With over 10,000 attendees — including over 2,500 CEOs and 350 speakers — HLTH has quickly become a landmark industry event for healthcare executives, decision-makers, and innovators alike. This year at HLTH, over 150 media attendees from global and industry outlets attended the event with an important job: to engage with countless thought leaders in healthcare and source fresh insights for future reporting. 

PAN caught up with John Lynn, Founder and Chief Editor at Healthcare IT Today, and Jared Taylor, Founder and CEO of Slice of Healthcare, to discuss the hottest trends impacting all facets of healthcare, most surprising learnings at HLTH, their favorite part of attending onsite, and more.  

Hot Takes

Where Jared shared with us the most interesting news for him at HLTH was “General Catalyst’s interest in buying a hospital system,” John said that he was surprised “how many more people were there from pharma and payers along with providers.”  

Not surprisingly, and in line with the PAN HealthPulse, AI is a hot topic across healthcare and was certainly top-of-mind for those attending this year’s show. John especially noted the prevalence and increasing amount of companies innovating with AI to solve real-world problems like burnout.  

That said, both journalists agreed that it’s going to take a little bit to see how the buzzworthy adoption of AI across the healthcare continuum shakes out. John noted, “It will take until at least 2024 and possibly 2025 to … see who the big winners are in the healthcare AI space.” Jared agreed and added that “2023 was the year of talking about AI in healthcare, it’ll be interesting to see how actually puts that talk to action in 2024.”  

Networking with Brands

When asked about this year’s theme, “elevate humanity,” and “creating a better future for all,” Jared noted that “many of the sessions aligned well with the theme.” Jared said he’s been busy catching up virtually and watching the sessions post-event that he couldn’t get to in-person due to recording at the event. This includes meeting with PAN client, Brad Kittredge, Co-founder and CEO of Brightside Health. 

“The best part of any event hasn’t changed in a long time,” John shared with PAN. At the show, John said it was fun to catch up with PAN client, BJ Boyle, Chief Product Officer of PointClickCare. “It’s always about the people. The people you connect with. The conversations you have with people. The insights and perspectives you hear from people. The people who have had success that you want to celebrate.  Events are always about connecting with smart people for me.” Jared agreed and added that Slice of Healthcare loves “the ability to record in-person content with lots of leaders” and running into the people he speaks to virtually throughout the year. 

Looking Forward

Needless to say, both John and Jared let us know that their time was well-spent and that HLTH put on a great show. John added, “I’m interested to see how the event evolves over time. In the early iterations, it was about startups and investors.  It’s now morphed into an interesting mix of a wide swath of the healthcare ecosystem. I think that’s by design, but I’ll be interested to see what attendees think of the mix across very disparate parts of healthcare.”   

I suppose time will tell as the event has already launched their 2024 webpage to connect with everyone again next October at the Venetian Expo in Las Vegas. Until next year! 

Get in touch to learn more about how PAN supports clients at industry events like HLTH, and download the PAN HealthPulse, the latest report analyzing top conversations in HIT and digital health in 2023.