Innovation with teeth: Inside the 2025 CHIME Innovation Summit SE

It wasn’t a meeting. It was a manifesto.

Held at the Baptist Health Innovation Center in Jacksonville, Florida, the 2025 CHIME Innovation Summit brought together health IT and innovation leaders not to marvel at a vendor showcase or slog through buzzword bingo, but to have an honest conversation about the future of healthcare. And for once, that conversation didn’t shy away from the hard stuff.

Attendees challenged one another to stop mistaking pilots for progress, to push back against innovation theater, and to think bigger than the boundaries of today’s workflows and reimbursement structures. There were no easy answers, but that was never the point.

This was innovation with teeth: collaborative, reality-checked, and determined to turn today’s hype into tomorrow’s operational backbone.

Moonshots, not maintenance

Moonshot: an ambitious, exploratory and ground-breaking project undertaken without any expectation of near-term profitability or benefit.

From the iconic Apollo space program to the James Webb Telescope, from the Human Genome Project to Alphabet’s semi-secret R&D project X, moonshots combining the best of human intelligence and technology have transformed life on (and above) Earth. The delivery of care craves its own moonshot moment.

Healthcare is not a slow adopter because it lacks vision; it’s because it can’t afford to get things wrong: You don’t get to beta test on a human being.

And yet, many agreed: the industry is at a tipping point where incrementalism won’t cut it. “What if we started from scratch?” became a recurring refrain. Attendees floated bold ideas, from replacing insurance-based care with public health-driven subscription models, to leapfrogging today’s clunky EHRs in favor of voice-first, ambient clinical environments. Others discussed the potential of digital twins, quantum computing, and blockchain — not as magic bullets, but as tools to support new models of care that are proactive, precise, and equitable.

But no one confused ambition for action. Leaders repeatedly emphasized that moonshot thinking must be grounded in the real, messy work of implementation, and that means designing for humans first.

“This is a people business, a patient care business,” said Aaron Miri, SVP and Chief Digital & Information Officer at Baptist Health. “It’s very difficult to shoehorn in technology from finance, manufacturing, or other sectors, because it’s about the workflow.”

From discussion to action plans

That’s why so many conversations returned to workflow. Whether the topic was ambient AI, clinical automation, or the future of the digital front door, speakers stressed that real transformation starts not with the technology, but with rethinking how people work and how they interact with technology.

Case in point: Baptist Health’s work with automated messaging. Making an AI-generated reply sound like a real doctor wasn’t a simple prompt-engineering trick. It took more than 200 hours of direct input from 16 physicians, with hundreds more providing feedback over 2024. The challenge wasn’t just accuracy; it was tone, trust, and empathy.

For Miri, that kind of investment is the price of real innovation. Flashy demos don’t cut it. “If you don’t match up to our workflow,” he said, “it’s not going to work, no matter how hard you try.”

Across sessions, panelists shared similar stories of rolling up their sleeves to operationalize change. Organizations described embedding GenAI copilots into revenue cycle workflows, building synthetic data environments to safely train AI tools, and integrating voice-based documentation to give time back to clinicians. These weren’t theoretical use cases; they were the “duct tape and empathy” needed to move innovation from prototype to practice.

And while the headlines often fixate on vendor partnerships or technology stacks, the real work is often about governance and grit. It’s not about buying a new tool; it’s about deciding who owns the problem and giving them the authority to solve it. “You cannot turn into a technology company,” Miri told the provider audience, referring to the tendency to favor turnkey solutions. “That’s not how healthcare works. You ‘ve got to stay true to your mission and use technology responsibly.”

Not just the future — the frontier

By the time the Summit wrapped on Day Two, attendees were already buzzing about how to keep the momentum going.

The Summit didn’t pretend that any of this was easy. But there was a palpable sense that healthcare’s innovation window is wide open — and closing fast. Participants acknowledged the regulatory, cultural, and technical headwinds, but also recognized that standing still is no longer an option.

From AI to ambient interfaces, decentralized data models to digital-first care teams, the energy in the room wasn’t just about technology. It was about redesigning systems that serve humans better.

The industry may be allergic to hype, but it’s hungry for hope. And if the 2025 CHIME Innovation Summit proved anything, it’s that healthcare doesn’t lack big ideas. It just needs more rooms like this, with bright people, bright ideas and the ambition to drive them forward, to make them real.

Thought leaders and innovators will have five more of these opportunities to gather and fuel real transformation, as CHIME Innovation has plans for a total of six innovation summits this year.

“I remember what we were talking about, in terms of AI, a year ago … and 12 months later, we are in a completely different place,” Fraidenburg noted. He explained the unique, interactive format of this year’s summit was designed to “mature these conversations” and move them forward to even bigger successes.

Here’s to building on the bold ideas and big conversations sparked in Dana Point. Because if there’s one thing the 2025 CHIME Innovation Summit made clear, it’s this: Healthcare’s future won’t invent itself. But together, we just might.

If you missed this summit, now is your chance to weigh in: What’s your healthcare moonshot? What innovation are you working on that could shift the system forward? Share it, shape it, and show up — because the future of care delivery won’t invent itself.

For more information on the upcoming CHIME Innovation summits, visit the CHIME Events page.