Summit 2025
SUMMARY of WAVE 2025
The Wave Summit opened with a focus on convening leaders across policy, technology, and applied innovation to address healthcare’s inertia and chart a path forward. Organizers framed innovation as a “team sport” requiring cross-disciplinary collaboration. Key Takeaways from the morning’s programming are below and read on for a more in-depth look at topics.
Urgency: A rare policy alignment window exists; failing to act risks a decade of stagnation.
Data & AI: Clean, structured data is the linchpin for usable AI in healthcare.
Consumer Power: Patients are demanding convenience, transparency, and preventive solutions—often outside traditional systems.
Systemic Redesign: Payment, value, and integration models must shift to unlock real innovation.
Global Lessons: Scalable, affordable innovation is possible, but requires reimagining entrenched U.S. assumptions.
Policy & Technology: The “Tsunami of 2025”
Ryan Howells (Leavitt Partners) delivered a keynote framing the current moment as one of the rare times in the last 20 years where the White House, CMS, HHS, and ONC are aligned on digital health. He argued this creates a 3.5-year window of opportunity to overhaul interoperability before momentum is lost for another decade. He also warned that AI progress is hampered by messy, unstructured data. Cleaning and standardizing data sets, he argued, is a precondition for usable AI in clinical settings .
APIs as the new foundation: By 2027, payers and providers must provide clinical and claims data via FHIR APIs. He urged organizations to adopt now or risk falling behind.
Digital identity as critical infrastructure: Without identity-proofing at scale, trust and security collapse. He pointed to CMS commitments to build provider and patient identity ecosystems.
CMS’s Five Commitments: Provider directory, digital identity, expanded Blue Button 2.0, digital insurance cards, and trusted data exchange.
“Kill the Clipboard” initiative: A coalition of 60+ organizations now working with CMS in real time on Slack to accelerate interoperability—an unprecedented public-private collaboration.
Information blocking enforcement: Howells emphasized that systemic refusal to share data will face growing scrutiny.
AI in the Clinical Workforce
Zach Lipton (Abridge) & Dr. Mark Sendak (Duke) discussed AI’s integration into clinical workflows.
They emphasized embedding intelligence at the point of care rather than bolting on tools afterward.
Both reflected on lessons since 2018, when early ML models highlighted provider burnout risks if poorly implemented.
Their dialogue stressed the need for trust, transparency, and clinician buy-in to ensure AI augments rather than alienates healthcare workers .
Consumerism in Healthcare
Panel: Aaron Severs (Noom), Jon Lensing (OpenLoop), moderated by Gabi Tellez
This session focused on how consumer demand is reshaping health access.
Behavioral change as the core challenge: Severs noted motivation and habit formation are harder than knowledge; Noom uses psychology-based nudges, reinforced now with GLP-1 medications that “quiet the food noise.”
Meeting patients where they are: Lensing argued that patients must first resolve foundational needs (e.g., obesity) before they will engage with preventive or longevity health.
GLP-1s as “generation-defining drugs”: Compared to penicillin or insulin in their impact. Both speakers said valuations reflect a broader platform shift in consumer health, not just drug hype.
Convenience and cash pay trends: Consumers increasingly expect on-demand care (like Amazon or grocery delivery) and are willing to pay subscriptions for transparency and access.
Health systems at a crossroads: Both suggested traditional systems risk losing relevance unless they pivot toward virtual-first, consumer-led models .
Payer Innovation
Tony Miller (Harbor Health) & Ben Wanamaker (General Atlantic) delivered a provocative session challenging assumptions about U.S. healthcare.
Miller dismissed the “triple aim” as too timid, arguing instead for eradicating disease and human thriving as true goals.
He contended that U.S. healthcare is “not broken—it’s perfectly designed for the outcomes it delivers,” citing systemic design flaws in pricing, risk models, and fragmentation.
Clinical AI will upend the current RVU-based value system, as no clinician can “out-train the algorithm.”
Vertical integration of payers and providers was presented as essential to correct misaligned incentives.
Wanamaker reinforced that physicians remain the most trusted actors but are compensated uniformly despite a wide distribution of quality—a failure that stalls progress .
Health System Innovation
A panel of CIOs and executives (Russ Branzell-CHIME, Keith Fraidenburg-CHIME, Jonathan Manis-CHRISTUS Health, Andy Crowder-Advocate) focused on how health systems view startups and innovation.
They stressed that systems value adoption and operational fit over novelty.
Startups often misjudge procurement complexity and underestimate the long timelines for integration.
CIOs highlighted the importance of aligning innovation pitches with system-level pain points and financial sustainability .
Global Perspective
Dr. Sangita Reddy (Apollo Hospitals, India) provided an international lens.
Apollo has proven it is possible to deliver scalable, high-quality, affordable care at population level.
She shared how India’s model embraces omni-channel platforms, proactive care, and aggressive AI adoption.
Her message underscored the potential for U.S. systems to learn from global peers rather than assuming domestic models are universal.
