A Look Back at the Top 10 Innovation and Technology Stories of 2025

AI dominated the conversation, taking half of the most read HealthLeaders stories over the past year. But healthcare leaders were also interested in telehealth, RPM and the emerging Food is Medicine movement.

AI may have grabbed the majority of the headlines in the innovation and technology space in 2025, but a review of the top stories of the past year in HealthLeaders finds that healthcare executives were interested in a variety of issues.

The ongoing saga of COVID-era CMS waivers for telehealth and the Hospital at Home strategy made the list – and will probably continue to do so as Congress debates whether to extend those freedoms. The Food is Medicine movement had its moment as well, as did remote patient monitoring reimbursement and Epic’s annual user’s meeting.

But the top story focused on Kaiser Permanente’s decision to settle a class action lawsuit over data captured by auto-tracking technology. The story apparently hit a nerve with healthcare executives across the country who use similar tactics to understand who’s accessing their websites, portals and apps.

And, of course, there’s AI. Half of the top 10 stories accessed by HealthLeaders readers in 2025 focused on the industry’s adoption of AI. Expect that topic to top the charts in 2026 as well as outcomes and governance continue to demand attention.

Here’s the list of the top 2025 HealthLeaders stories in innovation and technology.

1. Kaiser Permanente to Pay $46M for Patient Data Breach. The massive, California-based healthcare network decided in December to pay upwards of $46 million to settle a class action lawsuit charging KP with collecting and sharing potentially sensitive patient data with companies like Google and Microsoft. The suit centered on technology used by many healthcare organizations to capture information from users who accessed their websites, portals and apps. While KP contended that no PHI was shared – which would have been a HIPAA violation – it decided to pay the fine rather than fight the charges.
2. CMS Offers Good News, Bad News for Telehealth. November’s release of CMS’ 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule offered new opportunities for providers to use telehealth inside the hospital setting and in skilled nursing facilities, while also improving options for remote supervision. CMS also eliminated a five-year-old policy allowing providers to bill for remote telehealth services using their practice location instead of their home. The uproar caused by that decision prompted CMS to backtrack a short while later, proving that telehealth is still a big issue with healthcare leaders looking to extend their platform and meet patients where they want to be met.
3. Finding True Value in AI for Smaller Health Systems. The top 2025 story on AI centered on how Dayton Children’s Hospital CIO Jason Whitlock is developing an AI strategy, and how rural networks and smaller hospitals have to be selective and stingy in deciding how and where to use the technology. Being a part of the Epic universe does have its advantages, Whitlock says, but that doesn’t mean he can sit back and embrace every new tool or platform that comes along. These are trying times for healthcare organizations living on the razor’s edge of financial stability, and while AI has the potential to truly transform care, it comes with a heft price tag that many can’t afford.
4. What Is the C-Suite Getting Wrong About AI Strategy? The next AI story on the list affects all healthcare organizations, large and small – and it’s an issue that isn’t going away. An April survey of C-Suite executives by Accenture found that few believe they’re investing enough money in infrastructure to support AI scalability and sustainability. Those execs also feel that leadership is focusing too much on financial and administrative value and not giving enough thought to clinician wellness and clinical outcomes. The debate over how to determine ROI for AI was also a main component of HealthLeaders’ recent Chief Digital Executive Exchange (CDEX). Expect AI strategy to be a top topic in 2026 as execs grapple with cost, heady expectations and sustainability concerns.
5. Integrating AI Into Clinical Care: It’s All About Efficiency. This story, which came out of the HealthLeaders AI in Clinical Care Mastermind program, highlights a top strategy in 2025 that will carry over in 2026: Using AI to enhance clinical care. Executives from more than a dozen health systems gathered at Deer Valley in Utah this past September to trade ideas, and many said they’re focusing first on reducing workflows for clinicians and taking them away from their computers to spend more time in front of their patients. Improvements in clinical outcomes will come later. But there is one nagging concern: Can a clinician become too dependent on AI, to the point that they forget how to practice medicine without it?
6. Healthcare’s Food is Medicine Movement Now Has a Network of Excellence. This story dates back to February, when Kaiser Permanente and Tufts University launched the Food is Medicine National Network of Excellence, with Geisinger and Highmark Health as founding partners. The story taps into a growing trend in healthcare to include diet and nutrition in care plans, with technology platforms enabling providers to integrate diet directions into the EHR and partner with supermarkets, food banks and other resources to make sure patients have access to the food they need. This trend should gain strength in 2026 as healthcare organizations begin to report how better diet and nutrition affect clinical outcomes.
7. RPM Reimbursement: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? Healthcare leaders see RPM as a growing trend in 2026, as they look to expand their care programs and access patient data outside the hospital, doctor’s office or clinic. The catch? There are few use cases that have proven the ROI in RPM, and payers are reluctant to reimburse until they see proof that it works. The good news for providers is that CMS expanded opportunities for RPM reimbursement in its 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, but at about the same time UnitedHealthcare announced plans to curtail its RPM coverage to only two proven programs – chronic heart failure and hypertension during pregnancy. The payer has since put those plans on hold, due to backlash, but the industry has to gather the data to prove value if it wants to move forward.
8. Waivers’ End Pushes Healthcare Leaders to Make Tough Decisions on Telehealth, Hospital at Home. When the federal government shut down for 43 days in October and November, pandemic-era waivers for telehealth coverage and the CMS Acute Hospital Car at Home (AHCaH) program also expired. Healthcare executives responded by cutting virtual care services and sunsetting Hospital at Home initiatives. Congress included a short-term extension for those waivers in its funding package to re-open government, but many executives are struggling to justify keeping those programs going without a long-term or permanent solution.
9. Who’s Minding the Store on AI Governance? AI governance was a popular topic of conversation in 2025 and will certainly be high on the agenda in 2026. Health systems and hospitals are embracing AI at a rapid pace, and in many cases leaving proper governance behind. In a Sage Growth Partners survey earlier this year of 100 C-Suite execs, 83% said Ai can improve clinical decision-making and another 75% say it can reduce inefficiency and boost operation costs, but only 13% said they have a clear strategy for using Ai in clinical care, and only 10% are aggressively pursuing the technology in that area. The upshot of the survey is that healthcare leaders are still wary of using AI where it touches patient care, and they have to figure out the whole “human in the loop” concept before they take that step.
10. Epic’s Grand AI Gamble: Can the EHR Giant Truly Build a Connected Healthcare Universe? The final story on this year’s top 10 list dives into the busy sandbox of EHRs. Epic, which held its annual and very splashy user’s conference in August, is the king of the sandbox, and is pushing (excuse the mixed metaphors) a closed-garden strategy that rewards health systems for joining the network. This year the company unveiled hundreds of new AI tools either ready to go or in development, leaving healthcare execs to debate whether to wait for Epic to offer a tool they need or partner with another vendor, either for the long run or until Epic catches up. Epic is now facing a few lawsuits over how it guards the use of its technology, while some of its rivals are pursuing a more open strategy that promotes sharing AI. Expect the sandbox to get feisty in 2026.