The Next 10 Years of Healthcare: What Leaders Can Change Starting Now

Healthcare leaders have spent the past decade investing in AI, interoperability, telehealth, analytics and other technologies designed to improve care. Yet technology alone does not transform a healthcare system. The bigger challenge is deciding where innovation can make the greatest difference—and changing the processes, priorities and investments that stand in its way.

That question is at the heart of insights from the Senior Executive Healthcare Think Tank, a group of experts spanning patient experience, workforce strategy, policy, quality, equity and healthcare technology. Rather than focusing on what healthcare could do someday, they consider where leaders can take meaningful action now and what needs to change in the way organizations approach transformation.

Below, they explore the leadership choices behind better care—how to move from reactive treatment toward earlier intervention, connect fragmented systems, make AI useful without adding complexity, give patients a greater role in decisions and rethink how success is measured—offering a practical look at where healthcare leaders can focus their efforts to create lasting change over the decade ahead.

Move Decisions Closer to the Moment of Care

For Tirumala Ashish Kumar Manne, Principal Cloud Architect at Optum, the opportunity begins with reducing the time between information becoming available and a decision being made.

“The biggest opportunity is moving decisions from after the fact to the moment of care,” Manne says. “Most of what frustrates patients and clinicians is a decision that arrives late: an authorization, a claim, a referral, a risk flag.”

He argues that the technical capability is already available, but healthcare organizations have struggled to move beyond experimentation.

“The technology to decide in seconds already exists,” Manne says. “What has to change is how we fund it.”

That means treating successful digital capabilities as enduring products rather than temporary innovation projects.

“Treat these capabilities as products with a named owner, a budget line and outcome measures tied to cost of care and time to decision,” he says. “The next decade should be about running it at scale, with governance built in from day one rather than bolted on after an audit.”

Redesign the Care Journey, Not Just the Technology

Sriharsha Chavali, Engineering Lead at a leading national dental services organization, says healthcare needs to move away from disconnected interventions toward a deliberately designed care journey.

“The greatest opportunity in healthcare over the next decade is to shift from a reactive, fragmented system to one that is proactive, connected and outcome-driven,” he says. “Technology is an important enabler, but it is not the transformation itself.”

He notes that adding another application to an already complicated workflow may digitize a problem without actually solving it.

“The real opportunity is to redesign the care journey from prevention and access through treatment, recovery and long-term management,” Chavali says.

For leaders, that means beginning with operational and clinical problems rather than starting with a technology category.

“Leaders must start with the problem: Which delays, gaps in handoffs, duplication or deterioration can we prevent?” he says. “Technology should automate where appropriate, strengthen clinical decision-making and preserve the human connection where it matters most.”

The measurement system must change, too, he adds. Access, quality, equity, patient experience, workforce capacity and outcomes need to sit alongside traditional measures of productivity.

“Right now, insurers decide what’s covered or not, what needs approval or preauthorization, and patients rarely know what anything costs until the bill arrives.”

– Dorothy Riviere, Founder and CEO of Work Resilience

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Put Patients in a Position to Make Better Decisions

Dorothy Riviere, Founder and CEO of Work Resilience, sees a major opportunity in changing the relationship between patients, healthcare costs and decision-making.

“This take is what patients have been asking for: Put them back in charge,” Riviere says. “Right now, insurers decide what’s covered or not, what needs approval or preauthorization, and patients rarely know what anything costs until the bill arrives.”

Her argument is not simply for more price information. Transparency is useful only when people have enough context to understand what the information means.

“Healthcare isn’t a TV purchase,” Riviere says. “Patients often can’t judge medical value alone, which is why past attempts to shift cost onto patients cut necessary care along with wasteful care.”

She sees AI as a potential bridge between transparency and informed decision-making.

“AI can close both gaps,” Riviere says. “It can strip out the administrative bloat driving over 30% of national health spending, prior auth, claims and billing, freeing real dollars for care. And it can give patients real-time, personalized guidance so seeing a price comes with the judgment to use it well.”

Riviere’s broader point is that transparency should be paired with decision support—not simply transferred financial responsibility.

Fix the Payer-Provider Seam

Harikrishnan Muthukrishnan, Principal IT Developer at BCBS Florida, identifies an area that patients often experience as a series of disconnected transactions: the boundary between payer and provider.

“Fix the payer-provider seam,” he says. “The largest untapped opportunity sits at the boundary between the people who pay for care and the people who deliver it.”

He argues that prior authorization, eligibility, claims and quality reporting are often treated as negotiations rather than shared infrastructure.

“Leaders treat this as a negotiation problem when it is a platform problem,” Muthukrishnan says. “Shared rules, shared member context and shared decision logic could remove much of the friction that patients experience as delays and surprise bills.”

For healthcare leaders, the next step is making interoperability operational.

“A decade of value-based care contracts has aligned the incentives on paper,” Muthukrishnan says. “The next step is aligning the systems so that a coverage decision and a clinical decision are made once, together.”

“Over-adapting technology for novelty’s sake without a clear clinical purpose will do more harm than good.”

– Rajani Kumar Sindavalam, Systems Engineering Leader at HCL America Inc.

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Make AI Earn Its Place in the Clinical Workflow

Rajani Kumar Sindavalam, Systems Engineering Leader at HCL America Inc., sees AI as an opportunity to turn existing healthcare data into earlier, more useful intervention.

“The greatest opportunity for healthcare leaders over the next decade lies in the ethical, meaningful use of AI to turn massive stores of existing, passive health data into actionable, preventive information,” he says.

The value, he says, comes from using that data to support earlier, more informed intervention.

“By activating this unutilized data, AI can enhance traditional medical devices and services, shifting care from reactive treatment to proactive prevention,” Sindavalam says. “This empowers clinicians with dependable insights, significantly improves patient outcomes and optimizes care delivery across the entire provider ecosystem.”

But he cautions against confusing technological novelty with meaningful progress.

“Over-adapting technology for novelty’s sake without a clear clinical purpose will do more harm than good,” he says. “Leaders must avoid forcing unvetted tools onto teams, focusing instead on rigorous validation and targeted workforce training to ensure safety and seamless workflow integration.”

That approach puts governance, clinical validation and workforce readiness ahead of adoption speed—a particularly important consideration as AI moves from experimentation into everyday clinical and operational environments.

Bring Long-Term Care Into the Healthcare Equation

Mark Francis, Founder and CEO of CaregiverZone, Inc., believes one of healthcare’s largest opportunities sits outside the traditional boundaries of the healthcare system.

“The integration of long-term care into traditional healthcare is one of the greatest opportunities for healthcare leaders to drive meaningful change over the next few decades,” Francis says. “A holistic approach to care is needed—from the home to the hospital—inclusive of clinical and nonclinical care.”

That broader definition of care also means recognizing the role of family caregivers and the environment in which patients actually live.

“Such a holistic approach will require an expanded definition of care as well as an OS and EHR that comprehensively integrates all sources of data—including data associated with social determinants of health, consumer wearables and ambient activity sensing,” Francis says.

Francis sees that broader data environment as the foundation for a more individualized model.

“If achieved, AI can be applied to create curated, personalized intelligence that is the foundation of truly personalized medicine,” he says.

Measure What Happens Before the Crisis

Asaad Hakeem of SARC MedIQ Inc. sees the central opportunity in moving healthcare upstream. His perspective focuses on aligning incentives, data, diagnostics and workflows around prevention rather than waiting for a condition to become an acute episode.

“The greatest opportunity is shifting from reactive care to earlier intervention,” Hakeem says.

That shift means more than adding screening tools or predictive algorithms. It means changing what healthcare organizations consider a successful outcome.

“That requires aligning incentives, data, diagnostics and workflows around keeping patients healthier, not simply treating more episodes,” he says. “Leaders should measure success by time to detection, outcomes and avoided downstream care, not volume alone.”

For executives, Hakeem’s message is ultimately about changing the scoreboard. If organizations continue to reward encounters, procedures and episodes without sufficiently measuring what they prevented, the system will continue to be structurally oriented toward treating problems after they emerge.

Make Prevention a Core Definition of Healthcare

Dr. Peter Fotinos, Chief Medical Officer at Excel Medical, argues that healthcare leaders need to rethink what the system is fundamentally designed to accomplish.

“Healthcare must stop defining success by how well we manage disease and start asking how well we prevent it,” Fotinos says.

That does not mean eliminating traditional disease management. Rather, he argues that prevention and mitigation should become more central to the healthcare operating model.

“Sick care is essential, but it is not healthcare,” Fotinos says. “The next decade belongs to leaders willing to challenge convention, embrace prevention and mitigation, and use telehealth, AI and emerging approaches to help people stay healthier longer.”

The strategic challenge for executives is turning prevention from an aspiration into an operating discipline—with measurable interventions, appropriate clinical evidence, patient engagement and payment models that support health before it deteriorates.

Build the Connected Patient Journey

Vikas Gupta, Technical Manager at HCL America Inc., sees the opportunity through the patient’s experience of navigating multiple channels.

“From my experience leading specialty referral, scheduling and virtual telehealth initiatives, the greatest opportunity for healthcare leaders over the next decade is creating truly connected, patient-centered care journeys,” Gupta says.

Patients increasingly move between digital and physical environments, but the underlying systems do not always move with them.

“Patients expect seamless access across in-person and virtual care, yet healthcare often remains fragmented across providers, systems and communication channels,” Gupta says.

The answer, he argues, is a shift in perspective.

“What needs to change is moving from organization-centric processes to patient-centric experiences powered by interoperability, digital engagement, telehealth and data-driven insights,” Gupta says.

Gupta says the ultimate test should remain the patient’s experience.

“Success should be measured not only by operational efficiency, but by improved access, engagement, outcomes and patient satisfaction,” he says. “When care is connected and proactive, patients receive the right care at the right time, wherever they are.”

“To drive real change, leaders must treat data integration not as back-office plumbing, but as a primary clinical asset.”

– Mahendran Chinnaiah, Digital Healthcare Architect at a major U.S. healthcare and pharmacy services firm

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Treat Interoperability as a Clinical Asset

Mahendran Chinnaiah, Digital Healthcare Architect at a major U.S. healthcare and pharmacy services firm, identifies a fundamental infrastructure problem beneath many of healthcare’s more visible challenges.

“The greatest opportunity lies in breaking down data silos to build continuous, proactive care ecosystems instead of waiting for episodic sick visits,” he says.

He argues that organizations have too often treated interoperability as a compliance obligation rather than a foundation for care.

“Today, healthcare still treats interoperability as an IT compliance checklist—conforming to minimal data-sharing mandates on paper while leaving EHRs, pharmacy systems and wearable metrics isolated in operational silos,” Chinnaiah says.

The result is familiar to both patients and clinicians: repeated questions, duplicated administrative work and incomplete context at the point of care.

“To drive real change, leaders must treat data integration not as back-office plumbing, but as a primary clinical asset,” he says.

That requires investment in the architecture needed to make information usable, not simply available.

“That means shifting investment toward open APIs, unified data models and automated, real-time handoffs across care teams,” Chinnaiah says. “When clinical context flows seamlessly, early intervention becomes the baseline rather than the exception.”

10 Priorities for Healthcare Leaders

• Treat proven technology as a product, not a pilot. Leaders should give successful capabilities a named owner, dedicated funding and outcome measures tied to cost of care and time to decision.
• Redesign the care journey before choosing the technology. Identify preventable delays, handoff gaps, duplication and deterioration first, then use technology to make better care easier to deliver.
• Pair cost transparency with responsible decision support. Giving patients prices is not enough; AI can help provide the context and personalized guidance patients need to make informed decisions.
• Turn the payer-provider boundary into a shared platform. Leaders should connect shared rules, member context and decision logic so coverage and clinical decisions can happen together rather than through fragmented handoffs.
• Make AI prove its clinical value. Use AI to turn passive health data into actionable preventive insights while prioritizing rigorous validation, workforce training and safe workflow integration.
• Expand care beyond the walls of the healthcare system. Integrate clinical and nonclinical care, family caregivers, social determinants, wearable data and information from the home into a more comprehensive view of the patient.
• Measure how early healthcare can intervene. Align incentives, data, diagnostics and workflows around earlier intervention and measure time to detection, outcomes and avoided downstream care—not volume alone.
• Make prevention a core measure of healthcare success. Leaders should shift attention from managing disease to preventing and mitigating it, using tools such as telehealth and AI to help people stay healthier longer.
• Design care around the patient’s journey, not the organization’s structure. Connect specialty referrals, scheduling, virtual and in-person care through interoperability, digital engagement and data-driven insights.
• Treat data integration as a clinical asset. Invest in open APIs, unified data models and real-time handoffs so clinical context can move seamlessly across EHRs, pharmacy systems, wearables and care teams.

The Real Work Starts Now

Healthcare does not need to wait for the next big breakthrough to start working differently. Much of what leaders need is already here: better data, more capable AI, virtual care, interoperable systems and new ways to reach patients. The harder part is putting those tools to work in ways that actually improve care.

That means changing what gets funded, how workflows are designed and what organizations measure. It means making decisions sooner, connecting information across the patient’s journey and giving clinicians and patients the support they need to act before problems become crises.

The next 10 years will bring plenty of new technology, but the bigger question for healthcare leaders is how willing they are to change the way the system works today. That’s where meaningful transformation will happen.