Innovation with purpose: Inside the CHIME Innovation Summit at CHRISTUS Health

The 2025 CHIME Innovation Summit at CHRISTUS Health in Irving, Texas, brought together leaders who share a bold conviction: People, not technology alone, will transform healthcare.

Guided by this year’s theme, Moonshots in Digital Health Innovation, this latest event united executives, clinicians, and innovators for two days of unfiltered, forward-looking discussion focused on real-world progress rooted in purpose.

“Be bold. Be audacious. Do something that matters — but most importantly, just do something,” urged Jon Manis, Senior Vice President & CIO at CHRISTUS Health.

That challenge framed every conversation, from genomics and AI to cybersecurity, governance, and leadership.

Moonshot mindsets: From genomics to quantum possibility

Sessions on genomics, AI, and personalized care highlighted a familiar pattern: clinical promise outpacing operational readiness. Several leaders described limited day-to-day use beyond targeted cases, plus practical hurdles around compute, storage, and clinician adoption.

One participant noted very little was being done mostly around pharmacogenetic work in the oncology space.

Our primary care doctors and some of our other doctors just didn’t even really know what to do with it.

An important consideration in genomic sequencing is the large amount of storage required and the associated cost — really large research institutions might be good candidates, but it is much less attainable for a freestanding children’s hospital.

Panelists noted that test costs have fallen while infrastructure demands persist:

The first Genome Project took $3 billion and several decades to code the genome; you could do that for $100 today. That is the quantum difference.

That “quantum difference” captured a defining tension: sequencing is no longer the bottleneck — storage, compute, and interpretation are. Participants reflected that real progress will depend less on faster or cheaper sequencing and more on the infrastructure and intelligence required to turn genomic data into actionable, equitable care.

A key takeaway from the genomics discussion: Keep investing in clear use cases (e.g., oncology/pharmacogenomics), pair them with AI-driven interpretation, and be realistic about the data/compute footprint required to scale beyond pilots.

AI could help bridge the gap between technology and actionable, usable insights for clinicians by identifying patterns that help providers understand which genetic signals actually matter. In other words: Data by itself doesn’t change outcomes — insight does.

This theme extended to discussions of digital twins, and predictive modeling, with participants stressing that moonshot thinking should be tempered with implementation discipline. The breakthrough, they agreed, will not come from any single technology, but from orchestrating them in ways that make care more personal, proactive, and equitable.

Moonshots, not maintenance: The new mandate

Across panels, leaders agreed that incrementalism won’t cut it. Transformation requires courageous leadership—and a willingness to shed the “caterpillar mindset” of layering new technology on old workflows.

Transformation is experiential, not digital, and success demands an unwavering focus on the consumer experience.

Healthcare’s operating model, several participants noted, remains unsustainably provider centered. Patients are no longer willing to accept experiences that lag behind retail, banking, or logistics.

If you don’t have convenience and everything is a pain, you lose confidence. And then you have to take control.

Convenience, not brand, is becoming healthcare’s most powerful loyalty driver.

Cyber resilience and the new frontier of patient safety

While precision medicine represented one kind of frontier, cybersecurity emerged as another — the invisible foundation that keeps healthcare standing.

Keeping data safe is only one part of the ultimate goal of keeping hospitals in operation.

Speakers described a relentless threat landscape where ransomware and nation-state attacks can jeopardize patient safety as much as privacy. Health systems must shift from a mindset of perfect protection to one of resilience: redundant systems, microsegmentation, tabletop exercises, and constant readiness.

Preparedness, not comfort, is the new definition of security.

AI, policy, and the human element

Across panels, AI was both hero and headache — a transformative force limited by the friction of policy, reimbursement, and regulation. Several leaders called for modernizing frameworks that no longer reflect digital realities.

“We need to bring HIPAA into the 21st century,” one panelist said, noting that current privacy laws were written for an era of paper charts, not predictive models.

Leaders underscored that policy modernization must be paired with strong governance, not to slow progress but to ensure alignment with mission and outcomes.

If you automate something bad, you’re going to get better at being bad.

Governance is also about checking whether things are aligned with your mission and vision, and they are delivering what they promise.

Others emphasized giving consumers a greater voice in how AI is used in their care. If patients understand the trade-offs, they argued, they should be able to choose human-out-of-the-loop models when appropriate.

Still, for innovation to succeed, workflow is destiny.

If it’s convenient and aligned with what they want to do, it will get done faster.

That blend of practicality and principled vision defined much of the conversation — technology serves humans, not the other way around.

A moonshot for clinician joy and resiliency

Discussions also turned inward to the workforce. Burnout remains one of healthcare’s most dangerous epidemics, and leaders emphasized that moonshot thinking must include clinician joy.

Speed isn’t the only prize; Innovation restores purpose, creates consistency, and eliminates organizational waste.

Ambient AI and chart summarization technologies were cited as early breakthroughs: tools that give time back to clinicians by dramatically reducing documentation burdens.

One physician called the ambient listening solution “life changing.”

Such technologies illustrate how AI can enable empathy rather than replace it, a central thread across the summit.

Leading with heart

Amid all the talk of AI and quantum computing, the Summit’s most powerful moments were deeply human. Following a local tragedy, participants paused to reflect on why they do this work in the first place:

We have to get back to taking care of each other as human beings first and foremost — not worrying about what we believe, but about each other.

That spirit of compassion carried through closing remarks as leaders encouraged one another to share what works and “plagiarize best practices” — a reminder that progress in healthcare should never depend on reinventing what already works.

Takeaways: Innovation with integrity

The CHRISTUS Innovation Summit reinforced several essential lessons for healthcare’s next chapter:

Moonshots must serve the mission. Big ideas only matter if they deliver measurable outcomes.

Cyber resilience is patient safety. Continuity of care is as vital as data protection.

Policy must evolve. Modern healthcare demands modern governance.

Workflow wins. Adoption depends on convenience, trust, and human-centered design.

Compassion drives innovation. Technology is most powerful when grounded in empathy.

From thinkers to conquerors

This CHIME Innovation Summit proved that healthcare’s boldest ambitions — from AI to genomics — gain meaning only when anchored in purpose. Digital health’s next frontier will be built not just with code, but with courage, compassion, and collaboration.

Manis closed the summit with a stern call to action: “Leave here and do something.”

Or, as Julius Caesar might have said: Vade, vide, vince — Go, seek, conquer.