LAS VEGAS—Get caught up with the latest news from the 2026 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Global Health Conference & Exhibition with this quick news recap.
Innovaccer aims to tackle medical coding with autonomous AI
Healthcare AI company has been building out AI solutions to automate manual tasks and streamline workflows for payers and providers.
Last year, it rolled out Flow Auth, an AI-powered prior authorization solution that is part of Flow by Innovaccer. This year at HIMSS, the company launched an autonomous medical coding solution.
Traditionally, health systems rely on a staff of coders and computer-assisted tools that still require a human to review every chart. But this model is under pressure as documentation grows more complex, there is a growing shortage of medical coders and payer rules constantly evolve.
Flow Capture autonomously codes approximately 80% of encounters without human intervention and routes the remaining complex cases to certified coders with full AI-assisted context, according to the company.
"Prior auths, referrals, coding, denial management and scribing, all of these products are combined into one stack that we are calling the autonomous healthcare stack," Abhinav Shashank, co-founder and CEO of Innovaccer, told Fierce Healthcare at HIMSS26.
Before a patient arrives for a medical visit, the Flow Capture solution generates a concise summary of the patient's history, active conditions and care gaps. During the visit, an ambient scribe captures the conversation and builds the note in real time, so the physician's full attention stays on the patient. As the encounter wraps up, a built-in CDI assistant closes documentation gaps before the note is signed, right when the evidence is still in the room.
When a physician signs an encounter note, Flow Capture reads the documentation, extracts clinical entities, maps diagnoses and procedures to ICD-10, CPT, HCPCS, and E/M codes, and applies current CMS and payer rules before submission, Innovaccer executives said/ Encounters that meet high-confidence thresholds, are coded and prepared for billing automatically, while edge cases are escalated with transparent reasoning and supporting references, according to the company.
Innovaccer is launching Flow Capture through a limited early adopter program with select health systems. Participants will pilot the solution across defined specialties and track measurable outcomes including first-pass rate, chart closure time and coder productivity.
The AI-based medical coding solution embeds payer and CMS logic directly into the coding engine, applying ICD-10-CM, CPT, HCPCS, NCCI edits, modifier logic, and evolving guideline updates before a claim is ever submitted. The company contends that every coding decision includes a clear audit trail and mapped medical decision-making rationale.
Coding teams focus on exceptions and clinical judgment, not repetitive validation, executives said.
“It's a massive win for our customers because these things used to take, for every system, hundreds of millions of dollars of cost structure, and suddenly you could direct those dollars into clinical care, rather than on the administrative things,” Shashank said. “For us, it’s been quite a bit of validation on what we've been building, that none of these things effectively work well unless you have a data infrastructure in place.”
With Innovaccer's prior authorization solution, healthcare organizations are reporting significant reductions in clinician time spent on prior authorizations, from minutes down to seconds, Shashank said.
Innovaccer is anticipating similar workflow improvements with the Flow Capture technology. “This process for the provider, used to be like a 10-minute process, and that 10 minutes is going to get to 15 seconds,” he noted.
"It's been quite a bit of validation on what we've been building, that none of these things effectively work well unless you have a core data infrastructure and interoperability infrastructure in place. As we bring agentic capabilities on top of our platform, the value creation for our customers is massive," Shashank said.
Roy Schoenberg’s newest venture: AI-powered health companion for seniors
Health tech entrepreneur Roy Schoenberg, M.D. has played a pivotal role in the growth and adoption of digital healthcare. He co-founded American Well (now Amwell) with his brother in 2006, and the telehealth player has grown into one of the largest virtual care companies.
Schoenberg stepped down from his role as president and co-CEO at Amwell back in 2024 and essentially retired, he told Fierce Healthcare at HIMSS26. But the promise of AI brought him back to health tech. His latest venture, Aileen, offers an AI-powered health companion focused on older adults.
While many companies have tried to bring innovation to senior care through devices and robotics combined with artificial intelligence, Schoenberg says Aileen has a different approach by focusing on developing intimate daily companionship with seniors.
Aileen interacts with seniors via regular incoming phone calls to provide companionship and caregiving support. Unlike solutions of the past that waited for the user to act, Aileen initiates contact and offers proactive, personalized support to help them stay safe, connected and confident in their own homes, according to the company.
With Amwell, Schoenberg tackled making healthcare more accessible through telehealth.
“AI, to me, represents another opportunity for another very big and tough nut to crack, which is the love and hate relationship between technology and really the people that need it most, who are seniors,” he told Fierce Healthcare in an interview.
AI can help address the mismatch between growing demand for senior care, especially to help combat isolation and loneliness, and the increasing shortage of senior caregivers, he noted.
As the U.S. population ages, the number of adults 65 and older living alone is growing. According to recent data, over 28% of adults age 65+ live alone. At the same time, the caregiver workforce is under unprecedented strain, with shortages projected to reach up to 8 million direct care workers by 2030, leaving many older adults without reliable support in daily life. This shortage has created an urgent need for sustainable, scalable, affordable solutions that augment—not replace—human caregiving.
“The vast majority of age tech is essentially taking the typical paternalistic view of healthcare, which is, essentially, we, the healthcare people, have the knowledge of what's good for you so we're going to tell you what to do. That doesn’t work,” he said. “Do we have the opportunity to actually change the way technology interfaces with seniors? Specifically, if we are to have a regular, influential role in their lives, maybe our first order of business is to become an indispensable part of their lives, and only then do we actually have a voice that they care to listen to, onto which we can communicate medication and primary care reminders.”
He added, “We need to be able to talk about their grandkids before we talk about medication lists or medication adherence.”
Through conversational AI and sentiment analysis, Aileen provides daily check-ins, casual conversation, light entertainment and reminders to build comfort and routine. Aileen also will give medication prompts, hydration nudges and tailored suggestions based on an individual’s health profile. Aileen engages seniors in casual conversations to support emotional well-being, social connectedness, cognitive engagement, and gentle health conversations. The AI assistant then learns from each interaction and reports back to caregivers.
“They don't have to download an app, they don't have to log in anywhere, they don't have to set up a device. They don't even have to have Wi-Fi. It calls them and talks to them. It's ntroduced to them by the kids or by their existing caregivers, and when they pick up the phone, the conversation doesn't sound like a healthcare conversation at all,” Schoenberg said.
When needed, Aileen can alert caregivers, trigger remote monitoring or escalate to live clinical intervention.
At HIMSS, Aileen announced a collaboration with deep tech and AI company Cherish to offer a new senior care solution. Cheris built radar-based technology for elder care that continuously and ambiently monitors daily behaviors, including movement and sleep patterns, and deviations from daily routines—such as reduced motion or missed meals—while preserving people’s privacy.
The partnership will build on Cherish’s real-time behavioral insights to influence Aileen’s next conversation with the senior. For example, if Cherish detects that the senior hasn’t been to the refrigerator this morning, Aileen will follow with a gentle conversation about missing breakfast, appetite or the availability of food. If Cherish detects slower movement or an unusually late wake-up time, Aileen will ask about the late wake-up, energy levels, discomfort or even interest in scheduling a telehealth visit.
“We are introducing the notion of caregiving that doesn't require labor, that is working alongside the people that care for that senior, and that is focused squarely on how to become a meaningful companion to their life,” Schoenberg said.
Aileen will initially focus on deploying its technology through professional caregivers, primarily home care agencies and senior living operators, he noted. Schoenberg envisions that Aileen’s technology will eventually be offered direct-to-consumer to support families. The long-term vision is to work with insurance plans as well, he said.
Verily, Samsung team up to advance clinical research
Samsung Electronics has been actively picking tech partners to advance its ambitions in healthcare as it unveiled a stepped-up partnership with b.well Connected Health to scrap the patient clipboard and replace it with smartphones.
The electronics giant has now tapped Verily Life Sciences to combine wearable data and analytics to advance clinical research. The collaboration will bring together Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 8 with Verily’s precision health platform, Pre, to provide an integrated solution for generating evidence and monitoring real-world populations. This joint offering, a bundled solution, aims to accelerate research for life sciences and government customers by combining advanced health analytics with consumer-grade wearable data, the companies said.
Through this collaboration, Verily will fully integrate sensor data from the Samsung Galaxy Watch and make them accessible in its Viewpoint Evidence solution, which is built on the Verily Pre platform and enables research sponsors to run real-world studies with re-contactable participant cohorts. Sponsors will use Verily Pre data solutions including Refinery for data harmonization and Workbench for analysis, modeling and activation. Verily will provide artificial intelligence/machine learning based analytics and digital measure expertise paired with comprehensive clinical trial support across regulatory, development, operations and compliance.
The collaboration will enable researchers to combine Verily's longitudinal dataset from consenting participants with Samsung sensor data, medical records, surveys and other third-party data. Sponsors can run their own studies using Verily’s registry population, leveraging full longitudinal data to explore sleep, activity and health outcomes, the companies said.
Verily will recruit and engage Samsung users for research participation, driving consistent use and high-quality data capture while enabling meaningful research and health insights.
The companies will also explore potential joint development of new and enhanced end-to-end solutions for clinical research.
Meditech expands ambient listening capabilities
Electronic health record company Meditech is expanding its Expanse AI portfolio with native ambient intelligence for physicians and nurses, the company announced Tuesday.
Meditech is integrating its native ambient intelligence solutions within the workflows of the Expanse Now mobile app for physicians and Expanse Point of Care app for nurses. These fully integrated solutions reduce documentation burden by capturing conversations in real time, automatically generating clinic visit notes and inpatient assessments and queuing next steps in workflow, according to the company.
“Meditech has been strategic in its application of artificial intelligence, focusing on areas where it can improve care delivery most,” said Cathy Turner, Meditech's chief nursing officer. "By integrating ambient listening into Meditech Expanse Point of Care, we’re helping our nurses capture assessment data through natural conversation. This is not just about efficiency, but it is a meaningful step toward supporting the human connection that’s at the center of exceptional nursing care."
The company also unveiled additional AI features including claim denials agents to streamline claim denial management and the appeals process. It generates a proposed action plan and drafts an evidence-based appeal with clinical data extracted from the EHR.
Meditech also developed an AI-powered assistant, MyHealth Assistant, integrated into the MyHealth patient portal that provides personalized and immediate support. And Meditech rolled out a new tool, called Ask Expanse, that lets clinicians ask questions via a chatbot interface at the point of care.
CoverMyMeds launches new specialty access and affordability solutions
CoverMyMeds announced new capabilities to streamline medical prior authorization, benefits investigation and patient enrollment for specialty therapies.
The company developed the new solutions to offer a fully integrated medication access experience that brings benefits investigation, medical and pharmacy prior authorization and patient services enrollment together directly within the CoverMyMeds workflow, executives said.
CoverMyMeds aims to support any medication, from the most complex specialty therapies to traditional retail prescriptions, while reducing administrative work for care teams and improving the overall patient experience.
The company's new solutions expand automation across routine prior authorization workflows for medications covered under both medical and pharmacy benefits. An intelligent eligibility check routes each request to the appropriate benefit pathway for processing. It then automates the completion of enrollment and prior authorization forms leveraging clinical data from within the EHR and submits required documentation to insurance. This integrated capability maintains visibility for the provider during this process and can be integrated with hubs and specialty pharmacies that are also responsible for supporting patients getting on therapy, CoverMyMeds said.
Providers see fewer delays and more efficient workflows, while biopharma companies gain actionable insights to strengthen patient support programs and accelerate specialty therapy initiation, the company said.
Zoom announces new healthcare solutions
Zoom, the web and video conferencing platform, is growing its footprint in healthcare with updated features and solutions.
The company is strengthening its electronic health record integrations, and its Zoom Contact Center is now available in Epic Toolbox. It will be generally available in April 2026. More than 300 healthcare organizations use Zoom’s CX solutions to power patient communication and support. The EHR integration deepens Zoom's ability to support large-scale adoption across hospitals, health systems and payer networks, the company said.
Zoom is also expanding its healthcare ecosystem with an Epic integration for Clinical Note. This enables clinicians to capture, review and finalize artificial-intelligence‑generated clinical notes without ever leaving Epic Haiku or Hyperspace. And Zoom Virtual Agent is now integrated with Epic, enabling healthcare organizations to automate routine patient inquiries across voice and chat channels and allowing clinicians to focus on higher-value, patient-centered care.
Zoom also is introducing new capabilities within Zoom Workplace for Frontline designed to streamline communication and coordination for clinical and operational teams. The enhanced solution, expected later in 2026, will enable teams to communicate instantly to close gaps with urgent messages, start every shift with clear visibility into who’s on duty and provide a single workspace for faster handoffs and collaboration.
RingCentral debuts AI agent for patient access workflows
RingCentral, an artificial-intelligence-powered business communications company, unveiled a voice-first, omnichannel AI agent platform designed to automate high-volume patient access and administrative workflows across voice, SMS, video and messaging.
It marks an industry-specific application of AIR Pro, an agentic voice platform, that delivers production-ready AI agents optimized for the unique operational and regulatory requirements of healthcare organizations, the company said.
"AIR Pro for Healthcare acts as an intelligent digital front door—handling calls, verifying coverage, scheduling appointments, updating records, and coordinating care seamlessly across channels. By automating routine interactions securely and reliably, it frees staff to focus on delivering more connected, human-centered care," said Carson Hostetter, executive vice president and general manager, AI and CX solutions at RingCentral.
AIR Pro for Healthcare includes configurable, healthcare-specific accelerators with pre-built skills that automate common patient interactions. For example, when a patient calls to reschedule an appointment, AIR Pro can verify identity, access scheduling systems, evaluate provider availability, set appointment priorities and manage wait times, then recommend the best available options, RingCentral said. Once confirmed, the agent updates the appointment in the system of record and sends an SMS confirmation—all within a single interaction.
Pre-built skills include patient identity verification, intelligent call routing, appointment scheduling and rescheduling, patient check-in workflows, insurance verification, billing inquiries and patient intake and basic triage.
AIR Pro for Healthcare supports more than 80 integrations with electronic health record and healthcare management systems, including Epic, Oracle Health, athenahealth and eClinicalWorks.
Early pilot participants are testing AIR Pro for Healthcare to automate appointment management and common patient inquiries, enabling staff to focus on higher-value care coordination activities.