Clinical

The region's healthcare leaders outline the key digital health and AI trends they expect will shape clinical care, data use, and innovation in the new year.

While he stresses that AI won't replace doctors, surgeon and futurist Dr. Shafi Ahmed says it is already being used for imaging, documentation, digital surgery and agentic assistants to help build future-ready health systems.

Unlike claims or EHR data, diagnostics reveal what's occurring biologically in real time – often before symptoms emerge. Especially when combined with AI, it can support smarter treatment decisions, one CEO says.

Ahead of HIMSS26, Sairohith Thummarakoti of Texas A&M University–Kingsville previews his talk on how agentic AI and low-code platforms can automate routine claims and prior authorization workflows.

The editors of the HIMSS Media brands offer sneak peek of the year ahead: including precision medicine advances, cybersecurity challenges, policy shifts and, of course, continued evolution of AI-enabled care delivery.

Severance Hospital researchers have developed an AI platform that converts paramedic voice reports into clinical records, predicts patient deterioration, and recommends suitable transfer hospitals.

Technology could help automatically determine when the billing period ends for electrophysiologists who implant devices such as pacemakers, says Sallie Gustafson, RN, director of medical affairs at Murj.

The Emirates Health Service, according to Dr. Amina Al Jasmi, is using AI to strengthen radiologists' skills and to reduce workload by acting as a second reader that catches subtle findings humans might miss.

Sallie Gustafson, RN, director of medical affairs at Murj, discusses recent survey findings that verified billing is the undisputed top concern for electrophysiologists.

Rural hospitals are overcoming fears of artificial intelligence and adopting tools that integrate with electronic health records on their own terms – whether that's all at once or by cultivating buy-in slowly and deliberately.