On Harnessing Information and Technology for Health Equity - HIMSS Europe Series with Hal Wolf

We have to change our scope of practice. We have to change the way we deliver care. We cannot slowly move. The incandescent bulb did not come from the continuous improvement of the candle.We have to take a big leap. This is our moment to harness the electricity, if you would, of the AI and to leap it forward. I'm Hal Wolf, President and CEO of HIMSS.

Hello, dear listeners. Welcome back to Narratives of Purpose. You have just tuned into our first episode of the HIMSS Europe 2025 special series.In the next dozen episodes or so, I will bring you short interviews with international health tech leaders and health tech startup founders, with women's health pioneers and innovators.These interviews were recorded at the HIMSS Europe annual flagship, also considered as Europe's number one digital health conference, and this event took place in June 2025 in Paris. For those of you listening to Narratives of Purpose for the first time, my name is Claire Murigande.I am your host in this podcast which is all about amplifying social impact by showcasing unique stories of global change makers who are contributing to make a difference in society. My guest in this first episode of the series is Hal Wolf, the President and CEO of HIMSS.Okay, so you've heard HIMSS several times already, but what does this name mean exactly? Well, himss, which is spelled H I M S S, is the acronym of Healthcare Information and management systems society.Hal tells me about how HIMSS began in 1961, how the organization has expanded internationally. He also shares the vision of the organization and an overview of its activities strongly focused on health equity.Finally, HaL talks about the importance of diversity for healthcare to be successful. Plus, he mentions the development of technology and the health data space in Europe, as well as the European Commission's AI Act.Remember to rate and to review our show wherever you listen to your podcasts or simply share your thoughts and feedback on the Narratives of Purpose website using this short link. bit.ly/narrativesofpurpose, then select the review page. For now, get comfortable and let's jump into the conversation with Hal.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

Oh, pleasure to be here.

Excited to be. Actually, it's my first time at HIMSS and I'll be moderating the Women's Health track.And I'm happy to see that you have podcasters here at the Congress.

Quite a few, actually. Yeah, yeah, we're very excited.

Yeah. How did that idea start?

Well, we've been having podcasters for a number of years at different events, and then the demand has been coming along, very much so, for hymns Europe. So we just realized, let's set up a podcaster row like we did last year, the global conference in Las Vegas. And here we are.

How was it, how was the experience last year in Las Vegas?

It was really good. I think that the city did an amazing job of rolling out the red carpet as only Las Vegas can do. And, you know, it's a unique environment.So many people just absolutely love it and just love the entire Vegas ecosystem. Some people don't. That's cool. That's why we move it around a bit.

Must be special, right?

Yeah, it's a special environment. Have you ever been?

Never.

Okay, so it's, it's. It's the only place like it in the world. It really is. And I've traveled, so I would say go and experience it at least once.And it's either your thing or it's not. But it's. It's a great experience.

Okay, you're the president and the CEO of himss, right. Can you.

So far, so good.

Can you briefly introduce what HIMSS is to our listeners? And I want to challenge you to pitch it in 90 seconds. Can you do that?

Oh, yeah, we can do that. We can even do it faster. So HIMSS is a global nonprofit.It really established itself from the computer science world with this crazy idea back in 1961 that data and information could help improve health outcomes. And we are a global nonprofit with our operations, you know, in the United States, centrally out of Chicago, and in Europe out of Rotterdam.That's where HIM sits. Our fundamental mission is to realize the full health potential of every human everywhere. That's our vision statement.And so built into that is an absolute strong focus on health equity. And behind that is the mission statement, you know, which is to reform the global health ecosystem through the power of information and technology.And that is broken up into information and technology, not it, because they're very different things. And the world relies more and more on information in order to inform. And we'll go into more depth, but that's who HIMSS is.With 125,000 plus members on a global basis. Three out of four, I mean, three out of five are in North America and two out of five are outside and Europe and Middle east and Asia.

Right. And how did the organization grow through time? You know, you started in the U.S. and then where did you expand first?

You know, we were certainly largely a U.S. based organization. And in fact, when I took over almost eight years ago, which is, which is amazing. When I think about how quickly it's gone.We were still about 95, 96% US based. Since then we had international efforts, but we weren't really focused on them today. We've just been growing internationally very, very fast.And so that's where the change of going from less than 80,000 to 125,000 plus came from in the last five years has been our growth internationally.

And do you have like a different, I want to say objectives, because it's also community based, from what I understood. Right. You have different communities everywhere. Do you have like different objectives or missions depending on the regions?

Yeah.

Or is it really similar?

It's a great question. Not necessarily. First of all, the challenges in health care are extraordinarily similar no matter where you are.We're all working through the challenges of disease management. We have an aging population that with aging brings additional chronic disease management. We all have budgetary problems.We all have a lack of actionable information that we're there to improve.And we all recognize that it's people, process and technology that have to come together and in order to actually fulfill our goals and our missions of taking care of our populations. Right.So I think it's just a question of where you're looking at the elephant at any given time based on the life cycle of a particular healthcare system. So some organizations are further along in the development of their technical prowess and capability, their digital health transformation.Others are just starting the journey.So what HIMSS does is, is we collect that information globally, best practices, experiences, things that didn't go well, and we make them available to our members and we also express them through our maturity models and our advisory services. So people can read what's a best practice. They can see a checklist of what they need to do to improve access and quality.And what are the technical foundations that'll help them get there.

It's almost like an open source somehow, right?

Absolutely. No, really? Yes. And in fact, you can access our maturity models online at any time. That is one of the great benefits of being a global nonprofit.

And I have one specific question about this year's Women's Health in Focus track, which I'll be moderating. I'm really honored to do that. It's the first time you have it at HIMSS Europe, at least. I don't know if you've had it in other regions. Why now?

Well, I think it's not a question so much of you mean, why now? Here in Europe, when you go back, we all recognize that, first of all, women make up the majority of the workforce in healthcare.That's point number one. Number two, the largest segment of our membership is actually nursing.

Oh, really?

10% of all HIMSS members are in fact nursing. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean women, but it's a majority, no question, on the nursing side and nursing informatics in particular.So we've always had an extraordinary close relationship in the development of women in health. It, which is a subsidiary of HIMSS or a group that HIMSS has always supported and started.And we do this on a global basis, so we've always had a strong focus on it.So I think what's unique in the European event this year, and thank you so much for moderating it, is really a track focused less on the nursing informatics component and spreading it out wider. And now why that we've been really focusing on the last S in the hymn's name, which is society.See, we're not an org, we're not an association, we're a society. And it was named as a society because we all recognize that healthcare must have a very broad spectrum of, of individuals and segments in order to be successful. It is not one thing in healthcare. Doctors can't do it alone, nurses can't do it alone, technicians can't do it alone.

It's a collective effort, Right?

It's a total collective effort. It's the old adage of the village. But each segment will bring with it very important perspectives.And so understanding those perspectives from the women point of view, as an example, in this case, is critically important and it helps galvanize and it shares thoughts in a space which you'll be moderating, you know, which we think will produce better insights. So we're very excited about that.

Excellent.

And what are your overall expectations from this Congress in Paris this year?

Well, this is amazing time to be in Europe. So you have two significant things that have been going on simultaneously. One is the data space effort.There's been a huge investment going on in the development of technology. It would be the equivalent of meaningful use from the United States a number of years ago.So we're very involved in countries and in helping them develop their investments. Germany, Italy, France, etc. And then the second part is the AI Act. Right.So the AI act was a tremendous leadership push by the European Commission and it really starts to set up a global framework for how AI needs to be thought of, regulated and worked through.And because the European Union and through the European Commission took on the AI act early, you know, first out of the gate, it's going to dictate what happens.And so here we are now, one year into the process and so catching up with what's been developed, what is actually happening with AI, and how is the European Commission responding to those challenges and opportunities? This is a very important checkpoint.

And you'll be doing the opening keynote and the last one, if I'm not mistaken.

Yes.

What do you want the audience to take away from your talk?

I think that the main point that I hope the audience takes away is that we have an extraordinarily short amount of time to use these new tools of AI machine learning around us because we have a chronic workforce shortage which is only going to continue to grow. And so we have to change our scope of practice. We have to change the way we deliver care. We cannot slowly move.And so there's one slide that I love very much, which is that the incandescent bulb did not come from the continuous improvement of the candle. So we need a different level of illumination with a different technology. It's all illumination.But we have to take a big leap and this is our moment to harness the electricity, if you would, of the AI and to leap it forward.

Yeah, I like the comparison. I think sometimes it's always good to show these small things so people can really realize, you know, thinking outside of the box, as they say.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much. Thank you very much for joining me today.

Pleasure to be here.

If you wish to learn more about the main topics addressed during the HIMSS conference in Paris, I encourage you to have a look at the links to a few LinkedIn posts listed in the show Notes.There's content on cyber security, AI capacity building in healthcare, the future of healthcare, Workforce Responsible AI in Healthcare, the European Health Data Space, Women's Health in Focus, and Women in Health IT. You can also follow HIMSS activities on LinkedIn.You will find details on HIMSS commitment to advancing global health through technology on their website@hisss.org that's h I m s s.org and as always, all the links are available in the show Notes. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in today.Join me again next week for two new episodes of our HIMSS Europe special series featuring two of the Startup Pitchfest competition finalists in the category Expanding Horizons in Health Equity. Until then, take care of yourselves, stay well and stay inspired.