From Hype to Accountability: Lessons and Shifts in Healthcare Tech for 2026

Welcome back to Care Decoded, the podcast where we break down the complexities of healthcare technology, documentation, coding, quality, and clinical AI to help organizations work smarter, not harder. In this special New Year’s episode, hosts Dr. Sunil Nihalani and Mark McKeown turn the spotlight inward, reflecting on everything 2025 taught the industry and their own team at Inferscience.

This year was nothing short of a stress test for healthcare, marked by evolving CMS expectations, tougher audits, turbulence in risk adjustment, and a critical shift for AI from pure hype to real accountability. Dr. Sunil Nihalani and Mark McKeown discuss why flashy new tools often fell flat and how true progress came from technology that reduces clinician burden, works seamlessly inside clinical workflows, and, most importantly, earns trust.

Join them as they unpack the year's biggest lessons, share the real-world feedback they heard from hundreds of clinicians and leaders, and preview the themes that will define success in 2026: audit readiness, real-time intelligence at the point of care, and building genuine trust across the industry. Whether you're a clinician, health plan leader, or health tech enthusiast, this episode is packed with insights to help you navigate the ever-evolving landscape of healthcare innovation.

Timestamsp:
00:00 "Care Decoded: Healthcare Insights 2026"
03:29 "Compliance Evolution and Clinician Support"
06:38 "Clarity, Speed, Confidence"
09:46 Enhancing Healthcare Workflow Intelligence
12:59 "Decoding Care in 2026"

Quotes, Hooks, & Timestamps:
2025 was not just another year, it was a stress test for healthcare."
— Dr Sunil Nihalani [00:00:39 → 00:00:43]

When you look back on 2025, not just for infoscience, but for healthcare broadly, what stands out the most for you?
— Dr Sunil Nihalani [00:01:59 → 00:02:06]

"Healthcare has finally started to understand that technology itself doesn't fix healthcare, but usable technology does."
— Mark McKeown [00:03:21 → 00:03:27]

"2025 shifted compliance from event that we prepare for to a continuous state that must be maintained."
— Dr Sunil Nihalani [00:03:56 → 00:04:03]

"Looking back last year, V28 Radvi, quality interoperability and augmented clinicians, which teams do you think became Most real in 2025?"
— Dr Sunil Nihalani [00:04:32 → 00:04:43]

"Working together, health plans urgently tell us that they wanted accuracy, had to have accuracy, they needed defensibility, and they needed to be able to reduce their audit exposure. That's exactly why real time documentation intelligence resonated. Because leaders didn't want to do cleanup later."
— Mark McKeown [00:04:59 → 00:05:18]

"They just don't want more volume, they want clarity and they want confidence at the point of care."
— Mark McKeown [00:05:59 → 00:06:04]

"AI is humanizing care rather than Mechanizing it."
— Dr Sunil Nihalani [00:06:20 → 00:06:24]

"Health plans on the other side finally started saying, stop siloing. Quality, coding, compliance and documentations. You have to help us align them."
— Mark McKeown [00:07:04 → 00:07:13]

"And honestly, nothing is more rewarding than hearing clinicians say that this finally feels like support, not surveillance, not just somebody checking on us."
— Dr Sunil Nihalani [00:07:48 → 00:07:57]

"Second of all must be defensible. And third, has to stand up against scrutiny that they've never had to go through before."
— Mark McKeown [00:08:27 → 00:08:32]

"What the industry needs is intelligence at the moment the care happens."
— Mark McKeown [00:09:00 → 00:09:05]

"The first one is to make sure that we are deeply embedded our intelligence inside of the EHR workflow so that this intelligence is available at the point of care, not encapsulated in a portal or a report somewhere else."
— Mark McKeown [00:09:54 → 00:10:09]

"Physicians are telling me, make me better, make me more efficient without taking me away from my patient. And if you can, can you give me back a little time at the end of the day?"
— Mark McKeown [00:11:02 → 00:11:13]

"We are actively working on enhancing our ui, which is already very much designed with clinicians in mind, but just making it even better and more sort of focused on, you know, providing the right recommendations at the right time without a lot of noise to the clinicians."
— Dr Sunil Nihalani [00:11:30 → 00:11:46]

"Let's talk about strategy. Let's collaborate. Let's build smarter systems together."
— Dr Sunil Nihalani [00:12:27 → 00:12:32]

"Healthcare does not need louder technology. It needs smarter, more human technology."
— Dr Sunil Nihalani [00:12:49 → 00:12:53]


Podcast's Website - https://caredecoded.com/

Dr. Sunil Nihalani - CEO and Founder at Inferscience -   / sunil-nihalani-a6983a5  

Inferscience - https://www.inferscience.com/

Podcast Powered by TopHealth - https://tophealth.care/

“Disclaimer: Informational only. Not medical advice. Consult your doctor for guidance.”