The Executive Guide to Health IT & Interoperability in 2026
A working brief for leaders evaluating health it & interoperability investments: evidence, market reality, and the questions that matter.
Every technology budget tells a story, and in health it & interoperability the 2026 story is one of consolidation, evidence, and reimbursement finally catching up with capability. This guide distills what we hear from operators and what the data shows into a working brief for executives.
Start with the problem, not the product
The costliest failures in this category share a root cause: technology purchased before the workflow, staffing, and payment model to absorb it existed. The discipline that separates successful programs is unglamorous - governance first, a narrowly scoped pilot second, measurement third, and scale only when the first three hold.
The market reality
Consider the current numbers: tEFCA crossed one billion exchanged health records this summer, up from 10 million in under a year (our coverage).
Meanwhile, kLAS reports Epic added 77 hospitals while Oracle Health shed 56, and overall EHR purchasing fell about 40% as budgets shift to AI (our coverage).
Meanwhile, healthcare suffered 410 ransomware attacks in the first half of 2026 - 2.3 per day, up 14% year over year (our coverage).
Meanwhile, the CPT 2026 code set formally recognizes remote monitoring and AI-assisted diagnostic services (our coverage).
Questions to ask every vendor
Where is the peer-reviewed or real-world evidence, and on a population like ours? What happens to our data - who trains on it, who profits from it? What does integration actually require from our EHR team? And what is the exit: if we terminate, what do we keep? Vendors comfortable with these questions tend to be the ones still standing in three years.
The bottom line
Health IT & Interoperability rewards patient, evidence-driven adopters. Track the category daily on our Health IT & Interoperability page and the topic feeds beneath it.