Why Health IT Leaders Must Attend HIMSS26: Why the Effort Is Still Worth It

HIMSS can be overwhelming. Anyone who tells you otherwise either has not been or has not stayed long enough to feel it.

The scale is immense. The exhibit hall stretches endlessly. The sessions overlap. The conversations start early and run late. It is loud, fast, and relentless. And yet, for many health IT leaders in 2026, that intensity is precisely why attendance still matters.

HIMSS is not a conference you attend casually. It is one you attend with purpose. And when approached deliberately, it remains one of the few environments capable of delivering something increasingly rare in healthcare IT: true ecosystem-level perspective.

HIMSS is where the whole system shows up at once

Healthcare IT does not operate in silos, even when organizations wish it did. Strategy is shaped simultaneously by vendors, regulators, clinicians, payers, policymakers, standards bodies, and emerging innovators.

HIMSS is one of the only places where all of those forces converge in the same physical space, at the same time.

That matters.

Reading reports, joining webinars, and attending niche events can deepen understanding of specific issues. But they rarely reveal how the broader system is moving. HIMSS allows leaders to step back from daily operations and see patterns forming across the industry, patterns that will shape procurement decisions, regulatory expectations, and technology roadmaps long after the conference ends.

For leaders responsible for long-term planning, that macro view is not a luxury. It is a necessity.

Strategy requires context and HIMSS provides it at scale

Health IT leaders are increasingly expected to think beyond their own organizations. Boards and executive teams want to know where the industry is actually going, which technologies are maturing and which are stalling, how peers are responding to the same constraints, and what expectations are forming that will soon become table stakes.

HIMSS is not about finding all the answers. It is about understanding the direction of travel.

The conversations that happen in hallways, side meetings, and unscripted encounters often provide more strategic insight than any single session. Leaders hear what vendors are emphasizing and what they are quietly backing away from. They hear what peers are excited about and what they regret. Those signals are difficult to capture anywhere else at the same density.

AI demands discernment, not distance

AI will dominate HIMSS26, and that alone is a reason serious leaders should attend.

Not because the hype is convincing, but because it needs to be interrogated.

AI is no longer speculative. It is entering contracts, workflows, and governance discussions. Leaders who avoid the conversation risk falling behind not technologically, but organizationally. HIMSS provides a unique opportunity to compare claims, question assumptions, and evaluate maturity across dozens of vendors and use cases in a compressed timeframe.

Seeing AI presented side by side across clinical, operational, and administrative domains helps leaders distinguish between novelty and readiness. That discernment is difficult to develop from a distance.

Leadership visibility still matters

For better or worse, HIMSS remains a stage.

Attendance signals engagement, not just with technology, but with the industry itself. For CIOs, CMIOs, and senior IT leaders, being present communicates credibility to peers, vendors, and internal stakeholders.

That visibility is not about ego. It is about influence.

Decisions made in healthcare IT are increasingly shaped by informal networks and shared understanding. Leaders who show up, listen, and contribute thoughtfully help shape the conversations that ripple outward long after the conference concludes.

The value is unlocked by intention

HIMSS fails leaders who attend without a plan. It rewards those who arrive with clarity.

The leaders who benefit most define specific objectives before they arrive, schedule meetings in advance, prioritize conversations over sessions, and treat the exhibit hall as research rather than entertainment.

When approached this way, HIMSS becomes less about consumption and more about synthesis. It becomes a place to test assumptions, pressure-test strategy, and recalibrate priorities.

HIMSS is not mandatory, but it is still consequential

Not every leader needs to attend every year. That is no longer realistic or necessary.

But for leaders shaping enterprise IT strategy, navigating AI adoption, managing vendor ecosystems, or preparing for regulatory and operational shifts, HIMSS26 remains one of the few environments capable of delivering concentrated insight at scale.

It is exhausting. It is imperfect. It is too much at times.

And yet, done right, it still matters.

Because healthcare IT does not move forward in isolation. And once a year, HIMSS offers a rare opportunity to see the entire machine in motion.