HIMSS 2026 in Las Vegas showcased healthcare interoperability coming to life, not through a single technology or policy announcement, but through the convergence of multiple breakthroughs happening simultaneously. After years of policy discussions and pilot programs, the exhibit halls and session rooms were filled with live demonstrations of what the industry has been promising. Patients controlling their health data, AI that actually helps navigate care, and the literal elimination of clipboards at the point of care.
Healthcare has been asking patients to adapt to its systems for too long, with multiple portals, repeated forms, and fragmented data scattered across dozens of providers. HIMSS 2026 showcased a new approach in which healthcare is adapting to how consumers already live. Your smartphone is already your boarding pass, your payment method, your communication hub, and your entertainment center. At HIMSS 2026, it became clear that it’s also becoming your healthcare front door.
Top 10 Takeaways from HIMSS 2026
1. Samsung + b.well Bring “Kill the Clipboard” to Life
The biggest announcement of HIMSS 2026 came on day one when b.well Connected Health and Samsung Electronics unveiled an industry-leading, end-to-end consumer experience aligned with the federal “Kill the Clipboard” initiative—a nationwide effort led by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to modernize healthcare by eliminating repetitive forms and giving patients direct control of their medical data.
In the session “Healthcare without Clipboards or Portals: The Interoperability Breakthrough for Consumers,” Sara Zywicki (Chief Product Officer, b.well) and Ricky Choi ( Head of Digital Health, Samsung Electronics America) demonstrated how Samsung Galaxy smartphone users can securely access their complete health history, understand it in plain language through conversational AI, and share it with participating providers instantly all from the Health Records feature via the Samsung Health app.
The live demo showcases the complete workflow, with a consumer opening the Samsung Health app, completing identity verification with CLEAR, retrieving health data through FHIR connections with MEDITECH and athenahealth, as well as through b.well’s QHIN connection with Commonwealth Health Alliance (providing access to Clover Health). Within moments, the consumer’s health records appeared in the app, normalized and cleansed. The patient could review key information, such as post-visit summaries, interact with their data through bailey™ (b.well’s AI health assistant), and even integrate wearable data from their Samsung watch.
When it comes time to share with a provider, the patient simply selects which data to share, and the app generates a secure QR code. At the point of care, the provider using athenaOne can open athenaCapture to scan the QR code directly from the patient’s phone. With a simple scan, clinical records and wearable data are imported directly into their workflow with no paperwork, no manual entry, no clipboard.
On stage, Amy Gleason (Administrator & Senior Advisor at DOGE Service & CMS) noted during the demonstration, “Samsung and b.well just announced this, so they’re fresh out of the press and coming into production, and they are gonna be ready for the March 31st deadline.”
“This is the moment interoperability becomes real for people,” said Kristen Valdes (Founder & CEO, b.well). “For years, patients were promised access to their health data but still faced friction at every appointment. Now the experience matches the policy—your health information moves with you.”
2. The CMS Health Tech Ecosystem Pledges Are Moving from Talk to Real Demos
This was one of the highlights across both days. The pledgees are starting to show real implementations, not just commitments. Throughout the conference, multiple EHR vendors and health IT companies demonstrated their “Kill the Clipboard” workflows on the main stage, each showing how they’re ready for the March 31st deadline.
The demonstrations proved that the vision of seamless, patient-controlled data sharing is no longer theoretical, but it’s production-ready. Across different platforms, the workflow was consistent. Patients arrive with a QR code generated from their patient-facing app, front desk staff scans it, and the patient’s health data automatically populates in the EHR. Some implementations took less than a minute from scan to full chart integration.
What made these demonstrations significant wasn’t just the technology, it was the proof that standards-based interoperability works across different platforms and vendors. Patients don’t need to worry about which EHR their doctor uses. The QR code workflow and patient control remain the same, and the elimination of redundant paperwork is universal.
There’s also growing excitement building around what’s coming next, including the Medicare App Library, which will help make trusted digital health tools easier for people to discover and use.
3. AI Is Moving from Pilots to Production to Consumer Use
Across sessions and booths, we noted that focus is no longer on whether AI will work in healthcare, but how to operationalize it safely at scale, from clinical decision support to patient navigation.
In his session “Three Keys to Trustworthy Health AI – Lessons Learned building AI @ b.well,” Imran Qureshi (Chief Technology & AI Officer, b.well) explored a new vision for Health AI that supports the entire spectrum of a consumer’s health journey, from prevention and daily decisions to post-visit follow-up. He introduced b.well’s Health Skills, combining clinical knowledge, safety protocols, and operational workflows into structured intelligence that moves AI from generic responses to trusted, personalized, safety-vetted guidance, all based on the patient’s complete health data and real health system workflows.
The session reinforced what many conversations on the floor emphasized. Healthcare AI today focuses almost entirely on the clinical encounter, but the real opportunity lies in supporting patients through their entire health journey.
4. It’s About Health Skills, Not Just LLMs
Building on the AI theme, discussions at the b.well booth focused on how AI becomes truly useful when it’s paired with Health Skills, the clinical knowledge, safety checks, and structured workflows required to guide real health decisions.
The takeaway is that generic AI can answer questions, but Health AI with specialized skills can actually help people navigate care safely and effectively.
bailey™, b.well’s AI health assistant, exemplifies this approach. Named after Kristen Valdes’ daughter, who manages a complex autoimmune condition across multiple specialists and medications, bailey can instantly retrieve visit summaries and lab results spanning years, analyze inflammatory markers across disparate lab records, correlate medication history with health outcomes, and summarize follow-up steps like imaging, lab work, specialist appointments, and daily care needs. It makes complex medical data digestible and helps patients close contextually relevant care gaps that their care team wants them to follow through on.
5. Data Completeness Is the Next Frontier
Many discussions reinforced the point that AI is only as good as the data behind it. Organizations are realizing that normalized, longitudinal health data is the foundation for trustworthy AI experiences.
This theme connected directly to the Samsung-b.well demonstration, where b.well’s Data Refinery normalizes and cleanses fragmented data from multiple sources—EHRs, wearables, claims data, and more—creating a complete longitudinal health record that AI can actually use to provide accurate, personalized guidance.
Without complete data, AI is guessing. With it, AI becomes exponentially more powerful.
6. Interoperability Is Finally Becoming Consumer-Driven
From TEFCA to patient-facing apps, the industry is shifting toward consumer-mediated data exchange where individuals control and share their own records across the ecosystem.
This shift was highlighted in the session “From Clipboard to QR Code: A New Era of Patient-Led Intake,” presented by Liz Lewis (AVP Network Management, b.well) and Melissa Massardo (Product Market Strategy Senior Manager, athenahealth). The session showcased a live point-of-care workflow that advances patients’ right of access to secure digital health information sharing during intake with no paper forms, faxes, or portal logins.
The demonstration showed how patients collect records from multiple sources, share via QR code, and receive visit summaries back, all while maintaining control of their data across athenaOne and b.well-powered apps. The workflow is bidirectional, so patients can share what they want at intake, and visit summaries automatically flow back to patients in both their athena patient portal and b.well-powered apps, closing the care loop.
This represents true patient-directed data exchange where patients control what information to share and when, using a simple QR code workflow that eliminates manual intake processes. For providers, the integration is seamless because practice staff can scan, review, and incorporate patient-shared data directly into athenaOne without disrupting clinical workflows.
7. While Interoperability Progress Is Real, We Still Work To Do
Standards like FHIR and initiatives like TEFCA continue to move the industry forward, but many conversations reinforced that governance, trust, and data quality are what make interoperability work in practice.
In the panel “Powering Rural Health Through Open, Intelligent EHR Innovation,” Liz Lewis, Mike Cordeiro (Senior Director, Interoperability Market & Product Strategy, MEDITECH), and Brendan Keeler (Interoperability Practice Lead, HTD Health) explored how rural and community hospitals can leverage interoperability to overcome some of healthcare’s most urgent challenges like workforce shortages, financial pressure, fragmented data, and limited access to specialty care.
The panelists emphasized, technical standards alone aren’t enough—you need governance frameworks, trust between organizations, and commitment to data quality. Open standards and vendor-neutral approaches mean that small community hospitals can participate in nationwide data exchange without massive infrastructure investments—the same QR code workflow that works at a major academic medical center works at a rural clinic.
8. Access to Care Is the Next Digital Battleground
Scheduling, care navigation, and digital front doors dominated conversations throughout HIMSS 2026. The winners will be the organizations that connect data → insights → access into one unified experience.
It’s not enough to tell a patient they need a mammogram. The future is “I’ve booked you at 2 pm on Monday, 1 mile away, in-network, with a $50 copay.” This shift from advisory to executional AI requires secure connections to real clinical systems, real-time scheduling data, and the ability to take action on behalf of the patient.
9. Policy and Regulation Are Accelerating Digital Transformation, and It’s Not Slowing Down
Many leaders talked about how federal initiatives are pushing the industry toward a more connected ecosystem. And there is a lot more innovation coming as these programs continue to evolve.
The March 31st deadline for CMS Health Tech Ecosystem pledges created urgency across the exhibit hall. Organizations were demonstrating what they’re ready to deploy, not just talking about what they might do. The next deadline is July 4th, and the momentum is building.
10. Consumer Experience Is Getting Even More Attention
From AI assistants to personalized digital front doors to smarter care navigation, there’s a growing focus on making healthcare easier to access, understand, and act on.
This theme connected every session and demo. Whether it was the Samsung-b.well, “Kill the Clipboard” experience, the athenahealth QR code intake workflow, or the discussions about Health Skills and conversational AI, the common thread was putting consumers in control with experiences that actually work.
From Demonstration to Deployment at HIMSS 2026
The energy at HIMSS 2026 was different from previous years because organizations weren’t showing prototypes, they were demonstrating production-ready systems with deployment dates.
What became clear throughout the conference is that the shift from conversational AI to agentic AI requires an entire ecosystem working together with complete normalized data, health skills that combine clinical knowledge with safety protocols, secure identity verification, and seamless provider integrations.
The integration of wearable data with clinical records shows that healthcare is finally recognizing that a patient’s health story includes the sleep patterns, activity levels, and daily decisions made between appointments. We are finally paying attention to more than just what happens in the doctor’s office.
If you missed us at HIMSS 2026, contact us to see a demo of our “Kill the Clipboard” experience, learn how bailey™ can transform your consumer engagement, or explore how b.well can help you meet CMS interoperability goals.
