HIMSS 2026 Takeaways: AI, Dr. Oz, home hospitals, the FDA, and more

Las Vegas - The HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition offers more than a showcase for high-tech tools.

The annual digital health conference proves to be a great place to gauge the mindset and opinions of leaders, doctors and innovators in the healthcare industry.

This year’s event drew 24,000 healthcare leaders, which would fill Sin City’s T-Mobile Arena and still leave thousands outside. The attendance fell a bit short of the anticipated 25,000, with conference leaders saying some members from the Middle East and those working in the Defense Department weren’t able to arrive as planned.

Here are some takeaways from the big event.

AI optimism

Healthcare leaders are expressing more and more enthusiasm for AI, as they acknowledge it’s going to be a key in addressing some big challenges in the industry.

Hal Wolf, president and CEO of HIMSS, said in his annual media briefing at the conference that health systems need to ask themselves how they can use AI to “redirect my resources for higher acuity and higher delivery.”

“I think we're absolutely at an inflection point where we have to do that,” Wolf says.

At the same time, hospitals will only get big returns from AI if they use it properly, he said. And that means applying AI to the right processes to expand access to care and reduce the workload on clinicians.

Wolf cited a formula to keep in mind when applying AI: NT + OO = COO. As he says: “New technology, plus old organization, equals costly old organization.”

‘Too slow and too fast’

Isaac Kohane, a computer scientist and the chair of biomedical informatics at Harvard Medical School, offered a case for caution and acceleration in a panel discussion at HIMSS.

“We have to worry about the fact we're going both too slow and too fast,” Kohane said.

Health systems are having substantive discussions about proper governance and ensuring AI is used safely. “Therefore their adoption of AI outside of revenue cycle management and outside of ambient documentation, has been slow,” he said.

But he said that has spurred doctors to turn to other tools, and notes that many doctors are using OpenEvidence, which offers AI-generated insights from studies for doctors. Last week, OpenEvidence said for the first time, it had 1 million clinical consultations within a 24-hour period.

While he said OpenEvidence and other resources can assist doctors, he added, “Disruptive elements are going in without evaluations, without oversight.”

“The worst outcome will be if the worst parts of medicine get concrete poured over it by AI, so that the worst practices, the ones that are most linked, perhaps to medical, legal issues, to reimbursement issues, dominate,” he said.

FDA reviews

During the first day of the HIMSS conference, several federal officials participated in a discussion about how the government is using and regulating AI tools.

The Food and Drug Administration is considering new approaches to regulating AI tools and products, said Jared Seehafer, senior adviser in the FDA’s office of the commissioner. The FDA has already approved more than 1,000 AI products in the healthcare industry.

The FDA is “really looking toward more of a post-market approach” in regulating AI tools in health care, Seehafer said.

“That is going to be moving from a focus, which has been almost 90 to 95 percent focused on pre-market review, to something that is more evenly balanced, where we make a lighter touch on pre-market, but a much heavier focus … on how that product is actually performing in the field,” Seehafer said.

The FDA is planning to put out a request for information and comments on such an approach in the coming weeks, he said.

Hope for home hospital programs

Several leaders at HIMSS said they were thrilled about the likely expansion of hospital-at-home programs.

Congress and the White House last month agreed to extend approval for hospital-at-home programs well into 2030. Hospitals have implored lawmakers for a multi-year extension of federal waivers for home hospital programs. With those approvals in place, healthcare executives and analysts say they expect to see more home hospital programs.

Heather O’Sullivan, president and chief operating officer of Mass General Brigham’s Healthcare at Home, told Chief Healthcare Executive® that she’s been getting multiple calls each week from systems looking to start home hospital programs. Mass General Brigham launched one of the nation’s first home hospital programs.

“It’s absolutely the future of health care,” she said.

As of Feb. 10, 366 hospital-at-home programs are operating in 37 states, according to data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Those numbers look like they’ll be rising in the near future.

Permanent telehealth reforms

Kyle Zebley, president and CEO of the American Telemedicine Association, said he’s heartened by the government’s extension of approvals for telehealth programs, including hospital-at-home programs.

Lawmakers also agreed last month to extend federal approvals for telehealth programs through the end of 2027. Finally, policymakers have broken the cycle of settling for short-term extensions of telehealth waivers, which flustered providers for a year.

In a conversation at HIMSS, Zebley told Chief Healthcare Executive® that he sees permanent reforms as inevitable.

“I think we're definitely going to have permanency, and I think it's just a question of when,” Zebley says.

He says it’s possible that policymakers will do a couple of other extensions before leaving telehealth approvals in place for good. But he says, “I think at the end of the day, we are going to get some permanency for these programs that are in place now.”

Winning at home

Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, appeared for a keynote session on the final day of the conference. He said the healthcare industry is the only sector to see costs continue to rise even as technology improves.

But he says the key to driving down costs is treating more people at home before they need to end up in a hospital.

Oz said he wants to “win the battle for health, not in the ER or in the ICU, but in your home, in your kitchen, your bedroom, in your living room, with remote patient monitoring and better tools.”

While he engaged in a collegial conversation with Wolf, the HIMSS CEO, he also said the healthcare industry needs to be redesigned. “The current system will not work,” Oz said.

Don’t get distracted

While hospitals can take advantage of AI to help their operations, health systems should rediscover their “Covid state of mind,” said Vince Vickers, the U.S. healthcare advisory leader for KPMG.

In a conversation at HIMSS, Vickers said that hospitals need to tap their ability to quickly create and innovate, as they had to during the pandemic. Health systems will need to become more nimble and inventive as they deal with pressing challenges.

Hospitals are facing higher costs, Medicaid cuts, supply chain headaches, and a host of other issues that need attention.

“One of the things that I'm really here trying to do is bridge that gap for those IT executives that are getting lost in some of the shiny things that are here, but fundamentally are not working to resolve those issues, which aren't going away anytime soon,” Vickers says.

He says he’s advising hospitals that AI isn’t a panacea.

“I'm hugely optimistic about what AI opportunities exist out there,” Vickers says. “I think the opportunity is huge. I just think a lot of people are getting kind of distracted by that when there's stuff that's right in front of us.”

Sweet home Chicago

For its conference next year, HIMSS will be back in Chicago.

The conference has been in Vegas for the past two years, but the event returns to the Windy City, April 5-8. HIMSS held its big conference in Chicago in 2023.

More on the way

Chief Healthcare Executive sat down with a number of healthcare leaders at HIMSS, and some more stories from these conversations will be published in the coming days.