As we wrap up another year and get ready for 2026 to begin, it is once again time for everyone’s favorite annual tradition of Health IT Predictions! We reached out to our incredible Healthcare IT Today Community to get their insights on what will happen in the coming year, and boy, did they deliver. We, in fact, got so many responses to our prompt this year that we have had to narrow them down to just the best and most interesting. Check out the community’s predictions down below and be sure to follow along as we share more 2026 Health IT Predictions!
Check out our community’s Healthcare Workforce predictions:
Ed Chekan, Vice President, Medical Affairs & Professional Education at Asensus Surgical
In 2026, the hospitals that stand out won’t simply be the ones buying the newest technology – they’ll be the ones investing in their people. Over the past decade, health systems have poured resources into advanced tools, but one factor continues to shape outcomes more than anything else: training. Hospitals that invest in data-driven training programs may see measurable differences in outcomes, including fewer complications, more predictable case times, and improved surgeon satisfaction.
The next wave of surgical quality improvement will come from repeatable performance, not sporadic excellence. Hospitals that treat training as a strategic priority will deliver care that’s steadier and more reliable. Those who don’t may find it increasingly difficult to keep up with the demands of modern surgery.
Paul Baratta, Manager, Industry Segments – Americas at Axis Communications
In 2026, ensuring safety in healthcare facilities will remain a critical priority as organizations look for practical ways to protect patients, staff, and visitors while improving efficiency. Body-worn cameras, which gained acceptance this year, will expand into clinical areas such as emergency departments to deter workplace violence and support staff training, which might in turn help facilities in recruitment and retention of critical workforces.
Additionally, artificial intelligence will become a critical component of proactive security strategies, helping to close gaps caused by staffing shortages while identifying potential threats. Current intelligent video solutions focus on fall detection, but future solutions will aim for fall prevention. The data collected from intelligent sensors will guide leaders in allocating resources to improve emergency response and enhance overall patient care.
Taylor Beery, Chief Innovation & Administrative Officer and Co-Founder at Imagine Pediatrics
Workforce shortages will continue to shape healthcare policy and care delivery in 2026, but we need to think more broadly about what the workforce actually is. For children with special health care needs, caregivers are an essential part of that workforce, providing care that is constant and complex. Care models must evolve to recognize and support them.
Virtual care is one of the best tools we have to do that because it expands access, reduces strain on clinical teams, and connects patients and caregivers to care when and where they need it most. And when we include caregiver feedback and knowledge as a data point in a tech-enabled care model, we’re better able to deliver care that is personalized and addresses the true needs of the patient and their family, resulting in better outcomes and experience.
Lani Bertrand, Senior Director, Clinical Marketing & Thought Leadership at Omnicell
Despite optimism that the healthcare workforce crisis would gradually resolve after the pandemic, recent data shows the U.S. is projected to face a shortfall of more than 400,000 nurse practitioners, registered nurses, and licensed practical nurses by 2032. As the frontline providers on the patient care team – especially in acute settings – helping to alleviate stress on the nurses will require continuous innovation to streamline processes to allow them to keep focus on direct patient care. From streamlining administrative workflows and automating repetitive tasks to supporting larger health system priorities like medication supply chain management, technology will allow frontline care teams to focus more of their time on direct patient care, improving staff resilience, and helping support better outcomes across the care continuum.
Dr. Michael Blackman, Chief Medical Officer at Greenway Health
I expect staffing shortages and burnout to remain among the most pressing challenges in healthcare in 2026, and much of that strain comes from disjointed systems that force clinicians to juggle disconnected tools, distracting from patient care. The answer isn’t chasing the latest AI bolt-on but ensuring technology truly serves care teams by reducing friction, not adding to it. For the first time, we’re able to deliver on the promise EHRs made decades ago: using AI-by-design to build technology that works, giving clinicians the right information at the right time, so they can better focus on patients.
Brent Dover, CEO at Carta Healthcare
The workforce challenge isn’t going away, but the focus is shifting. Health systems will invest in retention strategies, flexible staffing models, and technology that reduces burnout. The organizations that balance efficiency with workforce well-being will be best positioned to thrive.
Curtis Forbes, CEO at MustardHub
In 2026, healthcare leaders will stop seeing turnover as inevitable and instead feel more empowered to prevent it using predictive analytics. This approach identifies disengagement before it turns into a resignation by connecting data across scheduling systems, attendance records, and communication patterns. Leaders will spot areas of high stress in real time, whether it’s frequent shift swaps, declining survey participation, or decreasing participation in company culture. The right predictive HR tools will be able to distinguish between repeated patterns and isolated incidents, enabling healthcare organizations to shift from reactive damage control to preventative workforce management. The resulting outcome will ultimately lead to better protection of health teams and improved quality of care for the patients who depend on them.
Andrea Greco, SVP, Healthcare Safety at CENTEGIX
I think we will see a bigger shift from reactive responses to proactive risk monitoring as a core element of workplace violence prevention. Instead of relying solely on incremental risk assessments, we’ll see healthcare organizations conduct them more frequently and at broader levels, encompassing patient, staff, and facility-level needs. Following these assessments, leaders will be able to better facilitate trainings that enable staff to recognize early danger and encourage the submission of incident reports without fear or retaliation. When these elements come together, healthcare facilities are not only able to promote safety, but they are also supporting their workforce that is providing care.
Eric Lloyd, Chief Revenue Officer at IQVIA Digital
In 2026, healthcare marketing will finally reflect how clinical decision-making works. Nurse practitioners and physician associates now drive 40.9 percent of all U.S. prescription claims, and they often serve as the first point of contact for symptoms, medication adjustments, and ongoing patient education across all specialties.
This shift will require new measurement and attribution models. Traditional physician-only targeting is no longer accurate, and strategies will need to account for the full care team’s role in treatment pathways. Brands that engage all members of the care team with relevant, tailored resources and support will gain a structural advantage in access, awareness, and influence.
Dan McDonald, CEO at 86Borders
2026 will be the year healthcare remembers that nothing works without people. AI will get faster, automation will get smarter, and tools will get better. But the real breakthroughs will come from meeting vulnerable members where they are and removing the barriers that keep them from engaging in the first place. The systems that win won’t be the ones with only the most tech. They’ll be the ones that use technology to drive engagement, establish relationships, and make care feel human again.
Lindsay Oberleitner, PhD, LP, Head of Clinical Strategy at SimplePractice
Healthcare keeps adding new technology without considering how these tools actually work in practice. In 2026, clinicians need to be integrated into the thought process from the start, helping shape how tools are designed and applied. Without that input, innovation risks falling short of the real needs in healthcare and will eventually hit a wall. The next wave of progress will come from seamlessly blending innovation and clinical insight, creating solutions that take into consideration clinician needs and real-world experiences.
Polly Parrent, Senior Vice President, EHR & ERP Services at Nordic
The coming year will be a new chapter for M&A, workforce, and change management for health systems. They will be judged less on ‘deal size’ and more on whether leaders can keep people, processes, and technology moving toward defined goals. We’ve seen too many ‘roommate’ mergers that never become true marriages: the acquirer and acquiree keep parallel cultures, workflows, and tech stacks. That’s where costs and burnout spike. The smart systems will treat workforce and change management as board-level risks, not soft add-ons. They’ll do cultural due diligence before ink dries, set a shared vision for why the deal exists (market access, service rationalization, cost structure), and measure success based on clinician retention, additional populations served, and reduction in duplicative tech, rather than simply bed count.
On the technology side, consolidation won’t be optional anymore. Many systems are carrying two of everything after years of bolt-on deals, from EHR add-on suites to analytics platforms to collaboration tools, and bleeding money and talent to support them. In 2026, expect more M&A playbooks that put application rationalization, data conversion, and archiving on a clear 12-24 month roadmap, with real change management dollars behind them. That means funding the unglamorous work: contract hygiene (so savings don’t slip because of auto-renewals), retraining teams on standard tools, and redesigning workflows so frontline staff experience one integrated system instead of a patchwork. The mergers that succeed will acknowledge a hard truth up front: there is no shortcut to synergy. You invest in people and change management first, so the balance sheet and the workforce can actually benefit from the deal.
Bethany Robertson, Clinical Executive at Wolters Kluwer Health
Over the past year, we have seen the nursing industry experience significant shifts as transformative care models and technologies like Gen AI, virtual nursing, and ambient listening tools move from a pipedream to actual implementations. In 2026, leading healthcare organizations will continue to take steps forward with building the infrastructure, training, and guidelines needed to facilitate, not hinder, nurses’ daily workflows.
Under a landscape where workforce shortages, career satisfaction, and unbalanced patient ratios are still negatives, health systems implementing these new offerings need their nursing workforce involved in the rollout and subsequent evaluation of these tools. This ensures that the use cases support the issues in their workflow and aren’t seen as a decision made by leadership in the absence of nursing’s voice, while also understanding the true impact of the efforts. This cultural shift toward tech adoption will empower nurses to work more efficiently, reduce burnout, and elevate the overall quality of care. Ultimately, these trends will position nursing as a dynamic, technology-supported profession that remains at the forefront of patient-centered innovation.
Jordan Ruch, Chief Information Officer at AtlantiCare
The changes that accelerated in 2025 will reshape the IT workforce in 2026. As AI automates many tier one tickets and produces first-draft code, entry-level roles such as service desk and junior programming positions will evolve. CIOs will look for candidates with strong critical thinking, creativity, adaptability, and ethical reasoning rather than purely technical skills. Programmers will act more like architects who guide and refine AI outputs rather than building everything from scratch. IT teams in these areas will become smaller and more strategic, focused on orchestrating automation rather than performing manual tasks.
Jennifer Schmitz, Chief Clinical Officer, ENA, CENTEGIX Healthcare Advisory Board Member at Emergency Nurses Association/CENTEGIX
Workplace violence in the healthcare industry has become increasingly visible, even making several news headlines in 2025. In the coming year, healthcare leaders will be challenged to move beyond one-size-fits-all solutions and adopt multi-pronged strategies that integrate policy, culture, environment, and technology. They will be compelled to acknowledge that their duty of care extends not only to patients, but also to staff.
Clear policies, defined procedures, and consistent enforcement build trust and accountability. These, coupled with tools that accelerate emergency response, such as wearable duress buttons, will allow healthcare organizations to track trends, measure effectiveness, and continuously refine their workplace violence prevention strategies. By creating multi-layered, proactive safety programs, healthcare organizations will protect their workforce while fostering safer, more effective patient care.
Roy Ziegelstein, Editor in Chief at DynaMed
In 2026, AI clinical decision support will become the stethoscope of today. Two centuries ago, physicians initially mistrusted the stethoscope; indeed, it was ridiculed as a ‘guessing tube.’ Trust came slowly because it was new and most clinicians were used to examining patients by putting their ear to the chest and thought that was as good as it gets. Today, many clinicians are skeptical of AI; however, just as the stethoscope allowed clinicians to diagnose patients with greater accuracy, AI clinical decision support – especially from a reliable source – will become a trusted, integrated part of the clinical encounter.
Thank you so much to everyone who took the time out of their day to submit a prediction to us, and thank you to all of you for taking the time to read this article! We could not do this without all of your support. What do you think will happen for the Healthcare Workforce in 2026? Let us know on social media. We’d love to hear from all of you!
Be sure to check out all of Healthcare IT Today’s Healthcare Workforce content and our other 2026 Health IT Predictions.
About Lucienne Ide
The following is a guest article by Marie Hattar, SVP at