TBW ADVISORS LLC

Tag: Hal Wolf

Conference Whispers: HIMSS 2026
Las Vegas, NV March 9 – March 12

Published: March 15, 2026 ID: TBW2157

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Computer Talk Radio Coverage

ABSTRACT

“HIMSS26 in Las Vegas spotlighted healthcare’s shift toward real‑time data, patient‑driven insights, and quietly automated workflows. Printers, paper bottlenecks, and cyber hygiene revealed how much unstructured data still shapes care. The through‑line: trusted data powering emerging AI. A community‑driven push toward interoperability and smarter infrastructure defined this year’s experience on the ground.”

The Conference
- The 2026 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition brought together roughly 25,000 attendees from across the global health ecosystem, hosted by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) at the Venetian Expo in Las Vegas.
Cautions
- Friendly reminder: this research provides examples of what was shared with us at the event, not an evaluation, validation, or recommendation of the given technology.
Exhibits

Have you ever found yourself trying to figure out what is wrong with you or a loved one? Every doctor running their own test but no one is communicating and you are left in the dark with no answers? Thanks to b.well consumers can now control and manage their own health data and get the answers they need. Coverage includes most medical practices in the US, Apple Watch, Samsung Watch, Aura Ring, Walgreens, Samsung phones, Google apps, and ChatGPT.

When you have an emergency, you want your EMS attendant to have the best possible information. Furthermore, you want the information created in the ambulance given to those in the hospital treating you. Good news, ImageTrend is focused on closing that exact gap enabling true continuum of care.

For anyone who has ever used an auto feed on a copier or scanner, you know they can be finicky. Successful execution has been considered an art form – for decades. Witness this Ricoh demonstration. Very quietly and with one push of the button, these scanners digitize hundreds of pages in seconds. They scan all types of hospital paperwork -forms of varying size, thickness, orientation, black and white or color. Today, auto size, auto orient, auto color detect, silent enterprise document scanners are realized.

Symphion provides turnkey services for establishing, maintaining and proving cyber hygiene of edge devices including printers. Protections include inventory management, detection and response, firmware security and password management. Focusing on healthcare native protocols including DICOM (an international standard for printing data storage, transmission and retrieval of medical information) and HL7, SecurITe (pronounced secure IT) protects networks by analyzing and securing its healthcare-related traffic.

At this point, you may be noticing a trend we also encountered in distribution during our coverage of Manifest and Retail, Supply Chain and Logistics Expo – a lot of discussion on printers. That means physical, unstructured, not digitized data. This causes problems on a few fronts. How are medical practices going to get reimbursed – paper is not part of the FHIR standard (pronounced FIRE standard) required to get paid. Interestingly the answer for this technology challenge comes from eFax from Consensus Cloud. They literally have transformed the old-fashioned traditional faxing into intelligent digital processing.

Behind every credible clinical AI, there’s one non-negotiable: data you can trust. Expo hall featured Drummond that explicitly focuses on the accuracy and completeness of the data once digitized, providing data validation for health care data. Many are also trying to create such intelligent products to serve the health care sector. The first requirement is that of data to train and create their models. For those seeking to depersonalize their healthcare data for training OR create fake data, Tonic.ai was ready to meet your needs. For organizations creating healthcare products requiring not just privacy and governance for their data but the ability to run really, really fast AI, OneSource Cloud was looking to meet you. As a dedicated cloud provider, they gain priority access to GPUs ensuring they can meet your needs. Their architecture is optimized for speed by optimizing the storage compute connection with an IB Switch or InfiniBand switch. For those not familiar, IB switches are designed for Ultra-low latency, very high throughput, RDMA (remote direct memory access for zero-copy communication) and offer high scalability. This is a feature one cannot directly request and manage in public clouds today.

Hospitals are some of the most high-tech buildings one can come across. Penetrating 40% of healthcare facilities, Schneider Electric is there to support the industry. Schneider Electric specializes in digitizing physical infrastructure for operational efficiencies. Hospital efficiencies start with smart, efficient infrastructure.

HIMSS Hal Wolf Press Q&A

With the exhibits covered, we now shift towards the bigger picture shaping healthcare’s future. Admittedly as a member of the press, one of the highlights is when HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) President and CEO, Hal Wolf, hosts the press for a round of questions and answers. Hal truly emphasized the last S in HIMSS for society. It’s that society that is going to enable healthcare to evolve with the injection of AI. He emphasized the impact AI is having on operational efficiency from supply chain management to bed utilization. Moving towards a translational AI Ecosystems, his hopes lie in seamless connectivity and true interoperability being achieved. One final message was the direct correlation and causation relationship between health and the economy. Specifically good physical health and well-being is required to drive a strong economy.

Conference Vibe

After 48 videos including a livestream and over a twenty fact checks, our coverage of The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2026 Global Health Conference and Exhibition or HIMSS26 for short, closes. HIMSS26 brought together approximately 25,000 healthcare technology and systems professionals from around the world. Exhibitions expanded and covered the entire upstairs expo hall at the Venetian Expo as well as the entire downstairs. Downstairs exhibitions were also known as, “The Park” also featured private meeting and demo spaces. One could buy food at the Venetian’s Café Press or at any of the Bistro locations. In addition, The Park featured snack time ranging from home made cookies you could smell a mile away on Tuesday. Wednesday attempted to top what Tuesday brought to the table with homemade scones.

We once again live streamed from on site. We let everyone know we were at HIMSS on the ground covering it as well as requesting assistance. Specifically, I requested assistance on your favorite videos for my segment on the March 14, 2026 broadcast edition of Computer Talk Radio.

We conducted research for twelve additional forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available with the video version to be distributed via YouTube Whisper Club upper tier membership area on our YouTube Channel.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: HIMSS 2026 Playlist in its entirety. The playlist will be sited in the end screen, description, and as a pinned comment of the video edition.

The video edition will conclude with gratitude towards those that contributed and a montage of responses to Bonus Question, “What’s the best part about attending the HIMSS 2026 live in Las Vegas?”.

Next Year’s Conference

Unfortunately, next year’s conference will be in Chicago so we are not scheduled to attend or cover the event unless our coverage is sponsored. HIMSS27 will be taking place April 5-8, 2027. We look forward to its return to Vegas in the future.

^*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

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©2019-2026 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, Whisper Club, Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Vegas Convention Library, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.
March 14, 2026
Whisper Report: What are the best practices for enhancing cybersecurity in healthcare?
Whisper Report: What are the best practices for enhancing cybersecurity in healthcare?

Published to clients: June 18, 2025 ID: TBW2063

Published to Readers: June 19, 2025

Email Whispers: July 22, 2025

Public & Video Edition: July 23, 2025

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Abstract:

Cybersecurity in healthcare is responsible for protecting the data that represents the life’s story of patients and infrastructure to enable proper care. Managing and securing the plethora of edge devices and the interoperability of all the technologies is an increasing challenge. There are four steps to take to enhance your healthcare cybersecurity: select a framework, leverage depth in defense, automate where possible, and test your environment.

Target Audience Titles:
- Chief Information Security Officer, Chief Information Officer, Chief Security Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, Chief Data Officer, Chief Privacy Officer
- VP of Cybersecurity, Director of Information Security
- Security Architect, Information Security Architect, Network Security Engineer, Systems Security Engineer, SOC Analysts, IAM Specialists, Director of Privacy
Key Takeaways
- Device maintenance and interoperability continue to challenge healthcare environments cybersecurity.
- Four steps to enhance cybersecurity in healthcare environments. Select a framework, leverage depth in defense, automate where possible, and test your solution.
Tags

cybersecurity, privacy, healthcare, healthcare technology, health tech, HIMSS, HIPPA, medical devices, edge devices, IoT, depth in defense, automate, integration, cybersecurity frameworks, Evidently, Hal Wolf, Kai Romero, Brennen Reynolds, Absolute Security, Alexander Group, Trey Chamberlin, Aisera, Daniel Carvajal Marin

What are the best practices for enhancing cybersecurity in healthcare?

We took the most frequently asked and most urgent technology questions straight to the health systems technology experts gathering at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2025 Global Health Conference and Exhibition or HIMSS 25 for short. This Whisper Report addresses the question regarding the best practices for enhancing cybersecurity in healthcare. Given that data breaches in 2024 affected 1 in 2 American’s health records, cybersecurity is top of mind in healthcare¹. But healthcare data is not your shopping data, it represents much more. As Evidently’s Kai Romero shared, “the narrative Arc of who they are how they’ve suffered, how they’ve overcome the illnesses that they’ve experienced, you can’t treat that lightly … this is their life.” But there is a reason for concern in healthcare. For those unfamiliar, Russia has been found the source of ransomware attacks on the healthcare industry². As HIMSS Hal Wolf shared, “security is a major issue our own the federal government the United States just announced that they were bringing down cyber security blockage or fundamentals against another foreign country recently that was yesterday.” There is no indication that the cyberattacks on healthcare will stop, just an announcement that the government is no longer stopping such attacks.

Where are the vulnerabilities?

Understanding that healthcare data represents the whole person and their life, where are the vulnerabilities coming from in the healthcare environment? Examining the source of the security vulnerabilities can offer insights to the efforts to defend and protect this valuable healthcare data. Turns out there are two large sources of vulnerabilities.

Device Maintenance

First, devices in the healthcare environment itself are an issue. As we discussed in Whisper Report: How can AI be effectively integrated into healthcare systems?, many devices on site are old. They may not have over the air (OTA) updates, may require human in the loop to update. As Absolute Security’s Brennen Reynolds stated, “any given organization that man that has our technology about 15% of the devices that are being manually managed have some missing critical security control which increases their risk to either an operational outage or a cyber event like Ransomware.” It may sound like simple advice you have heard a million times, but keeping your equipment up to date with the latest software and security patches is simply critical.

Interoperability

Healthcare creates complicated environments full of an array of diverse vendors. Somehow these vendors and their technology – or more specifically – the diverse array of data about the patient derived must interoperate. Not just interoperate, the data must come together to provide a picture of the patient for the practitioner. Unfortunately, as Alexander Group’s Tray Chamberlin pointed out, “a lot of interoperability issues and leaks.” Getting the technology to work together is so difficult in and of itself, the process created that ‘works’ may not be a secure solution. It is critical that during any interoperability project that protection of the data in the processes is the first a priority. Furthermore, the integration architecture and solution must be examined at a detailed level to understand and identify any potential leakages created in the process.

Solutions

Organizations concern about security in healthcare technology is not going to go away. Per HIMSS’s Hal Wolf, “this is going to be the coinage of which we really improve Healthcare is information (and) information comes from data the data will be unprotected so .. it is why it (cybersecurity) is one of our (HIMSS) four focus points.. at HIMSS (25) digital Health transformation, AI, cyber security, and Workforce Development.” Information is how we improve care, thus information is the goldmine of healthcare. Figure 4 depicts Four Steps to Enhance your Healthcare Cybersecurity.

Select Framework

Through the various conversations while conducting this research, it became very clear that each organization has their own framework to guide their cybersecurity program. When selecting amongst the frameworks, ensure these common characteristics are present.
- It should be 100% restricting while enabling productivity.
- Needs guardrails and controls
- It should be deliberate and intentional with how it handles your assets.
Leverage Defense in Depth

Regardless of where the technology is used within healthcare, certain security practices should be consistent. As Evidently’s Kai Romera shared, “some of the same things that we use in the clinical setting to protect patient data whether that’s logging out of a screen pretty quickly after it’s not active or you know taking away the protected patient information so that anyone who’s looking at the screen would not know who that patient was you want to know that they’re employing those things because this (is) patient data.” Understanding no single method covers all scenarios, it is good to use every method available when possible. For example, clinical data masking technology and standards can easily be applied to the terminals used at the front desk and billing as well.

But data masking is not just useful at the terminal level. As Aisera’s pointed out, regarding you agentic AI solutions, we can do everything from masking PII for mask any personal data “architecture that’s going to keep your data private data privacy is probably the most important thing especially when it comes to healthcare right .. but also how it is stored right even in our cloud approach” our customers get the unique architecture so when you’re training the LLM you’re not trained in our models.”

Deploy Automation

Many shy away from automation, but as we pointed out in Conference Whispers: Black Hat USA 2019, a ransom ware attack can take down an organization in 30 minutes. What human on call can get notified, get online and stop an attack that fast? Furthermore, as Absolute Security’s Brennan Reynolds shared, “topic of automation there’s just too many things to be done in a day to allow and require humans to be doing all of the maintenance and management task so if the it devices across their organizations whether you have a th000 devices 10,000 or a million devices you’re never going to have enough staff to manually execute tasks to keep those devices safe and secure.” Thus it is physically impossible to stop many attacks or even simply update all the devices on site without automation.

Test!

Regardless of the care taken, it important to review the architecture and test the system. As Alexander Group’s Tray Chamberlin explained, “make sure that it’s not just we want this system we want to stand it up and we want the functionality but also going through the paces and testing and making sure that is playing nice but also doesn’t open up a new vulnerability within your system going forward.” A system that simply works is not the goal. Rather, a system must work and be secure, resilient, and hardened against attacks including its integration points is the minimum standard.

We will close with remarks by HIMSS’s Hal Wolf, “ I think cyber security is going to continue to be at the Forefront of our thoughts whenever you’re dealing with data and information they are going to be bad actors… HIMSS is focused on cyber security we have cyber security forums (and) there are cyber security events taking place.”

^*When vendors’ names or quotes are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference or what we heard doing our research, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document.

Related playlists
1. Whisper Report: HIMSS: Question 1: How can AI be effectively integrated into healthcare systems??
2. Conference Whispers: HIMSS 25
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©2019-2025 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.
June 18, 2025
Whisper Report: How can AI be effectively integrated into healthcare systems?
Published to clients: April 28, 2025 ID: 2062

Published to Readers: April 29, 2025

Published to Email Whispers: May 8, 2025

Public: May 9, 2025

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Abstract:

To effectively integrate AI into healthcare, focus on three key areas: risk, impact, and value. Achieving a Patient 360 view requires orchestrating various tools. AI is embedded in many healthcare solutions including those for asset location, employee safety, and security. Always have a strategy to integrate AI into workflows. Successful integration depends on strong partnerships and clear communication about AI capabilities and limitations.

Target Audience Titles:
- Chief Supply Chain, Logistics Officer, Procurement, Technology, and Data Officers
- Supply Chain, Logistics, Procurement, Technology, BI and Data Science Directors
- ERP Specialist, Supply Chain IT, Data Scientists, BI and related managers
Key Takeaways

Generic AI models don’t understand logistics-specific challenges.

Inconsistent, incomplete, and manually entered data hinder AI’s effectiveness.

Poorly structured processes and a reluctance to adopt AI-driven solutions slow innovation.

Onboarding new suppliers and standardizing systems remains difficult.

Biggest challenge using Generative AI in Logistics??

We took the most frequently asked and most urgent questions straight to the logistics and supply chain experts in the industry. This Whisper Report addresses the question regarding the biggest challenges using generative AI in supply chain and logistics. The first challenge, however, is not unique to that industry nor is it unique to generative AI. This challenge applies to a all analysis and analytics including all forms of AI – generative or not regardless the size of the models. Put simply, no matter how many ways you state it, when you put garbage data in you will get garbage results.

Tom Larson with ITS Logistics “bad inputs in = bad outputs.”

Balaji Gunter with Hoptek, “case of garbage in garbage out.”

Blake Donaldson with Nutrabolt, “quality of information.”

Obrie Scarborough with Wolley Digital Innovations, “good in good out.”

Jacob Hobbs with Cubiscan, “you are only as good as your data.”

Additional research on technology available to help with getting and cleaning data in supply chain and logistics is available in Conference Whispers: Manifest 2025 and Conference Whispers: Smart Retail Tech Expo.

Challenges Unique to Lo gistics and Supply chain?

Given the dominance of a common answer, this raises the question, is the sector of logistics and supply chain in worse shape versus other industries? More specifically, is the data itself within logistics and supply chain the problem and if so, why? Put simply and as depicted in Figure 1, the challenges go far beyond the data. As Don Addington of Cloud 9 Perception put it, “in logistics space there is a level of complexity that is more complex than others.” These complexities come in for the following reasons.

Data doesn’t exist

There is an ideal digital world which is very different from the physical world. As Owen Nicholson from Slamcore pointed out, “If you are not seeing real world deployments with all the gnarly things that go wrong you are only creating idealized models that don’t work in the real world.” Distribution centers are full of human and robot workers as well as machines from multiple manufacturers. Unlike construction, many of these machines are in the same building they entered at the start of their usefulness as brand new machines long before generative AI term existed. Logistics is not the neat and tidy world of fintech transactions.

Data is inconsistent

As Ben Tracy of Vizion pointed out, “(many) skipped a few fundament steps, being useful and being reliable… They don’t monitor data quality, they don’t have consistency amongst data formats, and their systems are not exportable for the data that is inside of them.” Or what data professionals call it- ‘good old fashioned data quality’. To put it in the simplest terms possible, we all learned early in elementary school you need data in the same units to perform any math over the data. You do not add inches and feet together. You cannot add meters and feet together. You don’t speak globally about time without time zones. But perhaps most important, you cannot create data quality nor can you analyze data you haven’t or cannot export.

Data is manual and miss-keyed

If you are wondering how bad that data can be, Dawn Favier of Green Screens provided some hard facts, “its not uncommon to flag 35% of their (customers) data as dirty. Dirty meaning miss-keyed data, something tagged as full truck load when its partial.” Obviously, if one looked at data for a half truck and leveraged for a full truck, the resulting analytics are useless. With 35% of one’s data being dirty, there is work involved before you can even hope for insights.

Data lacks historical context
For any AI to be successful, you need massive amounts of data over a very small problem so the mathematics behind the AI can provide useful information. As Atit Shah of Chetu explained, “

Even if you have the right collection of data, you can generate incorrect forecasting. A lot of people do not have a huge history or the history of the records so they go into the gen AI because everyone is doing it but it doesn’t meet their expectation.“ No matter how powerful the technology, all forms of AI need good data. Furthermore, the data must have context to be useful for any advance form of AI including generative AI.

Bad Processes
One obvious reason for messy data is the messy, manual, and imprecise or undefined processes it represents. The biggest challenge as Bill Driegert of Flexport shared, is simply, “not slapping it (generative AI) on bad processes. There needs to be a lot of process engineering required to leverage AI.” If process re-engineering and establishing a clean data fabric is your organizations Mt. Everest, TBW Advisors LLC offers a lot of first-hand experience and expertise to teams and executive via inquiry. Any clients at this phase should schedule an inquiry to receive guidance. We will set up a plan of inquiries during your journey to give you any guidance we may have or can gather to assist you. The plan will cover milestones including but not limited to strategy reviews, presentation reviews, and architecture reviews. It is not an area to go through without a guide on your side even if the work is outsourced.

Resistant to change

It is always important to consider the culture of any organization when executing or desire to execute change management. As Erica Frank of Optimal Dynamics put it, “need to take a healthy assessment, how resistant are we to change, how are we going to challenge this from the top down.” As with any change management, executive buy-in with a business objective are critical to success. AI for the sake of AI is always a bad idea.

Perhaps the reason many in this space are resistant to change is the change is constant. As Jason Augustine of WNS put it, “Environment keeps changing every 3-6 months”. Thus discovering opportunities to align and integrate the transformational changes into these already occurring network constant changes is a less tumultuous approach.

Human Machine Interaction

Logistics, like manufacturing and construction, has a lot of machines in the loop. Those machines may or may not be intelligent machines. Thus as Dr. Mario Bjelonic of Rivr.ai shared, “the challenge will come up in terms of how the humans and robots will act as a team together.” Optimizing the total solution over this shared space is the true goal. But as one organization is optimized, what about working between each organization?

As Justin Liu from Alibaba.com stated, “biggest challenge what it can do and what it cannot do

is the on boarding suppliers cannot be done by AI”. That’s correct. Bringing each and every machine into the system, or each and every supplier and the complex of array of data that that suppliers managed to coalesce together IS ITSELF NOT standardized thus cannot be automated.

Can’t use Generic Gen AI

As Balaji Guntur of Hoptek pointed out, “Most of the models are very generalized.” “AI is data hungry, and you need to train it on real data. The biggest challenge Generative AI in logistics is that the generative models don’t know what logistics is doing. This is the main challenge,” Aviv Castro, Sensos. In summary, as best put by Nykaj Nair of Sugere, “you need data highly accurate data that is relative to the companies supply chain.”

Opportunities for Generative AI in Logistics

With all the challenges discussed, it may seem discouraging. It is important to realize the significant opportunity awaits thus easily providing business justification for the work to transform – carefully. As Justin Liu of Alibaba.com put it, “we are continuously adopting AI into our workflow into our latest and greatest features and functionalities to do their business more efficiently.” Rye Akervik of Shipsi believes the value is, “in adding it as a first layer to understand the (customer) issue.” Mick Oliver of Dexory shared, “We don’t see it as a challenge we see it as an opportunity and provide insights based on that data.” Rich Krul of Hoplite observed that the intelligent systems are, “way more efficient, people get their answers a little faster and thinks that is a good thing for the industry.” Most importantly as Georgy Melkonyan of Arnata pointed out, “Shouldn’t fear it (AI) is going to take your job, ai will not replace your job. The people that use ai are going to replace your job.”

^*When vendors’ names or quotes are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference or what we heard doing our research, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document.

Related playlists
1. Whisper Report: How can AI be effectively integrated into healthcare systems?
2. Conference Whispers: HIMSS 2025
Corporate Headquarters

2884 Grand Helios Way

Henderson, NV 89052

©2019-2025 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.
March 25, 2025
Conference Whispers: HIMSS 2025
Las Vegas, NV March 3-6

Published to clients: March 10, 2025

Published to readers: March 11, 2025

Published to Email Whispers: June 18, 2025

Publicly Published with video edition: June 19, 2025

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): D. Doreen Galli

ABSTRACT

The gathering of Health Information and Management Systems Society, 2025 HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition or HIMSS 2025 allowed over 28,000 attendees from 88 countries to gather. Discussions revolved around the pursuit of global health equity, the impact of digitization on revenue growth, and the importance of security in healthcare technology. Thought-provoking questions were raised about common household medical devices, and innovative solutions to improve patient access and operational efficiency were highlighted. The event centers on the intersection of technology and healthcare, emphasizing the need for secure, efficient, and patient-focus approaches to modern medical challenge.

The Conference
- The 2025 HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition or HIMSSS 2025 saw over 28,000 attendees gathered with a net gain of over 2,000 attendees from the previous year.
- The event spanned the Sands convention center at Venetian as well as leveraged the connector bridge and all of Caesars Forum.
- Attendees titles spanned clinician, IT director, Chief Medical Officer, founder, investor, security analyst, to Chief Privacy officer.
Cautions
- At HIMSS the entire expo hall is treated as a patient operating room from a privacy perspective. Thus, if you want press coverage of any type, one must have executed all planning before the start of HIMSS. Press was not allowed to walk up and film attendees without prior authorization. Many first timers at HIMSS were caught off guard by this aspect.
TAGS:

ACH payments, aries fraud, aries fraud solutoins, consumer finance, drivers license, fintech, FM25, Fraud, Gitlab, Identiverse, Incentive.ai, Intellicheck, Interface.ai, Money 20/20, MoneyLion, Onbe, OnFido, payments, phone intelligence, Provenir, risk decisioning, Security Metrics, socure, Thetaray, Wysh

Conference Vibe

Every event has their own personality and HIMSS 2025, the conference for Health Information and Management Systems Society or HIMSS annual gathering is no different. In Healthcare, data privacy is not just about protecting data. As attendees regularly shared, health data represents a patient’s whole body, a patient’s being, a patient’s life history, the data represents the patient’s life – not to mention individuals can be fined for making mistakes. Thus, one might expect, HIMSS25 was a very, very private conference. A huge no cameras sign welcomed all to the expo hall and Press were required to be prebriefed and reminded multiple times, no advance permission, no video. As a point of comparison, our video to time on site ratio was 50% of what we were able to achieve at CES. Nonetheless, we were able to work with the system and bring you a whopping 37 videos and over 110 minutes of video, endless shorts to enjoy, and research for 4 different research documents including this one. The Conference Whispers: HIMSS 2025 playlist is available on our channel for you to enjoy.

HIMSS welcomed 28,000 attendees to see more than X exhibits and y sessions with over Z startups represented. The energy was quite high as all awaited the show’s opening and the registration lines moved quickly. The Sphere, right next door, even put on a wild psychedelic show to welcome all. Finally, the moment arrived all were waiting for when the Expo Hall Opened. Food could be found for purchase at both locations. The Venetian had their Bistro open with multiple locations throughout the event. Much like SEMA, the Venetian Expo leveraged the bridge connecting it to Caesars Forum which also hosted HIMSS. For those that were at Caesar’s Forum, food was available at the café known as cash-concessions.

We were able to conduct research for three forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available and will eventually fill in with the video version of the report so you may wish to bookmark these playlists.
Sessions and Deep Dives

Due to the restrictive privacy nature of the conference, we could not record any keynotes and sessions were limited but we were still able to capture great research. First, enjoy the press Q&A session held by HIMSS very own President and CEO Hal Wolf. This session covered the gambit including HIMSS instrumental role in ensuring citizens around the world achieve health equity. Their mission is independent of any specific government. He has high hopes that private organizations will step in to compensate for any globally shifting landscapes. TBW Advisors was excited to say that we were able to secure HIMSS President and CEO Hal Wolf’s answer for the Whisper Report based on Question 1 and Question 2 above. These answers are presented separately from the primary session video. Hal Wolf’s answers to Question 1 and Question 2 are in their respective playlists.

The Alexander Group provided their framework in the session titled, “From Strategy to Success: Rel World Go To Market Studies”. This session provided their framework for revenue growth in healthcare through digitizing. The framework nicely summarizes the primary objectives of current investment areas that are occurring within healthcare to grow revenue. The session included a specific case study to drive the point home. The session, “Revolutionizing Healthcare: The AI Powered Stethoscope? During this session, Minttihealth CEO Xiaong Zou left attendees with one important question. “Why is there a thermometer in every home but not a stethoscope!?” For those seeking to secure and extended resilience across endpoints used to manage care and smart technologies, Absolute Security provided a session on a model to secure the health enterprise. Specifically, they leveraged a healthcare model to minimize risk into IT Security.

Front Office AI Applications

In healthcare, standard business operations are separate from technologies leveraged to provide healthcare. While both may deal with health data, health operations are significantly riskier and more restrictive. There were innovations serving both aspects of the healthcare system at HIMSS. On the front office side, we found one of those technologies you hope the next doctor you see with has deployed. Relatient’s focus is on enabling patient self-scheduling, even for new patients without using the Patient Portal. No more hold time and spending hours trying to get into the doctors’ office. Relatient purports Practices leveraging the technology have realized 70% of self-scheduling are brand new patients with 30% making their appointments after hours. Xcaliber shared their agentic AI solution for healthcare which can anchor to any of your organization’s data stores. Problems they solve include prior authorization and discharge summaries. Aisera is another agentic AI solution for Healthcare with three separate fully developed ontologies for healthcare ready to go. Aisera purports it is designed to leverage agentic AI to build out new workflows opening the doors to endless possibilities.

Healthcare Support Applications

When you move from the front office of healthcare to the back office, many things change. Even the keyboards and mice must be different so they can be sanitized. Fortunately, Man & Machine has waterproof and washable keyboards and mice available. The mice can even be dipped in 10% bleach! Warning, do not try that at home with your equipment!

Keyboards are not the only devices to support providing health, doctors leverage many handheld devices. Stethoscopes, blood pressure meters, glucose meters and the likes. Telemedicine and AI are also impacting these medical devices. In turn, these medical devices are also becoming more intelligent and capable of provide remote and real-time data such as those now available by Minttihealth. For those in cybersecurity, at this point your head might start to spin at the possibilities of it all. Have no fear, there were many providers on hand to help including Absolute Security. Absolute Security solutions aim to ensure those end points such as tablet and PC’s in use are secure and resilient.

Some of those endpoints are more expensive than others. Some may be huge expensive machines. Keeping track of all those assets and ensuring the safety of staff require an intelligent location solution. Cognosos provides an infrastructure light, location intelligence solution for your assets – man or machine.

Moving on to the care side and practitioner support, Evidently provides clinical summarization and decision support created leveraging actual clinicians. Notice it is a decision support tool as the clinician is ultimately responsible for taking care of the patient. We often refer to this as Human in the Loop or HIL. One interesting capability of Evidently is to provide a very clear line where facts originated. This makes it easy for the clinician to decide to agree or disagree with the technology’s suggestion, ultimately building trust.

Next Year’s Conference

HIMSS 2026 conference will once again be held in Las Vegas, Nevada. The announced dates are March 9-13, 2026.

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March 11, 2025