In Conversation: Hal Wolf
President & CEO, HIMSS - on how hospitals' attitudes toward digital transformation have matured, where AI can realistically help amid workforce shortages, and why interoperability remains a stubborn obstacle
Some of the clearest thinking in digital health today comes from Hal Wolf, President & CEO, HIMSS. In a wide-ranging conversation conducted by Chief Healthcare Executive, Hal laid out a view of the industry that is both candid and immediately useful to the executives, clinicians, and builders who read HealthTech Cube.
The conversation
How hospitals' attitudes toward digital transformation have matured, where AI can realistically help amid workforce shortages, and why interoperability remains a stubborn obstacle.
“People get it now. They see it.”
- Hal Wolf, in conversation with Chief Healthcare Executive
Conversation highlights
How hospitals' attitudes toward digital transformation have matured
Where AI can realistically help amid workforce shortages
And why interoperability remains a stubborn obstacle
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.
The data-infrastructure backdrop makes this conversation timely: TEFCA crossed one billion exchanged health records this summer, up from 10 million in under a year (our coverage), while KLAS reports EHR purchasing fell 40% as capital shifts from record systems to the AI and analytics layered on top of them. Interoperability is no longer the constraint - deciding what to do with flowing data is.
The exchange offers a rare unvarnished look at how these decisions actually get made. At HIMSS, that thinking translates into daily decisions about where technology genuinely earns its place in care delivery, and where discipline matters more than novelty.
The HTC take
As the reimbursement and regulatory ground shifts through 2026 and 2027, this is exactly the kind of leadership thinking worth revisiting.