In Conversation: Mitesh Rao, MD

The healthcare technology conversation this year keeps returning to the themes raised by Mitesh Rao, MD, Founder & CEO, OMNY Health. In a wide-ranging conversation conducted by MedCity News, Mitesh 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 fragmented healthcare data infrastructure is holding back AI - and what a functioning national data ecosystem for research and life sciences would look like.

Conversation highlights

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.

It is the kind of discussion that separates durable strategy from conference-stage talking points. At OMNY Health, 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

Set against the sector's $7.4 billion funding half-year and accelerating policy agenda, perspectives like this one are the practical map the headlines don't provide.