“You should never leverage technology for technology’s sake. It has to solve a problem.”
That’s what Dr. Sumbul Ahmad Desai, vice president for health and fitness at Apple, said during her keynote conversation during the 2026 HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas in March.
She’s been at the tech giant for nearly a decade and has overseen the development of its wearables as they become more clinically useful, helping to support monitoring for heart health, sleep and more. “We don’t want to just empower you. We want to empower you to have a better relationship with your healthcare provider,” she added.
At the core of this conversation is the role technology can play to improve workflows and offer clinicians the right data at the right time so that they can deliver high-quality care with a personal touch.
“We really want to deliver streamlined workflows and clinically validated ways to use technology,” Desai said. “But again, it’s not just about the technology. It really has to be the model that is around the technology.”
DISCOVER: Make health services work smarter with AI and collaboration.
Transforming Healthcare With New Tech and Reimagined Processes
For this issue, HealthTech is highlighting the ways healthcare organizations are transforming operations, not just with technology but also by reimagining teams and processes.
In Texas, for example, Houston Methodist recently celebrated the first birthday of Cypress Hospital, its smart hospital campus that has brand-new tools but also updated workflows to support virtual nursing and rapid response.
And across the Dakotas, we get a glimpse of the modernization efforts at Sanford Health, which is setting the standard on delivering innovative care to rural communities.
“Healthcare is at a very challenging moment,” says Dr. Dave Newman, chief medical officer of virtual care at Sanford Health. “We’re really at an inflection point where we need to start trying novel ideas.”
