Oren Nissim, CEO and cofounder at Brook Health
Photo: Oren Nissim
Here comes a new year, and with it, possibly, a turning point for remote patient monitoring.
RPM can be a valuable way to help treat chronic diseases at home while keeping people out of the hospital. Similarly, it's becoming an increasingly important tool as more and more seniors age at home.
In 2026, RPM is poised for its next major transformation: moving beyond data capture to create living, connected care experiences, says Oren Nissim, CEO and cofounder at Brook Health, a care management company that uses RPM and artificial intelligence for home-based care.
He predicts that in the coming year RPM will evolve from a data stream into a human connection. By combining AI, clinical care teams and intuitive design, healthcare organizations are beginning to deliver continuous care that's outcomes-driven, compassionate and easy to live with, he said.
We spoke with Nissim to discuss these thoughts on RPM, including how AI is reshaping continuous monitoring, why patient experience design is key to RPM, and what healthcare organizations should prioritize to make remote care sustainable.
Q. You suggest in 2026 AI and automation will reshape continuous monitoring and follow-up care. How so?
A. In 2026, AI will cease to be merely a report engine and will completely transform into an active triage and healthcare personalization engine. What that means is that instead of a lot of meaningless data, or noise, that doesn't necessarily help clinicians or patients, AI systems will become critical clinical assistants.
They'll become capable of noticing, analyzing and flagging patterns in data collected from devices, meds, labs and patient-reported context – and providing a list of potential actions. That kind of growth will turn data into decisions clinicians can use in the moment to make a real, and sometimes immediate, difference.
Natural language processing tools, however, aren't going to be among the AI technologies making this possible. The new AI won't be one-size-fits-all. Instead, it will be adaptive. It will learn a patient's baseline and response patterns, change thresholds based on recent events, and be able to vary messaging and timing to make care work for patients.
Routine check-ins, adherence nudges and basic coaching will become a standard part of everyday automated workflows that adapt to each individual patient. Only true clinical issues will go to human teams.
Those kinds of changes will make remote monitoring fully scalable, sustainable and successful. What does that mean? It means fewer false positives. Faster, targeted intervention to reduce preventable readmissions. Patients who get well and stay that way. Clinicians who spend more time on care and less time on paperwork.
It means being able to do more of what matters most without doing less of anything else.
Q. You say that patient experience design will become central to RPM success next year. Why? And what should this design look like, in your opinion?
A. Patient experience is the engine of healthcare. If patients stop engaging with their doctors or their treatment, nothing else matters. While we've already started to see a recognition of this from payers and providers, 2026 is going to bring an invigorated and sustained effort toward engagement, behavior change and real-world adherence – rather than just enrollment spikes.
We're also going to see program design that takes this into account and starts with human motivation and daily life in mind. That means thinking about patients as individuals with unique needs and giving them agency in their own healthcare.
Importantly, it also means taking the time and care to make automated interactions feel human through context and empathy so that patients feel seen, heard and cared for every step of the way.
Empathy is just one half of the equation in remote care. Design must also be durable – made for the long term. That means designing a platform that patients won't just use for a month and quit. After all, a beautifully designed device means nothing if the patient stops using it after 30 or 60 days.
The benchmark for success is whether a patient would consistently use this device or platform for a full year. If the answer is no, the design isn't ready or durable. Real durability integrates monitoring into routines and leans into AI to adapt with patients as their condition improves or deteriorates, and as their motivation shifts day by day.
When remote patient monitoring is designed this way, patient engagement holds steady and remote care delivers real impact marked by real results.
Q. What should healthcare provider organizations prioritize in 2026 to make remote care truly sustainable?
A. Sustainability for remote care in 2026 and beyond will hinge on three main priorities: automation, long-term engagement, and alignment with both payers and the real world.
First, health systems must automate operational work that doesn't require clinical judgment. This means automating triage, routine follow-ups and documentation so clinicians can focus on the decisions and diagnoses only humans should make.
This is critical because the sustainability of remote care is directly tied to having enough clinicians to provide it. As it stands, global healthcare expects a workforce shortfall of more than 10 million people by 2030.
Reducing administrative workloads could have a profound impact on the more than 45% of clinicians who've reported symptoms of burnout, and keep the workforce stable to provide robust remote care. Importantly, automation also cannot be left to its own devices, so to speak. It must be audited for safety and tuned for accuracy so care teams and patients can trust what they see.
Second, systems must be built for retention, not enrollment. RPM systems must measure retention, sustained behavior change, medication adherence and longitudinal outcomes to build a foundation for patient wellness that will last a lifetime.
To build these systems the right way, health systems must invest in behavioral segmentation, tailored coaching and consumer-style experience design so patients stay active beyond the first 60 days and make adherence a long-term habit.
Third, health systems must align with payers and outcomes. This means designing deployments that can prove population-level impact and that use metrics payers value and will trust. It also means being willing to invest in upgrades and updates, like adding technology where it can assist with burdensome or inefficient human work or otherwise clearly improve quality of care.
And finally, it means taking care to combine adaptive AI and human-centered engagement to support outcomes alignment. When we get it right, remote care will become an ally for all patients and practitioners.
Follow Bill's health IT coverage on LinkedIn: Bill Siwicki
Email him: bsiwicki@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
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