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HIMSS outlines priorities
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — During opening remarks at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society 2025 Global Health Conference & Exhibition, the organization’s CEO Harold Wolf discussed HIMSS’ health tech priorities, its standing as an international organization and the organization’s efforts to support the healthcare industry as it faces funding cuts under the Trump administration.
HIMSS has focused the conference around the topics of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, digital health transformation and workforce development. Wolf noted the exponential rise of artificial intelligence in the industry and represented at the conference. He jokingly challenged the audience to find ten booths on the show floor that do not feature AI.
During a press briefing with reporters, Wolf said 28,000 people registered for this year’s conference, which is an increase of 2,000 people from last year. He said they’ve especially seen a change in professional members.
Wolf warned in his opening comments about the disruptions the healthcare industry may face under President Donald Trump. He noted that healthcare organizations may have cash flow concerns if federal healthcare programs are cut. HIMSS is preparing for a sliding scale of disruption and planning contingencies in the event of low, medium and high amounts of disruption.
Amidst changes in the U.S., Wolf stressed HIMSS’ existence as an international organization that works to advance digital health around the world. Regardless of the environment in the U.S., HIMSS will continue to work abroad, including with the World Health Organization, he said.
Moreover, the European Union’s AI Act set global standards for AI regulation, which the rest of the world will likely follow, Wolf said. In Asia, the development of new systems will push innovation forward across the world.
The second half of the opening keynote session featured two leaders from Samsung Medical in Korea, which is the only organization to receive four HIMSS Stage 7 maturity model validations and is the only facility in Korea to be recognized as a 2024 HIMSS Davies Award recipient. The two speakers, Seung Woo Park, CEO and president, and Meong Hi Son, M.D., chief information medical officer, discussed the advancements in data sharing at the organization and showed off two robotic care companions developed to interact with pediatric patients.
Zoom launches betas for healthcare AI
Zoom has released two AI features for healthcare. Zoom launched the public beta of Zoom Workplace for Clinicians, which includes an ambient scribe, and a select beta of its Custom AI Companion for Healthcare for healthcare organizations to layer on agentic AI.
Zoom announced a partnership with ambient scribe company Suki AI in October 2024. Suki has integrated its AI features, including ambient scribe, into Zoom’s Workplace for Clinicians suite, a spokesperson for Suki said. In the public beta of the suite, Suki’s ambient scribe will be in use to capture visit notes for telehealth and in-person encounters.
Zoom touts that its Workplace for Clinicians will make pre-visit and post-visit workflows more efficient for clinicians and help reduce provider burnout related to documentation.
The tools are trained on automatic speech recognition of medical terms, custom medical dictionaries and medical terminology. For administrative improvements, the suite includes customized meeting templates and meeting summaries tailored for healthcare. The suite also connects to external data sources such as electronic health records and services from third-party apps.
The Custom AI Companion for Healthcare is an paid add-on feature to the Clinical Workplace suite that is being released in a select beta. With the custom companion, healthcare organizations can include information from various data sources, including third-party applications.
Zoom says the agent can enhance business decisions with a unique AI companion for the organization and be used to improve performance by serving as an AI personal coach.
“Think about Zoom AI Companion as your dedicated team of highly skilled agents that you can delegate your work to,” a Zoom webpage says.
With the forthcoming Zoom AI studio, which will allow organizations to build personal AI companions, an organization could upload a dictionary of terms, create custom knowledge collections within data, develop own templates for meetings and use AI companion in Microsoft Teams and Google Meet.
Teladoc enhances Prism with AI features, improved referral capabilities
Teladoc announced improvements to its Prism platform that enhances referral mechanisms and adds AI insights and tools for providers.
Providers can now make closed-loop referrals to brick-and-mortar practices as well as referrals to Teladoc’s digital care partners like Hinge Health and Sword Health, a Teladoc spokesperson said.
A press release says care team referrals to other Teladoc Health services increase 40% with similar technology enhancements. The closed-loop referral process was previously only available through Teladoc’s Primary360 program.
Prism will surface data insights to help clinicians close care gaps and improve population health. The platform will also include new data integrations and clinician administrative support capabilities. Prism also boasts AI-enabled clinical transcription tools to create and structure clinical notes in real time.
The enhancements to Prism are not related to Teladoc’s partnership with Microsoft announced in 2023. A spokesperson said Teladoc collaborated with other partners to create the new features.
Teladoc released its 2024 earnings last week, which revealed a $1 billion loss for the company driven by a Q2 goodwill impairment charge related to its mental health offering, BetterHelp.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center taps Abridge for ambient scribing
Ambient scribe provider Abridge will be rolled out across the oncology care centers at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) locations in 2025 and 2026, following a pilot MSK conducted through the organization’s Innovation Hub “iHub.”
When testing Abridge during the pilot phase, oncologists in various specialties found the technology to accurately record complex oncology terminology like disease names and drug names, according to a press release by the company. Clinicians tested the ambient scribe in English, Spanish, Chinese and Russian.
“In this highly sensitive setting, Abridge empowers clinicians to focus on establishing deep connections with their patients without distraction,” Shiv Rao, Abridge CEO and Founder, said in a statement. “Abridge is designed to reduce cognitive burden, improve patient experience, and create exceptional documentation for all medical conversations, including the long, complex encounters typical to oncology care.”
“Both clinicians and patients who consented to evaluate Abridge at MSK gave positive feedback about the quality of its performance and the impact on their experience,” said Peter Stetson, MD, MSK’s Chief Health Informatics Officer. “We are looking forward to expanding its use at MSK, bringing advanced digital tools to the bedside that help our clinicians focus on the care of their patients, not clicks in the EHR.”
UpToDate integrates with new Microsoft Dragon Copilot for medical evidence at the point of care
Wolter Kluwers Health has integrated UpToDate into Microsoft Copilot Studio, the company announced on Tuesday.
UpToDate, the gold-standard medical resource for accurate medical information, will now be able to assist clinicians through Microsoft’s Dragon Copilot ambient listening and voice-enabled clinical documentation workflows. Microsoft announced the Dragon Copilot on Monday.
The Dragon Copilot is “the first AI assistant for clinical workflow that brings together the trusted natural language voice dictation capabilities of DMO with the ambient listening capabilities of DAX, fine-tuned generative AI and healthcare-adapted safeguards,” Microsoft touted in a press release.
The new Microsoft AI agent will surface clinical decision support recommendations from UpToDate at the point of care that are specific to the patient. Healthcare IT teams can also use Dragon Copilot to create unique healthcare AI agents for their organizations with pre-built templates, plug-ins and integrations.
“Every day, healthcare organizations and clinicians depend on UpToDate to provide answers to clinical questions when caring for patients. By collaborating with Microsoft to incorporate UpToDate content into their healthcare agent service, we are pioneering new ways to provide healthcare organizations with trusted, evidence-based answers in real-time—where it best meets their needs. We believe these efforts together will help provide clinicians with new resources to alleviate administrative burdens and spend more time with patients.” Greg Samios, President and CEO of Clinical Effectiveness for Wolters Kluwer Health, said in a statement.
Rush announces expansion with Suki AI
Rush University System for Health is growing its partnership with AI assistant and ambient scribe company Suki.
The academic medical center, which uses Epic’s electronic health record, began a limited partnership with Suki last summer across 28 specialties, and the partnership will now be expanded enterprise-wide.
Suki and Rush also are working together to co-develop an AI-powered dictation feature directly within Epic. That feature will converge Suki’s ambient and dictation technologies into one holistic solution, driving clinician adoption and value for health systems at scale within the Epic ecosystem. Rush system clinicians can dictate notes to the Suki ambient scribe in addition to the application using ambient listening to capture key aspects of the conversation. Suki recently announced its integration with Haiku, Epic’s mobile app for clinicians.
“Our next-gen dictation feature will streamline current clinical workflows by combining ambient documentation and dictation capabilities, while ensuring clinicians are using the most up-to-date technology available to them,” Punit Soni, CEO of Suki, said in a statement to Fierce Healthcare. “This means that clinicians who prefer to use dictation day-to-day can continue to do so with Suki, while also using our ambient technology to tell Suki exactly what they want the note to say. This merge is the future of healthcare AI — meeting clinicians exactly where they are in their adoption of new technologies. This will improve efficiency and allow for even greater focus on patient care, thus enhancing user adoption and scalability of Suki Assistant.”
In the pilot period, Rush clinicians were able to increase their encounter volume by 10%, according to a press release, and a 5% increase in advanced coding levels, which saved $202 per user per month.
“In the initial trial period, 74% of our clinicians reported that Suki reduced their burnout levels, and 95% expressed a desire to continue using it—reinforcing our belief in the transformational power of AI in healthcare,” Briana Rygg, Chief Applications Officer at Rush, said in a statement.
NYU Langone partners with Amazon One for contactless check-in
NYU Langone plans to roll out Amazon One, the digital palm reader for identity verification, for patient check in, the companies announced Monday.
The announcement marks Amazon One’s debut into healthcare and its largest third party deployment to date. NYU Langone sees millions of patients per year across five in-patient facilities and 320 outpatient facilities in New York City and Florida. Amazon One will be deployed in all locations by summer 2025, according to an NYU Langone website.
The health system touts that the technology is quicker and safer for patient check in than standard check-in processes. Amazon One technology will replace the system’s current palm scanners for check in.
Amazon One uses hardware and software to identify unique patterns in the palm to create a unique palm signature. Palm scanning has been established as more secure than other biometric data collection because a person cannot be identified from a picture of their palm, Amazon said.
The technology has been deployed at Amazon Go, Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods. Customers can link their unique palm signature to a credit card so they can pay with their palm.
NYU Langone patients must sign up with Amazon One to use the new check in system, but using the system is not required to access healthcare services. Amazon One users must provide a phone number and create a personal identification number in the system.
“[Amazon One] eliminates the need for traditional identity checking methods such as presenting physical identity documents, offering a fast and secure way to reduce wait times and human error risk,” a press release by Amazon says.
Patients’ medical data are not shared with Amazon One, and Amazon One cannot access medical records. Amazon One users can unenroll and request deletion of their palm data at any time.
‘When a user scans their palm, images are immediately encrypted and sent to a highly secure environment in the AWS Cloud, custom built for Amazon One, where their unique palm signature is created. Multiple security controls protect data at all times, including, but not limited to, encryption, data isolation, and dedicated secure zones with restricted access controls,” an Amazon spokesperson wrote in an email to Fierce Healthcare.
NYU Langone is notifying patients about the new check in technology via email and instructing them on how to register before their next appointment. Patients can register through the NYU Langone mobile app or on devices at the healthcare facility.
