LAS VEGAS—Samsung Electronics and digital health company b.well Connected Health are working together to toss out the traditional patient clipboard and replace it with smartphones.
Samsung Galaxy smartphone users, through the Samsung Health app, will now have digital access to their complete health history and can share their medical record with participating providers via a QR code. That eliminates the intake paperwork patients fill out at nearly every healthcare visit, according to the two companies.
Despite advances with technology, patients typically still fill out the same paperwork at the doctor's office and often have to repeat pertinent medical information from memory and log into multiple portals.
The new feature builds on Samsung's two-year partnership with b.well Connected Health to develop a more connected consumer health experience based on mobile technology.
B.well integrates patients' longitudinal health records while Samsung brings in data from wearables and sensors that track key health metrics including sleep, exercise and nutrition, enabling consumers to have all their health information in one place.
"Your health information moves with you," Kristen Valdes, CEO and founder of b.well, told Fierce Healthcare in an interview at HIMSS 2026. Through mobile technology, individuals can carry their electronic health record data with them.
B.well operates a health data network designed to support consumer-mediated access to live clinical data across more than 2.2 million providers and 320 health plans, labs and other sources. The company connects consumers to their health data across a nationwide network of health systems and data sources. This secure exchange is enabled by CLEAR1, CLEAR’s secure identity platform, to verify users and issue a reusable digital IAL2 credential that b.well can rely on across interactions.
The digital health company also is working with OpenAI to connect its AI chatbot, ChatGPT Health, to users' medical records and wellness apps for more personalized answers to medical questions.
Samsung’s open ecosystem connects consumer devices directly into clinical workflows using national standards. Health data can move securely into electronic medical records without manual entry, reducing administrative burden for providers, executives said.
"We feel this is an important and much-needed step to start to get at eliminating some of this fragmentation in healthcare," Ricky Choi, M.D., head of digital health at Samsung, told Fierce Healthcare.
Along with collecting and sharing their health records, b.well can also enable consumers to interact with their clinical records using its conversational AI and health assistant, called bailey. The AI assistant can translate complex medical terminology into plain language, interpret diagnoses and medications and help patients prepare for doctor visits.
“Our conversational AI allows consumers to interact and ask questions of their health record, and they can see visualized trend lines for things like, ‘What was my average A1C over the last six to 12 months?’ and then get education and information around that,” Valdes said.
Samsung and b.well's work to free patients from paperwork and tedious portal log-ins aligns with the federal “kill the clipboard” initiative—a nationwide effort led by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to replace paper intake forms with digital check-ins.
Eight months ago, federal healthcare policy leaders put out an ambitious call to action to the industry to modernize Medicare and advance next-generation digital health for patients, making it easier for patients to access their health data.
Since July, more than 600 healthcare organizations have joined the Health Tech Ecosystem pledge, which is completely voluntary, Amy Gleason, acting administrator, U.S. DOGE Service, and strategic advisor to the CMS, said back in January. The goal is to have tangible results from these pledges go live by March 31, she said on the sidelines of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference two months ago.
The healthcare industry is overdue for a modernized overhaul of patient intake and health data sharing, Valdes said.
"The standards have existed for a very long time, and you simply need to adopt them. Getting from a document exchange or CCDA on to FHIR, getting away from portal log-ins and passwords. 'Portalitis' is the diagnosis we can eradicate in our lifetimes. We are getting very close thanks to this [CMS] pledge," she noted.
She added, "I've never seen this much urgency happening in the health IT side of the world in order to support pledges for things that physicians, patients and payers, quite frankly, have wanted for a very long time."
Gleason, who started her career in nursing and then moved into healthcare technology, believes the timing is right to move these initiatives forward as consumers demand easier access to their health data combined with advancements in technology.
"I've never seen this kind of momentum," Gleason told Fierce Healthcare, also noting the CMS plans to launch awareness campaigns to educate providers and patients about the health tech ecosystem initiatives.
The health tech ecosystem pledge is backed by EHR companies, payers, device companies and foundational LLM platforms, Valdes noted. "I'm hopeful that as the roads are built and paved, that we build ecosystems where we can take the best of all technology and put it wherever patients are and make it easy wherever they are," she said.