Becker’s Annual Meeting is just a few days long, but its takeaways signal what is to come for much longer. This April, there was a resounding theme: Healthcare has officially entered its next phase of digital transformation. The tone has shifted from experimentation to execution. Health systems aren’t asking what’s possible anymore—they’re asking what actually works.
No matter what the role—CIO, CMO, CTO, CMIO—the themes were consistent. Across each, tightening financial pressures, rising expectations for measurable ROI, and a growing urgency to operationalize AI and digital investments at scale are all top of mind.
And nowhere was that tension more visible than in the conversation around AI and digital health.
Because while the industry has spent the better part of the last decade investing in digital tools, many health systems are now grappling with the unintended consequence: fragmented ecosystems that are increasingly difficult to manage, scale, and sustain. The advancements in AI are only adding to the urgency to maximize the benefit of existing digital health technology before adopting new tools.
That reality set the stage for one of the most candid—and standing-room-only—roundtables of the event.
Led by moderator Dr. Ricky Choi, Xealth’s Strategic Medical Advisor, panelists Caitlin Dunn of Froedtert Health, Brett Berman of the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), and Marcee Chmait of City of Hope tackled a challenge nearly every health system in the room recognized immediately: digital sprawl. Here are the top takeaways:
#1 Digital Sprawl Is No Longer a Side Effect—It’s the Problem
Health systems didn’t set out to create fragmented ecosystems. But solving problems one use case at a time is exactly how they got there, shared Chmait of a previous experience at another health system.
What started as targeted innovation quickly turned into something harder to manage.
“We had 40 use cases and 40 vendors—and they weren’t talking to each other,” she shared. The challenge led the system to pursue a solution orchestration partner that revolutionized their ecosystem.
While similar fragmentation shows up in budgets and tech stacks, its impact is felt most acutely by the people expected to use the solutions in question.
Dunn pointed to clinicians in particular, who are navigating an increasing number of tools, data sources, and workflows—often all within the same visit. The result isn’t just inefficiency, it’s fatigue. As she noted, clinicians are being asked to operate in environments they weren’t designed for, where “multiple integrations at different places to look” make even simple workflows more complex.
That’s the reality many organizations are facing today. What once felt like progress—adding new digital tools to solve specific problems—has created a level of complexity that’s now impeding scale.
#2 If It Doesn’t Fit the Workflow, It Doesn’t Work
Another top takeaway from Becker’s: Adoption lives and dies by workflow.
Panelists agreed that health systems can no longer afford to introduce tools and expect clinicians to adapt. The model is shifting for technology that conforms to care delivery, not the other way around.
As Dunn put it, scaling digital requires eliminating friction at every step: “You have to be looking at every single way to take something off [clinicians’] plates, because those are barriers to adoption,” she said. “We have great tools in place to automate patient outreach that’s allowed us to scale. Clinicians say ‘Oh, this did make my life easier. I didn’t have to think about it during the visit.’”
That shift is showing up in how organizations deploy digital solutions to automate identification of patient eligibility, to embed tools directly into care pathways, and remove the need for clinicians to navigate multiple systems during visits.
But enabling that kind of transformation requires more than just the right technology. As Chmait emphasized, “’Technology adoption is a team sport’—City of Hope has our innovation team at the table with clinicians to figure out how to make it all work together.”
#3 Frictionless Experiences Are Created Via Orchestration—and Innovation
Health systems don’t just have a tool problem—they have a coordination problem. Success isn’t about adding more solutions, but about making the ones already in place work together in a way that feels seamless to clinicians and patients alike. That shift is driving a new focus on orchestration, said Berman.
“Do you really need a new vendor or a new tool—or do you just need the right foundational orchestration layer to create that experience for whoever’s leveraging it?” he said.
Increasingly, organizations are choosing the latter. As Berman described, that means rationalizing existing portfolios, building more intentional toolboxes, and partnering with platforms like Xealth to create a seamless experience to simplify deployments, connect systems behind the scenes, and allow clinicians to “just push a button, prescribe it, and it goes.”
Such platforms are a more disciplined approach to innovation that makes the most of what’s in place today, while building the foundation for what comes next. That foundation is even more critical as systems increasingly invest in and harness the power of AI.
#4 AI Is Accelerating the Need for Structure
AI may be dominating most enterprise conversations, but health systems are approaching it differently than previous waves of digital innovation. This time, governance is showing up earlier as a priority, said Dunn.
Panelists and attendees agreed that AI can introduce new complexity. In many cases, it’s not a standalone purchase, but embedded into existing tools, layered into workflows, and often adopted before organizations fully understand how it’s being used. Without the right data strategy, governance model, and orchestration layer in place, AI has the potential to compound existing challenges rather than solve them.
But with the right foundation, it can do the opposite—unlock the ability to deliver a personalized care experience where clinicians can get the insights they need, scale care across the system and optimize care delivery efficiency.
#5 ROI Is No Longer a Downstream Metric
Health systems are operating in an environment where financial scrutiny is higher than ever. As a result, ROI is no longer something evaluated after deployment—it’s being built into decisions from the start.
Panelists emphasized that value can’t be defined by a single metric. It’s a balance of patient experience, clinical outcomes, operational efficiency, and financial impact. But increasingly, organizations are aligning around one reality: if a solution doesn’t deliver measurable value, it won’t last.
“If you purchase a technology and it doesn’t create ROI, you’re going backwards. Bring your finance folks as soon as possible into initial conversations,” Dunn advised. “So while you’re working with your clinicians, your excellence team, operational team, it’s important to keep the financials in mind because you’re making a case for your investments, and finance can help you make the right choice as awareness grows about the hidden cost of digital sprawl.”
As digital health shifts from experimentation to execution, staying ahead requires more than innovation—it requires orchestration. Follow Xealth here for insights on how leading health systems are scaling digital solutions that work, or connect with us at bizdev@xealth.com.