HIMSS President and CEO Hal Wolf speaking at HIMSS26
Photo: HIMSS Media
LAS VEGAS – Artificial intelligence is moving from experimentation to operational use inside hospitals, but health systems are still early in figuring out how to translate the technology's promise into measurable improvements in care delivery.
Speaking at HIMSS26 here on Tuesday, Hal Wolf, president and CEO of HIMSS, said AI is already producing tangible results in certain operational areas, even as organizations continue to wrestle with governance, workforce training and workflow redesign.
"If you're looking inside hospital operations, AI is being effectively deployed in efficiency – bed utilization, supply chain, staff utilization," Wolf said.
Enhancing resource management
Wolf added that those applications are helping organizations analyze operational data and identify opportunities to improve resource management.
"If you integrate it and make the decision to bring those analytics forward, it improves efficiency," he said.
But he cautioned that the technology is not a quick fix for deeper structural challenges in healthcare, noting many organizations are still learning how to adapt their processes and workforce models to fully take advantage of AI capabilities.
"I understand the frustration that it's not a silver bullet," he said.
Adoption is speeding up
The pace of adoption has accelerated rapidly over the past several years. Four years ago, most health systems were experimenting with AI on a limited basis.
Wolf noted that two years ago, fewer than 5% of organizations were deploying the technology in production environments. More recently, AI capabilities have begun appearing as embedded features inside enterprise healthcare platforms.
"We're just at the start of the operational scope," Wolf said, particularly when it comes to applying AI to clinical decision-making.
As adoption expands, governance and data quality are becoming critical concerns. Health systems must carefully evaluate new tools before deploying them, Wolf said, emphasizing the importance of clear oversight processes and rigorous quality assurance.
"With any new tool that's introduced, it needs to be objectively looked at by governance before the tool is used," he said. "Bad data in, bad information out."
Enabling new workflows
At the same time, healthcare leaders must ensure that technology investments are paired with organizational changes that enable new workflows – without that alignment, digital initiatives often fail to deliver their intended value, he continued.
"If you're going to make the investment but not redesign processes to take advantage of it, then it fails because we don't adjust our people or our processes," Wolf said.
Nurses are likely to play a particularly important role in shaping how digital tools evolve inside healthcare organizations. Wolf noted that bedside nurses often have the closest connection to both patients and clinical systems, making them key contributors to the development of practical digital systems.
"The closest relationship between digital health technology and the patient is at the nursing level," he said.
Digital health innovation
Looking ahead, Wolf expressed optimism that improvements in interoperability and AI-driven data integration could help scale digital health innovation more effectively across the healthcare ecosystem. Historically, many digital health tools have been created to solve specific problems but struggled to integrate with other systems.
What gives him hope, he said, is that emerging AI-enabled interoperability frameworks may make it easier to connect and scale those innovations across health systems.
"The ease of adoption from the ecosystem is getting better," Wolf said. "And that will translate to the consumer level."
Ultimately, digital transformation in healthcare is about equipping clinicians and organizations with better information and tools, Wolf emphasized.
"Nothing's easy about healthcare," he said. "It's about educating and putting people in the position to make a better decision the next day. If we do that, we all win."
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