Epic, Microsoft Dragon Copilot and the clinical AI wave at HIMSS26
HIMSS26 in Las Vegas turned into a huge stage to show how Artificial Intelligence is moving from promise to everyday reality in healthcare. Among the highlights, two names led the way: Epic, with its AI ecosystem already in production, and Microsoft Dragon Copilot, which has cemented itself as a central piece in automating clinical and administrative workflows.
According to Epic, more than 85% of its customers already use Epic AI features. That means hospitals and clinics are using AI to support decisions, cut costs, and improve outcomes not just in pilots, but in real operations. The company also unveiled new capabilities in development, such as conversational AI for physicians, an AI agent factory to create workflow-specific assistants, and support for differential diagnosis, helping clinicians explore hypotheses more quickly.
On the Microsoft side, Dragon Copilot gained new integration layers and is becoming an even more complete productivity hub for healthcare. Beyond traditional medical speech recognition, the solution now connects directly with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Teams, and a series of apps and agents available through the Microsoft Marketplace. This expansion positions Dragon as a cross-cutting component, spanning everything from clinical documentation to team collaboration and task management.
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One of the most interesting announcements was the integration between the clinical content from UpToDate by Wolters Kluwer Health and Microsoft Dragon Copilot. In practice, this gives clinicians access to up-to-date clinical intelligence directly within their productivity flow, without switching between multiple windows. In addition, Atropos Health announced a collaboration with Microsoft to bring its Evidence Agent into Dragon Copilot in environments such as Stanford Medicine, delivering real-world evidence in context during care.
Cybersecurity in crisis: two-thirds of providers hit by attacks
In parallel with the excitement around AI and automation, HIMSS26 also exposed a tense reality in cybersecurity. According to data presented by Cohesity, around two-thirds of healthcare organizations suffered a material cyberattack in the last 12 months. Among those institutions, 92% reported revenue loss and 59% lost customers as a result of the incidents.
These numbers highlight how the rapid digitalization of healthcare comes with a much larger attack surface. Electronic health records, imaging systems, connected bedside devices, and even AI tools can all become potential entry points when there is no strong strategy for data protection and business continuity. The message is clear: there is no point in investing in AI, cloud, and automation if the foundation of cyber resilience is not firmly in place.
In this context, the combination of identity management, strong authentication, and real-time monitoring of user and AI agent behavior is gaining traction. Specialized solutions are starting to apply machine learning models to detect outlier patterns, lateral movement across the network, and unauthorized access attempts in clinical environments. And the message that spread strongly through the HIMSS26 halls was: security is now a shared responsibility across IT, clinical, and executive leadership.
New AI and automation products unveiled at HIMSS26
The list of launches in Las Vegas was long, showing that virtually every link in the healthcare chain is getting some kind of upgrade with AI, data, and automation. Below is an overview of the main highlights, focusing on what each solution actually delivers in practice.
Environmental monitoring, RTLS, and patient experience
- Cherish + Aileen: Cherish showcased an environmental monitoring technology that integrates with Aileen, an AI-based virtual companion focused on senior care. Together, they create a home or institutional environment that tracks movement, activity patterns, and risks, helping identify falls, behavior changes, and intervention needs without relying solely on direct human contact.
- CenTrak: CenTrak, specialized in real-time location systems (RTLS), launched four new products with Bluetooth Low Energy support. These capabilities enable real-time tracking of patients, staff, and equipment, optimizing asset utilization, reducing search time for devices, and improving safety in critical areas.
- Cognosos: Also in the RTLS space, Cognosos introduced encounter-detection tags for staff and patients. The idea is to automate encounter logging by capturing data that today depends on manual entry. This can be used to measure time at bedside, verify presence, support billing, and even feed care quality analytics.
- Zebra Technologies – Orchestrated Care: Zebra brought the concept of Orchestrated Care, a framework designed to automate operational workflows in healthcare. The approach combines data capture at the edge (mobile devices, barcodes, RTLS) with orchestration layers to align tasks, reduce communication noise, and increase visibility into what is happening across the hospital in real time.
Language models, agents, and clinical AI
- Certilytics Health Language Model: Certilytics announced a health-specialized language model aimed at predictive analytics. The goal is to offer near real-time answers to complex questions from executives and analysts, focusing on population risk, costs, and resource utilization by unifying clinical and administrative data.
- eClinicalWorks – AI API Workbench: eClinicalWorks introduced AI API Workbench, an environment where small and mid-sized practices can build and customize autonomous AI agents within the EHR workflow. Instead of a rigid, one-size-fits-all solution, Workbench lets organizations adapt agent behavior to their local context, from administrative tasks to light clinical support.
- Greenway Health – Novare: Greenway unveiled Novare, a platform natively built with agentic AI to support ambulatory practices, covering both clinical workflows and RCM (revenue cycle management). The idea is to redesign legacy EHR experiences by putting intelligent agents at the center of task automation and care coordination.
- Heidi + R1: Heidi, known for its AI scribe that automates visit documentation, announced a partnership with R1, a major RCM player. The integration aims to connect information captured at the point of care with billing and collections processes, reducing coding errors, rework, and denials.
- Innovaccer – Flow Capture: Innovaccer launched Flow Capture, an autonomous medical coding solution operating at the front line. The goal is to transform clinical data into billing codes with AI support, accelerating the revenue cycle and reducing reliance on fully manual processes.
- FUJIFILM – Synapse AI Orchestrator and Worklist Orchestrator: FUJIFILM introduced two tools to optimize radiology workflow. Synapse AI Orchestrator helps prioritize studies based on AI models, while Synapse Worklist Orchestrator organizes radiologist worklists, distributing studies more evenly and efficiently.
Prescribing workflows, medications, and legacy data
- DrFirst – RxInform: DrFirst showcased the new generation of RxInform, its real-time prescription engagement platform. With AI and UX improvements, the system aims to increase patient interaction with guidance and reminders by around 30%, helping improve medication adherence.
- FDB – Script Agent and VerifyAssist: FDB presented two new automation solutions for the medication chain. Script Agent targets ambulatory settings, helping automate prescribing, while VerifyAssist focuses on hospital pharmacy orders, assisting in validating prescriptions and reducing the risk of errors.
- MediQuant: MediQuant expanded the capabilities of its enterprise archive platform with integrated clinical summaries and embedded DICOM viewing. This allows hospitals to sunset legacy systems without losing access to important data, while making historical information easier to search and use.
Clinical assistants, mobility, and productivity
- ControlUp – Tap-to-App: ControlUp introduced Tap-to-App, designed to speed up login for clinicians who move between shared workstations. Instead of multiple lengthy sign-ins, clinicians can authenticate quickly, cutting the time it takes to access necessary systems and boosting productivity during shifts.
- ModMed – ModMed Scribe 2.0: ModMed updated ModMed Scribe, its AI-based assistant, adding note reconciliation features and full iPhone support. The company highlighted that in just three months since the new version launched, it has already supported 240,000 patient visits.
Discharge coordination, interoperability, and communication
- PointClickCare – Discharge Intel: PointClickCare launched Discharge Intel, a solution that delivers clinical intelligence to payers within 24 hours of discharge. The goal is to make post-discharge coordination easier, reduce readmissions, and improve follow-up across care transitions.
- Documo + PointClickCare: Documo, focused on document exchange, is now available in the PointClickCare Marketplace. This enables automation of document-based workflows such as forms and authorizations, keeping everything more tightly integrated with the EHR and care coordination systems.
- RingCentral – AIR Pro for Healthcare: RingCentral introduced AIR Pro for Healthcare, an agentic AI voice platform designed for high-volume administrative workflow automation across voice, SMS, video, and messaging. Tasks like scheduling, visit confirmations, and basic patient guidance can be handled by intelligent agents.
- Talkdesk – CXA in healthcare: Talkdesk expanded Talkdesk CXA to support complex scheduling, including specialties and multidisciplinary teams. The company also released CXA Operations Center and enhancements to its Interaction and Quality Analytics solutions, aimed at understanding and optimizing the patient contact experience.
Real-world implementations: from digital identity to AI-powered RCM
Beyond new products, HIMSS26 also brought news about real-world implementations, showing how some organizations are already putting these technologies into production.
Digital identity and simplified login
- Ochsner Health + CLEAR1: Ochsner Health, based in Louisiana, adopted CLEAR1, CLEARs secure identity platform, to improve the patient identification experience. The idea is to make identity verification processes faster and safer, both in physical and digital settings.
- CMS – Medicare.gov with enhanced login: CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) rolled out enhanced login options on Medicare.gov, including the ability to use CLEAR to create new accounts or verify identity. This move signals a broader trend toward verified digital identities in public health portals.
AI agent governance and monitoring
- Delta Dental + Singulr AI – Agent Pulse: Delta Dental implemented Agent Pulse from Singulr AI, a solution designed to monitor the behavior of autonomous AI agents. This gives the company more visibility into actions taken by agents, risk levels, policy compliance, and where fine-tuning of models is needed.
Smart RCM and operational scale
- Northwell Health + XiFin Empower AI: Northwell Health in New York implemented XiFin Empower AI, an RCM ecosystem that leans heavily on automation and artificial intelligence to redesign revenue operations. The solution integrates financial, clinical, and administrative data to support faster decisions, reduce bad debt, and improve cash flow predictability.
An increasingly connected and intelligent health ecosystem
Taken together, the HIMSS26 announcements paint a picture where AI, automation, and security are becoming inseparable elements of healthcare infrastructure. On one side, Microsoft Dragon Copilot is solidifying its position as an intelligent productivity layer integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem and clinical content like UpToDate, while Epic shows, with more than 85% of its customers using Epic AI, that automation is already part of the normal workflow in many hospitals.
At the same time, new solutions are emerging for every step of the journey: environmental monitoring for seniors, RTLS to track people and assets, autonomous coding platforms, health-specific language models, radiology tools, new care orchestration frameworks, voice agents, and patient experience centers. In parallel, cybersecurity has taken on a sense of urgency with the revelation that two-thirds of organizations suffered material attacks in a single year, underscoring the need to invest in resilience and data governance.
In the end, what HIMSS26 makes clear is that digital transformation in healthcare is no longer in pilot mode. It is happening simultaneously in the EHR, in the physical environment, in the cloud, in patient communication, in billing, and in protection against attacks. Organizations that manage to align AI technologies, process automation, user experience, and security are likely to gain efficiency without losing sight of the central goal: delivering better, more human, and sustainable care in a sector that never stops evolving.
