HealthTech Magazine
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HealthTech Magazine explores technology and healthcare issues relevant to IT leaders and managers at healthcare organizations evaluating and implementing technology solutions.
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Historically, machine learning models have been trained by consolidating data from multiple sources into a centralized cloud server or data center and then training the model based on the combined data. This approach can streamline ML model training but “may also create significant privacy risks and potential vulnerabilities if the central data repository is compromised,” as a Google blog post notes. A range of organizations, especially in highly regulated industries such as healthcare, are turning to a solution that has existed for many years but is growing in prominence: federated…
Documentation overload, clinical burnout and rising operational costs are just some of the challenges healthcare organizations face today. This can have a major impact on clinician satisfaction and retention. One way health systems are hoping to address these concerns is with the help of artificial intelligence–powered tools that can streamline clinical documentation so that clinicians can return their attention to direct patient care, focusing on establishing trust and building relationships rather than clicking through administrative tasks on a screen. Last year, Microsoft launched Dragon…
Until recently, campus Wi-Fi and cellular telephony networks were entirely different animals: different vendors, spectrum, equipment and security. As wireless networking and Internet of Things become mission-critical for providers, it makes sense to look at private 5G to supplement or even replace campus Wi-Fi. For questions about how private 5G could work for your healthcare organization, start here. Click the banner below to prepare your network to support emerging AI applications.
At the 2026 Splunk GovSummit in Washington, D.C., Indian Health Service leaders made a clear case: In modern healthcare environments, cybersecurity is inseparable from patient care. IHS CISO Benjamin Koshy and Solomon Wilson, a cybersecurity project manager in the agency’s Division of Information Security, outlined how IHS is aligning security, operations and emerging technologies to support care delivery across a vast and complex network. The agency serves roughly 2.7 million patients across federal facilities in 37 states, spanning highly urban and extremely remote locations. That…
Clinicians have been trained to handle unexpected medical situations, but what’s become clear in recent years is that entire organizations need to strengthen procedures for when an unexpected IT event happens. If a critical application, such as an electronic health records system or an enterprise resource planning platform, goes dark, can care teams still operate? And even if clinicians can switch to paper charting, does everyone know where the paper supplies are and how much inventory is available for a three-hour outage? A three-day outage? What about a three-week outage? This is why…
Artificial intelligence has the potential to help small, rural and independent healthcare organizations optimize operations and combat staff shortages — ultimately benefiting the patients that rely on their services. But rural hospitals often lack the infrastructure and specialized expertise that have allowed larger health systems to integrate AI more readily. The American Hospital Association reports that 56% of rural hospitals are using some form of predictive AI, compared with 81% of urban hospitals. However, experts say there are practical, achievable ways for rural…
Artificial intelligence is offering new possibilities to standardize surgical training, improve intra-operative decision-making and patient care, and generate performance data for clinicians. Last fall, the University of Maryland, Baltimore and medical research and training company Axis Research and Technologies announced a joint venture to create the Surgical Performance Center, a 36,000-square-foot facility to support surgical education and applied research. The linchpin of the ecosystem is an AI-powered platform that integrates data and performance analytics into surgical environments.…
Technical debt comes in many forms, especially for hospitals and health systems. The larger the organization, the more complex the technology, explains David Hotchkiss, vice president and chief information and security officer for the Medical College of Wisconsin. Each application and piece of equipment or software has a cost and a lifespan of five to seven years. Once the lifespan runs out, organizations are vulnerable to security issues, unexpected downtime and, in the case of hospitals, patient safety risks, says Hotchkiss. In addition, many hospitals may have relied on quick fixes for…
Traditional call centers often fail to meet customer expectations related to speed, flexibility and the ability to properly address concerns. In healthcare, where the cost of care is rising, organizations can’t afford to drive patients away due to inefficient systems. Rather than focusing on improvements, health systems need to start thinking about how to transform their traditional call center into a care center that meets patient needs quickly and effectively. Fragmented systems make it harder for healthcare contact center staff to respond to patients effectively. Imagine six different…
The Food and Drug Administration issued updated cybersecurity guidance for medical devices, setting stricter requirements that many existing systems — and the software that runs them — cannot meet without significant redesign. The FDA’s updated guidance, enacted through the omnibus appropriations legislation known as Section 524B, marks a major shift in how device security is regulated. The new framework requires manufacturers to implement security throughout the product lifecycle, including documenting software components, managing vulnerabilities and maintaining secure development processes…
While workers may not be hitting the office printer like they used to, technology-based friction still exists in all industries and departments, despite the massive advancements. Healthcare team members know this evolution all too well, from pagers and floppy disks to smartphones and generative artificial intelligence. But just because an organization adopts a new technology with powerful capabilities doesn’t mean workflows will automatically improve. “There is simply no way to remove that friction without being intentional about it. It’s not going to remove itself. It has to be a leader-led…
Health information exchanges are steadily gaining traction as healthcare organizations look for ways to improve care coordination, reduce costs and meet regulatory expectations. Organizations are seeking ways to use data to make better decisions, which reduces costs and increases revenue. This is especially important for health systems as the federal government cuts funding across the board. The result is an increase in health systems, post-acute providers and even senior care organizations participating in HIEs or actively exploring that as part of their clinical transformation strategies.…
Data literacy is the organizational ability to capture, evaluate, normalize and transform available data sources into actionable business insights. It is as much about culture as it is about processes and tools. To understand whether your organization has good data literacy, ask yourself these questions. Do you know which data sets you have? Do you know the quality of those data sets? Do you know which ones are sensitive or not? Do you know which buttons or levers that bit of data pushes when you’re making a decision about something? That is what data literacy means. The next step is figuring…
The funding landscape for rural healthcare organizations is still riddled with uncertainties. Organizations are bracing for changes that will come with reduced federal spending on Medicaid over the next few years. They’re also eyeing the sustainability of the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP), which awards $50 billion, or $10 billion per year over five years, to state initiatives meant to promote preventive care and develop local workforces, among other goals. Rural health systems operate on razor-thin margins, and many smaller community hospitals have a limited amount of cash…
Increased emphasis on creating a connected care continuum was deemed one of the key health tech trends to watch in 2026. Looking at the big picture of care delivery, it’s easy to see why. Information that remains in silos contributes to a deeply disjointed experience for patients and clinicians alike, especially amid the industry’s push to move care to the setting best suited to meeting a patient’s needs. The smart care continuum should be longitudinal and not episodic, according to Chif Umejei, senior vice president and CIO at NewYork-Presbyterian. “The continuum is designed to ensure that…
Clinician shortages are forcing hospitals to rethink how they plan and deploy their workforce, with many turning to predictive scheduling systems to better match staffing levels with fluctuating patient demand. Built on data analytics and artificial intelligence, predictive scheduling platforms analyze historical and real-time operational data to forecast patient volume and align clinical staffing accordingly. The goal is to ensure adequate coverage during peak periods while reducing unnecessary overtime and burnout when demand drops. Terry McDonnell, senior vice president and chief nursing…
Health systems face the growing risk of IT outages caused by ransomware and other cyber-attacks, forcing healthcare leaders to rethink how care continues after critical systems go offline. For CISOs, IT directors and clinical operations leaders, the priority must be ensuring clinicians can safely treat patients without access to electronic health records, diagnostic systems and other core platforms. This is driving organizations to adopt cyber resilience strategies combining prevention, rapid recovery, business continuity planning and automation to maintain clinical operations during downtime…
Some of the most recognizable names in the generative artificial intelligence space have announced expanded services geared to healthcare and life sciences. At the start of 2026, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude shared their respective solutions meant to support consumers with their health or providers with their workflows. And more than 40% of physicians in the U.S. reportedly log in daily to OpenEvidence to scour peer-reviewed journals to keep up with medical breakthroughs and help with evidence-based decision-making. Despite generative AI becoming a regular fixture in healthcare,…
In traditional vulnerability management, organizations react to, detect and patch known software flaws, but a framework called Continuous Threat Exposure Management offers an iterative strategy for managing and mitigating threats in real time. First introduced by Gartner, CTEM allows organizations such as health systems to take a continuous approach to fighting cyberthreats such as ransomware and credential leaks. While traditional vulnerability management is periodic and volume-driven, with a long list of findings that may not reflect real-world risk, CTEM is continuous and “threat-informed…
Most organizations are familiar with the concept of “shadow IT,” a term that describes any technological solution used on an enterprise network without prior approval or oversight from the IT department. It’s a reality of the modern workplace: Employees who feel that it’s too burdensome to involve IT in signing up for a new cloud-based service, for instance, may use a personal account to do their work, not thinking about compliance or security concerns. Now, with the proliferation of solutions that use generative artificial intelligence, signing up for a service has never been easier. But if…
Healthcare organizations should be prepared to keep operating in the event of planned or unplanned downtime. Besides the impact any amount of downtime can have on patient care, multiple days of it can spell financial troubles for an organization. That’s why the security focus during the 2026 HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition spotlighted lessons for building up clinical care resilience so that clinical teams and other departments have access to critical applications, such as the electronic health records system, and can adapt their procedures to updated expectations. …
Patients want the same level of ease and seamlessness in their healthcare experiences that they get when interacting with airlines or banks. Artificial intelligence is one way healthcare organizations are meeting that demand. In addition to using AI in the contact center to reduce agent workloads, organizations such as UC San Diego Health are engaging with patients via text and authenticating patient identities to protect their privacy. At HIMSS26 in Las Vegas, HealthTech connected with leaders in the patient engagement space about how they are improving patient experiences, how to measure…
Artificial intelligence has the potential to improve clinician workflows, patient experiences and even patient outcomes, but many AI initiatives aren’t possible without the infrastructure to support them. A hybrid infrastructure, in particular, plays an important role in AI success. On-prem data centers provide lower latency for high-volume inferencing, while the cloud offers on-demand computing power. At HIMSS26 in Las Vegas, HealthTech connected with health IT leaders to discuss how a hybrid infrastructure supports healthcare’s AI initiatives, how organizations can optimize their…
Healthcare’s increased investment in artificial intelligence has turned the industry’s attention to finding ways to maximize the value of AI deployment. One important example is data processing. There’s valuable information to be gleaned from sensors and medical devices operating at the edge, but near-real-time analysis has proved difficult without sending data to the cloud and back. That’s beginning to change. At Lenovo’s Tech World event at CES 2026, Lenovo announced three servers designed to support AI inferencing at the edge. The goal: Run large language models in environments where power…