As I prepare to fly out to Las Vegas for HIMSS25, I’ve got a lot of thoughts buzzing around in my brain. I’ve had many different kinds of experiences at the annual HIMSS Conference, sponsored by the Chicago-based Healthcare Information and Systems Society (HIMSS). Indeed, this will be my thirty-third HIMSS Conference, which definitely makes me a HIMSS “graybeard” of some sort (indeed, my beard is gray and white, so that somehow fits!).

What has fascinated me over the years is how the conference has evolved forward since 1991, my first HIMSS. Back then, vendors were purposely selling closed information systems that didn’t communicate with one another; and, bizarrely enough, there was a kind of consensus back in 1991 that closed information systems were the way to go in healthcare. Even back then, I questioned the reasoning; and of course, that line of thinking basically ended before the turn of the century. And then of course, the HITECH Act came along, and with it, meaningful use, and everything changed fundamentally, into a path moving our industry towards real interoperability.

I will tell you also that HIMSS91 was weirdly fascinating in another way. I think back on all the vaporware and all the really strange marketing promises made back then; honestly, when I look back on it then, I can see there was little to no coherence in the vendor sector of healthcare IT: people were trying to figure out the landscape of the future with no map.

Fast-forwarding to 2025, my, how times have changed. When I speak publicly, as at our Healthcare Innovation Summits, I like to bring up a simple set of facts: the Medicare actuaries at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, who annually update their projections for total annual U.S. healthcare expenditures, last June projected that total healthcare spending in this country will explode from its current (as of last year) level of $4.8 trillion per year, to a whopping $7.7 trillion per year by 2032, with the percentage of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) growing from 17.6 percent to 19.7 percent during that time. Those figures are absolutely mindblowing; they reflect the aging of the U.S. population, and the ongoing explosion in the presence of chronic disease in our population.

And, with regard to what the vendors are offering these days on the exhibitor floor at the HIMSS Conference, that mega-burning platform for change is causing the purchasers and payers of healthcare in this country to demand, ever more vociferously, that the providers of healthcare improve value, meaning, control costs while improving outcomes. For employer-purchasers, the crisis in healthcare costs for their employees and employees’ dependents is absolutely here already. And that’s focusing attention on what’s truly important.

And what is truly important? One absolute area of focus is optimizing the work lives and workflows of physicians, nurses, and other clinicians, in hospitals, medical groups, and integrated health systems, which above all means optimizing their time—time spent on administrative duties, so that they can maximize their time with patients and in patient care. Not surprisingly, artificial intelligence, whether algorithmic or generative, has reached a level of prominence of attention that is far beyond what it was even a few years ago. And patient care organization leaders are doing the work, figuring out how to use AI and machine learning to really move the needle in those areas.

Not surprisingly, I expect “AI” to be plastered on every booth entrance on the exhibit floor at the Venetian Sands Convention Center next week, and practically on every mug and t-shirt, too.

Importantly, it was clear to me at the ViVE Conference a week-and-a-half ago in Nashville, in discussions with providers, consultants, and vendors, that patient care leaders are far more discerning than they were even a few years ago; they really have to be. They know that they must move forward with alacrity to leverage technology to really make a difference for clinicians, their patients, patient care organizations, communities. The good news? The technology is improving rapidly, there are a ton of super-bright people working to develop and improve the technology, and there are a ton of people in U.S. healthcare committed to improving the healthcare system for the betterment of everyone.

So I’m flying out to Las Vegas with some optimism in terms of what I’ll see on the exhibit floor, not to mention also in educational sessions; because, for all the massive, massive challenges we’re facing right now in U.S. healthcare, we’ve got an industry full of intelligent, dedicated people who are passionately committed to improving the healthcare delivery system for the benefit of all. And I’m willing to gamble on the prediction that I’ll be seeing some pretty exciting things happening at HIMSS25 next week. And I’ll be glad to share what I see and hear after I get back. Let the LLM times roll!