Can healthcare keep pace with tech’s lightning speed?

Healthcare’s digital clock is ticking faster than ever. From AI-infused software to virtual-first care models, the sector is absorbing new capabilities at a rate that would have seemed implausible a few years ago. CIOs across the country point to three forces behind the acceleration: the industry’s pandemic-era transformation, the explosion of usable data and AI, and consumer expectations shaped by retail and banking experiences.

AI is collapsing the upgrade cycle

For Eric Daffron, vice president and CIO at Southeast Health in Dothan, Alabama, the shift is most visible in how quickly vendors are shipping new features. Not long ago, customers expected incremental improvements to clinical and administrative modules every year or two. Those enhancements were gathered from user feedback, vetted, coded, tested, and rolled out on predictable timelines.

That cadence is gone. As AI gets embedded into core products, features are being conceived, trained, and delivered in weeks or months. Decision support suggestions, ambient documentation, predictive scheduling, and coding assistance are showing up in routine updates rather than major releases.

The pressure point for health systems is no longer just whether the tech works—it’s whether organizations can adapt fast enough. Workflow redesign, clinician training, governance updates, and clear communication to stakeholders must now happen on compressed schedules. In other words, the gating factor has shifted from software readiness to operational readiness.

Momentum with many drivers

Omer Awan, vice president and CIO at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, sees a convergence of catalysts accelerating adoption:

• Post-pandemic maturity: Virtual care went from pilot to baseline, proving digital can scale in care delivery.
• Data and AI: The volume of structured and unstructured data—and the tools to derive insight—has exploded.
• Consumerism: Patients expect healthcare to work like modern finance or retail, with intuitive apps, transparent communication, and real-time access.
• Payment reform: Value-based care and evolving reimbursement models reward outcomes, integration, and efficiency.
• Cybersecurity and compliance: Heightened risk and enforcement are pushing modernization across identity, infrastructure, and monitoring.

Importantly, these forces compound each other. Better data enables better AI; better AI enables better experiences; better experiences improve adoption and outcomes. The flywheel is spinning.

Spending follows the speed

The rapid pace is showing up in budgets. According to a 2025 report from Kaufman Hall, health systems are increasing IT investment to consolidate EHR environments, integrate AI safely, and modernize infrastructure for future growth.

• Children’s hospitals lead with nearly a 16% increase in average monthly IT spend.
• Academic medical centers and acute care hospitals each saw IT spending rise by about 7.5%.
• Healthcare technology management budgets also expanded broadly, including a roughly 10% bump among children’s hospitals.

These investments are aimed at both the front door and the engine room: patient-facing digital tools such as mobile apps, portals, and virtual care, as well as the less visible but critical layers of interoperability, data platforms, and network security.

Where the frontier is moving fastest

At Fred Hutch, technology now sits at the center of cancer care delivery and research. Precision oncology is advancing with AI-driven insights that match patients to therapies based on molecular profiles. Clinical trials are becoming digital-first, with e-consent, remote monitoring, and decentralized data collection expanding access and speeding enrollment. Interoperability—long a sore spot in healthcare—is improving as APIs mature and data standards gain traction.

Oncology organizations, in particular, are pushing the envelope because the stakes are high: datasets are rich, patient journeys are complex, and incremental gains translate into real improvements in survival and quality of life. In these settings, the case for rapid evaluation and adoption can be unusually compelling.

The headline isn’t one technology—it’s the velocity

Both leaders emphasize that the story isn’t about a single category—gen AI, remote care, or analytics. It’s the sheer volume and speed of change arriving at health systems simultaneously. Tools that touch documentation, coding, scheduling, triage, imaging, and revenue cycle are updating in parallel. What worked yesterday might already have a smarter, faster counterpart today, forcing clinical and operational teams to continually reassess “the way we do things.”

That pace can be invigorating, but it’s also fatiguing. Without disciplined governance and pragmatic sequencing, organizations risk partial deployments, workflow fragmentation, or poorly controlled pilots that never scale. The hazard isn’t moving too slowly—it’s moving everywhere at once.

How CIOs can keep pace without breaking stride

Keeping up requires more than bigger budgets. It requires better choreography. Themes emerging from high-performing digital health programs include:

• Outcome-first governance: Prioritize use cases based on clear clinical, operational, or financial outcomes—not on novelty. Define success metrics upfront and revisit them after deployment.
• Change management at scale: Treat workflow redesign and training as first-class workstreams. Create rapid-feedback loops with clinicians and frontline staff to refine in production.
• Platform over point solutions: Favor extensible platforms and integration patterns that allow new AI features to plug into existing systems with minimal rework.
• Data quality and safety: Invest in data pipelines, labeling, and monitoring. Establish model oversight, bias review, and human-in-the-loop processes where appropriate.
• Security by design: Bake identity, access, and audit controls into procurement and implementation. Assume third-party risk and shared accountability across vendors.
• Communication cadence: Publish transparent roadmaps, change calendars, and “what’s new” summaries so clinicians aren’t blindsided by updates.

What patients will notice next

As spending and execution mature, patients should see smoother, more connected experiences: a single sign-on across services, real-time status updates, shorter wait times driven by predictive scheduling, and smarter navigation tools that route them to the right site of care. On the clinical side, ambient documentation can reduce keyboard time, while AI-supported triage, imaging, and risk prediction augment decision-making—without replacing it.

The bottom line

Can healthcare keep pace with tech’s lightning speed? Yes—if leaders treat speed as a competency, not a crisis. That means building the muscles of governance, interoperability, and change management, while aligning investment with measurable outcomes. The organizations that thrive won’t be the ones that deploy the most tools; they’ll be the ones that upgrade how they adopt them.