRAIN offer new and valuable resources to lead AI implementations effectively. Wes Cronkite, MA, MBA, a founding member of TRAIN, emphasizes including patient data and active engagement from community hospitals to remove bias and ensure AI adoption across the entire healthcare ecosystem.
Progress through Collaboration is Consistent Theme
The packed opening keynote at HIMSS’25 moved attendees from AI conversations to full digital transformation with a truly inspiring presentation by Samsung Medical Center in South Korea. The organization’s technology journey began in 1994 and continues today with HIMSS Stage 7 recognition in three different digital maturity models, demonstrating that meaningful change requires sustained effort and collaboration.
According to Dr. Seung Woo Park, President, “the key to progress lies in actionable and transparent health information” with collaborative communication versus top-down command.
Multiple industry announcements during the conference reiterated the theme of alacrity for active collaboration including Clinical Architecture’s partnership with the CommonWell Marketplace. This announcement highlights the industry’s focus on improving data quality and interoperability, essential precursors to cut costs, improve care and support clinicians.
The Valley Health System showcased innovative vendor collaboration in smart hospital rooms. Partnering with Vibe by eVideon and others, VP/CIO Eric Carey highlighted how integrating patient rooms improves patient experience and operational efficiency. Despite high patient volume, hallways stay quiet, and clinicians are fully supported. The organization has been over budget on admissions and emergency departments visits every single month and their Press Ganey scores are skyrocketing.
Dynamic partnership was also the theme during a session featuring Unite Us, NC Medicaid and Sarasota Memorial Healthcare. Each panelist explained how their organization is advancing social care and addressing SDOH through AI and cross-sector collaboration.
Of all the educational sessions I attended, this one left me the most hopeful for our industry, even amid proposed federal cutbacks for our Medicaid programs. Case studies included:
- NC Healthy Opportunities Pilots: Addressing food insecurity, housing, and transportation needs
- Sarasota Memorial’s First 1,000 Days Suncoast initiative for maternal and child health
According to Halima Ahmadi-Montecalvo, PhD, MPH, evidence from both organizations demonstrate that addressing SDOH improves health and achieves cost savings. For example, NC Medicaid reduced emergency and inpatient visits to spend $85 less per participant per month within the first two years of the program.
Valuable best practices were shared for other SDOH programs to consider including how:
- Collaboration with community partners enhances program success.
- AI-powered referral platforms streamline SDOH communications and hasten interventions.
- Investing in non-medical interventions leads to significant cost savings and improved health outcomes.
- A continual pulse on the community helps SDOH programs shift and adjust over time.
Susan Gutjhar, RHIT, CCS, CPC, shared a rural health perspective on social needs, highlighting Sparta Community Hospital’s partnership with EHR vendor TruBridge to automate data capture and reporting. She emphasized the unique privacy challenges small hospitals face, where patients are often neighbors or church members, making action on social needs both necessary and expected. As Gutjhar put it, “We can’t not act on a social need when an issue is found.”
AI, Data and Innovation: Three Final Takeaways
The last three sessions reinforced healthcare’s forward momentum:
- Device data integration: Garrett Eppers from Murj showcased a FHIR-powered integration engine that simplifies medical device data connectivity—enhancing security while reducing clinician workload. The company puts medical device data to work for medical practices, cardiologists, patients, and electrophysiologists alike.
- Cloud for actionable data: Zafar Chaudry, MD, detailed Seattle Children’s success using AWS and AdaptX to centralize data, analyze data and directly tackle business challenges. Clinicians implemented opioid-free operating rooms while cutting carbon emissions.
- AI empowering patients: Tom Lawry moderated a session on AI’s role in patient advocacy. Warris Bokhari, MD, introduced Claimable, an AI tool that helps patients write insurance appeal letters. The result? Authentic, patient-driven appeals tackling the industry-wide problem of payer denials.
- Keep clinicians supported and productive: Chris Wickersham, CHCIO, spent time with Jim Tate, host of The Tate Chronicles, to discuss how IT teams can better support clinicians, keeping them productive and engaged with EHRs. Wickersham shared new ways the CereCore clinical support team uses data and analytics to pinpoint gaps in EHR interactions to boost EHR satisfaction and lower IT support costs.
HIMSS is About Patients, Not Just Technology
My HIMSS’25 journey wrapped up with a FINN Voices podcast recording for Healthcare NOW Radio. Heather Wood, CPXP, summed it up best:
“Technology can’t be adopted for technology’s sake alone—the primary benefactor must be the patient.”
Two other attendees, Heather Hough and Heather Dorsett, MBA, PMP, agreed! And with that, another HIMSS story ends. See you next year in Las Vegas!