AI is transforming healthcare, but questions remain about how it will be implemented, regulated, and integrated into patient care. In this episode, Robert Havasy, Senior Director, Connected Health at HIMSS, shares insights on AI-driven EHRs, interoperability challenges, and the evolving role of policy in shaping the future of healthcare.
Artificial intelligence continues to shape the future of healthcare, and this year’s HIMSS Global Conference 2025 reflected both the momentum and the uncertainties surrounding its adoption. In a conversation with Robert Havasy, Senior Director, Connected Health at HIMSS, the discussion focused on how AI, interoperability, and regulatory policy are influencing healthcare delivery, patient engagement, and the broader industry landscape.
AI in Healthcare: From Concept to Implementation
Generative AI has moved beyond the hype stage, embedding itself into real-world applications. Oracle’s announcement of an AI-driven electronic health record (EHR) platform signals a shift in how hospitals and healthcare systems are rethinking data management. However, the conversation is no longer just about the technology itself—it’s about how governments, regulatory bodies, and healthcare institutions will set guardrails to ensure AI’s responsible and effective use.
The Role of Policy in Shaping AI’s Future
While AI adoption surges, regulatory uncertainty remains a key challenge. The Biden administration had proposed executive orders and regulations to guide AI’s role in healthcare, but with political shifts and differing global regulatory approaches, the direction remains unclear. HIMSS has observed that different regions—the U.S., Europe, and Asia—may take separate paths in AI governance, raising questions about whether a unified best-practice framework will emerge or if multiple regulatory approaches will lead to diverging standards.
Interoperability and the Shift Back to Customization
For years, healthcare institutions moved away from building their own systems in favor of purchasing standardized EHR solutions from dominant industry players. Now, there’s a return to in-house development, driven by the need for flexibility, adaptability, and deeper AI integration. At the same time, interoperability remains a hurdle, as institutions seek to make AI work across disparate systems while maintaining security and compliance.
The Patient’s Role in AI-Driven Healthcare
AI’s potential to close the information gap between patients and providers is one of the most promising developments. From personal health monitoring through wearables to AI-powered tools that help individuals interpret medical research and their own health data, the patient’s role in healthcare decision-making is evolving. The ability for AI to synthesize complex medical data and provide insights in real-time is reshaping how people engage with their health, making them more active participants in their care.
What’s Next?
As HIMSS 2025 highlighted, AI in healthcare is not a distant vision—it’s happening now. The question is no longer whether AI will be a part of healthcare, but rather how it will be implemented, regulated, and integrated into existing frameworks to maximize its benefits while mitigating risks. The conversation with Robert Havasy underscores the critical need for collaboration between healthcare providers, policymakers, and technologists to ensure AI delivers on its promise while keeping patients at the center of the equation.
Listen to the full episode for deeper insights into how AI, interoperability, and patient-centered care are shaping the future of healthcare.
Guest: Robert Havasy, Senior Director, Connected Health at HIMSS | On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhavasy/
Hosts:
Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast [@RedefiningCyber] | On ITSPmagazine: https://www.itspmagazine.com/sean-martin
Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals Podcast | On ITSPmagazine: https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Resources
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HIMSS 2024 Cybersecurity Report: https://www.himss.org/resources/himss-healthcare-cybersecurity-survey/
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Sean Martin: [00:00:00] Marco.
Marco Ciappelli: Sean, I'm a little confused. Were you there or not?
Sean Martin: I was there in spirit.
Marco Ciappelli: There where?
Sean Martin: There in Las Vegas, uh, at the, in the spirit. No, not the, not the sphere.
Marco Ciappelli: Not there. No,
Sean Martin: I didn't actually get to make it to, uh, to Las Vegas for HIMSS Global Conference 2025. Uh, we've had a couple of conversations, uh, surrounding event.
Very inspiring. A lot of stuff going on there. Clearly, health is an important part of our personal journey and society's resilience. And funny enough, Marco, technology plays a big role.
Marco Ciappelli: Good figure. I guess that's why I do have a podcast just about that. And as a matter of fact, before we introduced the guest today, I have to say that many of the conversations we had about him, they ended up being quite Uh, on the on the social side, the social angle of things, which pleases me [00:01:00] because it's still connecting more and more cyber security technology and society.
So, uh, were we there or not? Um, do you know Sean about our guests?
Sean Martin: You can roll the nice roll the dice.
Marco Ciappelli: The dice. Okay. All right. Let's do that.
Sean Martin: Rob. Rob. Have a seat. How are you, Rob? Good morning, gentlemen. Nice to be here. It's good. Good to have you on, uh, an incredible event. Marco and I will certainly make it a point to, uh, connect to the next one.
I presume it won't be in Vegas next year. I don't know if you have an idea where that, where it'll be, but
Robert Havasy: we have been, uh, for the last few years we've been alternating. We should be back in Florida next year.
Sean Martin: That's right.
Robert Havasy: Yes. And then Chicago will be in the mix again. It was out for a few years, but it's back in the mix.
So we'll bounce between Vegas, Chicago, and And, and Orlando,
Marco Ciappelli: I like this variety. I'm going
to be honest.
Sean Martin: I'll take myself. The last one was in new Orleans that I went to.
Robert Havasy: Wow. Yeah, there you go. That was before I started at HIMS, and that was, uh, it must have been 2013, I think.
Sean Martin: Yes, it was a while [00:02:00] back, and a long, long walking journey.
One went into the lobby.
Robert Havasy: Which is the reason you don't go there anymore. The hotels are not set up for being right close to the venue, so.
Marco Ciappelli: The Grammothon was a new thing at the time. It was. So, remember that.
Sean Martin: I know, I carried one around. I had hair, that was a big thing too.
Marco Ciappelli: Oh, my hair was black. Oh, man.
Sean Martin: Uh, times change and they're continuing to change.
And, uh, so we have a quick chat for you today, looking at hymns and some of the stuff that's going on. Uh, Rob, I know you, you look at, uh, some of the very future looking stuff, some of which is hitting us today. AI, but then even further. Further down the road, and who knows, we might very soon be saying it's upon us now, uh, quantum.
But, um, so we'll kind of fold those into the big, the broader conversation. But what were some of the things that were coming out of HIMSS, or going into [00:03:00] HIMSS, that were, were transforming how we approach health care, deliver health care, receive health care, have a society that's better because of improved health care?
Robert Havasy: Yeah. This was an interesting year. Coming out of 2023 or 2024 rather, um, AI was the big topic, right? Uh, 2024 was the year that generative AI in particular sort of blew into everybody's consciousness and every booth had a demonstration and everybody was talking about AI and we expected that to continue and in fact it, it has and we'll be talking about generative AI for a while.
Um, I have to say, though, that in since the last few months, right, as we crossed into the new administration, much of the conversation has been less about technology and more about how technology and policy are going to come together, right? The Biden administration, for example, was very active. in AI and had put forth a number of proposals, [00:04:00] executive orders and proposed regulations on how healthcare and AI could interact together.
And that landscape is much less certain right now. So I think much of the conversation this year, the tech conversation is still there. Um, AI is still moving forward. Oracle made its big announcement this year. They made it, they made it, um, I guess more, more real from the press release they had earlier.
Um, about the next generation Oracle EHR platform being completely based around AI. It's an AI platform that serves as an EHR. So it's, it's certainly still part of the conversation, but the question, something you said a little earlier, Sean is really more about. How we're going to interact with it, how the government's going to interact with it, regulate it, and how we as a society are going to put some rules and policies and procedures around these technologies to make sure that we derive the benefit without the, you know, without the cost that some people are very worried about.
Marco Ciappelli: For [00:05:00] sure. I mean, it's, it's a big topic because on one side, I always say, you know, technology is kind of like the show must go on and it will go on. No matter what the, the, the thing is, what kind of show is going to be right? I don't want to, I don't want to make guesses there, but there is a four letter show.
Well, hopefully not, but the point is we either connect with each other. We make a plan in a world that is always more and more connected. And, and, and we. We use the word connection and interconnection of different technology to come together because we are all interoperating with, with each other anyway.
So I think that's, that's the big question is not that's technology going to stop is, is it going to come the way we, we envision it?
Robert Havasy: When people ask me questions about this, I began a couple of years ago, particularly around AI since, since AI, the topic writ large is not new, right? We've [00:06:00] been experimenting with this and driving it forward since the sixties.
I say it's economically inevitable, right? The promise of the efficiency gains and other things is simply too great. And the amount of investment that's already gone into this is simply too great for, as your point, Marco, to stop. And so it's more a matter of setting the guardrails, as this giant truck drives down the highway, to make sure that it goes in a direction that's beneficial.
Um, you mentioned, you used the word interconnected, and I like that, right? I've been in interoperability most of my healthcare career in one form or another. And I think one of the points right now, one of the points that came out of the conference this year, and certainly the talk, since it is the HIMSS Global Conference, is that until December, we were approaching AI in a much more global fashion.
Europe had its rules, the Biden administration was putting out its rules. And we kind of assumed they'd come together in some way. [00:07:00] I don't think that's the case anymore. And the question now for me and for, for my scope, working for HIMSS and fielding questions from our members in the UK and across Europe and in Asia and here in the United States is, are we going to see one or two or three different ways that AI is going to evolve?
Are we going to see three big highways charging forward? Um, or will we, will the, will the non government entities sort of come to a consensus in the set of best practices about, about how this all works? So will we come to a, a beneficial consensus in spite of government rather than because of governments?
Sean Martin: So, um, something been on my mind for a while, and I think it was driven partly from the conversation we had with Albie before the event kicked off. Um, and other conversations I've had since in the last few days, this idea that. That there's behemoths [00:08:00] building EHRs that, that cross everything. And then there are feature companies that build features that work with other.
Services that together provide something that hopefully plug into the big EHR behemoth and then so there's all of that there and maybe if you can kind of describe that ecosystem, but then I also heard recently that that especially with AI and some of the orchestration technologies around that are available organizations are starting to build their own stuff.
So not necessarily, and I know companies are always software companies as well, but I think I see a lot of purpose built things for purpose specific capabilities within companies that that's going to change the game and how interoperability interoperability and interaction works, right?
Robert Havasy: Yeah. Um, we were joking right before we, uh, And we hit the record button that when, uh, when [00:09:00] I first started at HIMSS, my beard wasn't gray, and I had more hair.
So I've, I've been around technology and healthcare long enough to see, to start to see the cycles and what comes full circle again. So when I began my healthcare career here in Boston, right, I worked for one of the big hospitals that had its own in house medical record. Um, and would probably argue a little bit with Judy Faulkner that, that, you know, they were the inventors of it when Harvard and MIT came together in the 60s to build a medical record.
Um, and in fact, the underlying language of many of the health system or the EHR platforms today was known as MUMPS, which is the Massachusetts General Multipurpose Utility Language. So, MGH has an argument that they were there first, and I worked for MGH for a number of years. And we always built our technology, right?
When I started there, there were 6, 000 people in the IT, roughly 5 to 6, 000 people in an IT function at MGH. Um, there are a few hundred now. And so the cycle for a [00:10:00] variety of factors, not just technology, policy decisions, investment decisions, meaningful use programs, et cetera, stimulus packages. The 2008 changed the paradigm so that instead of building medical records as most of the largest hospitals in America did, They purchased medical records and we ended up with, uh, to your point, Marco, a few vendors, just a couple of big vendors, um, really dominating the market and a few smaller vendors for the mid size and other hospitals.
And people stopped building. But I wanted to make sure that, that especially younger listeners here remember that at one point we did all build, right? There were informatics departments in every hospital mid size and above. And so I think we're coming full circle and COVID really drove that. The rapid onset of COVID and the way it changed how hospitals had to work.
The way they managed information when they set up satellite [00:11:00] facilities and, you know, had patients in tents in some of the big cities, the need to build and adapt rapidly pointed out one of the downsides to purchasing sort of commoditized technology, which is it's less flexible than when you have it when you've built it on your own.
And so a number of the big consulting firms and others have pointed this out, but there was a line in a report from I'm pretty sure it was Accenture, don't, I might have that wrong, but at the end of about 2021, they wrote a report and they said there was an investor and an analyst who said COVID has really made interoperability sexy again, as hospitals realized that the EHR is not the platform.
It may be the core of their platform, but there is absolutely a need to innovate and build around that core. And since 2021 or 2022, there has been pressure and an opening for smaller and other vendors to get in to build around that core. The problem [00:12:00] is, For a variety of other economic reasons, the need to begin building around that core has happened right at the time when hospital revenues are under more pressure than they have ever been, and their staffs have been changed, right?
As I said, when I, when I joined here in, in Boston, there were 6, 000 of my colleagues and I in it. There's a few hundred right now. So we know there's workforce challenges across the workforce on the clinical side and on the it side. And yeah, And it's difficult for hospitals now to go back to building the way they did, but especially for the larger ones, there's pressure for them to do that.
And so interoperability is having to adapt. The one last remark I'll throw out here, and I think it needs to be a part of any discussion of AI is we're coming to grips at the moment with this idea that for the last almost 20 years, right? Since, since era and the investments in the high tech act in 2010 or so.
So 15 years, maybe. We've, um, we've tried to [00:13:00] build a healthcare system around efficiency and consistency. So we created any number of document based formats. We had profiles from organizations like IAG and HL7. We had FHIR build resources around these things. We've created a very complex set of structures for exchanging information in a very structured way.
The thing we're running into right now is that is probably, I'll borrow a little bit of, of Winston Churchill, right? It's the best system we've ever had for exchanging information, except for all the other ones we've ever tried. And it's very good driving consistency, and it's very good at driving predictability, and doing the same evidence based healthcare over and over again.
But AI, as people are waking up to the possibilities of artificial intelligence, AI is not that. AI is about discovering new patterns in data that you didn't know about, and you couldn't pre structure. And so the biggest [00:14:00] institutions that we work with at HIMSS right now are coming to grips with the fact that if they haven't already, they're facing a tremendous effort in decomposing a lot of the structured systems they've built up.
Creating the data lakes and other systems that AI can then go into and start to find new patterns within and so shifting that that informatics paradigm from a decade or more of driving towards structured document exchange right with fire and other APIs to wow, there is a place for unstructured data and AI does probably better in large institutions when it has access to a lake in which it can make Bye.
Connections we haven't thought of then has access to a pool of, you know, structured CCD documents. Is really a paradigm shift that we're going to struggle with in the next few years as we get back to building things.
Sean Martin: And is that, uh, Marco probably has a question, but is that
Marco Ciappelli: Oh, a question? No, wait for it.
Sean Martin: All right, you go. I'll, I'll [00:15:00] wait for it.
Marco Ciappelli: No, no, no, you go.
Sean Martin: Well, I was just, I'm trying to remember mine now. So the, I guess the, one of the interacting points that I think we've seen a lot of growth in is in the actual patient themselves. Um. Wearables and personal health records and, and the idea that you can get precision healthcare, right?
Targeted and precision trials and things like that. Does that, how, how does that fit in? And cause I think AI, certainly in the system perspective, but also the AI perspective in terms of granting access to that data for the end user too.
Robert Havasy: I mean, I think so. So Sean, you've hit something that's near and dear to my heart, right?
I, I came into healthcare. I started my work at Mass General Brigham at their Center for Connected Health. So I've been on the patient side all my healthcare career mostly. Most of my informatics work has been to bring [00:16:00] non standard data, patient generated data in the hospital systems. And my, from my view, right, um, one of the things patients struggle with and one of the ways that we've always talked about paternalism in healthcare or patient autonomy and patient activation is that there's an information asymmetry.
Take the technological systems out of it, right? Doctors go to school and go through residency for a reason. They know more about a lot of health things than your average person. But I know more about my own body than someone who isn't in it. And so, that tension between patient and provider has always been the core of the issue.
Regardless of anything else it can do, the efficiency, the cost savings, the drug discoveries, whatever. AI and particularly generative AI I think is poised to close that information gap, close that information asymmetry. With a few keystrokes and a good AI system, I can catch myself [00:17:00] up to most physicians or many clinicians in a matter of minutes to hours, as opposed to the sort of years of research it would take for patients to really get on a plane where they felt they were, they were having a conversation among equals with their providers.
And so if nothing else, just access to good generative AI. That's well trained helps to put people on a more level playing field to understand what their providers are telling them and to be able to communicate with their providers in a, in a better way, right? You can ask chat GPT, act like a doctor and tell me how to ask this question.
And it's pretty good. Actually, it understands a lot of those things. So, um, If nothing else, closing that information asymmetry gap will get people into a better place. The other thing I think AI is doing right now in particular is it's allowing people to do things with their own data in in more ways. I was talking to a friend of mine just this week actually [00:18:00] who believes he has a A certain condition and he asked, um, whatever AI he was using, I didn't, I don't know which one it was, but he asked whatever AI he has a subscription to, to go out and find all of the research on a particular topic, summarize it for him, and then take the spreadsheets that he uploaded of some test results that he had and some things from his own heart rate tracker and other things and compare to what it learned about this condition and tell me, you know, is it possible that I have this or that?
Yeah. And that's a pretty advanced data manipulation, right? That yeah, spreadsheet jockeys and analysts might have been able to do in the old days, but is much more accessible to someone now who doesn't spend their days working with Excel and importing and exporting data. It's able to normalize and do a lot of that for, for people.
And that to me is where I'm, I'm so hopeful. On the, on the clinician side, hospitals are hopeful that much of the cost savings will come from [00:19:00] allowing people to practice to the top of their license, we say, right, to allow nurses to act more like doctors, to allow nurse practitioners and PAs to act more like MDs today at a cost savings to the system, being AI enabled.
And spending less time in school so we can get more clinicians faster to finish the shortage who can practice at a high level because they're, they're AI enabled. I'm hopeful that it will do the same thing for patients, right? It'll bring patients up to that level too, where they can be, we've always wanted them to feel like they were part of their care team, but they can be a more equal partner as part of their care team in being able to communicate and understand.
The sort of lingo that's in health care and the data that drives a lot of it.
Marco Ciappelli: So I'm going to close with a question. Will you be back on my show so that I can ask you all the questions that I could? I couldn't ask you now in the time that we have a lot because this is an immense conversation. I I [00:20:00] had many time, uh, Dr.
Pearl, Robert Pearl is a former CEO of Kaiser Permanente. He's been, he's been talking about AI for years. And I always have, you know, this vision about what happened behind the scene and behind the backstage of hospitals. And so you're connecting so many points. I still cannot, haven't asked you about quantum and some other things.
So I think this is a good, uh, good first step in our conversations. Um, that I would love to have one more. That's why I use the plural. And, uh, and, and, and I think it's a great wrap for, um, our coverage of him because it lives with so many, so many questions, so many scenarios. And, and the fact that it's not, it's not about technology, I mean, technology sure is in there, but it's about our approach to it, how we use it, and, and the new one that it will be coming, um, our way.
So, um, I would love [00:21:00] to talk more, honestly.
Robert Havasy: I would love to, Marco, and I want to point out that that is the nicest way anybody has ever looked at me and said, God, you talk too much.
Marco Ciappelli: Well, I did that with Sean, so I'm quite used to it. Plus, I'm Italian, so I'm used to that.
Robert Havasy: Yeah, no, I
did. It's what I do. It's what I love to do.
I'm one of the
Marco Ciappelli: I can tell the passion, and I think that our listeners are getting that, and the fact that it is anyway a topic. That me and Sean feel very, very attached to it. I can tell that, um, from how much Sean likes to talk about health tech and cyber security and privacy and all of that.
Sean Martin: I've been looking at it for a long, long time, so it's very, very, since the gramophone.
Yes, that's right. At least 2013. I can point to that, but, uh, Rob, fantastic having you on, uh, congrats on a successful HIMSS Global Conference 2025. Look forward to, uh, future conversations, [00:22:00] perhaps meeting you in, uh, Orlando for the next Global HIMSS and, uh, stay tuned everybody for more on location with Sean and Marco, I think we have at least one more chat to do post events and, uh, obviously more, more events we're covering along the way.
So thanks everybody.