Beyond FHIR: Why True Healthcare Interoperability Needs AI
A practitioner perspective by Johnny Hecker, EVP & Chief Revenue Officer, Consensus Cloud Solutions.
The argument
Relying on FHIR alone puts an unfair burden on under-resourced providers. AI can bridge disparate systems so smaller facilities can exchange data using tools they already have, such as digital cloud fax, instead of buying costly new infrastructure.
Why we picked it
The HTC editorial desk curates practitioner perspectives that pass a simple test: would a health system executive, product leader, or investor act differently after reading it? This piece by Johnny Hecker earns its place - it comes from the operating trenches of health it & interoperability, not the conference stage, and it takes a position specific enough to disagree with.
The bigger picture
The AI adoption question runs through every executive conversation in 2026. The evidence base is finally arriving: the largest controlled study of ambient documentation, published in JAMA, found clinicians saved 16 minutes of documentation time per day - but only a third of users hit the usage threshold for maximum benefit (our coverage). Meanwhile Rock Health has stopped labeling AI as a differentiator at all, because every company claims it - which is exactly why operating discipline of the kind described here separates winners from demo-ware.
Read it alongside our own reporting in Health IT & Interoperability, where the data behind this debate is covered daily on the HTC Wire.