HIMSS 2026 recap: Learn from the brightest minds in healthcare.

HIMSS 2026 brought 25,000+ healthcare professionals together in Las Vegas, all with a shared belief: that the right technology, deployed with purpose, improves the experience of receiving care and the sustainability of delivering it.

From digital maturity benchmarks to AI-assisted clinical workflows, from wearables to cybersecurity resilience, HIMSS 2026 reinforced that healthcare technology is no longer a back-office discipline. It sits at the center of how care is experienced, delivered and continuously improved.

HIMSS Digital Maturity Models™: the North Star

A recurring theme across sessions were HIMSS Digital Maturity Models™ and the shared sense of urgency around reaching its highest levels: stages six and seven. These represent more than benchmarks; they are the point at which digital transformation stops being a project and starts being the way an organization operates.

Most attendees are at some point on that journey, and the conversations on the floor reflected that honestly. The gap between owning digital tools and fully realizing their impact is real; closing it requires more than simply technology investment. It requires governance, team structures and end-user adoption to match.

Human-centered healthcare: designing technology that works for people

One of the standout sessions of the week was the Wednesday keynote featuring Ami Bhatt of the American College of Cardiology and Dr. Sumbul Ahmad Desai from Apple. The conversation was less about product and more about philosophy: how do you design technology with intent and at scale that actually changes outcomes?

In an Emory Healthcare clip, a physician said simply: "We didn't go to school to work on computers. We went to school for medicine." That line captures the challenge every vendor, clinical stakeholder and healthcare technology team needs to address.

The discussion covered how cardiovascular care settings use Apple Watch, specifically concerning Atrial fibrillation ((AFib) detection and the research validating how it works.

But the more important conversation was about what happens after Apple Watch detects AFib. How does a patient become an active participant in their own care? How do clinicians trust the data enough to act on it?

Privacy came up directly. Clinicians want to engage patients through technology, but hesitation persists because the effort behind data protection is often invisible. The point was made clear: The same expectation of privacy a patient has with their care team should extend to the technology they use. That framing matters when you are trying to build clinical trust.

The session also provided an outlook on other emerging technologies, specifically in spatial computing. While this technology is still in its early stages, organizations have been using it for:

• Imaging
• Guided procedures,
• Pre-op visualization
• Surgical education

This discussion hit home the main message: Technology needs to solve real problems, not create new use cases.

Durable teams: A model for sustainable transformation

Mercy Health's session on durable teams deserves its own callout; the model is transferable well beyond their organization.

Traditional project-based delivery was creating gaps at Mercy: things were falling through the cracks and handoffs between technology and operational leadership were breaking down.

Their solution was to build longstanding cross-functional teams that stay together across initiatives. Clinical, technical and operational stakeholders work iteratively rather than in sequential phases.

The results across their three durable teams were notable:

• Their Primary Care efficiency team delivered 101 enhancements compared to 19 in 31 weeks under the previous model.
• Their Epic AI team saw a 30% increase in patient satisfaction and a meaningful reduction in clinical messaging workload.
• Projects that previously took months now move in weeks.

The agile mindset shift required real investment in training. It is a different way of working. But the outcome was a delivery model that could actually keep pace with what operational leaders needed.

AI in healthcare: Augment your greatest assets; don't replace them.

Artificial intelligence was everywhere at HIMSS 2026, but the most grounded conversations were the ones that resisted the hype. The consistent framing across sessions was collaborative intelligence: AI as augmentation, not as replacement.

Sessions explored AI's role in nursing workflows, clinical decision support, patient communication and administrative burden reduction. The practical applications are real:

• Reduced documentation times
• Faster access to relevant patient history
• Streamlined communication between care teams

One session directly explained why clinicians will not be replaced, positioning AI as a tool that amplifies judgment and empathy rather than substituting for it.

The governance question came up repeatedly. Healthcare has seen what happens when EHR adoption, connected devices and cybersecurity innovation outpaces structure. The sessions on responsible AI deployment were consistent: organizations that build the right frameworks now will be better positioned as the technology continues to mature.

Cybersecurity: resilience over reaction

The cybersecurity tracks reflected where healthcare organizations are with managing increasingly complex environments, facing more sophisticated threats, and trying to maintain care continuity when faced with cybersecurity events.

The opening cybersecurity keynote drew on a firsthand account of navigating a ransomware attack. The message was clear that cybersecurity is not a technology problem. It is everyone's responsibility, from the C-suite to frontline clinicians. The interconnected nature of modern healthcare (e.g., EHRs, connected devices, telehealth platforms, AI-assisted diagnostics) means a disruption anywhere can cascade quickly.

Sessions focused heavily on recovery readiness, not just prevention.

IT seeks to:

• Respond decisively
• Restore services with confidence
• Sustain care continuity

For security and operations teams, the key takeaways were:

• Simplify hybrid environments where you can
• Build cross-functional recovery teams before you need them
• Ensure that your security posture supports the pace of care rather than slowing it down

Jamf at HIMSS 2026: healthcare reimagined on iOS

Every conversation at HIMSS 2026 came back to the same foundational requirement: the devices powering care need to work reliably and securely, without adding complexity for the people depending on them.

That is what Jamf and Apple, alongside our Solution Partners, were demonstrating at booth #1144. Our theme was "Healthcare reimagined on iOS," and it was built around what a complete end-to-end healthcare journey looks like when every device is managed, protected, and ready — from a patient's first interaction at check-in to a clinician's last task at the end of a shift.

How to get started on your healthcare organization's digital transformation

So, you want to:

• Build to a digital maturity number of stage six or stage seven
• Deploy AI responsibly
• Build cyber resilience
• Empower patients with technology they can trust

First, you'll need these foundational capabilities:

• Zero-touch deployments
• Identity-based access
• Automated device re-provisioning
• Endpoint security that protects patient data without slowing down workflows

This foundation must be a solution that clinical, security and operations teams can all rely on. We encourage you to find healthcare solutions that offer these critical elements.

That was the conversation we had all week. If you want to continue it, we're ready.