Key Insights and Innovations from the 2025 Health Catalyst Analytics Summit
The curtain has closed on the 2025 Health Catalyst Analytics Summit (HAS 25), but it marked not an end, but rather a starting point, charting an energizing path for healthcare innovation and transformation. This year’s summit brought leaders together in an intimate setting to explore the power of data and analytics and the promise of AI in tackling healthcare’s most pressing challenges—from improving quality and reducing costs to driving revenue growth and advancing population health.
First Day Keynotes
Setting the Course
Dan Burton, Chief Executive Officer of Health Catalyst, kicked off the summit by expressing deep gratitude and reflecting on both personal and professional milestones that underscore the importance of Health Catalyst’s mission. Drawing from three recent life experiences—becoming a soon-to-be grandfather, witnessing a young church member overcome life-threatening kidney issues, and the loss of his mother-in-law—he reminded the audience why the work of improving healthcare matters so profoundly.
“What we do is personal, each and every one of us has been affected by the healthcare ecosystem,” Burton said.
Burton shared that, guided by its mission to be the catalyst for massive, measurable, data-informed healthcare improvement, Health Catalyst delivers a three-part solution of insights applications, a healthcare-specific data and analytics platform, and expert services. Its strategic priorities include clinical quality, regulatory and cybersecurity, revenue and cost management, and advancing value-based care. With 17 years in healthcare, a client community of over 1,100 organizations, 365+ case studies, and $2.2 billion in measurable improvements, Health Catalyst has a proven track record of delivering impact.
Burton reaffirmed the company’s promise to clients, rooted in the Golden Rule: honoring commitments, investing in AI and R&D, ensuring ROI, and maintaining fair, transparent partnerships.
“We should always stay on our front foot to adopt change in technology,” Burton said. “We have always been about measurable improvement; that is one thing that will never change.”
State of the Industry
Following Burton, KD Weitzel, Research Director & Expert Partner at Advisory Board, highlighted healthcare’s shift from topline growth to sustainable margins amid mounting policy, financial, and operational pressures. Federal changes (including the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” Medicaid work requirements, Medicare sequestration, and the Chevron ruling) are reshaping reimbursement, while state measures like California’s spending caps and Maryland’s all-payer model add complexity.
These shifts are projected to swell the uninsured population, increase administrative burdens, and further strain hospitals and health plans, with 40% of hospitals already operating at a loss and nearly one-third of rural hospitals at risk of closure.
At the same time, industry dynamics are evolving: Medicare Advantage now covers more than half of beneficiaries, marketplace growth faces subsidy expirations, and utilization patterns diverge with an aging population. Cost pressures from expensive drugs, specialty pharmacy, and rising cybersecurity threats compound challenges. Yet opportunities lie in Medicare Advantage, state cost-control models, and especially AI and big data—tools that promise efficiency, predictive power, and new ways to manage complexity.
As Weitzel put it: “The most interesting ‘tree’ to plant right now is AI. It doesn’t scare me—it will radically change healthcare.”
Igniting the Future of Healthcare Innovation
Next, Health Catalyst leaders Dave Ross, Chief Product and Technology Officer; Dan Samarov, Chief AI Officer; and Robbie Hughes, SVP of Product Strategy, took the stage to emphasize that while healthcare’s challenges are intensifying, so too is our capacity to meet them.
“So many of the challenges KD was just speaking about, I believe we have solutions to,” said Ross.
Together, Ross, Samarov and Hughes introduced Ignite Intelligence, an AI-powered improvement co-pilot that transforms decades of expertise into real-time insights to drive cost efficiency, operational growth, and value-based care. Built on healthcare-specific data and analytics infrastructure and supported by clinical, financial, and operational experts, the platform delivers actionable insights for measurable, sustained improvement.
“As a company improvement is at our core. It is why we get up every day. It drives our journey,” Hughes said.
Ignite Intelligence combines shared models, AI agents, benchmarks, and comparison services to accelerate results, with real-world savings already demonstrated. The Health Catalyst Clinical Cost Intelligence solution moves healthcare systems costing from months of analysis to instant insights across procedures, supplies, and service lines, using methods like supply normalization, ontology mapping, ML-driven variation analysis, and LLM-enabled opportunity screening.
The leaders ended the session by revealing Health Catalyst’s product roadmap, which includes Clinical Cost Intelligence (live now); ambulatory operations solutions focused on growth, efficiency, and retention (winter 2025); and integrated value-based care tools with risk simulation (spring 2026).
“At the center of everything Health Catalyst does is measurable improvement. And we design our products with this in mind,” Samarov said. “And, at the core of all this, we want to make sure we are doing right by the patient.”
AI at the Tipping Point: What Healthcare Leaders Need to Know Now
In his presentation, Harjinder Sandhu, Former CTO, Health and Life Sciences Solutions and Platform, Microsoft, emphasized that healthcare is entering a pivotal moment for AI adoption: LLMs are advancing rapidly, costs are falling, but true success hinges on reducing human-AI workflow friction and leveraging data effectively.
Over the past eight years, models have scaled from millions to over 100 billion parameters, driving major performance gains. Early successes are emerging in areas where AI complements clinicians, such as scribes, chart summaries, coding, and prior authorization. Yet friction, caused by workflow mismatches, lack of explainability, or undertrained models, limits value in scheduling, triage, and decision support.
Sandhu stressed that AI’s future in healthcare depends less on technology alone than on how well organizations marshal data and design workflows. With EMRs and health systems poised to build rapidly, the greatest opportunities lie in targeting low-friction use cases and reducing barriers to adoption.
“Risk has not fundamentally changed; human oversight is essential,” Sandhu said. “All this success we have had in AI, particularly in medicine, has been about how well humans and AI mesh together.”
Unlocking $100M in Value: Executing an Enterprise Analytics Strategy That Delivers
Rhiannon Harms, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at UnityPoint Health, shared how the organization achieved more than $100 million in measurable improvements by embedding analytics directly into its strategic planning and daily operations. Through predictive modeling, metric cascades close clinician partnerships, the system reduced 70,000 excess hospital days and saved over $70 million in avoided cost. Additional gains came from readmission prevention, supply chain analytics during shortages, and automation with AI to improve efficiency and insights.
Breakout Sessions
While leaders on the HAS mainstage charted the way forward, breakout sessions highlighted teams sharing tangible, measurable successes achieved through data and analytics at their organizations. We’ve highlighted a few HAS25 Breakout sessions below. To see the complete lineup, visit: https://hasummit.com/.
Navigating MIPS at Scale: Performance Reporting Across 35+ EHRs and 187 Practices - Revere Medical
Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) performance reporting remains one of healthcare’s most complex and challenging reporting programs, especially for large Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) operating across dozens of EHRs and practices. Udi Dontan, VP Technology & Informatics at Revere Medical, shared how his organization became one of the first ACOs to report MIPS electronically, integrating data from 187 practices across 35+ EHRs. Their strategy combined strong practice engagement, cross-functional teamwork, technology, and terminology mapping to standardize reporting. The effort drove measurable improvements in quality outcomes and generated $41 million in shared savings.
Discover Cost Clarity: Unlock Deeper Insights for Smarter Healthcare Finance - Temple University Health System
As healthcare organizations work to improve efficiency and cut costs, many find traditional cost accounting systems lack the depth and accuracy they need. Byron Glasgow, Vice President of Finance at Temple University Health System shared how Temple Health addressed this by using Health Catalyst PowerCosting™ and Pop Analyzer™ tools to gain real-time, data-driven insights into their true costs.
Temple Health applied activity-based costing to understand actual costs and linked cost and quality data to identify and prioritize opportunities for revenue, price, and quality improvement. Initiatives such as disposition days, collection, and enhanced service line charge capture and recovery have generated millions in revenue, ensuring appropriate payment for services provided.
Redefining Healthcare Delivery: Deploying a New Operating Model and Advanced Analytics - INTEGRIS Health
With healthcare waste in the U.S. reaching up to $930 billion annually, system transformation isn’t optional, it’s essential. Timothy Pehrson, President and Chief Executive Officer, INTEGRIS Health shared how INTEGRIS Health is raising the bar through its new operating model, The INTEGRIS Health Way, which pairs advanced analytics with collaborative design.
Since implementing The INTEGRIS Health Way in 2018, the organization has established a continuous improvement operating system that provides an enterprise-wide, common language for problem-solving. In just 6.5 years, caregivers have implemented more than 116,000 ideas, driving stronger engagement and generating $177 million in continuous financial improvement over three years. Quality and safety have also advanced significantly, with serious safety events reduced by 74.3% in four years. What was once a “data desert” has become a blossoming, data-driven culture through INTEGRIS Health’s partnership with Health Catalyst, embedding analytics into both strategy deployment and daily improvement.
Scaling Digital Patient Engagement: Transforming Pre-Procedure, Post-Discharge, and Population Health Outreach - MedStar Health
Patient engagement plays a crucial role in improving outcomes, reducing costs, and optimizing operational performance. However, traditional engagement methods like phone-based outreach are resource-intensive, and healthcare systems struggle to scale them effectively. David Brennan, Director of Strategic Initiatives at MedStar Health shared how his organization addressed this challenge by implementing enterprise-wide digital patient engagement and care delivery workflows and by strengthening patient-provider connections.
Using innovative, scalable digital solutions, the organization transformed pre-procedure, post-discharge, and population health outreach to improve the patient experience and drive operational efficiency. The results: MedStar engaged more than 43,000 patients to close care gaps, improved blood pressure control for 2,200 individuals, placed over 2,000 preventive screening orders, increased adoption of self-directed education and recovery tools, and redirected labor cost savings from automation of pre-anesthesia testing.
2025 Catalyst Awards
Recognizing Healthcare’s Data-Driven Innovators at the 2025 Health Catalyst Analytics Summit
While the conference featured energizing mainstage and breakout sessions, along with meaningful “Braindate” networking, attendees still found time to celebrate. HAS 25 highlighted the 2025 Catalyst Awards, an annual program recognizing healthcare organizations at the forefront of data-driven transformation. Of 28 finalists across 11 categories, 10 organizations were named winners, celebrated for their outstanding achievements in innovation and healthcare transformation alongside other leading hospitals and health systems. Learn more about the winners here: Health Catalyst Announces Winners of the 2025 Catalyst Awards
Final Day Keynotes
Upping the Ante on Technology Transformation in Healthcare
On the final day, Timothy Ferris, MD, President, Healthcare Practice, Red Cell Partners, detailed how the gap between the capacity of the healthcare workforce and the need for care is only deepening. A major factor in clinician burnout is the administrative burden of clinical practice and the vastness of information and knowledge required to keep up. AI holds the promise to significantly mitigate burdens, augment clinical decision making, and return aspects of humanity to care delivery. However, there are risks, not just technical and ethical, but from prioritizing business and financial incentives over improvements in patient care.
“A dangerous assumption healthcare leaders are making about AI is that the bias and hallucinations are more dangerous than the benefits,” Ferris said.
Reducing costs will require scaling one-to-many service models and adopting new technologies, though financial incentives often hinder their use. Across specialties, startups are developing devices and services that streamline care, but broader adoption is limited by misaligned incentives. Ultimately, technology has the potential to transform healthcare—improving efficiency, enabling better preventative care, and even supporting long-term health and retirement outcomes.
While addressing these issues, Ferris made a call for courageous leadership and innovation in a pivotal time for healthcare across the globe.
Adapt, Overcome, and WIN as ONE
Robyn Benincasa, Top Leadership and Teamwork Motivational Speaker, Retired Firefighter, Adventure Racing World Champion, CNN Hero, and Bestselling Author, capped the summit by sharing the Secrets to Extreme Teamwork that allowed her team to be the most prolific and consistent World Champions in the sport—lessons that easily apply to our adventures in healthcare improvement.
Benincasa emphasized that change and challenge are constants in life, and success comes not from individual effort but from strong, courageous teams. World-class teams are defined by courage—both innate and cultivated—and are driven by hope of success rather than fear of failure. They operate in the “white space,” share the burdens equally, create collective ownership of the mission, embrace difficult times, and leave egos behind. Ultimately, the session underscored that building and sustaining high-performing teams requires resilience, shared commitment, and the willingness to face challenges together.
Healthcare is a continuous journey—one that’s never truly complete.
From inspiring keynotes and engaging breakout sessions to the meaningful connections made through “Braindates,” HAS 25 left us energized about what’s next and reminded us of the opportunities AI presents, real-world stories of successful improvement, and the heart of what we do—improving healthcare. At Health Catalyst, our goal is to be the partner that helps organizations navigate this path with confidence.
Every challenge brings an opportunity, and we are committed to uncovering those opportunities to drive meaningful progress. From adapting to Medicaid changes to embracing the transition to AI, healthcare organizations need a trusted partner who delivers measurable results. That’s what we offer: measurable, lasting impact, both as a product and a promise.
