Emerging technologies have improved efficiency at most health systems. As these tools advance, operations are expected to run even more smoothly.

Over 50 healthcare leaders spoke with Becker’s about the emerging technology that needs to improve the soonest.

The leaders featured below are speaking at Becker’s 10th Annual Health IT + Digital Health + RCM Conference, Sept. 30-Oct. 3, 2025, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.

If you would like to join the event as a speaker, please contact Scott King at sking@beckershealthcare.com.

As part of an ongoing series, Becker’s is connecting with healthcare leaders who will speak at the event to get their perspectives on key issues in the industry.

Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Question: Which technology in healthcare needs to improve the fastest, and why?

Adrienne Chase. Chief integrity and compliance officer, Trinity Health (Livonia, Mich.): The fastest tech that needs to advance is access of care and ease to see a provider in any location (rural and metro areas). On demand care (i.e. Amazon Care) is gaining some interest and patients want care sooner rather than later, especially when medical care is more imminent. Let’s meet patients where they are, not have the patients meet us where we are as providers.

Edward Thomas. Director of enterprise revenue cycle training deployment, Trinity Health (Livonia, Mich.): My caveat to this question is that I am not in a Clinical area- rather a financial one so my response is purely from that space. For Health systems, provider technology used in the collection of third-party payments across the spectrum needs to advance minimally to the current state capability of payors. Delays in payment are often a result of such technological gaps. This impacts all providers but disproportionately impacts those which do not have capital on hand to “weather” such delays.

Christopher Horvat, MD. Senior director of clinical informatics, UPMC (Pittsburgh): Healthcare needs visual language models to improve the fastest. These models can process medical imaging, bedside waveforms, and clinical notes together, something no other tool can. Done right, they could enable faster diagnoses, fewer errors, and seamless integration of data into the learning health system.

Biju Samkutty. COO of international and enterprise automation, Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.): The technology that must advance the quickest is the ecosystem that enables true interoperability of health data—from standards like FHIR to secure APIs and cloud platforms. Interoperability itself isn’t a single technology, but the function that arises when these tools work seamlessly together. Unlocking it will transform care by giving clinicians and patients a complete, real-time view of health, fueling breakthroughs in AI, precision medicine, and global collaboration.

Mayo Clinic is advancing this through its platform initiatives, pioneering data-sharing frameworks, and forging global partnerships that securely connect providers, innovators, and patients—setting the stage for a more connected and intelligent future of care.

Anjali Bhagra, MD. Medical director of automation, Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.): Ambient sensing technologies, including advanced voice and sensor-based systems, must evolve rapidly to meet the demands of modern healthcare. These tools hold the promise of seamless, unobtrusive monitoring in both clinical and home settings, helping bridge the gap between episodic care and continuous engagement. By capturing natural interactions and environmental signals, these technologies provide real-time insights into a patient’s health without adding burden.

For example, voice biomarkers can reveal early signs of respiratory disease, neurological decline, or mood disorders, while ambient sensors can track mobility, sleep, medication adherence, and subtle physiological changes. Together, these innovations enable earlier diagnosis, proactive intervention, and more personalized, continuous care – paving the way for truly seamless, patient-centered healthcare delivery.

Brenna Loufek, MS. Director of AI, Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.): The area requiring the most urgent advancement is the governance and validation infrastructure for AI-enabled clinical decision support systems. Although the underlying algorithms are evolving rapidly, the corresponding mechanisms to ensure their safe, effective, and ethical integration into clinical practice remain underdeveloped.

In the absence of robust and scalable frameworks for oversight, bias detection, and post-market surveillance, healthcare institutions risk introducing tools that may inadvertently compromise patient safety or undermine trust in AI technologies. Strengthening this regulatory and institutional foundation is essential to enable responsible innovation while safeguarding both patients and clinicians.

Mark Townsend, MD. Chief clinical digital ventures officer, Bon Secours Mercy Health (Cincinnati): The technology that needs to improve the fastest in healthcare is technology that empowers us to measure financial impact attributable to use of digital applications. Measuring improvement in clinical domains is arguably easier than it is to measure impact on profitability attributed to applications, which constrains adoption and scaling of technology.

The manual effort required to empower management-control through cost accounting remains a significant limitation, and seemingly lends itself to the development of a future technology that will quantify value for our patients and communities.

Andrew Kim, MD. Director of physician informatics, Baylor Scott & White Health (Dallas): My main passion is focusing on initiatives that prevent physician burnout, as it’s associated with patient outcomes, decreased productivity, and the intent to leave the workforce. We have standard features that prevent this within the EHR such as ordersets, templates, dictations, and quick buttons, but we have constant changes to requirements for documentation that fragment or add to the workflow. Multiple vendor interfaces also add to the workflow, adding another link to click or another program to launch furthers the burden that we place on physicians to provide patient care.

The improvement that I constantly strive for is to make sure that any initiative we take on reduces the burden on the physician workflow and integrates seamlessly so that the workflow is unhindered to the physician. I work closely with our physician leaders as well as our Chief Wellness Officer, Dr. Jamile Ashmore, to improve the physician experience. I am happy to report that our work appears to be having an effect as we have seen consistent annual improvement in professional fulfillment since 2023. These kinds of results keep me motivated. They let me know our work, despite how frustrating it can be, is having a positive downstream effect.

Lewis Marshall Jr., MD. CMO, NYC Health + Hospitals/Lincoln (New York City): Healthcare has been slow to adopt technology. Thoughtful evaluation and consideration of technology and AI is critical to help us provide quality, efficient care to patients that does not increase the burden on our providers. While many areas of technology and AI need to be improved, remote monitoring comes to mind as the technology that needs to improve quickly.

As a healthcare system we struggle with financing care. High-cost care locations like the ED and in-patient services will become more difficult to generate revenue and some care will need to be provided in the community and at home. In order to accomplish this we will need to improve how we use remote monitoring. Remote monitoring may include vital signs, verbalized patient complaints, and family input using various devices. These devices would need to connect with our electronic health systems and we will need to utilize AI to summarize the data for the clinician. While rapid improvements in technology and AI will help, we will need to guard against worsening disparity. Who is going to pay for the device, the connection, the data storage and data analysis?

Aimmon Lago, MHA. Executive director of revenue cycle and population health systems, Stanford Health Care (Stanford, Calif.): Standardized data sharing between providers and payers will most dramatically reduce administrative cost in healthcare. Standards for real-time, bi-directional exchange of eligibility, benefit information, prior authorization, claims, and claims status will eliminate billions of dollars in cost burden and accelerate the path of care.

This effort needs the support of payers, providers, and the most prominent technology companies that have the ability to solve the issues of identity and scale that have prevented this in the past.

Felix Segre. Director of revenue integrity, Memorial Hermann Health System (Houston): The most urgent technology priority in healthcare is integrated ecosystem along the interoperability framework. Right now, too much of the HER system still operates in silos—patient information is scattered across hospitals, clinics, and payers, which leads to repeated tests, delayed diagnoses, and breakdowns in care coordination. These gaps don’t just affect patients; they also slow down billing, create denials, and undercut financial growth.

An integrated ecosystem built on true interoperability changes this. When data flows securely and consistently across the continuum of care, clinicians have the complete picture at the point of decision. That leads to fewer errors, faster treatment, and stronger patient trust. Financially, it means cleaner claims, less rework, and better revenue capture. Once this foundation is solid, investments in advanced analytics and decision-support tools finally deliver their full value.

Interoperability must be accelerated now—it is the only way to build a health system that improves outcomes while sustaining long-term financial growth.

Tim Calahan, DBA. CTO, University of Michigan Health (Ann Arbor): Healthcare technology needs to improve the integration of clinical applications with modern cloud platforms. While infrastructure and application automation have advanced, applications like Epic, imaging and their supporting application ecosystems still lag in being cloud-enabled and supported at the same level. Closing this gap is critical to unlocking scalability, resiliency, and cost optimization. By accelerating application readiness for the cloud, healthcare can deliver greater agility and better support reliable care delivery, innovation, and data-driven decision-making.

Kathleen Fear, PhD. Senior director of digital health and AI, University of Rochester Medical Center (Rochester, N.Y.): Healthcare technology is moving forward at an extraordinary pace, potentially faster than many of our organizations can keep up with – especially when it comes to AI. The challenges we face now are less about developing better tools and algorithms, and much more about figuring out how to steer this acceleration in innovation towards what really matters: healthier patients, a thriving workforce, and equitable access to care. In order to effectively find impact from the incredible tools that are becoming available to us, we most need to move quickly to build the systems and technologies that will guide and govern those tools, and harness them to not only transform individual workflows, but elevate the overall care we provide.

Lisa Stephenson, MSN, RN. Chief nursing informatics officer, Cedars-Sinai (Los Angeles): As technology continues to improve, Cedars-Sinai is committed to generating valuable datasets for every aspect of patient care needs. To do this efficiently and quickly, we must continue to break down the barriers to interoperability of patient information across care settings and healthcare organizations. Having all relevant patient information is essential for clinicians to provide safe, timely and effective care.

Joseph Jankowski, PhD. Director of the Davidson Innovation Fellowship and senior advisor of innovation, Henry Ford Health (Detroit): So many choices, but, in terms of ‘low-hanging fruit’, I believe an immense patient impact can and should be made with solutions that provide patients better digital information regarding their given intervention (e.g., summary of stay or visit), analysis (e.g., lab diagnostics and medical imaging results), and care instructions.

For instance, even though I work in healthcare and am seemingly more medical literate than the average person, I am surprised how difficult it is to interpret information provided when I view my parents’ respective electronic patient summaries.

Ken Dunham, MD. Executive director of medical operations, behavioral health, Sentara Health (Norfolk, Va.): The human factor in how we shape and guide AI needs to improve the quickest. In other words, we need to make sure that AI focuses on the human benefit, with transparency, trust, and accountability. We should quickly develop our concept of AI around the human factor. And even more intimate than that, we should develop AI around the “family factor”.

Let’s create AI that is safe and relevant for the people we love, not for the widgets we make. We should ask ourselves; how can this AI make the life of my friends and family better? What would I want it to do (and, maybe more importantly, not do), for the ones I cherish? We must build this technology with that in mind, especially in healthcare. Because, in the end, AI will be so integrated into our daily lives, it will be more of an extension of our families than a tool for work.

Umberto Tachinardi, MD. Senior vice president and chief health digital officer, UCHealth (Aurora, Colo.): The technology we need to develop faster will be one that helps us govern and orchestrate interoperability at the architectural and operational levels.

Ken Nepple, MD. Associate chief health information officer, University of Iowa Health Care (Iowa City): The chart is kind of a mess. Important information is located throughout the foundational system, health information exchanges, and as scanned documents. We have had a game changing experience with AI-powered chart summary that embeds within the native EHR. Technology that quickly surfaces the most pertinent information has an incredible impact on patient care and throughput with a resulting improvement in quality, access, and revenue.

Thomas Bentley, MS. Chief information and digital transformation officer, Ohio State University Hospital (Columbus): The advancements in AI over the past year have been remarkably impressive, demonstrating promising improvements that significantly enhance our clinicians’ efficiency. I am particularly excited about the upcoming developments that will simplify self-service analytics and patient-focused communications. These innovations have the potential to transform highly utilized tools, such as our patient portal, MyChart, into an even more vital connection for patients.

The patient portal will become increasingly integrated with advanced unified communications capabilities, broadening the range of individuals who will benefit. Finally, the advancement in AI’s ability to suggest clinical insights is poised to become mainstream, aiding a broader spectrum of clinicians and patients.

Rahul Kashyap, MD. Medical director of research, WellSpan Health (York, Pa.), and assistant professor, Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.): When we talk about the future of healthcare technology, the conversation often gravitates toward artificial intelligence, robotics, or genomics. While these innovations are undeniably transformative, the technology that most urgently needs improvement is something far more fundamental: interoperability of health data systems.

At present, healthcare is plagued by fragmentation. A patient’s information is scattered across electronic health records (EHRs), imaging platforms, laboratory systems, pharmacy databases, and sometimes even paper charts. Clinicians often spend more time searching for data than analyzing it. In emergencies, this can mean critical delays; in everyday practice. It results in inefficiency, duplication of tests, and avoidable costs. Most importantly, incomplete or inaccessible data can directly compromise patient safety.

Interoperability is not just about convenience—it is the backbone of every other technological advancement in healthcare. Artificial intelligence models, for example, require robust, representative, and comprehensive datasets to generate reliable predictions. Precision medicine depends on the integration of genomic, clinical, and lifestyle data at scale. Population health initiatives need connected systems to track trends, identify gaps in care, and inform public health responses. Without interoperable infrastructure, these innovations remain isolated proofs of concept rather than scalable solutions.

The issue extends beyond high-resource settings. In low and middle-income countries, digital health adoption is accelerating, often leapfrogging traditional paper systems. However, without interoperable frameworks, these regions risk replicating the same silos that hamper efficiency in wealthier healthcare systems. Building interoperability into global digital health from the outset offers a chance to avoid repeating past mistakes and to foster equity in access to care.

Improving interoperability is not solely a technical challenge—it is also cultural, political, and economic. Vendors, institutions, and regulators must collaborate to prioritize standards, data-sharing agreements, and patient-centered design. Trust, transparency, and security are critical to ensure that data flows without compromising privacy.

In the end, the promise of futuristic healthcare technologies will only be realized if we address this foundational issue. By enabling health data to move seamlessly, securely, and universally, we create the conditions for AI, genomics, and other innovations to thrive. Interoperability is not glamorous, but it is the single most urgent technology that needs to improve—because it is the key that unlocks everything else.

Racheal Hernandez, MPH. Lead director of operations, Rush University Medical Center (Chicago): In healthcare today, the single most urgent technology that needs improvement is interoperability—the ability for electronic health records, claims data, remote monitoring devices, and emerging AI tools to communicate seamlessly and securely across the system. The lack of true interoperability has created a fragmented landscape where each hospital, clinic, or health plan often functions in isolation, holding patient information in silos that do not easily connect.

The consequences are significant: patients are forced to repeat their medical history at every new encounter, clinicians are left to make critical decisions without access to complete records, and duplicate testing and imaging wastes both time and money. In urgent or emergent scenarios, the stakes rise even higher. Seconds matter when treating a trauma or heart attack, and yet emergency physicians often do not have immediate access to essential details like allergies, current medications, or recent lab results because prior records remain locked behind incompatible systems.

Beyond the immediate challenges of patient safety and efficiency, interoperability is the foundation upon which value-based care and artificial intelligence must rest. Programs such as ACO REACH depend on accurate, comprehensive data to benchmark quality, cost, and risk. When information is incomplete or siloed, those benchmarks become skewed, leading to unfair comparisons and inequities in reimbursement.

Patients feel the burden of poor interoperability every day. Many assume their providers are already sharing information, only to discover they must carry paperwork from office to office or upload PDFs into portals that no clinician reviews. This lack of coordination not only frustrates patients but also undermines trust in the system. Economically, the consequences are staggering. The United States alone loses tens of billions of dollars each year in inefficiencies tied to poor data sharing—avoidable admissions, unnecessary tests, redundant imaging, and administrative waste. These costs weigh heavily on health systems already operating on thin margins, and they siphon resources away from innovations that could genuinely improve care delivery.

While precision medicine, robotic surgery, and telehealth continue to advance, their transformative potential is bottlenecked by the absence of interoperability. No AI tool, no matter how sophisticated, can generate reliable insights if it must work with partial inputs. No telehealth service can deliver fully coordinated care if data from remote monitoring devices never reaches the patient’s broader record. No value-based care program can fairly reward outcomes if it is blind to half the patient journey. Improving interoperability quickly is the essential step that will allow every other innovation to be integrated seamlessly into a connected ecosystem capable of delivering on the full promise of modern medicine.

Patrick McDermott. Chief revenue officer, Geisinger (Danville, Pa.): Claim (bill) to payment tech so that it’s less than couple days, not the average 40, and digital scheduling with no human touch, amazon like!

Matt Morton. AVP and chief information security officer, University of Chicago (Chicago): I think the sprawling web of API connections, HL7 interfaces, and third-party integrations between healthcare systems represents our most critical vulnerability, multiplying attack surfaces through thousands of poorly secured interconnection points that often use outdated protocols and lack proper authentication or monitoring. These integration points enable attackers to pivot laterally across our entire ecosystem, exploiting vendor-to-vendor “trusted” relationships and legacy data exchange methods that bypass security controls. Without immediate implementation of zero-trust integration architectures and comprehensive API security gateways, these interconnections remain the weakest links that attackers exploit to compromise not just individual systems but entire healthcare networks.

Kerri Webster, MS, RN. Vice president and chief analytics officer, Children’s Hospital Colorado (Aurora): While Electronic Health Records (EHRs) form the digital foundation of modern healthcare, there are other technologies equally deserving of urgent advancement. Among these, telemedicine platforms and systems stand out as an area where rapid progress can dramatically improve patient outcomes, provider effectiveness, and system-wide efficiency. While telemedicine experienced explosive growth during COVID, the technology still faces significant hurdles such as: connectivity issues, user experience, integration with monitoring tools, and data security considerations.

While EHR’s remain a central priority, technologies that support the patients where they are (remote monitoring devices, technology infrastructure security) require swift and thoughtful innovation.

Marcus Speaker, MD. Associate chief medical information officer, Carilion Clinic (Roanoke, Va.): The technology that needs to improve fastest is clinical decision support inside the EHR. Right now, it’s too often a barrage of pop-ups and clicks that frustrate physicians instead of helping them. We need smarter, context-aware tools that guide care, capture quality metrics without extra work, and truly partner with us at the point of care. When CDS evolves from noise to intelligence, both physicians and patients win.

Laura Burrill, MS. Director of revenue cycle management, KVC Health Systems (Olathe, Kan.): The technology that most urgently needs improvement is claims processing automation. Revenue cycle teams still spend enormous time correcting denials, chasing down missing data, and navigating payer-specific requirements. Smarter, more adaptive automation that integrates directly with EHRs and payer systems would shorten reimbursement timelines, reduce costly rework, and allow staff to focus on higher-value tasks that directly support patient care and organizational stability.

Luis Taveras, PhD. CIO, Jefferson Health (Philadelphia): What Needs to Change:

 Smarter Integration: EHRs should connect effortlessly with wearables, imaging systems, and pharmacy platforms to create a unified patient profile. Of course, Epic is far down this path but, at times, it’s still a challenge to integrate with non-Epic solutions.

 AI-Powered Decision Support: Embedding machine learning into EHRs can help flag anomalies, suggest diagnoses, and optimize treatment plans. In our Epic environment, this is getting much better…particularly with the deluge of generative AI announcements by Epic in recent days.

 Fully Voice-Enabled Interfaces that allow clinicians to dictate notes naturally while AI transcribes and organizes them in real time, freeing up hours of administrative work.

 Patient-Focused Design that allows the patients to access, understand, and contribute to their own records easily, not just view results.

While technologies like telemedicine, nanomedicine, and smart implants are exciting frontiers, the foundational infrastructure of healthcare — the EHR — must continue evolving first. Without it, even the most advanced innovations will struggle to deliver to their full potential.

Zafar Chaudry, MD. Chief digital officer and chief AI and information officer, Seattle Children’s: The technology in healthcare that needs to improve the quickest: data interoperability. We have all these brilliant pieces of technology such as electronic health records, lab systems, imaging platforms, but they’re like islands. A clinician can’t get a complete picture of a patient’s health when their medical history is fragmented across different systems, or even different hospitals.

This siloed data leads to duplicated tests, slower diagnoses, and a higher risk of error. We are sitting on a mountain of information, but we can’t use it effectively. Breaking down those data silos is the single most critical step. Get that right, and we can unlock the true potential of everything else, from AI-powered diagnostics to personalized medicine.

James Matera, DO. Senior vice president of medical affairs and CMO, CentraState Medical Center (Freehold, N.J.): I feel that Artificial Intelligence applications in healthcare are growing faster than the ability to validate them. We all know they will be an integral part of medicine in the future, but we have to speed up the validation and avoid pitfalls that would lead to distraction, invalid data and potentially outcomes from any platform we look to incorporate. This, to me, is a key factor in harnessing the power that AI can have for our patients, and industry.

Benjamin Cox, MBA. CIO, CalvertHealth Medical Center (Prince Frederick, Md.): Cyber Security for Healthcare needs to drastically improve. A lot of work has been happening to interconnect systems and to embed AI tools into healthcare, but the protections around those systems are not growing at the same rate. While all the new advances in interoperability and AI increase the amount of data at risk in a breach grows exponentially. The damage done from a cyber attack is far worse in healthcare then in any other industry.

Roxanne Lopez. Director of patient financial services, Children’s Hospital Colorado (Aurora): Interoperability needs to improve the quickest. While we’ve made strides in digitizing healthcare, the ability to access and share comprehensive, real-time data across systems remains limited. Enhancing this would not only support better patient outcomes through coordinated care but also empower clinicians with richer insights for more accurate diagnoses and proactive treatment planning. Ultimately, improving how data flows will elevate both the quality and efficiency of care delivery.

Nirmit Kothari, MD. Associate CMO, Baptist Memorial Hospital–Memphis (Tenn.): One of the most crucial areas for improvement in healthcare technology is enhancing interoperability among Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). Fragmented systems lead to delays in data availability and duplicate testing—both of which delay care and increase costs. By streamlining connectivity, we can ensure the right data reaches the right person at the right time, improving clinical decision-making. Additionally, technologies that can intelligently summarize relevant clinical details will reduce cognitive burden and enhance patient care. Rapid progress in these areas is essential for creating a more efficient and safer healthcare system.

Pooja Vyas, DO. System vice president of care coordination and physician advisement, SSM Health (St. Louis): Prior authorization and payer connectivity are needed for improvement immediately. Authorizations still rely heavily on fax, phone calls, and payer portals. Rules change rapidly, and providers often don’t have real-time visibility into coverage requirements. Delays in OR schedules, bed holds, denials, and patient dissatisfaction. CMS is mandating electronic prior authorization (starting 2026), and systems that can’t upgrade quickly will face operational and compliance risk.

Catriona McDonald Harrop, MD. Senior vice president, Jefferson Medical Group (Philadelphia): Advancements in technology must prioritize solutions that alleviate the administrative burdens placed on Physicians and Advanced Practice Clinicians. The prevalence of clinician burnout has escalated into a national crisis, and the strategic application of technology—particularly artificial intelligence—represents a critical avenue for mitigation. At Jefferson Health, we have recently initiated a partnership with Abridge to implement ambient note-writing capabilities. Preliminary feedback from our clinical teams indicates a substantial reduction in documentation workload, underscoring the potential of this innovation to enhance efficiency and restore focus to patient-centered care.

Ashok Kurian. AVP of information services, Texas Children’s Hospital (Houston): We need to quickly improve three key areas of healthcare technology to make it safer and more effective. We have to fix data interoperability so all of a patient’s medical information can be easily shared between different doctors, hospitals and technical platforms. We also need to ensure AI is ethical so it doesn’t give biased results, and every healthcare organization needs to have a robust cybersecurity program to protect it all.

Tatyana Sushkina. Director of revenue cycle, Prosser Memorial Hospital (Wash.): From my perspective, the technology that most urgently needs improvement is payer interoperability and automation in claims processing. Too often, hospitals face delays and denials due to fragmented systems and inconsistent data exchange between providers and payers. Streamlined, automated platforms that reduce manual intervention would not only improve reimbursement timeliness but also lower administrative costs. For Critical Access Hospitals, where resources are limited, these efficiencies are critical to maintaining financial stability and ensuring focus remains on patient care.

Deepti Pandita, MD. Chief medical informatics officer, UC Irvine Health (Orange, Calif.): The healthcare technology that most urgently needs to improve is interoperability of health data systems. Fragmented data leads to patient errors, waste in the system and frustration for clinicians. While AI, wearables, and genomics are exciting, none of them reach their full potential until interoperability is solved. It’s the foundational technology gap that unlocks progress across the entire healthcare ecosystem.

Bob Berbeco. CIO, Mahaska Health (Oskaloosa, Iowa): Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare needs to improve the quickest. The foundation is already there, and it’s showing great promise by helping providers detect diseases earlier, flag drug interactions, and predict health risks before they happen. The challenge is trust, since many AI systems still act like black boxes, sometimes producing results without clear explanation. As AI becomes more accurate, transparent, and integrated into clinical workflows with provider oversight, it has the potential to truly transform healthcare.

Nate Gladwell, RN. Executive director of network development and digital health, University of Utah Health (Salt Lake City): There are many technologies that need to change and improve — and fast. The most obvious to me is data interoperability. We swim in oceans of data in health care but to the average consumer of health care services the movement of data is stuck in the 1990’s. Who would have guessed that every conference in health IT the last two years is obsessed with AI, LLMs, and the like but the speakers are representing organizations that still use pagers, fax machines, and DVDs?

The pace of the data interoperability evolution has been on par with the promise of nuclear fusion. We heard the concept decades ago, we hear about it every few years, and yet we fail to see meaningful change in the real world. Information flow is the most vital element of complex systems. It enables the parts to equal more than their sum. Healthcare’s information flow is severely limited, and we all live with the negative externalities.

Robb Wetmore. Director of digital healthcare, Variety Care (Oklahoma City): This is a great question. And one I have been pondering more as of late. So, I already have a good answer for you.

The technology that most urgently needs to improve is interoperability between health systems and digital tools. We’ve made great strides with AI, telehealth, and RPM, but if these solutions can’t easily exchange data across EHRs, payers, and population health platforms, their value is throttled. Right now, providers spend too much time reconciling data silos, which leads to inefficiency, errors, and inequities in care.

If interoperability accelerates, every other innovation—from predictive analytics to AI-assisted diagnostics—becomes more powerful and scalable. It’s the difference between isolated wins and a true system-level transformation. Without it, we’re building skyscrapers on sand; with it, we finally get to build on bedrock.

Gulshan Mehta. Chief digital and information officer, Blanchard Valley Health System (Findlay, Ohio): The technology that will have the greatest near-term impact on healthcare efficiency and sustainability is revenue cycle management – basically, how hospitals get paid for the care they deliver. Too many hospitals rely on fragmented, rules-based systems that slow payments, frustrate staff, and drain resources. By leveraging AI, automation, and advanced analytics, we can make revenue cycles proactive, reduce denials, accelerate reimbursements, and free clinicians to focus on patient care. Improving this technology is not just about finance, it’s about creating the operational foundation for innovation, quality, and workforce sustainability across health systems.

Mark Fred, RN. COO and CIO, Kirby Medical Center (Monticello, Ill.): The healthcare technology that arguably needs the quickest improvement is interoperability of health information systems, particularly Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and data sharing infrastructure. Here’s why:

Fragmented Patient Data
Many healthcare systems still operate in silos, where patient data is stored in incompatible formats across different providers. This fragmentation leads to:
- Repeated tests and procedures
- Delayed diagnoses
- Increased costs
- Poor patient outcomes

Care Coordination Challenges
Without seamless data exchange, care teams struggle to coordinate effectively—especially for patients with chronic or complex conditions. Interoperability would enable real-time access to comprehensive patient histories, improving decision-making and reducing medical errors

Patient Empowerment and Engagement
Patients increasingly expect digital access to their health data. Interoperability supports patient portals, mobile health apps, and wearable integrations that empower individuals to manage their health more proactively

Hernando Ruiz-Jimenez. Chief marketing and communications officer, Geisinger (Danville, Pa.): Every health system in the country is having challenges creating and sustaining access. With improvements in AI, we are close to being able to move to a dynamic scheduling approach. AI can make a recommendation, based on the patient medical record, when follow up should happen. Does the patient need to come back and see the physician, or can they see an AP, or do a virtual or phone check in without an office visit? If we can get smarter about follow-up, we can increase access, improve patient experience and create the opportunity for new patients to see a physician when they need to. It is a win for everyone.

Charles Emerman, MD. Chair of emergency medicine, MetroHealth (Cleveland): With budgets tightening everywhere we are looking to technology to help reduce costs. One obvious one is our use of scribes. While it is a great service and has been a time saver for the providers we would like a technologic improvement. Existing voice to text still require time to correct. Improving the accuracy of these or the implementation of AI based dictation systems would be welcome.

Meng Wei, MBA. Chief of clinical analytics and chair of the Health Integrated Analytics Group, UCLA Health (Los Angeles): The technology that extracts insights from unstructured data in clinical notes, such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) and AI-driven models (Machine Learning (ML) & Deep Learning), etc.), needs to be improved the quickest.

Healthcare costs in the U.S. are continuing to climb at unsustainable rates. Burnout in healthcare worker still remains a critical issue in 2025. If a technology can quickly and accurately convert unstructured clinical notes into structured data for clinical registries for research and regulatory requirements, and accurately identify symptoms, diagnoses, medications, and procedures to enhance predictive modeling to support clinical decision-making, the technology can hugely reduce manual workload and errors and improve patient and employee satisfaction.

Judd Hollander, MD. Chief virtual care officer, Jefferson Health (Philadelphia):
Electronic health record access and open integration is critical to providing optimal care of the population going forward. It is not feasible for patients, clinicians and support staff to manage one patient in many different applications. Data is not reviewed, extra dollars are spent with duplicative testing, and everyone is a loser (except maybe the EHR companies who won’t truly open up access).

Albert Villarin, MD. CMIO, Nuvance Health (Danbury, Conn.): As a CMIO, I believe clinical decision support (CDS) technology must improve the quickest. Current systems often overwhelm clinicians with non-specific alerts, contributing to burnout and missed opportunities for meaningful intervention. We need smarter CDS that leverage AI to deliver context-aware recommendations, accurate predictive modelling —such as flagging sepsis risk based on real-time vitals and lab trends or suggesting deprescribing options for polypharmacy in elderly patients. Integration with natural language processing could also allow CDS to surface relevant guidelines directly from clinical notes. These enhancements would reduce cognitive burden, improve safety, and align decision-making with evidence-based care.

Nariman Heshmati, MD. Chief physician and operations executive, Lee Physician Group (Fort Myers, Fla.): The EMR is the technology in healthcare that needs to improve the quickest and has some of the biggest opportunities. As EMRs proliferated, there was the promise of more efficiency. While there have been benefits like accessibility of records, ability to track trends, and meeting regulatory requirements, we truly have not unlocked the benefits that can make day to day practice easier and lower administrative burdens. There’s no reason that prior authorization work cannot be automated and search the EMR without involving the care team. The EMR could also offer better suggestions for work up and work flow using AI to avoid mistakes and improve care delivery. Right now, the EMR is predominantly a repository of information when it can actually be a care delivery tool that allows not only more time for direct patient care but also an improvement in high-value care delivery.

Robert Boos. Chief revenue officer, Centra (Lynchburg, Va.): Prior authorization automation is the technology that most urgently needs improvement in healthcare. It continues to be one of the greatest administrative burdens, delaying care for patients and creating inefficiencies for providers. While AI and digital tools show promise, adoption remains inconsistent, especially among payers. Meaningful automation would ease costs, streamline the revenue cycle, and most importantly ensure patients receive timely care.

Alena Hill. Senior director of pre-service revenue cycle, Michigan Medicine (Ann Arbor): I think the technology that needs the quickest improvement would be automating authorizations. With so much change with insurance requirements and increasing denials, having accurate automated authorization technology would be a huge win.

Salim Saiyed, MD. CMIO, UT Health Austin, and assistant professor, Dell Medical School, University of Texas at Austin: The technology that needs to improve the quickest is creating a truly digital-first, patient-centered experience for healthcare systems, the seamless layer that connects people to their care, data, and providers. As we design the hospital of the future as part of The University of Texas Medical Center, current platforms such as EHR alone are no longer enough. We need smarter, more intuitive platforms that can combine AI, automation and data to deliver personalized, on-demand healthcare experiences — for healing.

Clinicians should receive ambient, context-aware support that can automate, reduce clicks and cognitive load. If we don’t accelerate improvements here, we risk building new buildings on outdated digital foundations. The future of healthcare will be won not by who has the newest or largest tower, but by who has the smartest platform, and that starts with radically reimagining the patient experience.

Michelle Myers. Senior director of revenue cycle management, Boulder Care (Portland, Ore.): EHR interoperability has to be solved now. Every day that systems can’t talk to each other, patients face dangerous care gaps, waiting weeks for treatment, struggling to see specialists, and reliving their stories at every stop. Behind the scenes, providers are drowning in denied claims, billing errors, and revenue cycle chaos that wastes time and drains focus from care. This isn’t just a tech problem, it’s a human one. Patients deserve timely, seamless care, and clinicians deserve systems that support, not hinder, their work. It’s time for the industry to step up and make true interoperability the standard.

Anna Flattau, MD. Enterprise chief of primary care services, Jefferson Health (Philadelphia): There are endless opportunities for technology to advance health care. In my view, the most urgent are technologies that provide relief to our clinicians and staff from low-value, time-intensive work, to clear a path for them to the professional work for which they were trained. There are many examples of this that are already advancing, including documentation support, information synthesis, and decision support. Like the end of winter in Narnia, these advances will restore us to the professional work that we were trained to do and that patients seek from us. Support for information synthesis in particular has long been needed, and will become only more critical as advances in AI will increasingly generate additional data to manage, including findings beyond the traditionally expected results of the ordered tests, as well as findings from patient self-monitoring and self-testing.

Parag Jain. Director of clinical research, Children’s Health (Dallas): Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare diagnostics and decision-making needs the most urgent improvement. Despite its potential to enhance accuracy and efficiency, adoption has been subpar due to trust issues, lack of transparency, and limited integration into clinical workflows. Many clinicians remain skeptical of AI recommendations, especially when algorithms operate as “black boxes” without clear rationale. Improving explainability, validation, and regulatory oversight is essential to build confidence and accelerate meaningful use. As healthcare systems face rising demands, trustworthy AI can be a critical ally in delivering faster, safer, and more personalized care.

Marcia Hodge, DNP, RN. Assistant vice president of nursing practice and innovation, Maimonides Health (Brooklyn, N.Y.): In healthcare, interoperability of electronic health records (EHRs) definitely needs to improve the quickest! Delivery of high-quality, efficient patient care across the spectrum, especially in SafetyNet hospitals that do not have the financial resources, can be negatively impacted when you have fragmented systems that do not communicate well. Patient safety depends on accurate, timely information so providers can execute a tailored plan of care. Lack of interoperability can delay decision-making by the healthcare team if they have to piece together information from multiple systems and sources. Despite the amazing advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), universal interoperability remains the vital piece of the puzzle to bridge the digital divide!

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