HIMSS26: Day 3 highlights
- By Danielle Siarri and Faila Santos , Nuadox -
Here are our day three highlights from the 2026 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition in Las Vegas (March 9–12).
Military to healthcare technology: Phil Leamon’s journey
Phil Leamon of InterSystems reflected on his path from a 25-year career in the United States Army to leadership in healthcare technology.
Leamon enlisted at 17 and served in a range of roles, including explosive ordnance disposal and computer programming on large IBM mainframe systems. His first exposure to healthcare came during the Gulf War (Desert Shield and Desert Storm), when he was assigned to a 1,000-bed military hospital. There, he oversaw administrative teams processing injured soldiers arriving from the front lines—an experience that sparked his long-term interest in healthcare systems.
After leaving the military, Leamon moved into corporate technology roles before joining InterSystems, where he has spent more than two decades working on healthcare data integration and digital transformation initiatives, including AI-enabled solutions that connect information from disparate systems.
Navigating the complexity of U.S. healthcare
Leamon described the U.S. healthcare ecosystem as highly fragmented, comparing it to “wrangling an octopus.” Providers, regulators, and agencies all operate under different rules and priorities, making it difficult to implement unified technological solutions.
Unlike the military’s hierarchical structure, healthcare technology initiatives require consensus among numerous stakeholders. As a result, introducing new systems often depends as much on change management and communication as on technical capability. Building trust among clinicians—whose decisions directly affect patient safety—remains a central challenge when deploying new digital tools.
Voice-driven workflows to reduce EHR burden
In a separate interview, Carl Osborne discussed a voice-first approach to clinical workflows designed to reduce the documentation burden associated with electronic health record platforms such as Oracle Health and Epic.
Drawing on 17 years of consulting experience optimizing EHR implementations, Osborne described how excessive clicking and fragmented workflows can pull clinicians’ attention away from patients. His approach allows providers to retrieve patient data, place orders, and document care using natural speech while maintaining safety checks such as drug-interaction verification and patient identity confirmation.
Toward ambient, screenless care environments
Osborne said his voice-driven clinical platform integrates with InterSystems IRIS for Health and supports multilingual interaction, wearable devices, and shared displays that allow clinicians and patients to review health data together. The system is designed to interpret natural speech across languages and dialects while enforcing clinical safeguards and evidence-based decision support.
The longer-term vision is an ambient care environment in which clinicians interact with health systems conversationally rather than through keyboards and screens. In such settings, voice interfaces, wearable devices, and projected visualizations could enable hands-free workflows while allowing patients to actively participate in reviewing and understanding their health data.
That’s all for this year’s edition. Thanks for following along. See you next year.
Header image credit: Danielle Siarri
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HIMSS26: Day 1 highlights
HIMSS26: Day 2 highlights
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