As healthcare organizations strive to be 2026-ready, the CHIME Fall Forum continues to serve as a critical barometer for the priorities shaping the year ahead, highlighting emerging risks, breakthroughs, compliance, and the health-tech upgrades. Following last year’s Forum in San Antonio, our CTO Sudhakar Mohanraj joins us to unpack critical takeaways from the session, covering cybersecurity resilience to system connectivity and the maturing regulatory mandates.
A glimpse into the insightful conversation:
Considering cybersecurity resilience emerged as a dominant concern this year, how are CIOs reframing their 2026 defense strategies?
Sudhakar: I have observed that the industry discussions have shifted over the last few years from “preventing cyberattacks” to “improving cyber resilience”. This highlights that cyberattacks and downtimes due to cloud outages are inevitable, as seen in recent AWS outages caused by Cloudflare. Healthcare CIOs clearly state that cyber resilience is more than just an IT function. When systems are down, the entire organization is impacted – nurses should know what medication has to go to which patient in the next hour, lab managers must find a way to send critical lab results to the providers and patients, physicians must know the patient admission diagnosis and recent progress in treatment plans to decide on the next action plan for the patient. So, everyone must know which system to switch to and how to switch to it. Paper is predominantly used as a backup plan in resilience and while it is a solid alternative, it is unsustainable beyond a few hours. CIOs are prioritizing strong IRA preparedness, BBB updates, response-recovery plans, risk monitoring, and data security, especially for retired systems that may still store data. Going forward, health systems must strengthen overall cyber posture to prevent and respond to potential threats. In my personal experience, they must first start with a resilience playbook and test out the playbook as well.
What are your thoughts on one of this year’s crucial topics – broader interoperability over simple data exchange across systems?
Sudhakar: Interoperability has entered its AI era. The industry is frustrated with this fundamental problem being unsolved for decades! But there is light at the end of the tunnel. I have heard from at least a dozen organizations who are applying AI to solve the interop issue. If AI agents can do claims processing and COB, why not interop and mapping datasets using syntax and semantics? While this is exciting, we need to approach this with caution because, while AI error in RCM may lead only to a denied claim, AI error in interop can lead to medical errors which can be fatal.
When it comes to patient care, what are CIOs prioritizing to enhance virtual care and staffing pressure management?
Sudhakar: There are few angles to virtual care. Remote monitoring is making good strides, especially using AI. This is deployed both in acute care and at home. But there are some fiascos which deserve a textbook case study such as the Best Buy multi-million dollar deal with Current Health and the subsequent sale back to the original owners on failing to accelerate growth. The other angle is reimbursements. Challenges still exist for virtual visits due to changing regulations. But one common ground which everyone agrees to is staff burnout and shortage. While ambient techno lies have been happily lapped up by providers showcasing many successful adoptions, the same success is absent on the nursing side. Nurses need attention and AI can come to their rescue. I hope new ventures show up in this space and reduce workforce stress.
With so much regulatory momentum (CMS Pledge, TEFCA, etc.), what are being emphasized by CIOs for 2026?
Sudhakar: CEOs of hospitals are struggling with regulatory change. The wafer-thin margins in operating costs creates a magnifying impact of even small changes in the system. The changes witnessed this year are by no means “small”. CIOs are facing the urgency of regulatory mandates, stronger than ever. While TEFCA is welcomed by some leaders, others question the need to have one more standard rather than rolling out nationally what is already in place. The CMS Pledge and initiatives like the recently launched “Access” are improving transparency and accelerating digitization.
AI came up in nearly every discussion this year. How do you think AI intersects with the top priorities of security, data, patient care, and compliance?
Sudhakar: AI is rapidly moving from buzzword to practical infrastructure in healthcare. Recent industry analyses, including OpenAI’s enterprise trends report and Menlo Ventures’ 2025 study, show that while healthcare started from a smaller baseline, its AI adoption has grown faster than almost any other sector — rising from minimal use 3% to meaningful mainstream deployment at 22%. This acceleration is driven not by hype, but by AI’s clear value in secure data handling, reducing administrative burden, improving revenue cycle and workflow efficiency, enhancing documentation accuracy, compliance readiness, and patient care. I wish to see more in this space, beyond ambient AI and LLM use cases. In short, healthcare isn’t chasing futuristic autonomous medicine, it’s actively using AI to solve the operational, security, and compliance challenges that matter today.
Based on the Forum insights, what will be your futuristic note for healthcare leaders?
Sudhakar: Future-ready healthcare needs resilience, interoperability, and clinical sustainability to advance together. Leaders will seek to strengthen security readiness, build scalable and connected data ecosystems, support clinicians with smart, low-friction tools, meet rising 2026 regulatory demands, and unlock AI value through strong governance and clean data. That’s a lot, so not all organizations can take on all of these in initiatives in 2026. My advice would be to focus on two core areas – resilience and data management – both of which are foundational in nature and without which the other areas of work would not matter much.
Summary of the Key Takeaways
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