Identity for AI is the trust layer for the agentic era. This guide covers the frameworks, protocols, and governance models to get it right.

The Ultimate Guide to Identity for AI

The Ultimate Guide to Identity for AI - Digital Health Insights

Home

Digital Health Insights is the healthcare industry’s most trusted source for data, analytics, and executive knowledge.

Digital Health Insights

https://dhix.dhinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/dhi-logo-regular-mix.png

Most enterprises aren't ready to govern AI agents. This brief tells you what AI readiness looks like and how to get there in 90 days.

Are You AI Ready?

Are You AI Ready? - Digital Health Insights

64 staff hours saved monthly. 82% ROI above $500K. Find out what separates high-performing healthcare AI Agent deployments from the rest.

2026 Healthcare AI Agent Benchmark Report

2026 Healthcare AI Agent Benchmark Report - Digital Health Insights

Explore this solution brief to learn how to reduce identity friction and speed time-to-care with passwordless access for clinical staff.

Tap-and-Login with Verified Trust: Modernizing Clinical Identity for Faster, Safer Care

Tap-and-Login with Verified Trust: Modernizing Clinical Identity for Faster, Safer Care - Digital Health Insights

Reduce healthcare security risk and costs with modern identity governance and automated access control.

Strengthening Healthcare Security and Reducing Costs Through Modern IGA

Strengthening Healthcare Security and Reducing Costs Through Modern IGA - Digital Health Insights

Learn how top organizations turn infrastructure into a strategic driver of modern care delivery and resilience beyond the data center.

Most Wired Strategic Intelligence Report: Infrastructure

Most Wired Strategic Intelligence Report: Infrastructure - Digital Health Insights

Discover how AI-powered communications help healthcare providers improve care, coordination, and patient satisfaction.

Transforming Patient Engagement with AI-Powered Communications

Transforming Patient Engagement with AI-Powered Communications - Digital Health Insights

Fragmented communication impacts patient care. Learn how FQHCs can modernize and improve outcomes with unified platforms.

Transforming Patient Care: How FQHCs Can Leverage Modern Communication Solutions

Transforming Patient Care: How FQHCs Can Leverage Modern Communication Solutions - Digital Health Insights

From dashboards to decisions: New DHMW insights reveal how leading organizations operationalize analytics to drive real outcomes.

2025 Most Wired Analytics and Data Management Trends Report

2025 Most Wired Analytics and Data Management Trends Report - Digital Health Insights

Explore validated ROI from clinical AI, including time savings, improved coding, and better patient and provider experiences.

KLAS Report: Suki ROI Validations 2026

KLAS Report: Suki ROI Validations 2026 - Digital Health Insights

Gain valuable insights from Rubrik and leading healthcare organizations in this summit on building a robust cyber resilience framework.

Healthcare strikes back: Summit on cyber resilience and recovery

Healthcare strikes back: Summit on cyber resilience and recovery - Digital Health Insights

Hear about top threats, secure cloud migration strategies, and the importance of automation and employee training in this on-demand webinar.

Healthcare cybersecurity: Best practices and approaches (Webinar)

Healthcare cybersecurity: Best practices and approaches (Webinar) - Digital Health Insights

Webinar will review findings from the Cognizant 2023 Healthcare Provider Automation Survey and improving healthcare via automation and AI.

Beyond the Hype: Surprise Insights from the 2023 Healthcare Provider Automation Survey

Beyond the Hype: Surprise Insights from the 2023 Healthcare Provider Automation Survey - Digital Health Insights

Join this event to learn strategies to prepare for and respond to ransomware attacks, and hear insights from C-level healthcare leaders.

Webinar: Ransomware Preparedness for Healthcare: Enhancing Resilience Amid Growing Threats

Webinar: Ransomware Preparedness for Healthcare: Enhancing Resilience Amid Growing Threats - Digital Health Insights

Explore the growing efforts to enhance health equity through emerging technologies (techquity), and the effects on patient populations.

Webinar: How to Make Techquity a Reality

Webinar: How to Make Techquity a Reality - Digital Health Insights

This April 26 webinar will discuss how to prepare for an Epic data center upgrade and the case for high performance compute.

Webinar: Preparing for an EPIC upgrade

Webinar: Preparing for an EPIC upgrade - Digital Health Insights

Digital Transformation in healthcare will require some fundamental changes to cybersecurity in healthcare.

State of Cybersecurity in Healthcare Virtual Summit (On Demand)

State of Cybersecurity in Healthcare Virtual Summit (On Demand) - Digital Health Insights

Webinar on how Scripps Health is improving pop health and maximizing value in direct-to-employer arrangements through digital health.

Webinar: Digital Health Impact on Health System Employer Partnerships and Pop Health

Webinar: Digital Health Impact on Health System Employer Partnerships and Pop Health - Digital Health Insights

Experts from Deloitte and Google Fitbit will discuss the impact of technology advancements on early diagnostics and intervention.

Webinar: A wellness-first world: How early diagnostics and connected technology can shape the future of health

Webinar: A wellness-first world: How early diagnostics and connected technology can shape the future of health - Digital Health Insights

Health care leaders must consider digital inequity when making investments in digital consumer experience.

Webinar: How digital inequity will undermine health care consumer experience

Webinar: How digital inequity will undermine health care consumer experience - Digital Health Insights

A new report from Mozilla Foundation reveals how data privacy varies among six different period tracking apps.

Mozilla report reveals wide privacy gaps among popular period tracking apps

Comment

Mozilla report reveals wide privacy gaps among popular period tracking apps - Digital Health Insights

https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f34ba031cc2ebe143e7fb4aa7b7b7ed3b31f4de1d0d51d659c2c45e2a2a020d5?s=96&d=mm&r=g

Carrie Pallardy

From ambient capture to coding support, AI scribes are becoming clinical care partners — if health systems choose wisely.

Beyond dictation: Why health systems are rethinking the AI scribe

Beyond dictation: Why health systems are rethinking the AI scribe - Digital Health Insights

https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e702f6f4fe19d44cce4974d7b0b1bdf2356ca9047bd8714bf63292b7618e55ef?s=96&d=mm&r=g

Nancy Cibotti, MD

Cancer AI performs well in research but stalls before the bedside. Eric Stahlberg is working to close that gap.

Cancer AI's next frontier: Turning better models into improved care

Cancer AI&#8217;s next frontier: Turning better models into improved care

Cancer AI's next frontier: Turning better models into improved care - Digital Health Insights

https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/006161fa251902aa55dc7b315c3d23e608a706b185210f35844252f5be906949?s=96&d=mm&r=g

Isaac Lopez and Charity Plata

Health systems risk losing those patients is care journeys aren’t integrated or straightforward, as one in five patients now use virtual urgent care.

As virtual urgent care grows, health systems face an integration problem

As virtual urgent care grows, health systems face an integration problem - Digital Health Insights

https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f36591cff0965852db21cb152a56c963405dfaee1dd23b0b7098c3fc0cd932ad?s=96&d=mm&r=g

Brian Eastwood

While patients and clinicians believe AI tools can improve health literacy as well as care coordination, there’s work to be done before these stakeholders are ready to use the tools in tandem.

Wolters Kluwer survey finds patients, clinicians embrace AI but seek reassurance they can trust it

Wolters Kluwer survey finds patients, clinicians embrace AI but seek reassurance they can trust it - Digital Health Insights

Health systems are deploying AI across clinical and operational workflows. Whether those deployments succeed will depend less on the algorithms than on the underlying infrastructure.

The AI infrastructure problem: Preparing healthcare networks for the next wave of intelligence

The AI infrastructure problem: Preparing healthcare networks for the next wave of intelligence - Digital Health Insights

https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/3f347000f5720056170245577851dee977016907a5e01f2a501e54868494ba3f?s=96&d=mm&r=g

Healthcare organizations should take a holistic approach to measuring the value of AI initiatives instead of just focusing on traditional ROI metrics, argue authors of a new framework.

To measure the real value of AI, start looking beyond the dollar signs

To measure the real value of AI, start looking beyond the dollar signs - Digital Health Insights

https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/779082e10ef3d2b24bc8e9c0428b01bcb904a659a3ba03554919bbfff12717bc?s=96&d=mm&r=g

Jennifer Bresnick

Pharma and biotech companies are spending billions on AI, but there are several hurdles to clear before AI lives up to its potential. 

The long road to a future of AI-driven drug development

The long road to a future of AI-driven drug development - Digital Health Insights

As AI takes over the busywork, physicians are spending less time generating answers – but need to spend more time evaluating them.

How AI is redefining the role of critical thinking in medical education

How AI is redefining the role of critical thinking in medical education - Digital Health Insights

It’s not a great look for the AI revolution when patients feel that use of the technology is out of their control.

Patients feel “resigned” to the “inevitable” use of AI in healthcare

Patients feel “resigned” to the “inevitable” use of AI in healthcare - Digital Health Insights

dhc_network

<span style="font-weight: 400">In healthcare, the standard approach to solving a difficult problem is more collaboration. Health systems are told the future will be co-created, that progress depends on partnership, that everyone has to come together. The executive who opened the </span><a href="https://chimecentral.org/event/inno-summit-2026-dc"><span style="font-weight: 400">CHIME 2026 Innovation Summit in Fairfax, VA</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400"> is not convinced. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewtkull/">Matt Kull</a>, chief information and digital officer at Inova Health System, which hosted the summit, argued that healthcare does not have a too-little-collaboration problem. Its committees and advisory boards already meet constantly. What it has, he explained, is an authenticity problem, built on conflicting incentives, siloed rewards, and a shortage of shared accountability. Much of what gets called partnership is really just buying: a vendor sells a finished product, and the meetings around the deal do not make it something they built together.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400">Kull grounded the claim in a pilot graveyard familiar to most CIOs. When a promising tool fails after launch, teams blame the technology. The more common culprit, he said, is that a clinician showed up on a Tuesday morning and found it built for someone else's workflow. Every failed pilot in his career traced to the same root: the people measured for on-time delivery and those measured for patient outcomes chased different goals with the same work.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400">The stakes run higher than any single pilot, Kull argued, because the technology no longer sets anyone apart. Software that once took months can be built in minutes, and no health system holds an edge on tools for long. The durable advantage is how well it works with everyone who has a stake: clinicians, engineers, patients, security, finance. We can all build, he said. What separates organizations is who they choose to build with.</span>
<h2>Healthcare silos form around incentives and rewards, not org charts</h2>
<span style="font-weight: 400">Silos are not structural, Kull argued. They form around incentive and reward programs, and survive even inside a single IT department, where security, data, and infrastructure answer to different measures. Breaking them down means sharing risk, truth, and upside, not redrawing an org chart.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400">A later panel on collaborative ecosystems tested the same idea. Asked to name the one thing that most threatens collaboration, one leader said silos, or teams that talk collaboration in a meeting, then do what they had already planned. Another named incentives and money, warning that without aligned goals, collaboration becomes coordination with a better brand. Kull named fear, admitting that giving up control of Inova's kiosk program to an operations leader on his own team felt terrifying. Inova's counter is shared performance targets across the management team, so accountability does not split by department.</span>
<h2>Co-creation cut Inova's measles contact tracing from 60 hours to six minutes</h2>
<span style="font-weight: 400">Inova offered its clearest evidence that the approach pays off. Needing more infusion capacity, leaders asked clinicians and infusion techs to describe a friction-free workflow, then anchored the redesign with AI. The same rooms, chairs, and staff went from 160 to 210 infusions a day with less exhaustion, and the new demand filled within two days, opening access for patients who had waited years.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400">The infusion result reflected a principle several speakers returned to: when people help shape a tool from the start, it becomes theirs and they use it.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400">A measles case offered an even stronger example. Contact tracing that once took seven minutes per record and 60 hours to clear 600 patients now runs at 1.7 seconds per record and finishes in six minutes, sorted by vaccination risk. Quality, clinical, nursing, and contact-tracing teams built it together, and Epic is folding the work into its product for other customers.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400">In his keynote, Inova's president of clinical services, <a href="https://www.inova.org/about-inova/leadership/john-moynihan">Dr. John Moynihan</a>, described the culture behind those numbers. The system had run as a federation of five hospitals with separate medical staffs, and its unified strategy required a shift from “my patient” to “our patient.” More than 400 clinicians and staff met in intentionally inefficient 16-week cohorts to rebuild care around evidence. Asked afterward what the best part was, the biggest word in the response cloud was “collaboration.”</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400">Moynihan was explicit about the mechanism beneath the cohorts. Teams that interact regularly build what he called social capital, the trust that makes collaboration work. Inova organized clinicians into geographic pods, each led by a primary care physician and a specialty partner who share patients and data, and held town halls where physicians who had only traded referrals met in person.</span>
<h2>Patients are already co-creating care with AI, with or without their providers</h2>
<span style="font-weight: 400">Patients already co-create their care without their clinicians, Kull noted, plugging lab values into ChatGPT before a doctor can respond. An Amazon Web Services employee who has lived with type 1 diabetes for nearly 40 years asked why his providers question him about alcohol, home safety, and his personal life but never about the AI tools he uses to manage his condition.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400">A fishbowl on co-creating with patients, one of several open-chair panels, supplied cautionary history. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/drzafarchaudry/">Zafar Chaudr</a>y, former CIO of Seattle Children's, recalled ordering 277 registration kiosks at roughly $10,000 each during an Epic rollout, over his own objection, because operations insisted. Not one was used, and staff turned them into coat racks. No one had asked patients what they wanted.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400">The same instinct had paid off for Chaudry elsewhere. His hospital ran a monthly patient and family advisory group, parents and caregivers alongside patients as young as twelve, and it changed what the team built. When a young patient said the cable television was terrible, his team built a Minecraft version of the hospital, which proved genuinely therapeutic for children facing treatment. His kiosks failed because no one asked. The Minecraft build worked because someone did.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400">A Valley Health leader pressed the point that collaboration is human before it is technical. In an earlier role as a medical director, his team lifted patient satisfaction scores with no technology at all, just a dress code, chairs set so clinicians sit at eye level with patients, and a required handshake at the start of each visit. Scores rose from the 2nd percentile to the 65th in six months, and to the 85th within a year. At the moment of life and death, he said, technology is not what saves you.</span>
<h2>AI can undermine collaboration by shutting down debate</h2>
<span style="font-weight: 400">The most pointed exchange asked whether AI helps teams work together at all. Kull argued it can do the opposite by becoming a cudgel for being right. He described colleagues who end a debate by announcing that ChatGPT says the other person is wrong, which closes curiosity instead of opening it.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-ross-martin/">Tyler Martin</a> of MedStar Health offered a fix borrowed from software engineering. His team routes AI output through the equivalent of a pull request, where several people comment, question the assumptions baked into it, and send it back to a human before it moves ahead.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400">For all the ways AI can divide people, several speakers said its governance had done the opposite. Deciding how a health system wants to use AI, and be known for it, created a forum that had not existed before, pulling clinical, technical, and operational leaders into one conversation. Lauren Ross, who leads AI governance at Mayo Clinic, said the goal is to meet teams where they are, so that transparency levels the field rather than slowing people down.</span>
<h2>Health systems can share on technology and compete on outcomes</h2>
<span style="font-weight: 400"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanieahines/">Stephanie Hines</a> of Valleywise Health rejected the premise that collaboration requires someone to lose power. The wrong word is “lose,” she argued. The right one is “share.” Competition, inside a system and across it, grows from a scarcity mindset, the belief that resources are fixed and must be guarded. Once teams treat those resources as collective and give everyone a voice, whoever holds the most has reason to direct it toward the shared goal.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400">Kull drew the line between competing and sharing directly. Inova competes on outcomes and experience, not technology, he said, and would share anything technical with the MedStar, Hopkins, Mayo, and Valley leaders present, since that is not where they compete. Chappy Van Katessen, Inova's chief quality and safety officer, cited learning health networks as proof. In one pediatric collaborative focused on inflammatory bowel disease, remission rates climbed from 55 percent to more than 80 percent over a decade through shared data and network-wide goals, an improvement the member hospitals agreed none could have reached alone.</span>

Why healthcare collaboration fails: Leaders point to incentives, not technology

Delivering actionable insights, analysis, and tactical information on the most pressing issues facing healthcare professionals.

Home - Digital Health Insights

At the CHIME Innovation Summit in Fairfax, healthcare leaders argued that shared accountability turns partnership into results.

Why healthcare collaboration fails: Leaders point to incentives, not technology - Digital Health Insights

https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/aa42324f12904079e10641bb8ddfc1f70ab0e633b6ef0e65d4f52b31243ff0f4?s=96&d=mm&r=g

Why healthcare collaboration fails: Leaders point to incentives, not technology

The Ultimate Guide to Identity for AI

Tap-and-Login with Verified Trust: Modernizing Clinical Identity for Faster, Safer Care

Explore Analytics

Resources

Are You AI Ready?

2026 Healthcare AI Agent Benchmark Report

The Latest

Subscribe

Explore

REACH OUR AUDIENCE

Featured Topics