The Best of 2025: Looking back at HDM’s leading topics
2026 promises to be a challenging year for the industry, and we highlight 10 articles worth reading to prepare yourself.
It has been a tumultuous year in healthcare, with many challenges that will continue into the new year, and many technological advances that offer hope to address the difficulties that lie ahead.
Organizations enter a new world in 2026, with changing federal healthcare policies and reimbursement trends that will inevitably put pressure on providers’ bottom lines. At the same time, there’s increasing pressure to improve care quality, patient experience, and the use of data and digitization to achieve these and other important goals. Beyond those, there are other multiple challenges facing healthcare leaders in the New Year.
From the articles that were published by Health Data Management in 2025, it’s possible to get a sense of what topics are atop executives’ reading lists, and which provide information that they believe will help achieve important goals for the new year.
As Editor of Health Data Management and having read closely every article that appears under our imprimatur, I can quantify some of those key topics and provide links to some of the most provocative articles to highlight potential reading for you.
Artificial intelligence
Perhaps it’s no surprise that AI and associated technologies have appeared most frequently in Health Data Management this year. Some 31 articles were tagged with AI as a major topic, and the technology was also mentioned in another 20 articles.
In recent months, artificial intelligence increasingly has been incorporated into operations to improve efficiency – it’s clear AI has moved from theory to practice, and it must begin to make a difference in 2026 and beyond. Here are some articles worth reading on AI:
Younger consumer groups will force radical change in healthcare
From hype to healing: How healthcare leaders are embracing AI
Harnessing AI and data: A roadmap to future-proofing healthcare
Electronic health records systems
Most providers have seriously implemented records systems over the past 15 years, ever since the incentives of the HITECH Act provided impetus to make the investment in technology. Now, EHRs serve as the electronic backbone for nearly all providers. Beyond just recording information, the systems face expectations to do more to improve care and better manage the care of patients.
The intricacies of tackling the complexities of patient identity
How to translate genomic research into patient care
Two states advance EHR-based health data sharing initiatives
Interoperability
Healthcare organizations have long wanted to exchange information in a seamless and facile way. Progress is being made because of supportive efforts by the federal government – particularly TEFCA – as well as governmental prompts to improve performance and put teeth into information blocking regulations. Organizations are now beginning to see benefits from improving information exchange, but realize more work needs to be done, especially in achieving data standardization and building out use cases that standardization enables.
The stars are aligned to move interoperability forward, Chopra says
How compliant clinical data exchange aids both payers and providers
Why patient matching is a key challenge in achieving interoperability
Why TEFCA offers a promising future for interoperability
A final note
We published many great articles this year, which are carefully reviewed to ensure they are rich in content and eliminate vendor bias. We use our newsletters to highlight new articles daily, as well as to circle back to important pieces that we want to recirculate to our readers. We look forward to keeping you well prepared for this next exciting year in healthcare.