Management

HIMSS25: Collaboration Is Central to Healthcare Innovation

Healthcare leaders at the annual global conference discuss working together within and outside of organizations.

Teta Alim is the managing editor of HealthTech. Teta previously worked as a digital journalist in Washington, D.C.

From the first telehealth visit to advancements in remote robotic surgery, healthcare has seen many tools transform care delivery. Now, with artificial intelligence (AI) centered in seemingly every discussion and baked into the latest technologies, the focus on change management is clear.

“There’s little question that we’re fundamentally in a time to listen, to understand and, frankly, get ready for change at an unparalleled level,” said HIMSS President and CEO Hal Wolf in the opening keynote address at the annual HIMSS global conference and expo in Las Vegas Tuesday. “If you don’t like change, you’re absolutely in the wrong ecosystem.”

Before he took the stage, the session highlighted leaders from member chapters in Europe and Asia, emphasizing the international reach of not just HIMSS but healthcare itself. Changing funding environments, workforce concerns and the need to create healthcare access outside of hospital walls are industrywide and not limited by borders.

Similarly, policies and approaches to AI have far-reaching implications. Wolf noted the European Union’s AI Act, which he believes will impact legal frameworks on other continents. And in Asia, a number of healthcare organizations have been pushing forward AI’s technical capabilities in the industry, raising demand for training and deploying new complex systems.

One of those health systems is Samsung Medical Center in South Korea, which was featured during the opening keynote session.

“What fundamentally underlies each and every component of what we do is the reason many of us were motivated to get into healthcare in the first place,” Wolf said. “We think about the goals and the vision of every person that we serve to realize the full health potential of every human everywhere.”

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Becoming Agile and Listening to Clinicians

After Wolf, Samsung Medical Center President and CEO Dr. Seung Woo Park discussed the history and growth of the health system, from becoming a filmless hospital in 1996 and adopting a mobile electronic health record system in 2003 to completely overhauling its EHR to create DARWIN, which stands for Data Analytics and Research Window for Integrated Knowledge.

The journey to becoming an advanced healthcare organization that has garnered multiple recognitions from HIMSS was not an easy one. During a conversation with Wolf and Samsung Medical Center Chief Medical Information Officer Dr. Meong Hi Son, Park described how the previous EHR system did not align with the organization’s vision of creating a truly intelligent hospital.

“The first version of DARWIN failed totally,” Park said. “At first, we bit off more than we could chew. We wanted it perfect all at once, so we failed.”

Park said the organization then took a more agile approach, focusing on building up essential functions first and then gradually adding more features.

What made DARWIN work this time was creating a robust system with a flexible user experience that included ongoing collaboration with clinicians, Son added: “We actively integrated input from medical professionals, ensuring that the system reflects real-world experience.”

She said creating the next-generation system with clinicians has focused not only on improving workflows but also fostering a professional legacy that can help them feel more respected and connected to their work.

Son, who is also a pediatrician, introduced two robots named Nova and Lumi, which have been used in pediatric care either through remote guidance or with AI augmentation.

When Wolf asked about expectations for healthcare’s future, Park said that AI is transforming how care is delivered. He highlighted Samsung Medical Center’s Data-Based Operation and Communication Center as an integrated AI system that is helping streamline operations to save time for patients.

“Until now, the primary focus of AI was predicting prognoses or diagnostics so it can improve a patient’s outcome,” Son added. “While this remains really crucial, we are now witnessing a significant shift for AI that can linguistically understand processes and interactions between clinicians and patients. I envision a future where AI becomes agentic. Maybe the meaning of agentic will change, but the clear value is coming from actively assisting patients throughout their journey in a personalized and adaptive way.”

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