It started, as the best conference moments often do, at a water cooler. On the first morning of the HLTH 2025 Conference, my colleague Shawn Crowley and I ran into Heather Cook, CEO of Wellmind. We struck up a spontaneous conversation about her company, what she was hoping to learn, and where she saw the industry heading. Later that day, we met Amy Bucher, Chief Behavioral Officer at Lirio, who shared her insights on using behavioral science and hyper-personalization to drive meaningful change in health behavior.
These conversations – one accidental, one planned – ended up framing my entire experience at HLTH.While the conference is full of panels and product demos, what stood out most was the energy of people trying to make healthcare better. This year’s event offered a snapshot of how the market is evolving, where technology is overpromising, and where human connection still matters most. Here are four key takeaways.
1️⃣ Conversations That Matter More Than Sessions
HLTH is designed to spark connections, and it succeeds. Between scheduled meetups and chance encounters, I spoke with more than 50 people during the event. These weren’t just surface-level exchanges; they were genuine, hopeful conversations about how technology can improve patient lives.
What made these discussions so valuable wasn’t the networking itself. It was the shared optimism. Across startups, hospital systems, and established health tech firms, I heard consistent determination to create change that truly benefits patients. These interactions reminded me that healthcare innovation still runs on trust, curiosity, and a desire to make things better.
At Atomic Object, we believe connection drives innovation. Our human-centered design philosophy and our growing focus on trauma-informed design is built around the same principle: meaningful solutions start by understanding people. HLTH reinforced how much that mindset matters in healthcare, where empathy and evidence must work hand in hand.
2️⃣ AI Everywhere: Between Hype and Help
If 2024 was the year AI became a buzzword in healthcare, 2025 is the year it became ubiquitous. Every booth, every demo, every panel seemed to feature “AI-powered” in bold letters. Yet, as I walked the exhibit hall, I found myself wondering how many of these tools were truly solving problems, and not just adding “AI” mainly for attention.
There’s a growing maturity in how people talk about AI, though. Many organizations are starting to view it not as the product itself, but as a quiet assistant. Something embedded in workflows to enhance efficiency or insight rather than steal the spotlight. That’s an encouraging trend. But it’s also clear that AI’s marketing hype still outpaces its measurable impact.
This gap between hype and help underscores the importance of clarity in product design. In my experience, when AI is positioned as an enabler, it tends to create more value. Design plays a crucial role here: it helps teams focus on the right problems to solve and ensures that technology remains in the service of people, not the other way around.
3️⃣ Genetics and Personalized Medicine Take Center Stage
One of the most thought-provoking sessions I attended focused on the evolution of personalized medicine. What struck me most was how far the conversation has moved beyond genetics alone. As Dr. Wando Anyoku and Justin Brick discussed, we’re now entering an era of hyper-personalization. This is where genomics is combined with environmental, behavioral, and social context to create a truly holistic view of health.
But that progress comes with complexity. As several panelists noted, if our data and biorepositories aren’t representative, health disparities will scale faster than ever. True personalization demands equitable participation, interoperability, and community trust. “Test once, query often” was a phrase that stuck with me. It reflects the idea that genetic data should be reusable across systems, but responsibly so.
From a design and technology perspective, the opportunities are enormous. Equity dashboards, genetic counseling assistants, consent and education UX, and community-trust engagement tools could all play a part in building more inclusive personalized medicine systems. The challenge is ensuring that these innovations reach everyone—not just those with access or means. The conversation left me optimistic that the future of precision medicine will be defined not just by what’s possible, but by who it serves.
For more background on this topic, see NIH’s All of Us Research Program and recent coverage in Nature Medicine on genomic equity.
4️⃣ Data Sharing: The Key That Unlocks or Limits Everything
The final thread woven through nearly every HLTH conversation was data. AI, personalization, and patient experience all depend on it. Yet, the industry still struggles with how to share it responsibly. Companies acknowledge that their models need more diverse and comprehensive datasets to function well. But they also recognize that controlling data provides market leverage.
Until incentives change, most data will remain locked within proprietary systems. Still, I sensed progress. Some vendors are experimenting with new data-sharing partnerships, while others are looking at agent-based architectures that allow patients to control access dynamically. These ideas hint at a more human-centered future. This is one where individuals become active participants in how their health data is used.
The design challenge is enormous but essential: building trust into every layer of the system. Transparent permissions, understandable consent flows, and reciprocal value for users could make sharing feel less risky and more empowering. When that happens, we’ll finally start to see data and AI deliver on their promise of better outcomes for all.
Designing for Humanity in Health Tech
HLTH 2025 was both energizing and humbling. The event reminded me that, for all the progress in technology, the real breakthroughs still start with people. The most impactful innovations will come from teams that balance empathy with engineering and design systems that care as much about how something works as who it helps.
So here’s the question I left with…and one I plan to explore in a future post: How can we design healthcare technology that heals not just the body, but the experience of care itself?