Three days of ViVE. Dozens of AI sessions. Packed hallways.
And yet, I came back with one simple question: are we talking about healthcare problems, or actually solving them?
I spent a few days at ViVE recently and came back with mixed, but mostly positive feelings.
First, the basics: the size of the conference felt right, and the length was perfect. It was large enough to bring together a wide set of healthcare leaders, startups, and technology vendors, but still small enough that you could run into people in the hallway and actually have a conversation.
That balance is not easy to get right, and ViVE generally does it well.
But during the event, one thought kept coming back to me:
Is ViVE slowly becoming more like HIMSS?
Not yet in terms of scale, but in terms of the vendor-to-provider balance.
The Vendor–Provider Mix
Walking through the show floor, it was clear that there was a lot of vendor energy. Booths were active, demos were happening everywhere, and companies were putting serious effort into their presence.
But it also felt like the number of vendors far outweighed the number of providers.
What surprised me even more was that many providers didn’t seem to spend much time exploring the booths.
Personally, I think that’s a missed opportunity.
Some of the most useful learning at conferences happens when providers walk up to a booth and ask blunt questions:
- Does this actually work?
- Who is using it today?
- What broke during deployment?
Those conversations can be far more educational than many formal presentations.
The best conferences create two-way learning providers explaining real problems and vendors showing what is actually possible today. When that balance shifts too far one way, the event starts to feel different.
Interesting Topics… But Sometimes Missing the Details
There were definitely good educational sessions.
For example, Sam Lambson spoke about how AI agents could work inside the EHR ecosystem and what infrastructure health systems will need if agents are going to access data and execute workflows safely.
Samantha Mehta had a useful discussion around the risks of AI adoption – shadow AI, weak guardrails, and the danger of assuming vendors have fully solved the security side of things.
Another interesting session featured Julie Durham, Ryan Terry, and Dr. Akshay Syal, who talked about how conversational AI is changing healthcare navigation. One statistic that stuck with me was that UnitedHealth facilitated over 100 million voice and chatbot interactions in 2025.
Dr. Ryan Mackey also raised an important point about interoperability and how broken systems still prevent a large number of patients from getting the care they need.
All important topics.
But something bothered me in a few sessions.
Many presentations talked a lot about the problem and the vision, but didn’t really explain what was actually built.
Sometimes the speakers described the strategy, but never got into:
- What the implementation looked like
- What failed during the process
- What the results were
At times, it felt like the speakers were a little too far removed from the project itself.
And that’s where conferences lose some value.
The most interesting talks are usually given by the people who built the thing – the engineers, architects, clinical informatics teams, and operators who had to deal with the messy details.
If anything, I think conferences like ViVE would benefit from more hands-on practitioners attending and speaking, not just C level executives. Executives should take a break and give opportunities for their team members to attend these conferences and present their experiences.
AI Was Everywhere
If there was one theme you couldn’t escape, it was AI.
Nearly every track touched it in some way.
Peter White spoke about agentic automation improving workflows like prior authorizations and credentialing.
Kory Fong discussed how organizations can build AI using patient data without compromising privacy.
Miranda Zhao and Dr. Sumayah Rahman shared lessons from building Cedar’s AI voice agent for handling patient billing conversations.
And Dr. Aaron Miri and Robbie Freeman talked about ambient listening and digital scribe technology helping reduce documentation burden for nurses.
What was interesting wasn’t just the number of AI sessions.
It was the shift in the conversation.
A year or two ago, many talks were still about whether healthcare should use AI.
Now the discussion is clearly about how to deploy it safely and make it work in real operations.
That’s a meaningful change.
The Agenda Was… Very Full
Another observation: the agenda was extremely packed.
There were many good sessions running at the same time, which meant constantly having to choose between two or three interesting talks.
More than once, I found myself wishing I could attend multiple rooms at once.
Recordings would solve that problem, but if they were available, I never managed to find them. Having easy access to session recordings after the event would make the conference much more valuable.
The Best Conversations Were in the Hallways
Like many conferences, some of the best conversations didn’t happen on stage.
They happened in hallways, over coffee, and during the evening events.
People were talking honestly about things like:
- How hard is it to actually deploy AI in healthcare
- Why interoperability still feels stuck
- How difficult it is to maintain data in legacy systems
Those informal discussions are often where the real learning happens.
Final Thoughts
ViVE is still one of the more interesting healthcare technology gatherings out there. It brings together startups, health systems, vendors, and investors in ways that few events manage to do.
But conferences like this are at their best when the people actually building and operating the systems are in the room.
Not just talking about strategy.
Talking about:
- what worked
- what failed
- and what they would do differently next time
Because that’s where the real learning happens.
If ViVE keeps that balance – between vendors and providers, strategy and execution, executives and builders, it will continue to be one of the most valuable conversations in healthcare technology.
And if there are three things I’d like to see more of next year, it’s simple:
Less talking about the problem.
More stories from the people who actually solved it.
And more boots on the ground in the exhibit hall
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